WEINSTEIN CHAPTER 9,10,11

Ch. 9 - IDEAS FOR ENHANCING STUDENTS' MOTIVATION

In this chapter, it talks about ways in which teachers can enhance students' motivation to participate in the classroom. Strategies such as giving the students choice, giving positive praise, and relating the content to the student's lives could be helpful to have the students more engaged in what is going on in the classroom. I think these are all important things that teachers should practice daily in their classroom to keep their students engaged and interested in what they should be learning. In my classroom, we often relate the lesson to the students’ lives so that they can have some ties to what they are already familiar with to the new objective we are teaching them. An example of this was a lesson we did on doubles like 2+2 or 6+6. We asked the students to think of some doubles that were in their real life. I got answers from the students like wheels on a tire, fruits that could be doubles like cherries, and how they have two different types of teachers (there classroom teachers and their interning teachers, 2+2). A way that we give the students choice in the classroom is by having them engaged in the lesson through considering their examples that relate to the lesson. Also, in reading and writing we would ask the students to choose what activity they would like to do that they feel would better help them learn the concept we are teaching.

Ch. 10 - HOW TO MANAGE EFFECTIVE INDEPENDENT WORK

When directing students to work independently, there are certain things that teachers should instill into their classroom community so that independent work can be an effective process. Giving clear directions and expectations is something that I think is very important when asking students to work on their own. This is something I am currently trying to improve on in my internship because I realize that when my directions aren't clear, more students are confused about what they should do and do not follow the directions that i have given.

Independent work is probably the best time to monitor students work. In my classroom, I walk around to see how well my students are doing on their work. In math, my CT's and I walk around to see if our students are getting the problems on their worksheet. We assign them a Popsicle stick that is either red, purple, or green that tells them what further questions they should complete based upon how well they are grasping the concept.

Ch. 11- MANAGING SMALL GROUP WORK

Benefits:

- Students are engaged in their learning

- Students learn to cooperate in diverse groups

- Leads to increases achievement

Challenges:

- Unequal participation

- Bullying or leaving someone out

- Segregated by gender or race

In my classroom, the students are mostly engaged in group work during throughout the school day. I think this is beneficial for my students because they can use each other as a resource and learn from each other. My first graders are very open to everyone in the classroom and never really show a preference of who they do or do not want to work with unless it is a student who causes them multiple problems in the classroom. Since they are still young, I think they are open to those who are of different race then they are but I do see that the Latino students usually play more amongst themselves.

​ A downfall to any students working in a group would be the unequal participation in the task at hand. I believe that my students want to participate but often undermine their own intelligence and rely on other "smarter" students to do the thinking for them. I think the best way to avoid this is to give each student in the group a specific talks. In my classroom, we would give each student a certain task and have them switch. For example, in science we would have two of the students in the group conduct the experiment and the other two students would record the data. Then the students would switch so that they could all conduct the experiment.

Reference: Weinstein, C. S., Romano, M. E., & Mignano, A. J. (2011). Elementary classroom management:Lessons from research and practice, (5th Ed.). New York: McGraw-Hill.

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