Professor Sharon

100 Day Project – Day 15 – 9:17 p.m.

Today was a teaching high!  Last fall in a 100 level course for pre-service early care and education students, I introduced the concept of deciding what you will read when.  Well, it’s not really choosing what you will read of any material – but what you will read of the material I’ve chosen.

The readings consist of two short textbook type books, and two anthologies of teacher articles focused on the content of the course.  Depending upon how you split it up, it comes to about 15 to 30 pages of reading twice a week for two class meetings — about average in my experience.  I am repeating the experiment this semester, and it’s working so well.  I ask students by the third class to submit a reading plan.  It has to be exact: pages numbers, etc.  But I am not asking them to read the material in any order.  It is completely their choice.  Each article and chapter must have a written response.  In this case, a fairly standard reading response piece: the type you can find recommended at several college websites; and even find “how-tos” for if you are the student.  Each student must then be prepared to participate in a “Reading Talk” time during the first part of the class meeting time.

So far, I’ve allowed them to sit with whoever they are sitting with when they arrive, other classes I’ll divide them up in various ways using random cards, straws, etc.  Today they flew!  They made connections with the material, with each other and between materials.  It generally turns out that in groups of three, most of the time at this point, they have each read something different and have a lot to talk about.   Today, after general response reaction sharing, I asked them as groups of five (five groups) to summarize two vital points from all the material the group had read to this point.  The resulting list of points was excellent!  There’s no way I feel I would have succeeded so well with just picking topics and lecturing at them.  It was my kind of teaching day in that class!

And, then in between my four classes was an administrative curriculum change activity that completely frustrates me; that I find little patience for (and little understanding of need for) the minutia and the repetitive checking in.  Incessant waste of time.  So frustrating.  I may look unorganized at times at my desk, but I’m really efficient – this task is the opposite of efficiency.   So today the only word I can think of is Balance.  Or is it Roller Coaster?