Educational Philosopies - Better late than never!

So, of course I had just a big beautiful blog written and my lap top fritzed out and I lost the whole thing! Argh! After a week of my puking toddler, big stress at work and a group presentation – that was the icing on the cake! [insert sarcasm] I miss the old days – back in third grade Mrs. Vita’s black and white marble notebooks were a lot easier! But, the design portion of these is much more fun J

Here we go again…

For the week of 2/11/10

This week we learned about educational philosophies through a jig saw learning activity (both new for me). The jig saw worked by each of us learning a portion of the necessary information, and then bringing them together in class to learn about the topic in its entirety. It was a really nice way to mix things up, bring a group of students close together, and make the topic less overwhelming for each student. The only downside is that if one of the students isn’t present for the class the information they were supposed to provide isn’t available. However, my group did a really great job at coming together and learning about the topic together. Even though we only had five minutes or so to learn about one of the theories, it still sticks clearly in my mind because we did a really nice job at deciphering it.
I love doing activities like this in class because it really gets the wheels in my mind turning about what I’ll do in my own classroom one day… one day far, far, far away from now J Immediately I thought about some of the curriculum plans I had been tossing around, and thought that having students to jig saw learning with something like the different branches of government. I could break the classroom into a few groups and assign them each a branch. If I provided them group time for a little bit every day for a week, they should be able to come up with something really great. They would be so proud of their own little mini lessons to present to the class – it would be great for every child’s self esteem. Also, promoting team work among 5th grades is a great accomplishment in itself!
As for the philosophies we learned about, this was also new to me. Once I learned about them I realized that I had some knowledge about them. I knew that there were different approaches to teaching, but didn’t understand that those were based on different educational philosophies. After learning about the five philosophies I would have to say that I like bits and pieces of all of them, but really agree with a mix of Essentialism and Progressivism. I like that Essentialism focuses on the five main subjects, teaches students to become valuable members of society and that students are expected to read, write, and communicate clearly and logically. I like that Progressivism allows for more creativity – it’s student involved, hands on, has lots of problem solving, and requires self assessment and reflection. I have always imagined my classroom as being a place where a lot of learning gets done, but in a very memorable and exciting way. I love hands on learning and having the kids do projects where they can learn about a topic, present it to the class and be proud of the work they’ve done. When searching for the topic for my curriculum plan I was constantly thinking… “Okay, when I do this lesson they can make this… I can ask them to incorporate this or that, and then that would lead to self reflection when they explain to the class how they came up with their finished project.” Like I stated above, I also clearly remember writing in my weekly journal in Mrs. Vita’s 3rd grade class! We all LOVED the activity. We were assigned a journal topic for the week (something to do with class or your personal life) and if we answered in our journal we were allowed to ask the teacher a question in it too. It was a great little bribe from the teacher – because we all wanted to know everything there was to know about Mrs. Vita! And, most importantly, now that I look back, it was a great way to reflect of on life and what we were learning. This is definitely something I will incorporate into my own classroom!
I have a great group, and they really brought a lot of information to the table – and for that I’m really appreciative! This week’s lesson was a lot of fun, and very informative.