I am always searching for ways to encourage my students to be active and involved in the lesson; I aim for all to be engaged in the discussion. A whole-class discussion usually means a few students contributing, directing most of the comments to the teacher ping pong style. Even if the teacher decides to hear every group member, it can only ever be a short statement because of time limitations.I follow and deeply admire Jennifer Gonzales, a teacher blogger at Cult of Pedagogy. A few years ago, Gonzales wrote a post on ‘chat stations’, a teaching strategy that resonated with me, and I adopted it immediately. The simple idea involves…
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Four Day Teaching Marathon
Last week I taught a marathon. Sitting at my desk, I ran like the wind through four intensive days in which I taught a whole semester course. In my last post, I wrote about my dilemmas about dividing the students into groups to allow more intimate and significant learning. I was concerned that although I had offered three different time slots each day to cater to the needs of students with work and parenting responsibilities, the groups were very uneven. I had 23 students signed up for the morning sessions, eight for the afternoon and eight for the evening. After days of deliberation, I decided to encourage movement between the…
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Literacy Lockdown
Yesterday in the late afternoon, I received a request from the Oranim College spokesperson, asking me to write a short response to the Ministry of Education decision to place all grade one reading instruction on hold until schools reopen. The decision followed the widespread discussion in the media on the effectiveness of online reading instruction at the beginning of grade one. A news reporter from the top Israeli newspaper asked for the response and needed it very quickly. I sat down and spent an hour crafting a paragraph stating my opinion on the topic. Unfortunately, this morning I received an apology that they shortened the article, and that they cut out my response. While…
