Tuesday, December 10, 2013

Teaching While "Keeping Track"

For this blog post, I would like to talk about two quotes I noticed in the reading; One from Finn and the other from Oakes. The fist quote I would like to talk about is one by Oakes:

"To be successful, heterogeneous classrooms probably need to lean to­ward placing students more in charge of their own evaluation - checking their own understanding and asking for and providing feedback." (181)

I chose this because I thought she had a very good point when she was talking about this. She says the point of an evaluation should be "What did this student learn?" rather than "How does this student compare to the others?" I believe evaluation is a necessity for teachers. They can always learn what they need to improve on by looking at their students evaluations on them.

The next quote I would like to point out is one by Finn:

"Progressive methods, empowering education, and powerful literacy tend to go together. Traditional methods, domesticating education, and functional literacy tend to go together. Progressive methods are nearly impossible unless children want school knowledge and cooperate."

I urge you to really think about the last part of this quote. Progressive methods are nearly impossible unless children want school knowledge and cooperate. This made me think of the saying "You can bring a horse to water, but can not make it drink." In order to learn, students must WANT to learn. You can not force knowledge onto students.

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