Book Discussion 1
We read the first 26 pages of "Understanding How Young Children Learn" by Wendy Ostroff outside of PLC and were prepared to discuss the book during our meeting. Here were some highlights from our discussion:
We discussed how students are motivated in different ways to learn and how we as teachers can make learning a more fun experience for the students. In the book, Ostroff emphasizes the fact that school can become all about routine and habit for students and the novelty of learning wears off. This can cause students to become disinterested, distracted, or off task. As teachers, we need to try new things and surprise the students with new ways of introducing topics. If we are excited about the learning in the classroom, then the students will most likely become excited as well.
We each gave examples in our own classrooms of situations where we got the students more engaged or excited about a topic, even if it was not particularly interesting to us. For example, Kaila shared how she used motions and word connections to explain what a trapezoid was to her students. Shape naming is not her favourite thing to teach, but the students quickly caught on and enjoyed the activity. Joyce mentioned that the students love making flashcards because she introduced it as something "fun" and "different". Often, it is how we approach learning that affects students' attitude about it.
We also discussed how confidence plays a huge role in the process of learning in children. Helping students to visualize their success and encouraging confidence, even overconfidence, plays an important role in a student's learning. As teachers, overconfidence among students can be frustrating; however, according to the book it can be a good quality because it encourages students to try, even if they fail at accomplishing a task.
We answered discussion questions such as, "What classroom practices are done simply out of tradition? How can we empower children and enable them instead of acting like they are helpless or powerless? Why does the desire to learn often decrease as a child gets older? What are some ways we can engage them and make them excited?". We were reminded that as teachers, we need to put ourselves in the children's shoes and try to see life as they see it in order to more effectively teach. We also agreed that school should be about the children's learning and not about our teaching. Our focus should be on our students and in order to teach them more effectively, we must know them better in regards to their motivations, behaviours, brain structures, intelligences, etc.
We answered discussion questions such as, "What classroom practices are done simply out of tradition? How can we empower children and enable them instead of acting like they are helpless or powerless? Why does the desire to learn often decrease as a child gets older? What are some ways we can engage them and make them excited?". We were reminded that as teachers, we need to put ourselves in the children's shoes and try to see life as they see it in order to more effectively teach. We also agreed that school should be about the children's learning and not about our teaching. Our focus should be on our students and in order to teach them more effectively, we must know them better in regards to their motivations, behaviours, brain structures, intelligences, etc.
We are enjoying reading this book and especially appreciate the practical applications that the author includes for teachers to use in their classrooms. Hopefully, we will start to incorporate more of these ideas in our own classrooms and be open to learning more effective strategies to implement in the future.
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