Due to a mistake in this group, there is not a super summarizer assigned to this week. I have reposted the super summary from another group so that each of you are able to comment and complete your assignments. Thank you Jolene, for letting me know about this issue. Thank you to the whole group for your patience as we work out these items.
Debbie O'Doan, Lit Circle Facilitator
SUPER SUMMARY Pages 1-25
By Patricia Fisher (from group 14)
The author suggests that people do not enjoy thinking unless they feel they can solve the problem presented. If they feel the problem is too hard for them to solve, they become bored and will not work on it. Consequently students stop listening to teachers and disengage when they don’t understand the concept the teacher is encouraging them to think about. So a teacher’s job is to make thinking enjoyable.
According to Willingham (2009),“People are naturally curious, but we are not naturally good thinkers; unless the cognitive conditions are right, we will avoid thinking.” (p. 3). Willingham asserts that by combining adequate knowledge of a subject with a student’s innate curiosity, that student will find solving a problem in class to be an enjoyable experience and achieve the success necessary to engage in the learning process. As teachers, we need to make sure our students have the background information necessary to make problem solving enjoyable.
The author suggests that teachers engage the students’ interest in a subject by asking a question at the start of a lesson. If the students have adequate knowledge of a subject they will want to think about the question and try to answer it. This essential question should be something the students have an interest in since thinking is rearranging information already present in long-term memory and combining it with information from the environment in such a way that a problem can be solved.
This presents some challenges in the classroom. A problem cannot be too hard or too easy; it has to be just right. As teachers try new lesson plans they must keep a journal and note what works and what doesn’t to challenge students and achieve optimum engagement in learning. Since not all students are in the same place lessons must be tailored to each student’s ability. In order for a student to critically analyze information they need to have the facts necessary to accomplish the task.
"People are naturally curious, but we are not naturally good thinkers; unless the cognitive conditions are right, we will avoid thinking." (Willingham, p. 3)
ReplyDeleteAs I was reading through the first section of "Why Don't Students Like School", I found Willingham's take on education to be intriguing and spot-on at the same time.
It is true that children enter our classrooms as eager, curious students. This is especially true in the early elementary grades. Students WANT to learn. They want to take in new information. Almost everything seems interesting and wonderful. So when does it all change? When do students become bored, complacent, and begin to avoid thinking? According to Willingham, it is when the educator fails to make the content interesting. I tend to agree! Not every subject, topic, or assignment is interesting on its own. It is our job to raise interest and provide a reason that the student should take time to think and learn what we are asking them to think and learn about.
Willingham also states that students stop thinking when the problem is too hard. We see this in our classrooms every day. Students are not cookie-cutter images of each other. Not every student is at the same level at the same time. This is why it so important to differentiate instruction within the classroom. This is why we need to allow students to problem solve in a way that works for them.
As adults, we know all of these things to be true. We stop listening, paying attention, and trying the minute the speaker bores us, loses us in their rambling, or doesn't give us time to take in the information and think. We know this is true for us, yet we often do not use strategies in our classroom that will help our students become better thinkers. It is time that we change the way that we teach. It is time to try new strategies to help students be successful thinkers...and to be thinkers at all.
I found this book to be very interesting in the first chapter. The author captured my attention immediately.
ReplyDeleteOn page 12 the author is talking about the content of a problem, he states, "The content of a problem whether it's about sex or human motivation - may be sufficient to prompt your interest, but it won't maintain it."(Willingham, p.12) This is so true. We can be very interested in a problem or topic but if the speaker/teacher does not present the topic in an interesting way, then what is to hold our attention? I think the way we present a topic is very crutial and we can maintain our students interest through constructivist lessons while watching carefully for the tipping point of understanding. We don't want it to be too simple, but yet not too hard either. "Working on problems that are the right level of difficulty is rewarding, but working on problems that are too easy or too difficult is unpleasant." (Willingham, p.13)
The other area of interest in chapter one was when the author was talking about working memory and long term memory. "...successful thinking relies on four factors:information from the environment, facts in long-term memory, procedures in long term memory, and the amount of space in the working memory." (Willingham, p.18) Sometimes I forget or assume that students have information in their long term memory, when they do not, especially when you are dealing with young students. They do not have all the experiences that you may assume they have. Presenting a problem that they cannot draw anything from their long term memory will force them to have to think alot harder (using their working memory too much) and become bored with the problem because it is too hard. We need to respect the student's working memory and provide some knowledge for them in order for them to sucessfully solve a problem. One question that came to my mind was, is everyones working memory the same size? Can some people "hold" more information in their working memory than others?
Maybe that question will be answered later in the book.
I liked the comment about " Students are not cookie-cutter images of each other". Kids enter my Kindergarten classroom at varying levels. Some know all of the letters of the alphabet, sounds, colors etc. Some do not color, know how to hold a pencil, or even write their name. It is my responsibility to take the students where they are and scaffold them to a new level of learning. This takes creativity but is very worth it. This is true with all classrooms at all levels.
ReplyDeleteWe as teachers find ourselves in the same predicament as our students. We encounter different experiences where our long term memory or background knowledge is minimal. Sometimes we find ourselves shutting down in certain situations that seem a bit overwhelming. This should make us be understanding and humble when things become too hard for our students.
I couldn't agree more with Michelle, Melanie and Amy's comments about their students.
ReplyDeleteHowever, I really appreciated chapter 1 because it was refreshing to read what most teachers talk about every day and struggle with how to get their students to be more interested in concepts and to do more investigating on their own. As the author points out in this chapter that thinking is slow, unreliable, and usually biased to their memory to guide the students rather than to think on their own even though humans are naturally curious but the conditions have to right for the curiosity to thrive. (p. 8-9)
As a special education teacher, the thought processes of my students are the challenge I face with every single student I work with one on one. That working on problems that are of the right level of difficulty is rewarding, but working on problems that are too easy or too difficult is unpleasant. (p. 13) This quote is the challenge of working with students at the elementary level; making the lessons interesting enough all student to engage at their individual level of learning and not the level of their classmates. Once a teacher has this figured out for one student it changes for another.
The section about implications for the classroom (pages 18-22) is a list of characteristics of a good teacher.
I have found that elementary teachers are truly GREAT problem solvers and use their critical/high level of thinking all the time to keep their students on track and learning at a rate the STATE thinks it should be.
I enjoyed this chapter and look forward to what the next chapter has to bring.
I found this interesting. A problem cannot be too hard or too easy; it has to be just right. As teachers try new lesson plans they must keep a journal and note what works and what doesn’t to challenge students and achieve optimum engagement in learning. Since not all students are in the same place lessons must be tailored to each student’s ability. In order for a student to critically analyze information they need to have the facts necessary to accomplish the task.
ReplyDeleteTeachers are constantly adjusting lessons to meet the needs of their students. Each year I look at things I have tried previous years and find things I will try and what I might not because the students are not ready for such a project. We differentiate our instruction each day in reading groups, math groups and in other subjects too. Students need the sucess in completing a task to keep them motivated to try new things. I found my students solving math problems liked the challenge if they solved the first easier problem and then build on their knowledge.
I also found the task of learning how to drive that is so mentally demanding and then requires little or no thought interesting. I thought of this coming home today because I was feeling under the weather this week and it really does require little thinking.