Creating a space for learning in a community of truth is vital to effective teaching and involves a lot of carefully orchestrated skills. I found this concept perfect to read and reflect upon before school begins in a few weeks. As we plan for a lesson we need to be careful that all the necessary ingredients for the lesson such as the topic, materials, time frame, etc. don't smother our learning space. I loved the phrase that our course should be defined as "more engaging that engorging". Providing readings with substance but providing gaps where they can think their own thoughts is sometimes difficult to balance. I think you want to lead them to understanding the concept and also leave them hungry with questions that will spur them to find out more information about the topic. This can be a difficult balance with so many levels of students in our classroom. When one may be hungry the other could be stuffed! I think at times this is when whole and small groupings are effective. We could also take a general topic and assign groups to research an element of it and then they all report back to the class. That leaves everyone a bit hungry.
I also appreciated his thoughts on questioning techniques. Again, you are searching for the happy medium between closing the learning space by asking basic comprehension questions and opening up too much space where there aren't any boundaries to frame the question and you lose your students. There is definitely skill with good questioning and for me it took time to develop. Taking a question and turning it around into a community dialogue, engages everyone and allows freedom of expression to occur. It gives students the opportunity to listen on a deeper level that if they were just listening to the teacher. We need to carve out that time for community dialogue. It actually is an excellent informal assessment tool for the teacher. You can see engagement of students by their participation and their responses will reveal the level of thinking skills that are operating. Lifting up and reframing what students are saying is another tool to assess comprehension of the concept. Good questioning requires attentive listening...another paradox!
Angie, when you mentioned the "engaging rather than engorging" passage, I remembered the time one of our school's was switching to the block schedule. A veteran teacher kept asking, "How am I supposed to lecture for 90 minutes?" I was new, so I kept my mouth shut but thought, "You don't!" Creativity is such an important component in our classrooms, from elementary to college. Questioning strategies are equally important to engage students. With Bloom's taxonomy, we can match certain questions with particular students. These are the sorts of activities that keep teachers busy during the "off-season"...
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