From the past few chapter of Subjects Matter,
the topics that have stood out the most to me are student choice and building a
classroom community. While things like textbooks, teaching/learning strategies,
and content are all important things to we teachers, sometimes we neglect to
think about the things that are important to our students. If everything single
thing within our classroom is decided (dare I say dictated) by me, my students
are likely going to have little interest and motivation to learn. By not
allowing students to make any choices or work collaboratively with their peers,
I’m silencing their pursuits of knowledge. As a teacher, my goal should be to
give my students as many opportunities as I can to let them to express their
choices, creativity, personality, and feelings. Kathleen Ralf, teacher of Humanities & English at Frankfurt International School and also the Global Online Academy, details how to allow more student choice in the classroom in her Edutopia article, “5 Tips for Giving Students Choice That Leads to Student Voice.” Ralf believes students want to show us who they are and what they care about, we’ve just got to give them the freedom and support to do so. Ralf outlines 5 tips to help teachers promote this learning environment: scaffolding various types of projects throughout the semester; making the rubric and the requirements for the project explicit, yet open; give encouragement and support along the way; adjust, bend, and let it flow; and lastly, share their work with the world. I couldn’t agree more with her perspectives, and I truly think that if teachers could give away just little amounts of their control, their students would thrive in the newfound power and responsibility.
Lastly, I also found a super interesting video from Edutopia
that discusses the effects of the classroom design and environment on student’s
success and interest. The school in this video decided to encourage students to work collaboratively
by making classrooms more open and comfortable. I absolutely love this concept. And it's clear that students love it too.
361 (wow, sorry about that...)
Emily
