After reading the Wiggins' article, I can definitely relate the veteran teacher's experience to those of my students. My students are on a block schedule so they have 3 periods a day and each period is 2 hours long. I love the block schedule as a teacher because you never feel rushed, but I feel for my students by the end of the day. Passively sitting ALL day, 5 days a week is absolutely exhausting and by the end of the day their attention spans are short and they are sleepy! I find myself desperately trying to hold their attention while delivering information before they get lost to their phones or a side conversations with a classmate. Unfortunately, this makes me want to power through lectures without stopping or time to talk to partners because it is difficult to redirect their attention back to the lecture. I think a strategy that what would help this is more hands on activities, as described in the article. I need to work on giving content in 10 minute chunks and then creating engaging activities in groups that require them to talk to others and move around. Because my students have been in the traditional classroom for so long, they need some sort of motivation to put effort into classwork. In math class, they are used to receiving points for homework, quizzes, and tests. They aren't used to doing projects or presentations or anything else in class besides taking notes and practicing problems. I think they ARE capable of putting forth some good effort during class time, they just need something to grab them and get them into the awesome problems of life that math can solve. Additionally, I would like to try and incorporate most of the things that the veteran teacher wished she would have done. For example, it would be awesome to have a nerf game in the classroom, more mandatory movement, and no sarcasm when students ask questions. This was a great perspective to read about as I start thinking about having my own classroom.
Here is the article if you would like to check it out:
Grant Wiggins Article
Here is the article if you would like to check it out:
Grant Wiggins Article