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I'm hoping the collective wisdom of this blog can help me. I'm teaching in a small private school. There are 15 students in my class, grade levels 4 - 6, with ability levels from 1st grade to beyond 6th grade. I'll be teaching the content areas to the class as a whole, but will be grouping students for math and reading.
My question is, what can I have the other students doing pretty much independently (there will be an aide in the room for most but not all of the group time) while I'm meeting with each reading and math group that is not busy work or a waste of their time? There is close to two hours a day for which I need constructive, yet independent, learning activities. I can think of many things to do, but they all require some teaching, or at least some introduction, from me. I need work that can be done totally independently.
Thanks for your help with this.
Showing posts with label one-room schools. Show all posts
Showing posts with label one-room schools. Show all posts
Saturday, September 6, 2008
Tuesday, June 3, 2008
One-room schools
One-Room Schools and synchronicity:
1. At a recent homeschool convention, Andrew Pudewa, an engaging speaker with many interesting ideas about writing and thinking and education, talked about the excitement and excellence generated in what he calls "Mixed-Age" classrooms. You can read his thoughts about this and other things he's thought about on his website.
2. I read an interesting article which I commented on about One-Room Schools in Pajamas Media.
3. I was re-reading Irene Hunt's "Up a Road Slowly" and found she lamented both the demise of one-room schools and History and Geography as social studies.
Of course, our phonics website features pictures of One-Room Schoolhouses and states, "welcome to our virtual schoolhouse," so I might just be noticing the topic, but it is a little strange.
While I do like a lot of things from the past, especially education things lacking today like handwriting, Webster's Speller, Latin, math with real answers, and One-Room Schoolhouses, reading Susan Strasser's "Never Done: A History of American Housework" cured me of any lingering desire to live in the era of one-room schools. She lays out in excruciating detail what they had to to to cook and clean and keep their houses running, and the time spent each week lugging water and cleaning lamps (7 hours per week cleaning oil lamps!) I'll take my computer and my dishwasher and running water any day.
I would have enjoyed helping out younger students when I was in school, and I don't think it would have hurt my education at all. In fact, the class I learned the most in in college was one where the students taught. Our teacher had pregnancy complications that prevented her from standing, so she sat in the back while 10 of us (it was a small senior level micro-biology class) took turns teaching. We all tried to do a good job and have good notes so studying for the test would be easier. I was amazed at how hard I had to work to do a good job teaching a 1 hour class. She would occasionally pipe up with something we missed, but she generally just sat back and watched. I learned a lot more from learning at the level required to teach someone else than when just sitting back and listening. Plus, a lot more good teachers could find their calling this way--and perhaps even more importantly, some poor teachers could find out they weren't cut out to teach.
1. At a recent homeschool convention, Andrew Pudewa, an engaging speaker with many interesting ideas about writing and thinking and education, talked about the excitement and excellence generated in what he calls "Mixed-Age" classrooms. You can read his thoughts about this and other things he's thought about on his website.
2. I read an interesting article which I commented on about One-Room Schools in Pajamas Media.
3. I was re-reading Irene Hunt's "Up a Road Slowly" and found she lamented both the demise of one-room schools and History and Geography as social studies.
Of course, our phonics website features pictures of One-Room Schoolhouses and states, "welcome to our virtual schoolhouse," so I might just be noticing the topic, but it is a little strange.
While I do like a lot of things from the past, especially education things lacking today like handwriting, Webster's Speller, Latin, math with real answers, and One-Room Schoolhouses, reading Susan Strasser's "Never Done: A History of American Housework" cured me of any lingering desire to live in the era of one-room schools. She lays out in excruciating detail what they had to to to cook and clean and keep their houses running, and the time spent each week lugging water and cleaning lamps (7 hours per week cleaning oil lamps!) I'll take my computer and my dishwasher and running water any day.
I would have enjoyed helping out younger students when I was in school, and I don't think it would have hurt my education at all. In fact, the class I learned the most in in college was one where the students taught. Our teacher had pregnancy complications that prevented her from standing, so she sat in the back while 10 of us (it was a small senior level micro-biology class) took turns teaching. We all tried to do a good job and have good notes so studying for the test would be easier. I was amazed at how hard I had to work to do a good job teaching a 1 hour class. She would occasionally pipe up with something we missed, but she generally just sat back and watched. I learned a lot more from learning at the level required to teach someone else than when just sitting back and listening. Plus, a lot more good teachers could find their calling this way--and perhaps even more importantly, some poor teachers could find out they weren't cut out to teach.
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