Week+5

Hi guys,

Apologies for the lateness of the Week 5 posting. Its true that I had been a little slack over the holidays and was playing a game called World of Warcraft a little too much instead of getting the post done. However Helen reminded me and I had planned to get onto this last week. However a bad case of the flu (hopefully not of the swine variety!) had me bed ridden for much of last week, and I didn't get around to it. So, without any further ado......

=MODELS OF TEACHING AND LEARNING=

Its true that Pedagogy is going to be different for everyone, much in the same way that the best way to learn something is different from one person to the next. If this wasn't the case, the clip we saw from Pink Floyd's "The Wall" song would be much more prevalent in schools today. []

Thankfully it isn't, and the reason is that the beliefs of educators and curriculum/policy makers has changed for the better. That is my own assessment though, and probably isn't shared by teachers who were part of the old system of "teaching" rather than "educating". The YouTube clip we watched asking the question "Do you teach or do you educate?" was a little vague for me at the time. []

However, I kind of understand where it was coming from. I didn't want to get bogged down in the semantics it seemed to show on the screen, but wanted to think more about the deeper meaning of the question itself. Anyone can get up infront of a class and read out of a text book. Anyone can set a maths test and mark a child down or up depending on what they put down. But is this really education? Doing the "Maths In The Bush" class we did a few weeks ago would do more to educate a child about maths than have them fill out worksheets or do a test.

__BONUS LEARNING:__ **What I learnt on prac about models!!**

What you want to get out of a class ultimately comes down to your relationship with the students. When I first went into my Grade 1 class at Ormond Primary, I was perhaps naively desperate for the kids to like me. I thought if they like you, they will do what you say and that will make teaching the lessons much easier. But in reality, whilst I seemed to get along great with the kids, having them listen to me and do what I said using my "nice" Mr Armistead voice didn't always work. Mrs Johnson had the balance between being "nice" and being "authoritative" down pat. You felt at times that she was the nicest person on earth, but when the kids mistook that for misbehaving, the demeanour changed a little, only enough to let the students know what they were supposed to be doing. Bringing this back to "The Wall" example from above, my thinking is that being overly strict and dictating what the students should be doing doesn't work well, and neither does trying to be the best friend to a seven year old and negotiate their behaviour with them - too much of that happens these days. My best experiences as a student myself come from teachers who you felt safe and easy to talk to, but had a side that you didn't want to cross and misbehave against. Knowing when to play and knowing when to work are important factors, especially for a Grade 1 class.