How
do you know when it's time to change your approach?
I
know it's time to change direction when I see blank faces, or when a
student says "I'm missing something," or "I don't get
it." It means that I need to switch my approach. Often when I'm
trying to teach a particular concept and I know that the students aren't
getting it, I talk with some of the other adults in the room -- I have
a graduate student intern, and various other people coming in and out.
We talk about what I wanted the students to get from the lesson, and
what they actually got and understood. Often we do backwards planning
-- we decide that we need to follow up with a more hands-on approach,
or that we need to clarify something. And sometimes we decide that the
students really got it and we're ready to go to the next level.
What
will be your "next move"?
I think that my
challenge will always be to continually assess what I'm doing. What
I think works well one year falls short the next. Also I'm leaning more
towards hands-on discovery. I think it's very easy for teachers to set
things up for children. It's much easier for me to come up with the
questions. I want to step out of the picture as much as I can and have
the students more in charge of their own learning. That's really difficult
to do.
