Tuesday, February 9, 2010
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Responses to Merrill
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Responses to Merrill
Wordle Response to Classroom Managment 3
The most memorable learning experience I had was in my high school math class. Math was never the easiest subject for me, and it drove me crazy that I couldn't fully understand every concept when it was first introduced. My math teacher challenged my class every day to push ourselves harder to become better at math. His constant encouragement made me come to appreciate math in ways I never had before. He also set very high standards for his class, so we all worked hard because we wanted to earn his respect. He not only helped me appreciate math but he taught me the value of hard work, which is something I can use for the rest of my life.
ReplyDeleteThe most memorable learning experience I had was back in 1st grade. I can't even believe I can remember this long ago, but I truly believe this was the year and the teacher that made me love to read. The teacher would always read to us fun books both picture books and chapter books. When she read the chapter books she put so much excitment into it. I want to read so badly that I would beg my parents to buy all the books she read so that when I could read better I would have them. I also remember going home and having my little brother be my student and try to create a classroom at home. I think this was the first sign for me to become a teacher. :)
ReplyDeleteWhen I think back on elementary school the thing that sticks out the most was doing "rocket math" in third and fourth grade. If I remember right a majority of the second semester math time was spent with us doing rocket math. We started with addition then moved on through subtraction, multiplication, and finished with division. This sticks out to me because it allowed us to work and learn math at our own pace, and the further to the top of rocket our progress chart filled up, the more challenging the problems got. Since we knew the problems were becoming more challenging, we wanted to solve them even more than the ones before that. Also, it sparked a friendly competitive spirit in the room. Our teacher would supervise us to make sure we were grasping the material, but let the learning really come to us. She had already laid the basics down, and now it was our turn to show what we could. I think her effectiveness came earlier in the year, in the successful teaching of the basis of the operations, but by allowing us to now show what we could do all by ourselves was also a great idea and a good teaching strategy.
ReplyDeleteIn high school, I took a multimedia class. I hadn't really done much with multimedia before, so learning new things and creating images on the computer was a lot of fun. We were assigned to create a logo representing our school, including the name and our motto. The "best" logo from the class could have the opportunity to be used on various school documents. I ended up "winning" and my logo for the school is now on letters to parents, the student agendas, and various other items. I learned a lot from this experience because I learned a lot, and I also tend to be more interested in the projects or tasks if there is a competition involved. I think challenging and competitive tasks motivated me in school.
ReplyDeleteAnother experience I remember that learning was brought to life for me was in 3rd grade when we were learning about the layers of the earth. My teachers brought in Hostess cupcakes, Starbursts, and chocolate chip cookies to help demonstrate the layers of the earth for my entire grade. I will never forget twisting two kinds of Starbursts together to represent lava turning into rock because every time I eat Starbursts I think about twisting them together, even today! This was an experience my classmates and I will always remember because we still talk about it today!
ReplyDeleteMore experiences I can remember is my junior and senior math classes. Our teacher had been around for a long time, so she really knew what she was talking about. She didn't expect anything less than the best from us, and sometimes wouldn't accept our work if we didn't show how we came to our answer. This really eliminated the chance of anyone in the class cheating, since you had to show your work or else you would get an incomplete score for your homework. Although sometimes we found it quite annoying and inconvenient to show every little detail, by the time we graduated we really appreciated everything she had done for us. By making us explain everything we did, we had to take full responsibility of our work, and I think that nearly everyone that was in our math class will take what we learned from her and apply it to whatever field we are entering after college.
ReplyDeleteThe most memorable experience I had as a learner was in my high school chemistry class. My teacher would do these very cool and interesting demonstrations to help us understand the information that we were learning. I think that this way of teaching was very helpful for me to learn because of the visuals and it helped me understand the content a lot better.
ReplyDeleteRyan,
ReplyDeleteI also believe competition is a very good teaching strategy teachers can use. I was very competitive growing up and when teachers made learning into a game it always motivated me to try harder, which made me learn more without even knowing it.
In middle school, we did an activity with the Oregon Trail. Every day we would come into class and find out or fate for the day by rolling dice. We kept a journal to track what happened day-to-day. This was motivating because we learned the class content by incorporating a game that directly related to the topic.
ReplyDeleteWhen I was in high school my most memorable classes were with my history teacher, and that's mostly what motivated me and interested myself in becoming a teacher. He mixed up the lessons and instructional strategies so that the students were constantly seeing new ways to learn. Sometimes we would watch a video, sometimes we would play a game, sometimes we would read or take notes, and others we would review or do something else. I also agree that competition can be good. But only if the students are having fun, because if the students aren't having fun competing they won't want to do it. But if they are having fun, than it's easy for them to learn and compete against their classmates all in good fun. My most memorable was probably the history quiz game. We would break up into 4 groups and each group would get a turn, if that group got the answer wrong, another group got to try to get it right. It was a fun game and I believe it helped me learn a lot.
ReplyDeleteThe most memoriable learning experience I had was in my high school anatomy class. The curriculum was pretty difficult but the way my teacher taught us made it really interesting to learn about. He used a lot of hands-on activities to teach the information. I absolutely loved going to that class! Throughout the class we got to disect a lot of different animals and organs. This made the learning experience that much more valuable because we were doing hands-on activities. Being able to physically disect a cat versus looking at a diagram made it that much more enjoyable and valuable. I thought it was so much fun learning in that class because of the way the teacher presented the material.
ReplyDeleteOne of the most memorable experiences for me was in my high school government class. I am not at all interested in the forms of government or the branches involved. However my teacher was incredibly dynamic and he was always thinking of things we could do to get involved. Instead of reading the textbook or sitting though lectures we were always doing group projects or videos to learn. One of the things he did was to set up debates. He would put us on a certain team, so that they were equal and hopefully we wouldn't get into big arguments. He also let everyone know that it was a classroom debate and that it should not be taken outside of the classroom. Despite his control the debates could get very intense. We had to research the topic so that we could hold up an argument, and he required that everyone be involved at some point during the debate. I was not usually the first one to talk in class. However, during debates I wanted to present an argument and see what the response would be. This is one example of a fun way to teach a lesson. We all learned about the unit, and we also learned how to hold up an argument and speak our views. We also learned how to deal with people who have different viewpoints from our own.
ReplyDelete