Jason a. comic life

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Jason a. comic life

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Boys and Girls Learn Differently

It appears that boys and girls do learn differently. I liked the fact that your presentation was pretty interesting and the activities were fun; I personally question the accuracy of the sex i.d. test only because if you change a couple answer all the sudden you go from female to male. I thought that your website was really good, especially since it was not a wiki, and it has some great information on it. It was a good idea to work in new groups and to talk about issues that do affect the school atmosphere and situation -- it is important to talk about bullying, and positive memories, along with how to deal with different issues that may arise; my group had the advantage with having Dr. Grace in it.

The one major sticking point for me was that I really felt like you didn't talk much about the book itself. You talked about how the brains are different and that there is a continuum but you really didn't talk about why that is or what the author had to say about it. I really liked the activities but I was left wondering how they all connected or why they were used. Were things like bullying, positive school "mentors", and discipline talked about in the book? Or did you just use them because the concept of "right of passage" was the main thing talked about. I liked when we had to try and link the characteristic with the sex, but we only talked about the whole thing for about 2 minutes and then moved onto something else. I was hoping that maybe we could have talked about the characteristics or at least the authors input on how and why these are traits of each sex. Granted, for all I know, the author might not talk about it (and if that is the case then I apologize because its not your fault), but I figure that had to be some research and justification talked about.

All in all, I thought it was a good presentation that had us moving around, talking, and trying to incorporate these different concepts in our teaching and daily lives. I liked the fact that we were able to have a lot of "me" time with the whole group discussions. But, I would have really liked to know more about the book, why the brain is "different" for each sex, and how we are suppose to deal with that instead of just getting a handout.

Becoming a Whiz at Brain-Based Teaching

I would like to start off by saying that you clearly had the toughest book to have to try and do an hour long presentation on. Science is one of those subjects that is really fun to learn about, but if you are not very science-oriented then you might have difficulty understanding the information. I really liked how you put up an agenda -- it was very "Dr. Grace like", and I also thought that the use of the back burner activity was definitely cool and I would try that in my own classroom. I thought that the handouts were informative and offered some great activities and ideas to implement these things in your classroom -- though I would say that it was a little overwhelming to receive a packet of information at the very beginning; at that moment I thought that we would be listening to a very lecture-based talk, but luckily I was wrong. I liked the use of the skit and I have always wanted to do them in my class, but I also thought that for some people, it is a little much and they do not really want to have to "act" in front of a room full of people, taking volunteers may have been a good idea. I also want to commend you on the use of the "jig-saw" like grouping, but my only problem with that is that if you have a great partner then you really get to cover the information without all the lecture, but there are cases when you do not have a good partner and the information is not as full as it should be (I am not saying that that is how I felt, but the possibility does exist when doing it). All in all, I learned a great deal and the presentation was very good.


P.S. Great use of Pinky and the Brain

Student Oriented Curriculum

I thought that this was a very interesting presentation. I really enjoyed the early part of the presentation because we got up and moved around; it was fun to have to choose a side of the room depending on the answer to the question. I also really enjoyed the ending assignment with us each getting to choose one of the statements that best suited us and then write about why we chose it and how we would use it. It is always good when a teacher allows you to give your opinions on a topic and they do not correct you just because they do not like your answer.

On another note, I thought that the decision to use the jig-saw groupings was a good idea but that it did not work as well as I thought it might. It did get us moving around and talking to other people in the classroom, but I personally felt like the information that I learned in the jig-saw, as good as it was, would have been better if it came from a person who actually read the book. I think it would have been fun if the presenters walked around the to the other groups and did a form of jig-saw instead of the students doing it.

My only questions that I have at the end of the presentation are: Would you try this "let the students lead the unit" concept in your classroom? and Do you think that it can work?

very good overall. I learned a great deal.

Meet Me in the Middle Chapter 15: Parents as Partners

Meet Me in the Middle Chapter 15: Parents as Partners
This chapter was all about getting parents involved in the classroom. Wormeli talks about using both technology and the old face-to-face meetings as a way to get students involved. The chapter talks about finding a website, like blackboard, and getting your school to use it so that parents and students can see what work needs to get done. According to Wormeli, this will help make parents and teachers a team instead of having them argue with one another; he also added that with this system, he gets nearly 100% completion on all of his homework assignments because the students can no long say “I didn’t know about the homework”. The chapter also talks about how to get parents, who lack the internet, involved. He suggests sending out notes, post cards, calling, or going to their homes in order to make contact with them. He also suggests that teachers allow parents to come in and watch a lesson so that they know what is going on and can be a bigger part of their child’s life and education.
I liked this chapter a lot because I thought that it gave much more insight into how to get parents involved along with giving neat ways to make sure that they are involved. I thought it was great that he spoke about the fact that not every parent will have the ability to use the internet; he also spoke about how it is difficult for some parents to make it into their child’s classroom – I think that is very important because it is much more realistic than our other books. Not all parents can or will want to come in or communicate with the teacher and if we understand that we can find different ways to help our students to be successful.

Meet Me in the Middle Chapter 13: Outdoor Adventures

Meet Me in the Middle Chapter 13: Outdoor Adventures
This chapter was quite interesting because it talked about the importance of having an outdoor activity is to the health of your class. Wormeli talks about different camping trips that he took students on and the benefits that they shared. In general, he said that there are two major events that take place as a result of his camping trips. The first is that students come back and are much more proud of and thankful for the things that they have at home such as food, heat, and electricity. He said that the second big change is that students are much more apt to do things for themselves and be autonomous – this is something that is very important as you grow up; you should be able to do more and more things on your own as you get older. One final thing that was important from the chapter is that Wormeli talks about how the camping trips end up making students more comfortable with each other and with the teachers; he feels like the students are more likely to open up to the teachers and to each other after spending time in the wilderness and needing to rely on one another.
I am not so sure how I feel about going on a camping trip with a bunch of middle school students. To me I feel that this is an incident waiting to happen; with things such as injury, arguments, or some kind of misconduct taking place. We live in such a politically correct world, and we are so afraid that something terrible is going to happen that we try to shy away from it. For instance, teachers have to be very careful around their students for fear of anything being taken out of context. I personally cannot see many schools approving this, but maybe I am wrong. On a positive note, I did like his ideas for the Civil War re-enactment and the slave journey idea – I think that those would be fun activities that would also teach students history at the same time.

Meet Me in the Middle Chapter 8: effective assessment

Meet Me in the Middle Chapter 8: effective assessment
This chapter was all about designing effective assessment and how to go about doing that. Wormeli gives some ideas of how to make sure that you have designed good assessments for your students. When the assessment is good, it should clearly outline goals; it should prove to be challenging enough to make them work hard but not too hard so that you avoid making the student upset; you should give options for assessments so that students have a say in what they want to do; you should be able to link other content areas in so that the student can see how one interacts with the others; and you should may different formats when creating assessment instead of always asking students to write an essay. The other part of the chapter that many teachers are probably happy about was that Wormeli says to make sure that your assessments are easy to grade. If they are too time consuming or too difficult to grade then you assessment has missed the mark – always remember to use a rubric, it makes your life easier and it makes the student’s life easier.
I liked this chapter because it gave some great ideas for different assessments such as to use menus, journals, debates, games, or time lines to see if your students have learned the materials. I really like the notion of doing different types of assessments and within those assessments using different topics. The easiest way to describe it would be if you gave an essay to the students to make sure that there are different essay topics. I know that from personal experience, I really like when a teacher gives some choice especially in a history class – it is easier to write a history essay when you are actually interested in the topic. I can also attest that clear instructions and directions are vital to the success of the students; if you do not make things clear or the directions are hard to follow, many students will either refuse to do the assignment, do it poorly, or the wrong way. To be a good assessment, it must be hard enough so that it takes time to accomplish but not so difficult that you get frustrated with the whole concept. I also think assessment should be fun because it makes the students happy along with making it easier on you to grade them; it beats grading eighty essays on the plague.