For my last observation I had the opportunity to visit Jake Long's class at Biddeford Middle School. I will be student teaching with Jake starting in January, so I was particularly interested in this visit.
Jake is the English teacher at BMS' recently created STEM (Science Technology Engineering Math) Academy. Space is limited in the academy, and students must apply for entry. Therefore, the classes tend to be comprised of highly-motivated learners. Since the focus of the curriculum is towards the sciences with less time for the humanities, it means that Jake's English Language Arts class is actually a combination of English and Social Studies (and he has to teach a math class, too!). Though it is challenging to cover as many standards as would be possible if the classes were split, it does provide the opportunity to combine the subjects in interesting ways. For example, the focus of their social studies unit is understanding how different technologies impact different eras in history (from the medieval ages, through the Renaissance, to the age of space exploration), but this unit is further enriched by having the students read speculative short fiction about fantastical technology by authors like Ray Bradbury. I'm really excited to start thinking about how English and literacy lessons can connect to science and technology, so instead of finding the STEM program too narrowly focused, it is actually encouraging me to view English in a whole new light!
During this day, Jake also changed the seating charts for all his classes. He does this once a month to encourage the students to work with new people. For the new seating chart, he grouped the students based upon their book preferences. He then let the new group (4-5 to a table) decide on a book that they all wanted to read together. It was a cool idea to group students based upon the kind of books they loved to read, and the kids were visibly excited to be given the freedom to choose what book they wanted. If you make reading enjoyable, all the other stuff -- the nuts and bolts -- comes so much easier.
I am looking forward to joining these dynamic classrooms in 2017!
I hope you enjoyed visiting the BMS STEM program, I love going there to observe--the students are so creative and are usually so engaged with their learning! I think that the social studies unit about "understanding how different technologies impact different eras in history" is a very interesting and different way of learning history. I also like changing up the seating arrangement for students (I remember that my third grade teacher used to do this too). I think it adds a new perspective on the class, a new but familiar environment, and gets the students to collaborate with other students (who they might not usually connect with). I also like the idea of grouping students based on particular interests.
ReplyDeleteThank you for sharing your observations, and I wish you the best of luck student teaching next semester at BMS!
Will this is an interesting post. I really like how they are combining topics so that the students can link topics together. I wonder if this makes it easier to comprehend different material? In many of the classes that I take here at UNE, we discuss finding ways to make students connect what they are learning to other courses. I think this is a great way to do this and I think that it has a good breakdown so that students are constantly intrigued and motivated to keep learning. This connects to the topics we discussed in class because we are pairing different skills together and learning in ways that we didn't think of before. This also connects because the students are engaged with the learning and are actively taking a part in their education. Another aspect of this observation that I liked was the fact that the teacher changes the seating chart so that they continually make new connections. This can be linked to 21st century skills because it is giving them the communication and social skills they need for society. Overall I see a lot of positives in their observation, and hope to use many of these idea in my teaching!
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