Reinventing the wheel

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Home : 2002 : June : 7

Reinventing the wheel
By Kelly

In a small way I hope that Debbie is not joking. I have been teaching 3 years and find that a lot of the traditional methods work best with the students. I am a firm believer that a combination of old and new is the way
to go. I came in idealistic and promised that I would never use "the old school" techniques. I snickered with my recent grad. friends about the OLD teachers in the school and how bored I would be in their classrooms. While my students didn't do worksheets my first year the other 5th grade classes were reading from textbooks, completing projects and doing worksheets. Well let me tell

you, when it came time for state testing guess which classes did better. When it came to science fair competitions who did better? Who's students were reading at higher levels? The more traditional teacher's classes, that's who!!

College has a tendency to brainwash new teachers. You come out with all of these best practices in mind and swear off anything paper and pencil. Round robin reading does have its place in the classroom, not everyday but sometimes. Students need an opportunity to read out loud to improve pace and inflection. Worksheets do have their place in the classroom, again not everyday and not in place of authentic experiences but for reinforcement.

From my experience what you say and do now is not what you will feel when you are a teacher. A lot of textbook series now are designed to address the different learning styles and abilities. Don't disregard what has been researched (don't blindly follow either) and proven to work.

I guess what I am going for (with way too many words :-)) is you don't need to reinvent the wheel use the resources you have as a foundation and add creative ideas and activities to it!!!