classroom practices
What Does Brain Research Have to Say About Our Teaching?
Posted by David Wees on Sep 3, 2010
My head of school started the beginning of the year by talking about brain based research. He was told in a session he participated in during the summer that the use of sarcasm in a classroom can hamper learning. The reason for this issue with sarcasm is that, according to the presenter, negative emotional responses shut down the higher level functions of the brain and force the brain into "fight or flight" mode, during which very little learning can take place.
According to Diane Connell, there are 11 principles of brain-based learning:
Reflection on using back-channel chat in class
Posted by David Wees on Apr 28, 2010
Today we had a joint project in Science and English where students pitched a product they had "invented" which would help solve the global water crisis. Their product had to be greed inducing and their pitch had to include some of the scientific background required to understand how their product works.
Does testing students harm their learning?
Posted by David Wees on Mar 23, 2010
So I had an interesting thought today. I think that testing students, just to see what they know, can actually harm their learning. Here's my argument.
Let's start by assuming that we would like students to be responsible able adults. This is not an unreasonable assumption, I'm sure that all parents want this to be true for their children, although we may disagree about the methods to achieve this end.
Radically reform schools
Posted by David Wees on Mar 7, 2010
Personally I believe schools are in need of deeper reforms than simply changing the pedagogy a bit can resolve. Here are some suggestions I've been exposed to over the past few weeks, which could be considered radical, but might really improve schools. I'd like to provide references for where I learned about this information, but to be honest I'm not really sure who exactly suggested what, I've been processing a lot of information recently.
Teaching compassion to our students
Posted by David Wees on Mar 5, 2010
How do we teach our students to be compassionate? I'm thinking about this idea this morning because of something that happened to me that I want to share.
Making school feel more like the real world
Posted by David Wees on Feb 18, 2010
Here's my observation. What we have students do during school does not at all resemble what they will do when they finish university. In fact there is literally no relationship at all, and our students can see that and of course, they rebel. I've talked about an alternate school structure before, this post is really an extension of that post.
"Thin slicing" and its effect on educators.
Posted by David Wees on Jan 31, 2010
I'm reading Malcolm Gladwell's book, Blink. He uses a variety of arguments to show the power of information we can receive from a very small amount of information, and the subconscious ways we make decisions very quickly. It's a fascinating read, I highly recommend checking it out.
One point he brings up a fair bit in the first half of the book is the value in making quick decisions based on limited information and how it can both be extremely beneficial for making decisions but that it can also be problematic occasionally. He calls this process thin-slicing.
Problem based learning in math
Posted by David Wees on Jan 26, 2010
How does problem based learning work anyway? According to Wikipedia, "Problem-based learning (PBL) is a student-centered instructional strategy in which students collaboratively solve problems and reflect on their experiences." To me this means, choose problems which will reflect your curriculum and which students want to solve.
Research based teaching
Posted by David Wees on Jan 21, 2010
I'd like to be a research based teacher. This means, if research comes out which is compelling and reliable and which suggests that an alternate approach to what I do will work better, then I'll experiment and try that out. If research tells us that people learn in a certain way, then I'll need to look at my practices and adjust them correspondingly.
Authentic learning experiences
Posted by David Wees on Jan 20, 2010
This year I have really tried to step up the process of bringing the real world into my mathematics class. A major focus has been on using technology appropriately as a tool to help solve real life problems.
Here are some examples:
Distance formula: Finding an optimal (or near optimal) solution to the Traveling Salesman problem for a small number of cities.
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