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Hi Renee,
I enjoy reading your post about how helpful Kahoot can be! I can feel the energy from your enthusiastic descriptions. However, from my experience observing students playing Kahoot, I think it could sometimes get a little out of hand when students get too competitive. I saw students so disappointed that they dropped out of the leaderboard or yelling “It’s unfair!” if whatever happened that they accidentally picked the wrong answer. Also, the leaderboard and top-three ranking features of Kahoot inherently promote comparison and competition. So instead of pure intrinsic motivation toward the game, part of students’ enjoyment of playing Kahoot may stem from the extrinsic reward of seeing their name on the leaderboard, getting in the top three, or receiving a prize from the teacher when they get in the top three. Therefore, I think it would be the teacher’s job to make sure that students don’t become overly competitive while still enjoying the format of Kahoot.
On a side note, my somewhat adverse reaction toward Kahoot may also relate to my aversion from the overt competition as personality and/or cultural upbringing, so it doesn’t mean that the competitiveness of Kahoot definitely harms the students.
Shaw
Hi Chisom,
I enjoyed reading your post!
I had a similar experience of a substitute teacher not having enough content knowledge/knowledge about a specific classroom. In this case, the substitute teacher for that day was a guidance counselor. This meant that she knew a lot/most of the students, but she could not as effectively help with specific math problems. Luckily, both a St. Olaf tutor and I were in class that day, so we also took over the teacher’s role and helped students with more responsibility than we had before. I also agree that students seemed to be rowdier and less focused on their work in the absence of the actual teacher. It would be interesting to investigate how MKOs can be integrated into the classroom structurally to cover the teacher’s responsibility better when the teacher is absent. Will there be enough MKOs for every class in every school if the MKOs are volunteers? (I think the Northfield public schools can have so many tutors partly because of the two colleges and the socioeconomic status of some of the parents.) Are the MKOs teachers? How to make sure the MKOs have the relevant qualifications? Structured MKOs can indeed be very helpful in classrooms, but integrating them into the classrooms still has a lot of concerns.
Shaw
Hi Renee,
I really enjoy reading your post!
Your observation of a lack of ethnoracial diversity strikes me because I observed two relatively diverse classrooms in the 7th and 8th grades. However, I do feel like maybe the two classes I observed are not the norm because I remember the elementary school classrooms I used to tutor in three years ago were pretty white as well. But even in a more diverse classroom, I noticed that students of color still tend to study with each other during the rare pal-pair work times. I also saw a student sitting in the back of the classroom in the 7th-grade class I observed. I assumed that he has some special-education-related status but did not ask him or the teachers about it. This not knowing of his potential special need became my excuse to not approach him during class. I am acutely aware of the potential damage of my behavior if the student notices my lack of attention on him. However, it seemed awkward for me to ask about anything (partly because I came to this classroom late in the term, and my time only allowed me to observe the second half of the class, making my experience with this 7th-grade class incomplete and awkward in many other ways). Luckily, the teachers were usually quick to respond to him, so hopefully, my absence of attention was not too detrimental. Nevertheless, the fact that he is separated from the rest of the class was really sad.
Shaw
Hi Molly,
I really enjoyed reading your post!
I found your observation on Maddy fascinating. It makes sense that from a behavioral perspective, under the evaluation framework of Mr. DuBe’s current class, Maddy is behind since she hasn’t met the behavioral goal of completing worksheets. However, I wondered if Maddy could meet the learning standard even if it is behavioral-based, as long as the standard is more flexible and reflect Maddy’s learning process. After all, Maddy has to have demonstrated some behavioral clue that she could comprehend critical ideas about the American Dream. In other words, cognitivists also evaluate cognitive learning and growth through some behavioral indicators.
On the other hand, I wondered if there were ways to scaffold Maddy’s learning materials and environment to help her transform her comprehension and ideas into written texts. Would it be helpful to ask her to repeat what she just said (or repeat it for her) and ask where she thought she could start writing or what the main point should be? Since in many situations, people’s comprehension is more skilled or advanced than their performance, I would imagine the process of performing closer to the level of understanding can also be an aspect of learning (maybe even in Vygotsky’s zone of proximal development).
Shaw
Hi Clarissa,
I enjoyed reading your insightful post!
I share your concern about how to respond when a student gets an answer partially correct. I had a student who confidently asked me if his answer was correct. I answered, “Not quite but close.” Some students laughed at his exaggerated expression of disappointment. The student was a class-clown-like figure, so I couldn’t really tell how confident he was before and how disappointed he was about the partially wrong answer. However, this was the only experience I had of students responding negatively toward my response that they were not entirely correct. I hope students generally felt encouraged by the positive half of my reactions and were positively reinforced.
I was also intrigued by your experience on Friday. I understand the frustration of being ignored by the students. I wondered why you think it’s easier to work with Tristan one-on-one. Is it because he was talking to Stephanie? What was her response? If they were both talking, did they react differently to your follow-up questions for them to focus on their work? I was wondering if this could be related to the gendered differences we discussed last week. Have we been responding differently to students’ behavior based on their gender (such as more explicitly reprimanding male students while ignoring or subtly reminding female students)?
Shaw
Hi Allegra,
I really enjoyed reading your post!
Your description of the lack of gendered groupings or expectations in class is interesting. My friend group and the friend group in my elementary and middle school classes are almost always grouped by gender. Children would say that the kid who often played with the other gender was weird (which was usually a girl playing with a group of boys – obviously, femininity in boys is even less acceptable than masculinity in girls). I don’t remember my teachers encouraging group work or play across gender either, although I also don’t recall them implicitly or explicitly discouraging it. However, I wondered how the teacher at Prairie Creek reacts to the boys who are interrupting, having high energy, or having trouble focusing and how she reacts to girls who occasionally display this kind of behavior. Would she still interact with the students in a somehow gendered way? (If I were in the situation, I might only respond to girls who do this kind of thing because it’s rare and thus perhaps “more serious.”)
I also agree with you that most of the teachers in my education experience are female. And among them, three of the five teachers I formed some sort of close tie to are female (and four of them teach language arts, which is disproportionately taught by female teachers anyway). However, I remember my mom consciously trying to find afterschool programs taught by male teachers for my sister and me. She told us that because we met so many female teachers at school, she wanted us to be exposed to some qualities that male teachers were usually better at. Although I have some objections to her reasoning, she did help me get in touch with slightly more male teachers and understood that men could be teachers!
Shaw
Hi Trina,
I enjoyed reading your post!
First, it’s refreshing to read about how dedicated the teacher you observe encourages every student and does not make them feel like a failure. This might be a universal principle for all teachers, but unfortunately, I have never seen or had experience with any teacher like that. I love that Molly modifies the tasks to spark each student’s interest and motivations as much as possible. Since motivation must play a significant role in students’ willingness to persist when facing challenges and their eventual success, I can see how those individualized tasks can help her students achieve industry instead of inferiority. However, I wonder to what extent those students not reading at grade level understand that they are doing tasks at lower levels than their classmates because their works are obviously different (activity sheets instead of full books). If the students know that they haven’t achieved grade-level reading skills, will this deter their feeling of competence? I am very interested in how Molly explained their different tasks to those students.
Also, I totally understand your occupational moratorium, Trina! I didn’t put it into my blog post, but I had a similar experience in my sophomore year. I always thought I was interested in education (I still am), but I suddenly found that I am also very interested in urban planning during OCS. However, I felt uncomfortable exploring a brand new occupational potential that has little to do with my familiar area of education. I applied to a related externship the following fall but didn’t get into it. Eventually, I just “forgot” about this interest. Therefore, although I am still in moratorium regarding which direction I will go under the umbrella of education, I am relatively foreclosed in terms of not being willing to put much effort into exploring other occupational categories. I hope you the best in considering regenerative architecture, though. It definitely sounds fantastic!
Shaw
Hi Renee,
I enjoyed your post a lot!
I am especially interested in how you emphasize the emotional curiosity and readiness as demonstrators of students’ current levels of development in ZPD. I feel like both Vygotsky’s theory and its implementation in the classroom as we’ve discussed in class focus mainly on students’ intellectual (and perhaps social) readiness. However, your description of both your excitement and curiosity to learn about music theory and students’ excitement about specific topics you observed makes it clear that emotional readiness is a part of current levels of development. Moreover, I guess students cannot possibly show emotional readiness or curiosity if they do not have a clear cognitive understanding of what they currently know, so this might be, in fact, an aspect that indicates cognitive readiness. I also love your observation on some students’ extra dedication to the poster assignment. I can remember times in my schooling experience when I went the extra mile for some projects just because they were interesting to me, such as composing a short story as the final project in my 10th grade English class. I guess the students who were incredibly thoughtful about their posters also show the kind of curiosity and excitement you mentioned earlier, despite not as a preparation for more development. Nevertheless, their excitement shows their understanding of the content knowledge (such as different flame colors caused by burning elements) and, I might guess, their readiness to learn more.
Shaw
First, I love your observation of Allie claiming that her mask protects her from the volcano! I also find your comment on Piaget’s assimilation/accommodation in the classroom fascinating and insightful. When introduced to a new category (mammal) with one known example (humans, especially Kay herself), Kay somehow creates a new mental category of mammals that shares some features with humans. In this process, Kay understood mammals as having a mom. However, when Kay encountered the information about mammals later, she accommodated her understanding of mammals to fit the new information she internalized. Of course, this observation cannot possibly expose many nuances in Kay’s mental structures. For example, did Kay initially think that mammals are a subcategory of humans despite your prompting question hinting the other way around? (Only then can one logically conclude that since humans have mothers, mammals have mothers.) Or did Kay understand the categorical hierarchy but lack abstract logic (as she would at the concrete operational period) to attribute characteristics to the correct category level? Those questions make me wish I am Piaget and have several young children around me to observe! Extending the topic of assimilation and accommodation, Allie, who talked about masks and volcanos at the beginning of your blog, also showed some evidence of assimilation. Perhaps we could say that she assimilated volcanos and their dust into the scheme/mental representation of the things cloth masks can protect against. However, Allie might not realize yet that volcano dust might need different protective equipment. Later, she could accommodate her category of protective equipment, currently containing (only) cloth masks, to cover those needed in front of an erupting volcano.
