Sunday, September 8, 2013

Dora #1

Dora Learns to Write

                The questions that have been brought up are; “What does the teacher do to help Dora learn how to correctly punctuate the end of sentence”, “What doesn't the teacher do”, and “Why does it take so long for Dora to apply the concept of sentence-end-marking”? So how do we really answer these questions without being there in the action ourselves? We work with what we know.

What we do know is that the teacher does many things for all of her students to help them learn the punctuation problem. One way that the teacher helps Dora and her classmates learn new things is through the small group work that she provides before the lesson where the kids get to experiment with their ideas and tell each other what they think is correct and that allows the children to create new material and use their creativity while peers are cheering them on. This way of helping is very positive to all the kids in the group and allows them to grow in the fashion of learning how to create connections to concepts.  The teacher also helps Dora’s class learn by providing the definition of the punctuation at the end of the group meeting time. She makes sure that they have the opportunity to learn in that fashion of a small group with minor supervision, but also provides the actual concept and provides the reason why that is so. Then later in the passage we read the Teacher does something even more for Dora’s writing. She tells Dora to read out loud how the passage she wrote should sound, similar to a story book. By doing so the teacher is creating connections for Dora that she didn't see before. Instead of regurgitating what the rule is Dora now understands that it sounds wrong and the whole point of the punctuation is so that others can understand your thoughts in a fluid sweep of the page, rather than a cut up story with periods between random words.

According to the passage we read about Dora learning to write, the teacher does many things to help. But she also doesn't do some things very well. She doesn't keep the small groups in check and keep them corrected all the time. What she doesn't do is provide negative feedback to the children that are doing it wrong, but she does help them in a different way. The teacher doesn't do any calling out on those that are wrong and she doesn't discriminate against those that understand and those that don’t. This teacher also doesn't reach all the kids the same with the different learning styles. Her method isn't great for some learners that only need definitions and memorize things that way but rather for those that are thinkers and that do their own thing. This teacher promotes creativity instead of giving the kids the definition straight out of the book and over loading their brains with information.

All in all I believe the teacher did a great job teaching her class and provided a diverse learning environment, but she didn't really get all the concepts hard in some of the students. Dora took a while to learn and apply the concepts of punctuation of the period or sentence-end-marking. I believe it took her so long because she wasn't ready for the different learning styles that the teacher provided and because the different learning style was more group oriented so she got confused because her peers would say “Yeah that sounds right”, when it was actually wrong.  But WHOSE fault is that other than the teachers you would ask? I think that the parents and previous teachers are to blame as well. Without the guidance of THEIRS the student will more likely be left behind.


So in conclusion the teacher did a great job but didn't reach out to those kids with different learning styles as well, but created a very creative learning classroom where the kids could experiment with the concepts and definitions before they were told what they really meant. That being said I believe how she taught the class was well suited for the children there and she didn't do anything wrong. She taught them the basics while also teaching them how to open their minds and learn on their own which is something many high school students don’t understand how to do. Now if you were in this situation you would believe the failure of the student was YOURS alone to bear but I would like to say that teaching is a team effort and this teacher did everything she could with what her teammate the kindergarten teacher had to bring to the plate.

[I realized that i don't really use apostrophes other than for contractions so i actually read through the paper and didn't see any.]

2 comments:

  1. I liked you're response. Not only did you say that you liked what the teacher did, but you also backed it up with examples of what you liked about the teaching style.

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  2. uh-oh, Paul.
    you're response > your response.

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