Monday, August 3, 2009

Why Dont Students Like School: Part 1

Why Don't Students Like School: Part 1

5 comments:

Anonymous said...

As Mark mentioned in the presentation, it made me think about what I am having my own children read at home and how I need to diversify the material they are exposed to.
I teach Math to the low level students in the High School. Knowing the basic facts is such a fundamental skill for them to apply the knowledge to more advanced material. If they do not know the basic facts, they simply cannot comprehend higher applications due to this lack of knowledge.
The students love when I share stories. For many of them, building the trust is necessary for them to know you care and at that point they are more willing to put forth the effort and try.

Unknown said...

The heartening fact is that "talking up" to kids instead of dumbing down is an easy way to help students. Just by using a rich vocabulary in the classroom as we explain concepts can increase their exposure to new words and connections.

Anonymous said...

I really liked the ideas that reading and prior knowledge is so important. Also the idea of stories holds a lot of appeal to me as an English teacher. Students love and learn best from stories; they like to see the connections that the ideas they are studying apply to their lives. Teaching literature is the fun part of my job – writing and grammar is a different story.

Rick

Kyle said...

I agrees on the past knowlege is important to new learning. I agree with telling stories to the students will lead to success in the classroom. We have to improve on focusing on students past knowledge and applying it to their everyday lives.

Kyle

Ms. Given said...

I notice that in Middle School, many students read for pleasure more rarely or not at all. I also notice that reading comprehension, vocabulary and other related test scores often decrease as students progress from 6th through 8th grades. There are so many great books out there for this age group and yet so many things competing for kids' time. Parents often ask me for ways to improve scores and they don't like the answer - have kids read more...Maybe we should be spending our time in class differently or asking students to do more "assigned" reading outside of school? This may not be enough. The other skill that is lacking is reading critically. Sometimes guiding reading through asking questions can help students get more out of the text - what do we need to do to make sure that skill is transferring to "unguided" reading??