Paley's classroom allows her students to lead the pace and activities that will let them learn. The classroom is driven by student learning, and is not as teacher directed as the usual classroom. Paley lets her students select the direction of the learning, as well as the content to uncover. Through the use of a strongly developed thematic unit on the arthur, Leo Lionni, the students learn about very important life lessons that the teacher herself is learning about alongside her students. Paley allows herself to learn from the direction and responses of her students, and the thought provoking lessons they teach her make her question her own understandings.
Tuesday Experience Classroom: (as of the third visit)
My Tuesday experience teacher has a very scheduled classroom structure, everything is focused around the centers that student's go through in daily routine. Unlike Paley, my classroom teacher does not allow for much student directed or generated learning. The students follow the lead and pattern that has been set by my teacher, and do not question this schedule. It seems that this schedule is well understood and that the children would be unsure of the everyday structure of the classroom without in in place.
3 comments:
How do you like the structure of you classroom? What do your centers involve? Would you use the structure in your own clasroom?
Katie,
I feel as though the students in your Tuesday Experience classroom are missing out on so many great experiences by not having student led conversations. In my Tuesday Experience classroom, each student will have had the opportunity to participate with at least two literature circles by the end of the year; I believe that literature circles are a fantastic way of getting the students to generate conversation related to their reading while feeling validated with their assigned roles. Overall, I feel as though students are cheated if they are not given opportunities to be in charge of their conversations while the teacher facilitates the overall process.
I think that children particapating in the day as much as possible is very important. In the Tompkins book, she states that in order to sustain conversation in the classroom it is important for the children and the teacher to ask questions and help each other figure questions out.
I have to agree with Taylor in saying that the children in your Tuesday experience are missing out a lot of valuable learning. I think that students learn a lot from each other, just by asking questions and answering each other. I also feel that the teacher should faciliate the questions by asking 'why' and 'how' and have the children take the discussion from there.
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