Monday, July 9, 2012
Class Reading-- July 10
Today while reading the article by Richard Allington, I found it very interesting and helpful to find that one of the things mentioned about impressive teachers is that many of them focus on longer tasks. In other classes when having to create a lesson or unit plan, I always feel like my plans are too long and time consuming. I think this is due mostly to the fact that I have spent time in several elementary classrooms that seem like they are constantly jumping around from subject to subject with little connection to what they learned days prior to the current lesson. I think that more long term projects or lessons are a valuable idea to consider because, although they make take more time, students learn more than they would if they were constantly jumping around from one thing to the next. I am glad to know that this is something that is of importance and it is definitely a practice I would like to use in my future classroom.
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Just as this article talked about, I think that focusing on longer tasks is very important. As I have observed and participated in elementary school classes, i feel the same what as you have stated. i definitely think that teachers have to cover so much about so many different subjects that it is difficult to talk about one very important aspect for the appropriate amount of time.
ReplyDeleteWhen I try to remember what my elementary classes were like I cannot remember fluency in what we learned and now it seems to me that many classrooms jump from subject to subject without consistency and connection. I have yet to spend time in an elementary classroom and would be interested to see how they function from day to day and how teachers connect the material from a variety of subjects. I too value the idea of long term projects.
ReplyDeleteI think it's a really good idea to think about because it gives the students consistency and and end project that they can be proud of. In another class we talked about The Butterfly project where a class raised butterflies from caterpillars and integrated the project into all aspects of their class from writing in a daily journal about the progress of their butterflies, making growth and color charts in math, and reading and researching all the time about the growth of butterflies and other species of butterflies. I think something like this would a great way to incorporate a fun long term activity that can included in so many subjects. I'll try to include a picture on my blog about this project.
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