I spent my afternoon with a nine year old and a six year old playing Scrabble and reading books. The youngest is learning phonemes and how to use sounds to read; the oldest is trying her hardest to not learn multiplication tables. The girls wanted to play, so after telling the oldest she would be the score keeper and that I would help out the youngest, we were set.
The oldest dominated the game (I helped both of them), and the youngest was bored after an hour (that was 30 minutes longer than it took me), but it really was successful. "Tines" turned into an opportunity to teach the youngest about forks; an extra "ge" became an opportunity for the oldest to morph "tin" into "tinge." Double and triple word scores? A chance for our stubborn score keeper to use multiplication.
This isn't that exciting to others, perhaps, but it's cool to see the different ways little things we as adults enjoy doing can be used to help the little ones learn. And honestly, it's a helluva lot more exciting than 4 of my 5 classes (online doesn't count). In the last week, one instructor has read straight out of the book ver batim. Another has read to us from a power point presentation she gave us to read for homework the week before--ver. batim.
I'm accustomed to real conversations, analyzing essays and authors and questioning procedures, infering consequences, and asking a lot of "Why?" So far, no go. If this is the instruction that teachers are receiving, then I better understand why our educational system is going to hell in a handbasket, NCLB be damned. For the record, I don't think it's all the students' faults.
Tomorrow I'll go into more detail; for the moment, I'm going to bash my head against a wall to prepare for tomorrow's "lecture" that will probably be more of the same anecdotal evidence that so far has done absolutely nothing to assist any of us. I'm not the only one feeling this way, as evidenced by the student sitting two desks behind me who, upon exiting the row, threw her books down and hissed, "This class is a waste of time! We've been talking about the same crap for the last two weeks."
She's not exaggerating. I know there's lots to be said for theory vs. practice, but in this case, I think we all want more theory before we are, in a few short weeks, thrown into the practice.
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2 comments:
This is why our education system fails children with special needs. For the love of G-d, do they really think that reading to you from the textbook is neccessary?? I'm assuming y'all can already read!! Sad, really- when what you need is practical advice. E-mail me and I'll give you my cell number. I have lots of practical experience to pass on : )
We're being taught to be interactive, have a plan, try to interest the student so learning can occur...yet our model is the very opposite. I'm still trying to discover the logic.
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