collisterc

Mr. Smith,

We had to read in Mrs. Collister's class a couple of weeks ago.  My first thought was UGGGGHHHHH!  How I don't like to read.   We don't usually read in STEM, but she said that it is important to read in all classes.  So everyone in the class silently read a short article on the "Discover Engineering Car Show".   It was okay,  I did not remember very much at first - even though I think cars are really cool.

Our class then broke up into random groups of three.  We did this activity that I never did before.  It was very confusing at first, but we soon got the hang of it.  There was a "starter", who spoke about one thing he read that stood out in his mind.  He had one minute to speak.  No one else was allowed to speak during that minute.  When the minute was up, Mrs. Collister said, "time" and the next person had thirty seconds to respond.  Again, only one person talking and that is so hard for me because I love to talk.  Soon, I hear "time" and it is my turn to respond.  Yeahhhhhh!  We did this two minute cycle two more times so that we could all be a "starter".  Each time there was a new "starter", a new topic needed to be discussed.  This was really hard for me because by the time I was the "starter" we had already talked about a lot of things.

The reason I am telling you this Mr. Smith, is because I remember so much more about what I read after we did this fun activity, than before it.  Reading is hard for me and when I read silently, I sometimes zone out and don't get it.  When we were talking with the other kids in our group, I remembered so much more about the car show.  It was hard for some kids in my group to talk at first, but it did get easier.  We all talked about what we read and if I have to read in class again, I would want to do it this way.  The classroom was noisy, but we all learned more about the car show by the end of class than right after we finished reading the article silently.

Would you tell the other teachers to let us read like this in class sometimes?  It helped us learn a lot.

 Thank you,

John Doe 

During the last marking period, while working on an various projects, I incorporated the use of physical models.  Some of these physical models were scale models that were constructed by the students.  Others were actual physical models of black boxes while learning about black boxes.  Using this type of nonlinguistic representation relates/brings what we are learning about in the classroom to a deeper understanding.  Students were able to understand the concept of scale much better after building their scale model from their floor plan.  A 3-D physical representation of what was 2-D on paper had a much greater impact on the students' understanding.  The actual creation of the model was self-fulfilling for many students also.

 I would like to incorporate more types of nonlinguistic representations in the next month.  I think that a kinesthetic activity would be great in my hands-on class.  The students expect to move and be busy the majority of the class period, so this most likely will be well received, engaging, and retained.

The students are told when they first begin my class that their effort will have a large impact on their grade, in addition to grades for projects, quizzes,...  I try to instill in the students that if they try their best to reach their full potential, it will be reflected in a good grade. 

Currently, I am not using any tangible rewards, but am definitely looking for some type of reward system.  I have tried rewards in the past that really did not work.  I think that those rewards were more geared for elementary students rather than middle school students.  I am looking to implement a new reward system third marking period with a new group of students.  Maybe I will recognize exceptional effort and work on my homepage for each project that we finish.  Another way would be to contact the parents, either by phone, email or a note, to tell them how great their child has been doing.  Parents always love to hear good things about their kids and why not make contact for a good reason as opposed to a negative one.

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