Identity TIPR

Current Teacher Behaviors
1. Identity vs Confusion is the psychosocial crisis I feel is most prevalent in the class. Since our writing unit is tackling relevant social issues, students are having to determine their stances on them. I've noticed that several of them are extremely opinionated, to the degree that it sometimes feels like they're exhibiting their opinions in order for the whole class to see who they are and where they stand on both the social issues they're writing about as well as the education system as a whole. Others are trying to sort out their feelings on an issue, but social expectations from their parents and previous teachers still seem to shape their opinions and identity. The class seems to be split between Foreclosure and Moratorium. The former because I can hear parents' opinions coming out of some students' mouths each day, and moratorium for the more loudly opinionated ones who don't seem completely confident in their statements, but are trying to take a unique and personal stance. The teacher does try to help push students out of foreclosure and into moratorium by asking students what they personally think about an issue when he comes around to help workshop writing. He makes it clear he wants to hear the student's opinion, not his own or their parents. Students can be intimidated by having to come up with their own opinions and beliefs (especially on hot topic issues like immigration, gun control, and transgender identities), but I feel the teacher is encouraging them to begin or continue experimenting with independent thought to develop their own identity.
Student Needs
2. Breaking most of the students out of the Foreclosure stage seems to be the most relevant need right now. The students are all opinionated and strong-willed, but many don't carry that over to their writing. I believe this is because writing on hot topics issues like the ones listed above can be controversial and intimidating, and students may not want to rock the boat too much. Also, 2/3 of the class is mostly interested in just getting the assignments done for points, not to explore their identity or bolster critical thinking. Because of this, it's easy for students to take what they heard their parents or peers or former teachers say about an issue and just copy that down to complete the assignment and be done with it. I think having the narrative assignment be based around a large issue was a good move, but not a lot has been done to help students work through how they feel about it. I think more pre-writing/planning work could have been done to provide students an opportunity to list out various thoughts they have on an issue. That way, they could pull from that list of their own brainstorm ideas when they write the story rather than be rushing through it and copying and pasting outsiders' perspectives into it. Regardless, student voice and opinion is always valued and I think that helps encourage identity exploration. Students aren't punished for having the "wrong" viewpoint. They only need to show they thought through multiple perspectives, which I believe encourages identity exploration.
Plans for your Lesson
3. My lesson will be on characterization and voice, so individual identity is crucial. I think an approach I can take is to tell students if they can't come up with a fictional character to run through the characterization questionnaire I'll be giving them, that they should answer the questions on it about themselves instead. This would help them explicitly state some basic things about their perspective on the issue they plan to write about. They'll understand a little bit more about their current opinions and identity, and I can encourage them to add to those if they don't feel it's enough to show a strong perspective on the issue they plan to write about.

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Metacognition TIPR

Current Teacher Behaviors My cooperating teacher is a great planner and gives the students clear instructions and strategies on how to complete the task at hand. When presenting students with their summative assessment (writing a short personal narrative), he provided them with a list of 40 possible prompts they could draw from for ideas and then told them he wanted to see how they could present the situation in their own unique way through writing. In teaching things like action verbs and sensory details in micro-lessons, he's giving them the chance to monitor and evaluate for themselves how the story is taking shape and if their personal take on the story is coming through. By making the assignment about a personal story (fiction or non-fiction), he's making the foundation of the assignment declarative (something they already know a lot about) and is using the micro-lessons to build up their procedural and conditional knowledge. Student Needs The planning stage is so
Read more

Piaget TIPR

Current Teacher Behaviors 1. During this narrative writing unit, the teacher introduces disequilibrium by asking further probing questions about a decently well-known concept (like what dialogue is). Students can explain on their own that dialogue is when different characters speak to each other, so they already have that knowledge accommodated. But when he asks how dialogue is formatted (using indents, apostrophes, adding detailed descriptors after the dialogue to explain how it is said or what the character saying it is doing, etc), students enter a state of disequilibrium. Students can accommodate the use of apostrophes since it's very familiar to them from the early grades of school. We help the students assimilate the new information by employing concrete examples. The teacher had two students come to the front and assigned them a character from the dialogue projected on the board, which spoke to the concrete operational stage. Each role was highlighted a separate color, an
Read more

Defining Learning

What is my current definition of learning? The acquisition and expansion of knowledge and experience to improve skill sets, behavior/attitude, and living conditions throughout life.  How do I believe people learn? Through hands-on experimentation and experience within fields they are trying to learn within. For example, people wanting to learn how to play guitar should be learning on an actual guitar rather than just reading or talking about it. Readings and lectures can be incorporated, but a physical guitar should be there for them to try the things they read about on. What will learning look like in my classes? Incorporating as much visual and hands-on learning as I can so that students can actually create things as they learn rather than just read. I plan to do this by incorporating writing and even more visual artistic methods into our assessments.
Read more