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Recognize what those are? That’s right, the cute little snores of
a first hour class and even if you don’t hear them, you may be able to imagine
that little cloud above the heads of many of the students. My placement, the
first hour of the day, has many of these Zzz bubbles floating about, and it
puts a damper on the effectiveness of the lesson, leading me to question:
How do I weed out those Z’s?
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Weeds are stubborn, as are the students and their need for the z’s,
so I decided to look into how to set off a class to a start that gets the students up and ready to go. In my
search, I came across a blog post on Edutopia called, “Your Lesson's First Five
Minutes: Make Them Grand,” by Dr. Richard Curwin. This post doesn’t refer to
the time of day a class is, but it did help give me more of an insight on
instigating more interaction in class. In his post he
gives three tips: use teasers, use compelling questions, and...
Do something you love every day.
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Dr. Curwin writes that doing
something you love everyday will create energy and “Energy is contagious,” so,
next to a bright and welcoming hello to start the morning, the start to the
lesson should be just as energetic. Though he is writing about the educator
doing something he or she loves, my brain took me down a different path. What
if it was up to the students to start off the class by introducing or doing something they love?
Risky business for sure, but a way for the students to look forward to the
lesson to come because I could adjust it to where we work together to tie what
they love to the lesson.
My idea so far:
1. At the beginning of the year, the syllabus has a rough schedule
attached for what we will be doing in each unit.
2. Each student will pick an activity/lesson/reading that they
believe they could tie to something they love or enjoy.
3. As we near each item, the student will be in charge of creating a
mini lesson or way to introduce the class to this piece of them and show how
they found it related to what we are doing in class.
Obviously an extremely rough
draft to the idea, but it would help the students in developing connections,
learning how to speak with the group, and it would start off each class in a
manner other than the teacher jumping right into a lesson.
I know that this will need many, many
adjustments and may even leave me still wondering how to eliminate those z’s in
the end, but it is my start to developing one of many ways to weed out the z’s
in my future classes. It is only the first few weeks of pre student teaching,
and I am sure to come across a multitude of alternative ideas and ways to
further energize not only first hour students, but students in general, but for
now I will continue to ponder the weeding of the z’s.
Curwin, Dr. Richard. "Your Lesson's
First Five Minutes: Make Them Grand." Web log post. Edutopia.
George Lucas Educational Foundation, 15 Apr. 2013. Web. 8 Sept. 2016.
http://www.edutopia.org/blog/first-five-minutes-richard-curwin
http://www.edutopia.org/blog/first-five-minutes-richard-curwin
