Comments on: Too fun

By: Lori

Lori — Sun, 27 Jul 2008 20:08:24 +0000

this makes me think of howard gardner’s writings on how children learn at museum programs.

By: Carol

Carol — Fri, 25 Jul 2008 11:37:06 +0000

I’ve enjoyed reading the various reactions to the “fun and fluff” issue and believe we’re all saying something similar, but in different words. It hits on my passion for motivating gifted kids to feel an inner desire to work to their maximum performance. Sometimes we use techniques to keep that spark alive without jeopardizing the depth of unerstanding that persists by getting to a substantive end result. Ohio teachers of the gifted should be following the same Ohio Standards that every teacher uses, with a push for higher expectations which are commensurate with the level of ability. That means acceleration of content. There should be rewards for excellence and this could well be one of the areas we could address. I would love to see the spotlight on various districts to “show” their knowledge to other districts who have a similar interest. We highlight sports events to the max. Why not highlight brilliance in a similar way. But regardless, that spotlight exists in every classroom where teachers can recognize talent and assist in demonstrating it according to the student’s motivational preference. I’m giving a keynote in Mississippi at their state gifted conference in Sept. Read the book Motivation Breakthrough by Richard Lavoi. If teachers take the Ohio Standards, break them down by indicators,accelerate, and let their district’s curriculum maps assist, we would definitely put meat to our programs and that, my friends, is what the politicians want. No more “fluff,”…..just motivational strategies to get to the highest content level.

By: Chip

Chip — Thu, 24 Jul 2008 21:21:14 +0000

Unfortunately, one of the messages kids get when schools work too hard to “make learning fun”, is “well, of course, we all know that learning is not *really* fun”. What a great way to set kids up to be “life long learners”…

By: Independent George

Independent George — Thu, 24 Jul 2008 21:05:46 +0000

In high school, labs generally consisted repeating the procedures outlined in the lab manual by rote with little-to-no understanding of exactly what the experiment was trying to test, getting questionable results, then reverse engineering what the results ’should’ be, and finally fudging the data on the lab report so that our reported data was within 15% of the ‘correct’ values.

I suppose the reverse-engineering phase is pretty useful for learning the material, but everybody inevitibly the entire copied that from the smart kids who actually understood the lesson, thereby limiting what little benefit there was to the few kids in the class who really didn’t need it.

Labs up through the 200-level in college were much, much better. We faithfully reported our shoddy results before reverse-engineereing what they were supposed to be, and then explained in detail why we couldn’t get those results in the lab report.

I changed majors before I got to the 300-level classes, so I can’t relate what those were like.

By: rory

rory — Thu, 24 Jul 2008 19:45:45 +0000

To be fair Jay P. Greene posted on my blog and this one that he was talking about the staffing model, so while we have valid complaints against the idea to much camp activities in school, Jay isn’t a perpetrator.

I will add that the staffing of summer camps appears to be arbitrary. The key difference is that summer camp counselers aren’t held accountable, and summer camps rarely have expected outcomes. If you learn it great, if not, at least you had fun trying.

By: pm

pm — Thu, 24 Jul 2008 18:12:57 +0000

Yeah, Mary Poppins had some good advice. A little bit of sugar helps the medicine go down!

By: ucladavid

ucladavid — Thu, 24 Jul 2008 18:03:26 +0000

When I was in school and in college, I enjoyed the classes where the teacher was interesting and enthusiastic about the topic. A good teacher through their lesson and enthusiasm can make any subject interesting. A bad teacher can make any subject boring. Students can see through an unmotivated teacher very quickly.

The other thing to keep in mind is that what is intersting for me may not be interesting for you and vice versa. When you got 30-40 kids in a class especially in middle/high school, few activities will make all of the students interested. Likewise, not all teachers can make all of the students all of the time. Even the activities where most of the class enjoys like playing games and doing philosophical chairs will not please everyone.

By: SuperSub

SuperSub — Thu, 24 Jul 2008 16:19:43 +0000

Linda-
I have to disagree on the effectiveness of lectures in novel topics…
I see (and use) lectures as a way to convey basic knowledge to prepare my students for lab activities. That way, when they perform an experiment, they are better able to predict the results and understand their observations.
Without prior knowledge, the students have little chance of understanding what the lab meant.

By: Deirdre Mundy

Deirdre Mundy — Thu, 24 Jul 2008 16:17:18 +0000

I always found that the most educational part of a high school lab was NOT the lab itself. It was the writing of the dreaded lab-report after the fact.

Actually, this might be a big help for schools that didn’t have the resources to have 2 or 3 labs a week (like my AP chem class did)

Students could read an account of someone doing the lab, and then WRITE THE LAB REPORT for the lab……

Though there are some lab experiences you can’t get in a book…. like watching a concoction explode and hit the ceiling from overheating— or watching an outlet start shooting sparks…. or jumping back and screaming when you spill a highly corrosive substance on yourself— only to learn that if you had paid attention to the LECTURE you’d know that the strong acide and strong base had miraculously changed into Salt Water and heat!

By: Brian Rude

Brian Rude — Thu, 24 Jul 2008 16:07:41 +0000

Between Linda's and lu-lu's differing perspectives on science labs I'm definitely with lu-lu. Indeed I would go so far as to say that most conventional wisdom about labs is either shallow, or misleading, or misapplied, or just plain wrong. I have expanded my thoughts here .