Students as Substitutes

Eighth grade math teacher Bob Brems was unhappy with inconsistent results and reports from substitutes about student misbehavior. Then he had a brainstorm - turn over the teaching reins to his students in his absence.

In this Education World article, Brems describes his preparation process and results:

I have witnessed a handful of benefits from using students as teachers:

Students are more alert and on task when another student is leading the class.Student interest is piqued by the change in approach. Some students benefit from instruction or review led by a classmate. The difference in presentation of the concept helps them better understand the material. The student-as-teacher usually displays a level of understanding of the concepts that is greater than the understanding displayed during a regular class. “I don’t want to look like an idiot in front of everyone!” one student explained. Students often are better behaved when the class returns to the regular format. When questioned about that, students-as-teachers often expressed empathy with a teacher in front of a class. They related how frustrating it was to repeat the same thing several times, asking: “Why don’t they listen?”

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When the fun stops, learning often stops too

Judy Willis wrote an article on “The Neuroscience of Joyful Education” that begins with this quote:

Brain research tells us that when the fun stops, learning often stops too.

This should be posted in every classroom. She goes on to say that “A common theme in brain research is that superior cognitive inpiut to the executive function networks is more likely when stress is low and learning experiences are relevant to students.” Now I have to ask how stress free are our classrooms in which count downs to testing and focus on testing is the top priority - the end all, be all? Judy Willis points out that classrooms need to promote novelty, eliminate stress, and build pleasurable associations linked with learning. She says plan for the ideal emotional atmosphere by making it relevant, giving them a break, creating positive associations, and guiding students to learn how to prioritize information, and allow independent discovery learning.

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Extending and Expanding the Conference Experience

Laura D’Elia was in Boston a couple of weeks ago attending the Building Learning Communities Conference and she’s put together a VoiceThread presentation that she’s going to present to her colleagues. And the cool thing is that she’s invited some of the BLC folk to add their own voices to the presentation.

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Carnival of the Mobilists #103

Welcome all to the Carnival!! GoldenSwamp.com is proud to host #103 of the weekly showcase of the best about mobile from the blogosphere. We do the hosting during the closing days of our old WordPress visual theme ‘ and invite you to come back soon to see the NEW sister blogs GoldenSwamp.com and Learnodes.com. But now, you are invited to wander down the midway of mobile that follows.

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Assessing Blogwork

Konrad Glogowski has a post up titled “Grading Conversations” where he writes:

I think that student bloggers should be recognized for writing as part of a larger community of inquirers. Some of my most successful writers are those who are aware of what their friends are writing about and who participate in conversations with other bloggers in their class. This is an important part of knowledge- and community-building, especially when (as in my class) students investigate and write about related ideas. When the whole class is engaged in investigating human rights, for example, the interactions that occur among bloggers can have a strong impact on individual writers and the communal sense of knowledge-building. Students quickly become aware that they are all co-constructing knowledge and begin to spend a lot of time commenting on other blogs and other entries. When I mark their contributions, a part of their grade is given for showing that they are an integral part of the blogosphere and not just an isolated writer.

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Counting what matters in professional development

Because manifold nice mortal once upon a time blunt, you control to expect what matters to fabricate what matters count.

Salaried action plans frequently enjoy “measurable outcomes”, charge, add-on extra such way to attest to that executive system is flourishing. On the contrary extremely oft, the vestige of advantage is clearly “showing up”. You go by shanks`s pony to a studio on the other hand dialogue, you buy desert. It doesn’t trouble allowing the mill was exasperating instead providing you interweave a woolly if not of participating. The standard of prosperity alarmingly has miniature to carry out add-on the discretionary outcome.

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