I quite enjoyed class this past week. Like Kristen acknowledged, it can be difficult to remain attentive in the 5-8 time-slot, and so our variety of interactive activities were a relief. It's funny, as class was happening, I was just grateful that we were moving around and shifting our focus. It wasn't until a few days later that I realized that the situation itself was a lesson for us: when teaching long lessons, split the learning into a variety of activities to hold attention. Watching the TED talk was exciting (who knew video games could save the world?), and, I'll admit I love anytime the Comedy Central news-team is mentioned... (and in a plug I'm a little ashamed to be making, my other blog is all about items promoted on the Daily Show, so I'm always glad to see connections with the show made).
Readings
Unlike previous weeks, this week's readings didn't seem to present too many new ideas (or, to say it in a more positive way, they built off of many of our previous readings and class discussions). However, within these readings, I was able to make many connections to teaching/learning in my daily life. Two days a week, I tutor at 826michigan (which is always looking for more volunteers...) and help students with their homework. Much of what was discussed in Ch. 3 of How People Learn resonated with my 826 experience, particularly what the chapter said about fractions. HPL mentioned that students knowledge of things like addition and subtraction do not accurately transfer to the process of working with fractions. I saw this firsthand when working with a 4th grader last week. She just was not getting most of the problems. However, the worksheets the student was completing had a variety of types of fraction problems that, while similar, required different processes to complete. She totally understood how to complete one of these problem types, and we were able to use that knowledge to figure out how to solve the others. HPL does suggest giving a variety of problem types, not just because students learn in different ways, but also because it encourages the transfer of knowledge between the related problems.
Both HPL and "Put Understanding First" emphasize the importance of developing knowledge, rather than learning facts, and the three types of teaching for meaning and transfer within "Put Understanding First" are a great way to approach this knowledge development. While I'm still uncertain how I'll be able to apply this directly to much of my public library work (as you can only do so much in one-shot workshops), it does help to get an idea of how people learn.
Wow - SI has a great presence at 826 Michigan! Our next project will have great public library application ... stay tuned!
ReplyDeleteI wonder if there is a way to bring the tutoring model into the public library--not just the public library hosting tutors/tutoring sessions, but the librarians themselves teaching classes with more of a tutoring approach. I know some academic libraries let students sign up for one-on-one research assistance from a librarian, which is sort of like research tutoring. Why not something similar in public libraries? It might be nice to have long one-on-one instructional or reference sessions pre-scheduled so that the reference desk librarian doesn't need to worry about neglecting other patrons while helping someone with especially complex needs. I'm sure there are plenty of problems inherent to this idea, but I'm just typing as I think.
ReplyDeleteGreat point about taking lessons from the structure of class itself, in addition to the readings and activities!
ReplyDeleteAnd on an unrelated note, I thought you did a fantastic job with your 645 presentation last night; it was clear that you really know your target population.
It's really great that you were able to apply the readings to your tutoring and that you were kind of already doing some of the things suggested (like using knowledge from some problems to work out how to solve other problems). As far as what Carmen said, I think some variation on librarians tutoring would be really cool.
ReplyDeleteI noticed too that some of the readings did not bring up new ideas as much as connecting to what we've already learned. I did not realize how all of these concepts (transfer, teaching, librarians, etc) formulated this big picture. I'm interested in what new pieces we can add.
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