Week+2

Monday's Class:

Should punishment be used in the classroom? A well-known difficulty most teachers face is striking that balance between being liked by students and being firm. A teacher, as the authority in the classroom, must establish and enforce rules. I believe that students will not properly respect a teacher if there are no repercussions (aka punishments) for broken rules or inappropriate behaviour. I do not believe that they should be handed out lightly, or in a way to just deter students from doing certain activities while the teacher is watching. Mutual respect as a rule which is led by example should limit the times punishment should need to be given. It also comes with that element of choice that we are encouraging older students to learn from. However, if poor decisions are made, then depending on the severity of the issue, either punishment or a discussion with the student can be performed. How do you sell a topic which isn't that interesting to students and is hard to find relevance to every day life? Selling a topic which isn't that interesting to a class will greatly depend on the type of class. For example, all teachers would hope for a class which enjoys doing math because it is fun, but it's a known fact that these classes are hard to come by. At the intermediate level, I think it is appropriate to be fair and honest with the students, so long as it is used only in a few select situations. An expansion of that is to explain to students that school is about work ethic, and how the life lessons are what is far more important than the curriculum. An easier way to make a topic seem less drab would be to break it up with energisers as we learned in tribes, or using technology such as SMART boards to make the best of a situation that few students will like. In conclusion, I don't think that there is only one way to help diffuse the situations which many students dread.

Wednesday's Class:

Strategies Honestly, I would love to use as many of these strategies as I possibly can. In an ideal situation, I would utilize as many as I could until I understood what my class enjoyed and excelled in. My favourite strategies are those which gets the kids thinking. For example, Fermi problems or brain teasers as bell work are things that I could see students expecting in my classroom by the end of the semester or year. I would not just limit these types of problems to bell work, but I could see that as the most common time to do them. Getting students to look at math in a different way is my goal. Finding the way to make math not seem so hard, and to get over that mind block would be an immense help. Relating the topic to their lives as much as possible will help them to perhaps realize that they might already do some of the math that they learn on their own without even knowing it. I do not think I would be as comfortable leading a drama activity to do with math. It is certainly not my forte to grade skits, though I'm sure the creativity would be wonderful. Instead, at the workshop on Friday we learned how to use drama in various subjects, and get students physically moving while still incorporating it into the curriculum in some way. As for the story time, i think that it would maturity and book dependent. To find a book with a story that relates to the math concept a high school class would learn and have a story written about it would be unlikely. However, I was once told that there is a story behind every concept, including who it came from and how it came to be created. I would much rather tell a true story about why there was a need for this, or how it came to be, to help the students understand why it is important. This may not be practical for all lessons, but at least for the main concepts I think incorporating a non-fiction story would be fascinating to some of the students.