Chapter 3: Brain Research Applied to Middle School

I really liked this chapter because of the different way that Wormeli suggested making connections in more than one way when introducing new ideas. I liked when he wrote "When we make the right kind of connections for students, we can help the content catch a ride on one of the senses as the thoughts enter their brains." I've found that when you make connections between what you're teaching and the things that connected to their likes and passions. I also thought that it was interesting that our memories remain remarkably intact but we have a very hard time retrieving them. Something that I found very neat, and will come in extremely handy in the long run, is the fact that emotional cues help middle school students retain information. The more we know about the way the brain works the easier job we will have as teachers for getting our students to completely learn and remember the information that is important.

Waiting for Superman

I am so glad that we got to watch this movie. I was absolutely amazed and at the same time appalled at the way the education system works in the country right now in regards to firing teachers. I couldn't believe the footage from the student that carried a camcorder around in his backpack. Even worse than seeing teachers do absolutely NOTHING during a class period and even mock the students about it, and seeing other kids physically harassed there was nothing the school could do to change the situation. There is no way to fire a teacher with two year.

Thats another thing that I had no idea about before watching this movie. I had never heard of two year. This is a completely ridiculous contract that ensures that all teachers who have taught past a certain number of year cannot be fired without going through this huge process that costs the schools more money than if they hired another teacher and allowed the terrible one to leave with pay.

I could go on and on about the things that I learned in this movie, lemon dance, lottery, unions..... The one thing that I concluded form the movie is that we need a drastic change in way the education system is run before we can begin expecting our students to improve their scores. We need good teachers to help create great learners.

Chapter 13: Outdoor Adventures

I was so pumped at the idea that this was in a wide spread education book. I think that many teachers leave out the outdoors in their teaching because they believe that the kids are not getting all of the learning if they are outside and distracted. I don't think this is so, and neither did the chapter. This chapter expands on so many benefits from the outdoors. One thing in particular was really powerful. The chapter said "There are two dimensions to substantive outdoor experiences. The first is the focus on our physical, emotional, and intellectual selves...found that outdoor experiences gave students greater peer acceptance and more control of their lives, thereby creating greater confidence and self-esteem." The last few pages of the chapter also give helpful examples of fun games that the students can play while outside that will help them mature or bond or make connections while still being just that, a game.

Chapter 4: Active Learning

I'm really glad that this book went over Active learning. I believe that it is really extremely important to have students move around and have hands on experiences, and I know that almost all people think that the only time this happen is in the Science Labs, but thankfully that is not correct. I really liked the math teacher example. This was the one where the teacher knew that one of the students was not understanding the new material that was being presented. Instead of just letting him slip through the cracks the teacher thought of a new way to present the material. It worked.

The other really helpful part of this chapter was the list of "Additional Ideas for Making Subjects Physically Engaging." This is going to be really helpful for people like me who has always learned the best through reading and plain old discussion. I really lack in ideas to help these learners so anything like this is awesome.

Chapter 3: Curriculum and Assessment to Improve Teaching and Learning

The part of chapter 3 that stood out to me was the part about the different standards. One of the standards that I found intriguing was the Excellence and Equity standard. I never thought that excellence should be looked at as a standard. This is, of course, if excellence was a relative term. I feel like if, as an educator, I am looking at the cumulative grades on the report card looking for high B's and A's then I am failing my students, but if I was to look at excellence as this student was working at level x in the beginning of the year and is now producing work that is much higher then they have achieved working excellence in my opinion.

Chapter 9: Planning for Block Scheduling

Although the title of chapter 9 is "Planning for Block Scheduling" I felt like it could have been better titled Planning for your Lessons. That is what this whole chapter was about. Yes it did have some parts about planning for a larger block then per usual, but it was very brief. Although I disagreed with the title I did like some of the things Wormeli wrote in this chapter. One of the things that I really liked was the idea about taking attendance while the students are doing something so that you don't delay the lesson. I also liked when they wrote "I want to begin with the end in mind, and assessment is incorporated with instruction." I need to permanently get my mind to go into this mindset. Don't base everything around the finished product without knowing where you are beginning. There was one thing about this chapter that really caught my attention. Under the section titled Inviting Thinking Activity the first line is I have to get them engaged within ninety seconds of entering the classroom. I have never heard this before, but I feel like there is some truth in it. Although it will be really tough to do, I feel that if I can get and hold the students attention from the beginning the rest of the lesson will go smoother.

Chapter 6: Organizing Relationships for Learning

In chapter 6, Organizing Relationships for Learning, Jackson and Davis talk about the different ways to organize large schools to create more intimate learning environments for our young adolescents. The authors suggest many different ways of doing this. These include making houses or "schools-within-school", creating teams, different kinds of scheduling, and advisories. I had heard of all of these before, and have even had one on one experiences with some of them, but I have never heard of houses before. I liked these ideas. I believe with Jackson and Davis when they say that no school should exceed 600 students so that they groupings of students and educators is small enough to "stimulate the development of close, supportive relationships. The "small schools movement" is happening now and I like the idea of it. By opting to restructure a large school into two to four separate, autonomous schools-within-schools there will be a better learning environment.