Teaching is an exercise in connecting the dots … ?

I wish … After spending far to much time watching youtube clips I came across this episode called teachers.  While it was trying to be funnier than it was, it wasn’t the worst 20 minutes of my life. What I did find interesting was the comment made by the new teacher about wanting to be creative, a more experienced teacher replies, teaching is just an exercise in connecting the dots. 

 

 

A. Degree

B. Job

C. Class

D. Curriculum

E. Behaviour management

 

 

Sure connect it all together and you’re a teacher in a classroom BUT it doesn’t mean you’re teaching and it doesn’t mean your students are learning.

I was talking to one of the other year seven teachers yesterday about how much our students are enjoying our current learning element on the ANZAC’s. We have been studying it for just over a week now, and in that time my students values, preconceptions and ideas have begun to change. At the start comments were made by some of the boys (and a few girls) ‘I’d just kill them’ or ‘Nah I’d get my gun out.’ After only one lesson these statements began to stop. I didn’t tackle this as a behaviour problem but rather I relied on the curriculum to help them to change their minds. Reading parts of letters, diaries and information from text books to the students, the students began to develop empathy. After comparing and discussing the role of primary sources in studying history I was amazed by their written responses.

Why is it important to look at/examine/handle primary sources?

How do they help us?

It is good to use primary sources because they have better information than the information you get on the internet. The War Memorial has a lot of primary sources, some of them include guns, uniforms, letters and diary entries. The information from the War Memorial is primary because the stuff there are mostly from the Wars that have happened. The guns and al the other stuff are better information than from books and images. Because you can actually see what they used, you can feel it and imagine what it would be life, and you can get a very emotional response because you really feel like you are in the war.

This was response was written by one of my lower ability students. He can often think of interesting ideas and attempts to articulate them but he has difficulty writing down his ideas. When ever I have sat down to talk to students individually about their ideas he has listened. While the idea of discussing primary sources is not that engaging, it is something the students needed to understand and be able to identify. Because of their engagement with the topic they are working hard in all the areas. One of my more articulate students wrote:

It is good to have the primary source because it is more than a secondary source. A secondary source can change paths and differ the story, this can be bad in the media. It is better to the primary source because it is the real proof of what happened. It can quickly end up like a game of Chinese whispers, changing drastically very quickly. So that could be bad telling people the wrong source. In Gallipoli primary sources help us to understand exactly what happened. Like how they had to huddle up next to each other in the night, and they had to drink their shower water. This would spead disease. It would rain all the time in sludgy mud which would hang onto their suits and weigh them down. It was very bad conditions. That is why I believe that a primary source is better than a secondary source. 

As Rachael will remember at the time we were writing out draft responses in class, this student was under a table making animal noises and listening to Rachael explain about the difference between primary and secondary sources to another student. This student is someone who is very bright but tends to rush his work. 

 

 

What the students have really enjoyed is the freedom to think for themselves. Having the power to think for themselves. Reading the first part of chapter seven made me think about how the concept or rather the teaching of knowledge has changed. The didactic approach the teacher as the source of knowledge. I am right and you are wrong approach is an approach that I don’t feel would work for my students. I think that the learning elements enable our students think freely for themselves and to acquire the knowledge they need. As we know … Knowledge is power.