Question on teaching technique
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| Thu, 09-14-2006 - 10:49am |
DS14 is a freshman, and is taking a class called World Studies (all freshmen take it). The technique is unique to me, and he's struggling so far to 'get with the program'. The teacher assigns a chunk of the text, tells them to go home and read it and write notes, the notes are then permitted to be brought into class with them during the next class, and she gives them a quiz on the material. Only after the quiz does she teach them the material. Is this common? He says he finally got to talk to her yesterday (freshmen can't 'travel' during 'academic lab' yet to visit teachers to get help; that starts next week) and now knows what she's looking for - but this is 4 weeks in, and the usual A-/B+ he has in social studies is a C-; going to take a while to dig out of that one. He's frustrated but determined to bring it up. Sigh.
Sue

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I have a bit of a problem with this! It's not that I don't feel students should take responsibility for themselves and should feel comfortable approaching the teacher with questions, but a 6th grade student may not ask the right question, kwim? And as a parent, if you aren't getting the answer YOU need, trusting a 11-12yo to go back and forth between teacher and parent, well, something is bound to get lost in translation.
Our middle school sends home progress reports nearly every other week so there are absolutely no surprises come report card time. My DD's high school does not, so I am in the habit of requesting one from each teacher at least once during a quarter.
Both schools, at back to school night, told parents that they are available by phone or e-mail should we have any questions during the school year. Most said they preferred e-mail, but still, are open to having parent involvement.
Seems a bit odd to me that your DS' teachers don't want parents involved.
They do permit/encourage parent involvement, but when it's issues like this, such that ds14 needs help pulling out the pertinent facts from his book so he has the 'right' notes on these quizzes, I think she wants them to take the initiative to come to her for help, vs. the parent asking. And I can see that. Or another example - if a student thinks they were slighted on a test score or something was marked wrong that shouldn't have been, again, they want the students to approach the teachers vs. irate/perturbed parents nosing in. I can see that too.
Now if there's a major issue on how a student is treated, or complete confusion of how things are going, etc., that the student isn't prepared to handle, then the parents are more than welcome to step in.
I don't think this particular situation warrants my contact, although of course as a mother hen, it's tempting to stick my nose in! As ds is determined to handle this, I will be good and let him take care of it.
Sue
I have done an Internet search on the Cornell Notes method. It looks pretty interesting and might be an easy way to set up an outline. I'm such a perfectionist with very sloppy handwriting that I would still wind up typing them after class. I do like the idea of stressing to the students after they leave class that they review the notes and pull out the main ideas or any questions that they have in the left hand column. I used to just scribble stuff like that in the margin and then highlite it for later. The problem once again was that my handwriting was awful and scribbling in a tiny margin did't help much.
I looked at several links but this one explains it best.
http://coe.jmu.edu/learningtoolbox/cornellnotes.html
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