I have learned a great deal of information while continuing this GAME Plan. From the aspect of gathering material before the students receive it to picking the battles that students present have been learned in the past weeks. As students continue to come up with reasons they didn't do the assignment, I will continue to get upset but putting a zero in the book gives relief also. I can't make them all do the work, but keeping on them helps to keep them on target. Having extra material for the students is also important since it will show them what needs to be done.
My goal of having more student interaction is going well. The students are becoming more involved in the class and that is all that I can ask for. Class seems to be running much more smoothly as the past few weeks have gone by. I am trying not to tackle any more learning goals at this time until I have had total success in what I am doing at the current time. I think that it will only obstruct and further delay these actions if I try to do too much at one time. In the future I will have new ideas and new goals will be set from them. Keeping the students on task and going in the right direction is important and this is what I will try to do over the next few weeks.
I am going to try a new learning approach of just giving students what needs to be done and see how far they can go from there. I will try to limit my interaction with them so that they can have independence and truly work on their own. I have a good feeling that they will get lost in a week, so I will have to give instruction at that time to those who need it. Something is learned from the students each time a project is given out and then collected. Whether it be on what needs to be omitted or how to improve it, new data is available.
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I like your idea of limiting the amount of materials given to students and giving them some independence. I try the same thing - especially when I am working in the computer lab. Our school has two labs - one in a self-contained room, and the other spread out throughout the library. I'm usually stuck in the latter, and have to continously walk around the library to check on progress. But this week, I finally get to use the room lab - so I'm looking forward to keeping the students on task, but spending less time answering the same 5 questions.
ReplyDeletePhil,
ReplyDeleteI think you're doing the right thing by staying focused and seeing this through right up until the end where you'll be sure if it worked 100% or not. I am guilty many times of juggling too much, and when I overextend myself, things don't work at all. Last semester, I had the genius idea of introducing ning.com to my students without even knowing how to use it myself. Mind you, they were already on blogspot and creating their own wiki on wetpaint.com, and when I piled on ning, it went bad. I just wasn't ready, and of course, they weren't ready either. Thankfully, I got rid of it after a week and went back to the other stuff they were more familiar with.
Keep up the great work!
César