Chapter 6a and 6b

Chapter 6a pp. 223-235

            A lot of this part of the chapter was repetitive, of things I have already learned and continue to review in many of my class. It talks about the different learning styles and accommodating students in your classroom. It is really important that teachers are using different teaching strategies in their class to teach the subjects to connect to students learning styles. It can be difficult to get all of them, visual, auditory, and kinesthetic learners all at the same time. I know as a student I was a kinesthetic learner and needed those hands on experiences to learn best. I feel like this is one of the best ways to teach, giving students the opportunity to have those hands on learning lessons. I feel it is more difficult and does take more time for the teacher to put together, but is beneficial. I also feel that sometimes you can’t always have hands on learning activities and need to do other things besides just lecturing to your students or doing the same strategies over and over again. As the book discusses the delivery and assess mode, there are strengths and weaknesses to every teaching style. That’s why it is important to use multiple strategies. You could use more than one and being aware of how the students best learn, by change the strategies up for students to stay engaged and gather that understanding of what you are trying to teach.  I have learned about Gardner style of learning in few other classes, but it is also brought up in this text that teachers should use these different intelligences. It will help the teacher figure out how the students best learn and can be used in multiple lessons. I want to use multiple strategies in my classroom when I am a teacher such as those hands on learning activity and others for my students to get the most out of every lesson.

Chapter 6b pp. 237-244

           

            This part of the chapter talked about interdisciplinary thematic units. In school I always found it so fascinating and more interesting when teachers would create lessons that connected to things going on in the world or to themes in other lessons. I was shocked by how they did this. I was also more interested and engaged in the content being taught. Planning lessons are very beneficial and help for the teacher, sub, principal, and anyone else who looks at them, especially if they are well filled out including all the necessary information such as objectives, goals, title, grade, procedures, outcomes, etc. I think that the first few years I am a teacher I want to write out my lesson plans and elaborate on them because it will help me in the future and I can always write a shorter version of it. Then if anyone wants to look at why or what I am teaching in depth I would have that. It is also important as the book talked about pace and watching your time, because you don’t want a lesson including thematic units to go on for to long, that the class will get bored and not be engaged. You don’t want to focus on one area for to long and keep the lesson moving. This is also helpful when you have a fully written lesson plan to fall back on if things are not going as planned or things changed you will have options written on your lesson plan to help with these situations. Teachers want to be sure they are planning their lessons correctly to benefit the students and add to their prior knowledge. I think thematic units are awesome and very helpful; I will definitely use them in my classroom, as well as writing out my lesson plan with details.