w...i...k...i

Well...on to wikis this week. I am not sure I have much to say about them. Until now, I haven't had much/any experience with them. I like the concept of a wiki and think that it can DEFINITELY be useful in the classroom, but I haven't had time to play yet. In order for me to incorporate something new in the classroom, I need sufficient time to play with it. Unfortunately, time is at a minimum at the moment, with all of the crazy work this semester. I am enjoying creating a wiki in class, but still need more time to play/prepare for classroom use.

high speed learners

So, I am not one for just blogging about things that happened during the day, but this one is kind of fitting. I was having a chat with another teacher today about a student's performance on a math test. I don't know exactly what the problem was, but somehow she had 8 + 4 = 32. Now for a sixth grader, that is just an obvious, rushing mistake. Then I was also reading some of my students' writing and noticed how poor their structure is. They had great ideas, but structure/flow was awful. And we got into a discussion about how students need to learn how to slow down and take their time. But as we talked through it, we realized that maybe this wasn't the case. Students live in an incredibly fast-paced world. Everything is instantaneous, and as soon as they are done one thing, it's on to the next. It seems that teaching students to slow down is counterproductive and possibly even futile. We decided that it's the education that needs to catch up to the fast pace of the students. I know we have talked about this in class, but it really hit home today.

Yikes...that's a lot of writing. Hopefully you were able to listen to one of my songs as you took the time to read.