Was it just me, or were you perhaps scared out of your mind or at least confused by the previous posts? I thought I was missing classes or something! But no, once I moused over the time it showed the date - last year! So, I am not confused anymore.
Getting back to THIS year's topics, I had but a few questions to puzzle your mind over.
When you were in middle and high school (so long ago, I know), what methods of teaching were most engaging for you? My specific focus would be for those boring history classes. What did your teacher do to make it interesting? Is it the same with all students or does it need to be individualized? And do you have any ideas yourself that might make things less drowsing?
Like this?
An idea I had was to bring in and wear the clothing of the period being taught. It worked well for one class I was tutoring in and I presented on a few of the days. When I graded paperwork later, I found that the students did approx. 25% better on the periods I came in on than the periods done by the teacher.
Okay, post..... NOW! No, now! No, n-no-now! Wait... okay, go ahead. No, wait... NOW!
This is pretty obvious, but in my personal experience, the smaller the class size the better I did in terms of both engagement and grade. However, in all size classrooms I hated it when I felt that the work I was being assigned didn't serve any specific purpose. I was okay with doing a large amount of work as long as that work was constructive and not just busy work.
ReplyDeleteI agree with Jack. Smaller class sizes lead to a more personalized way of learning for all students involved. However, depending on the subject, I still became bored and tired during these classes. Take history, for example. My history teacher freshman year was terrible, mainly because he only lectured and assigned us massive amounts of homework that did not help us do well on his exams. My next two history teachers, on the other hand, tried to make class fun, even during the boring topics. They'd make jokes, impersonate key historical figures from the time period we were focusing on, and even play music that was written during the time period. These classes were much more fun and enlightening just because we did not simply sit and listen to a monotonous voice for hours each week.
ReplyDeleteHey Jen and Jack,
DeleteThanks so much for the input! Jen, when you say they played period music, was it all during the period, or just at certain times?