Engaged Learning: Part 2

First off, I just want to say that I will be using some of these English-focused ideas when it comes time to do RPG #3. I actually wish we would have read this before we had to do RPG #2 because some of the questioning strategies could have come in handy, but I guess that's just the learning process -- finding what works and what doesn't.

One thing Reynolds MS (and maybe SDoL as a whole) is really pushing is for teachers to model to the students. I'm not going to lie, I'm a little intimidated by this because I have a weird thinking-to-action process that few can follow! I also worry about this because not all students learn this way. While modeling is great, it's probably better for the visual learners more so than the verbal learners. I've watched some of the students when my co-op models and some of them are so lost you can actually see the point when they tune out and stop listening! I've been brainstorming about how I could model a little differently than my co-op so that the students would not only be engaged, but would also understand.

I agree completely with the idea that students beat themselves up when they get a bad grade or don't understand something. This is difficult because I found several of my students won't even try if they don't think it will be right! Case in point: a student refused to answer two questions on his test, and he literally wrote, "I refuse to answer these two questions.' When asked about it, he said he just didn't understand and knew whatever he was going to put down was going to be wrong, so he didn't see the point in trying. I think it is important to acknowledge student's actions and help them positively create sort of learning identity.

I love, love, love the concept of repeating a student's answer back to them (uptake). I actually did this without realizing it when I was putting together my RPG 2 video. The interesting thing is when the student heard their response coming from my mouth, they immediately wanted to change it because they knew they didn't clarify it completely!

I can see myself using the hybrid and exploratory essays with the 6th graders. I despise structured, rigid essays because I often feel like I'm saying what someone else wants me to say and there is no room for my personal expression. If I'm reading this correctly, exploratory writing is more open to personal style and expression, but falls in with the essay because the students must have done their reading/studying in order to do it. My favorite example is asking the students, If you were a character in The Great Gatsby, would you have admired Gatsby -- or not? Why? This is something I can see myself using when the students start working on their research papers towards the second half of the year (my co-op is not a fan of teaching writing so she told me I would be more or less taking over those lessons!). This will also come in handy for our poetry unit because I could ask the students to write a poem about a concept they learned in their Social Studies class.

There is a lot more I want to touch on from this reading, but I don't want to get too lengthy! As a final note, I realized that I tend to do a lot of these engaging activities already, but there is so much room for me to improve that I'm not really sure where to start!