• Discuss one question, confusion, or "I wonder...." from reading the Module.
• I wonder if frequently switching up the classroom arrangement would be more beneficial to certain age groups?
• Reflect on the statement "Teaching with a lot of control is easy. Handing control over to the students, and planning for every possible outcome, adapting instruction where they take it, is extremely difficult, but worth it." Why might this be so? How could you productively hand over some control to your students while still supporting learning?
• I agree that teaching with control is easier because in reality you only have to power to control your own actions. I feel that a teacher should be prepared for anything and everything at all times but I do not believe that it is physically possible to plan for EVERY possible outcome. I think that a teacher who has an open mind to different possibilities and is able to manipulate his or her lesson plan accordingly is going to find great success in his or her teaching career. Every class a teacher is given is going to be filled with students of different personalities and who learn differently than one another. Within the first week or so of the school year the teacher should have a good idea of how his or her students learn. One way of supporting learning but also handing over some control to the class is allowing them to work in groups on occasion or asking them what type of activities they would enjoy doing in the classroom.
To answer your question about rearranging the classroom... I think it is beneficial to rearrange the classroom when teaching different things. For instance, if you are teaching a lesson where the students are working in groups, it is helpful to arrange the desks into clusters where the students can easily interact with one another. On the other hand, if you are teaching a math lecture, where you want the undivided attention of the students, it is beneficial to arrange the desks in rows all facing towards the front. I feel that there are certain situations when a teacher should arrange the desks that will better facilitate learning in the classroom.
ReplyDeleteYeah I agree with Heather. Certain room arrangements can be positive for certain subjects or students and they can be negative for other subjects and students. Group work and individual work would both have separate types of room arrangement. If individual work is going on while students are in a group setup, it can lead to lack of attention, excessive talking and cheating. While if group work is done in a setting not meant for it, like rows/columns of desks, students can be left out of group discussions and it would be more awkward to figure out how to communicate to everyone. I know in my math classes in high school and probably in other classes too, we did a lot of group and partner work. But we'd also have days where it was just lecture. Some days we would be in standard row-column form while others we would push the desks together to form groups. It was really beneficial and worked well for the type of learning.
ReplyDeleteIn grade school, we each had an assigned desk. About once a month, the teacher would rearrange the desks so that we would be placed with a new group of students. This helped to move us around the classroom and also get to know our peers. Soon, the teacher could see which students worked well together and also which students were distracting to others. The teacher was then able to arrange the classroom in such a way as to minimize distractions and have the trouble students be located closer to her desk so she could keep a closer eye on them.
ReplyDeleteI think that mixing up the arrangement can be beneficial. I agree with both Rebecca and Heather in regards to the fact that different seating arrangements are beneficial to the different teaching methods. For a test, the teachers would often separate our desks in a way that minimized the possibility for cheating. When we were assigned group projects, the desks would be bundled together. Now, the teacher didn't change the desk arrangements to reflect every single daily activity. That would have been excessive.
I think that switching up the classroom arrangement would be more beneficial to younger children. In the third grade classroom in which I do my field experience, the teacher switches it up weekly, which could seem excessive to some, but I find it works for the students. They get to know other students in the classroom and learn to work with others and adapt according to their surroundings.
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