Blog 3: Cross Content Wish List
In class last week we talked about what you'd like to write for your last blog assignment. Suggestions included a lesson that worked well - perhaps one that supports literacy at the same time as the class content.
Another suggestion was to send a message to your colleagues in other content areas about what you'd like them to teach which will help students in your content area.
So please take your pick from these two topics.
posted by Dr. Robbins @ 9:47 PM
2 Comments
2 Comments:
Even though we're all in an uphill battle trying to get all of our students up to par, there are two things I find my students could really improve upon that they would learn in English and Math. Now, I say this without knowing what standards should be taught in English and Math or if these are covered already. But, none of my students really understand how to read graphs. They are pretty good at bar graphs, but any other is foreign to them. When I show them a pie chart, line graph, or any other type of chart they don't understand it. I'm not sure if this is something that is taught in math at some point, but that's one topic. The other topic is basic writing. All of my studnets plagiarize and don't understand research. I assigned a research paper, worked with my students, had them do peer editing (I should've edited too, I now know that) and I had one student hand in a "paper" that was a print out of information from a website. I asked her what this was and she said why should she have to write a paper when everything I want to know is on this website. I had no idea how to respond to that in a way that it would reach her. So English teachers, if you could work on plagiarism, summarizing, and paraphrasing that would be helpful.
There are several content-specific skills that I wish students would learn in their other subjects (e.g. unit conversion in science, reading for understanding in English, or graph interpretation in social studies). Most of all, however, I wish my students would acquire more basic skills in ALL of their classes that would help them towards overall academic success. By this I mean very simple skills, such as staying organized and bringing necessary materials to class (despite the fact that I let them use their notes on quizzes, the majority of them lose their notes as soon as they take them), but also more advanced skills, like how to use their textbooks to learn if they don't understand in class. In general, I wish they would learn to take responsibility for their own education and have confidence in their own abilities. So many of my students believe that they can't do a problem unless I'm standing there helping them, but when I get there, I find that they knew what to do all along, they just needed my confirmation at every step. Moreover, when they don't know how to do a problem at first glance, they often give up or ask for help, instead of trying to re-read their notes or examples for an explanation or model that will guide them. Many of my students are very passive learners; they expect the knowledge to just come to them as I deal it out, and I wish they would learn to take a more active role in their own education instead of relying so heavily on me.
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