Grant Wiggin’s blog analyzes what a typical day in a classroom looks like from the oft-forgotten students’ perspective. From this experience, Wiggins is able to boil down from the experience some common practices teachers probably engage in every day that would benefit students enormously if they changed.
His first observation about how students are expected to sit quietly and passively receive information all day long. This is far from optimal for student engagement. Students need to be allowed (and sometimes forced) to get up at some point—or multiple points—in each class, whether that is for a mandated stretch break or to actively transition from one activity to the next. Wiggins says one of the major changes he would implement would be to “build a hands-on, move-around activity into every single class day,” even if it meant sacrificing some time for content. After all, if students have completely disengaged from the your class, they will not be absorbing any of that content anyway. Because students typically spend so much time listening passively (up to 90% of their class time, according to Wiggins), he recommends breaking up the class into mini-lessons (approx.. 10 minutes) followed by some kind of hands-on activity with built in assessment. He also recommends tracking and limiting how much time you, the teacher, spends speaking to the class as a whole. Another idea is to get students more involved in the material that will be covered by having them pose their own list of essential questions, and choosing from that list what is most important to them to have covered. Finally, Wiggins emphasizes how easy it is for teachers to unintentionally make their students feel marginalized. From repeatedly quieting their talking, to using sarcasm, or being reticent to answer their questions, many students receive the message that they are not an important contributor to the class and that, as a result, their presence there is dispensable. While I don’t necessarily think that all sarcasm needs to be banished from the classroom, I think it should be used with caution and only in circumstances where good rapport already exists with that student, and in a situation that will not embarrass or single anyone out—and to make sure that joking around is a two-way street. In other words: don’t dish it out if you can’t take it (and don’t dish it out if they can’t take it!) Wiggins, Grant. (2014, Oct 10). A veteran teacher turned coach shadows 2 students for 2 days—a sobering lesson learned. Retrieved from: https://grantwiggins.wordpress.com/2014/10/10/a-veteran-teacher-turned-coach-shadows-2-students-for-2-days-a-sobering-lesson-learned/
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