Response to Weinstein text
Greetings,
As I was reading our assigned selection for this week, I was amazed by the amount of time we, as teachers, had, but also by the lack of time we have. On page 147, a chart describes how much time teachers have to begin with, but after clerical endeavors and behavior corrections, teachers have a very small timeframe to get the main ideas of the curriculum across to the students.
The book also focused on how homework fits into class time. It offered two differing accounts, where the students announce the answers to the questions individually, and one where the students announce the answers chorally.
I was reminded of my Algebra teacher’s method. At the beginning of class Mr. Jones (pseudonym) would have us get out our homework, while he would take attendance. Then he would ask who did not do the homework, and take a note of who raised their hands. To correct the answers he called on students individually, and we would ask questions on individual questions if we had them. If a student gave Mr. Jones reason to doubt the fact that s/he did the work, he would ask him/her to show it to him. If they lied at the beginning of class, s/he would get the late, as well as disciplinary action. After that, he would launch into the next section’s lecture. As another measure to make sure the students were doing their homework, Mr. Jones had ‘Homework checks’ which were quizzes in which he gave us the page number and problem number and asked us to copy and solve the question, without looking at our books.
If memory serves, this method worked quite well for Mr. Jones. It was a routine that the students would be able to adopt fairly easily, and would occur every day. Then we would have a clearly defined boundary, as we swapped the homework for our notes, as he launched into the days lecture.
This structure could also be adapted to a Social Studies classroom, as we go over the main figures during an era or event. Then, from that introductory exercise, I could possibly go into what the era or event means in contemporary life or what lessons we could glean from it.
Readings:
Weinstein, C. S. (2003). Making the most of classroom time. In Secondary Classroom Management: Lessons from research and practice (2nd ed., pp. 142-170). Boston: McGraw-Hill.
