Take Five Week 2-2
Changing the instruction of my classes to allow for more student driven knowledge has been interesting. I put my kids in charge of teaching the short stories before we begin Fahrenheit 451. At times it is frustrating because of the lack of participation for discussing certain stories, but for the most part, especially after today's discussion on Montgomery Boycott, they really rose to the challenge. The other aspect to this is that I am hoping it prepares them in a better way for the fishbowl discussions that are going to be the basis for our understanding of 451. I am not sure if I should be grading their leadership and participation of the discussion or should it just be something I debrief with them afterwards? This is the struggle I seem to come to most often. What needs to be graded for my kids to take the assignment seriously and if I don't grade will they still care enough about their own learning?
posted by annes @ 2:30 PM
4 Comments:
I don't think everything has to be graded (of course you know I'm pretty radical when it comes to grading!). Maybe at times you can grade them as you get them used to taking charge of their own learning, then grade less and less often as they begin to enjoy taking control of their own learning.
I agree with Karl. Sometimes we fear that students won't buy into what we are doing nearly as much as they actually do. It might work to grade the first time, but not after that.
I still want to talk to you about fishbowls; I am so interested in trying them in my class. I have used lit. circles and have been pleased and I love the notion of putting their discussion into a public forum.
As a teacher who shares room C-11 with Anne, I have to say that her students' F451 questions are intriguing (I get a sneak peak at the ones left on the board). Letting my students create the questions and guide the discussion is a humbling experience for me but an empowering one for them...I wonder how I can be so arrogant to think sometimes that my questions would spark a better discussion than the questions that their 31 combined brains could create.
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