Very unproductive day. Goal was to work through a representative sample of the worksheet problems so that we would see all the connections there were to see. Unfortunately, so many students had completed so little of the assignment, that we weren't ready to go over it. By the end of the class, we'd only managed to get through 2 or 3 problems.
I'm still very happy with my progress under a new curriculum. I'm very excited to see how the new sequence unfolds based on how structured the content has been thus far. However, I'm more than a little concerned that as the course content builds, students that haven't been working to their full potential are going to find themselves simply unable to participate in class (if you can't identify the slope of a line and you can't solve for the midpoint of a segment, how much luck are you going to have discovering general properties of parallelograms?).
I think the biggest lesson I'm learning this year is that the method of delivery and the sequence of the content are not the deciding factors in whether or not a student is successful. Do whatever you want - "flip" the classroom, lecture, model, whatever. If the students have no appreciation for the importance of education and are not willing to struggle to reach a desired goal, no fancy new approach will work.
Sorry, I try to avoid being negative, but it's the start of the 2nd marking period and I've been reflective this week.
No comments:
Post a Comment