Week+5

Week 5 Issues Models of teaching and learning. LINDSAY  Question posed today in lecture to discuss in tutorial... What models of teaching and learning are relevant for the 21st century?

Before we moved into our Socratic circle we brainstormed some ideas of our responses to the above question.
 * Metacognition or MI's - Learning how to learn
 * Social Model - Negotiation - Integrated curriculum
 * Technology - interacting with global peers - wealth power implications
 * 5E's - Engage, Explore, Explain, Elaborate and Evaluate
 * Creating alliances - Between students, teacher students and broader communities
 * Child centered learning
 * Inquiry base learning - own research
 * Out of the box learning means out of the classroom
 * Teacher not absolute resource - mixed ability teaching
 * Teachers becoming alongside students!

So with that list we were to then do think on our own, then as pairs then switch pairs twice....

You guys were all there so no use going into too much detail, however what did you think of this circle and or topics.

I like the idea of the circle as it gives kids the opportunity to voice their opinion to not only mates but other kids they may not speak to on a regular bases. It also forces shy kids to talk, in a positive way. In lager group conversations they have the opportunity to retreat and not participate but in one to one circumstance they do not!

Also what did you think about the lively discussion this afternoon. Any opinions?? Steve's response to Lindsay:

Firstly, I agree with you Lindsay, the socratic way of structuring a lesson does engage all children in the classroom and allows them to interact with not only friends but people who they wouldn't normally have conversations with. Furthermore, as you pointed out above Lindsay, it also allows children who are quite shy and normally wouldn't become heavily involved in a classroom discussion to get involved and voice their opinions.

Secondly, todays discussion/rant/debate was very interesting and probably highlighted how different people have different views about teaching and the 'best' way to go about it. Different influences and various backrounds lead to the quite heated discussion and neither party were prepared to back down. It just highlights how juvenile some classroom debates can become and basically doesn't paint a great picture of how some people percieve teaching to be. As Pete said, "Kids hate b@#ches."

__HEIDI__ As previously mentioned by Lindsay and Steve i also strongly agree that using the "socratic" teaching structure is a brilliant way of allow all students to feel that they are all equals as they are all given equal opportunity to voice their opinions as the teacher moves the discussion around the circle, one student at a time. Altough extremely beneficial tp all students, i feel that this technique is extremely beneficial to the softer spoken and quieter students. More often than not i feel teachers tend to "forget" and/or overlook these quieter, not so confident students and evidently this technique ensure that all students feel part of the discussion process. The "socratic" teaching tehnique is equally bemneficial to the students as it is to the teacher. These discussion circles allows that teacher to learn from their students. During these socratic classroom discussions students can evidently show the teacher their individual strengths and weaknesses, furthermore allowing the teacher to create class plans/lessons based upon what they have observed in the socratic circles.

During today's workshop we also discussed the use of technology in education and it's implications on students ie. Wealth and power. We discussed how the internet as a learning tool can advance childrens learning aswell as disadvantage those students who do not have access to the internet (especially in the home environment). Educators cannot assume that all children do have access to this rich resource and discussed demographic factors which prevent children from accessing the internet.

We also discussed, "How do teachers aid in the development with children who do not have access to the internet?". We came up with a couple of solutions which included; the teacher performing classroom examples such as gaining access to (at least) one computer and showing the children how to use the internet, allowing children in pairs to take turns of using the internet to search relevant classroom topics and classroom based discussions about the internet and how it can be used as an effective learning tool.

In conclusion, i must briefly mention that i was suitably amused with todays workshop discussion. I agree with Steve's previous comment that it's during discussions such as that, clearly outlines how misinformed many teaching students are for some people, the road to effective and positive classroom management will in fact be a long one for those hopeless individuals. All in all, an enjoyable, informative and insightful workshop.