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A 5th grade Social Studies lesson at Nashville Prep. (Original Post) madfloridian Jun 2014 OP
I preferred a different style of teaching... madfloridian Jun 2014 #1
Yuk. Are they required to salute, too? Cerridwen Jun 2014 #2
This wasn't a lesson. Igel Jun 2014 #5
Thank you for replying. n/t Cerridwen Jun 2014 #6
... madfloridian Jun 2014 #7
Even one session like that a month would have shut me down from learning csziggy Jun 2014 #8
I do have a comment. Are you advocating for 2-tier education? madfloridian Jun 2014 #9
This is sick. octoberlib Jun 2014 #3
From Diane Ravitch's blog...interesting posts in comments section. madfloridian Jun 2014 #4

madfloridian

(88,117 posts)
1. I preferred a different style of teaching...
Thu Jun 26, 2014, 12:25 PM
Jun 2014

but repetitive-style teaching like this is becoming more common.

I think quieter might be better.

Cerridwen

(13,251 posts)
2. Yuk. Are they required to salute, too?
Thu Jun 26, 2014, 12:41 PM
Jun 2014

Do they march in formation?

What the hell was that? Is there any actual thinking going on in an environment like that?

I would have so flunked out of a class like that.

That is just so scary on so many levels.


Igel

(35,197 posts)
5. This wasn't a lesson.
Thu Jun 26, 2014, 02:31 PM
Jun 2014

This was review, warm-up, rehearsal of what they'd learned. It was a transition.

This is what's going to be on the test. Depending on the school and principal, this may be 75% "mastery" level or 100% of what's on a criteron-based test. Does everybody get it? No. But most seemed to. (This won't work when the kids are a few years older, I'd guess, but it works for now and apparently gets the results that society and parents want, even if it's not what some self-styled experts want.) It was a chance for the kids to be bolstered, encouraged, to show to others and to themselves that they were successful at learning.

A bit loud, but quiet is considered bad these days. The problem is that often "not quiet" = "not on task." "Best practices" supposedly involve language, movement, visuals, song, rhythm. "Learning styles"--what they are depend on whose using low-level data to form unsupported high-level inferences, but they're not going anywhere soon.

It keeps the kids from being on the spot all the time so it's sort of down time but notice that students *are* put on the spot individually (and rewarded by a chant). This keeps them from completely tuning out. I'm willing to guess that the teacher didn't call on those who weren't paying attention, but those who were. I suspect next fall I'll be asked to watch this and try to implement it in my class. Sigh.

Too many on the Ravitch comments fell for WYSIATI, what you see is all there is. This was a bad video because it didn't show X and just let the commenters be judgmental and self-righteous, to look for flaws (even if imagined) and not for good traits. But a lot of different kinds of teaching had to go into this off screen. It's a good hook to refer back to, and there was more than a little info packed into their routine.

It shows a high degree of structure. And in many low SES households, a lot of research shows, the kids lack structure and need structure. And knowledge is to a large extent structure building. When you learn information, it has to come with structure that you replicate or you have to build the structure yourself ex nihilo. The latter is a lot harder than the former. High achievers learn to do this. Low achievers need to have structure provided. High achievers tended to comment, and figure everybody's like them.

It's also judged bad because it didn't show critical thinking, another "X" and the current Moloch of all educational practices. But without facts and background there is no critical thinking, CT skills are discipline-specific, fact-grounded, and high-level. This was year 1 for kids in the prep school. Fifth grade is where kids in poorer communities often start seriously falling behind, when all those expensive early-childhood intervention programs' effects become "statistically significant" but only *statistically* significant. When homelife and peer culture stops supporting education and a pattern of failure and discouragement starts to set in. Even in 9th, 10th, 11th, 12th grades the kiddos will need to continue to pack in facts. Fact learning isn't just the lowest level of thinking, it's also the foundational level for thinking. If you don't learn them in previous grades, instead of "higher order thinking" you're re-re-teaching what the kids failed to learn before. (Example: One teacher I knew was so irritated that he put together a unit on the "geocentric theory of the solar system", in which he said that Aristotle and others were wrong in thinking that the Sun was the center of the solar system and people like Galileo and Kepler put the Earth in its proper place. He skewed facts and twisted data that the kids should have known just from observation. His kids--high school seniors--dutifully took notes without a quibble. All day. Which left him even more irritated and, in addition, despondent.)

If i were in a single classroom all or most of the day with my kids, I'd have something to serve this purpose. (But not the singing. Yes, it sounds like a chant. You get 30 kids rapping in unison and let me know how it differs from a chant.) You need to transition from one activity and topic to another and let them know it's a clean break; you need to have some structured way to get them to stop doing something sitting still at their seats and get them ready to resume sitting still at their seats while doing something else. They need to release some energy. They need to be loud. They need to move. And this does it. Notice, a new teacher came into the room--and the previous segment of class ended. Then she was handing out something--whether additional practice on fairly new material or completely new material I don't know. This was review. It was transition. And it seemed fairly appropriate (even if it didn't get 100% buy-in, unlike, I'm assuming, every teacher in every class previous posters on this thread have been in).

Perhaps if it was billed as "interdisciplinary," putting together phys ed, music, theatre, and social studies it would have been acceptable. It's a question of labelling.

csziggy

(34,120 posts)
8. Even one session like that a month would have shut me down from learning
Thu Jun 26, 2014, 04:09 PM
Jun 2014

That kind of rote recital was never effective with me and stirred a deep desire to disrupt the procedure. As a quiet, introverted child, I reacted to that desire with a total shutdown in classes where the teachers used those techniques. I'd pretend to participate enough to blend in, but on my part there was no learning, no review, nothing but an increased hatred of that type of teaching.

And we didn't have anything approaching this level of rote recital. If we had, I'd have been suspended from school by seventh grade!

madfloridian

(88,117 posts)
9. I do have a comment. Are you advocating for 2-tier education?
Thu Jun 26, 2014, 04:10 PM
Jun 2014

Your words here sound that way.

It shows a high degree of structure. And in many low SES households, a lot of research shows, the kids lack structure and need structure. And knowledge is to a large extent structure building. When you learn information, it has to come with structure that you replicate or you have to build the structure yourself ex nihilo. The latter is a lot harder than the former. High achievers learn to do this. Low achievers need to have structure provided. High achievers tended to comment, and figure everybody's like them.

It's also judged bad because it didn't show critical thinking, another "X" and the current Moloch of all educational practices. But without facts and background there is no critical thinking, CT skills are discipline-specific, fact-grounded, and high-level. This was year 1 for kids in the prep school. Fifth grade is where kids in poorer communities often start seriously falling behind, when all those expensive early-childhood intervention programs' effects become "statistically significant" but only *statistically* significant.


In my many years of teaching I taught in both high income and near poverty level schools. I don't quote research on this because it is not only low SES households that can be unstructured and dysfunctional. Not by a long shot.

When that kind of mindset is put forth, it essentially says poor kids get rigid strong discipline as in the KIPP type discipline and that shown in the video. And the upper income kids get more of the kind that is seen in Sidwell and that which kids of many other politicians attend.

So I really do question that premise.
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