Alternatives to questioning during discussion sessions

[keypeg]

I was thinking about this conversation.  I think that what I am reading comes from your own experiences in teaching and the conclusions that you reached from them.  If I put myself in those shoes as much as I am able to, I tend to agree with them.  I'll describe what I see and you can tell me if I'm off base.

You start with a teacher for whom teaching starts from a book - I'm guessing a textbook.  The teacher , for whom teaching comes from a textbook, thinks some parts are nonsense, dismisses some of it, and ends up having his students miss something important.  Did I get it?  In addition to this you may have a set of principles that are set out, or those principles are in the book, and the teacher decides that only some principles which he himself values are important.  So he misses the boat.  You gave an example where early in teaching you believed in intervalic reading and later you discovered note recognition fell by the wayside.

I can remember having that attitude before teacher training, and even going into teacher training with a huge attitude of scepticism, ready to see it as mostly nonsense.  That attitude probably came from my experience as a student in high school and university.  It was decades ago and I had forgotten it.  I agree with you that it is not a good stance.

I think that when it comes that what I was writing about, we are talking past each other, because I'm referring to experiences that I don't think you have had.   So you would naturally see what you have known in it.

I'm coming from the teacher training that I have had and expanded on since then.  It is so much a part of me now that I don't think about its roots anymore.  Here's trying:
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My training simply does not start with any book.  That is not its starting point which makes it different from the above.  In my training, you start with what you are setting out to teach.  There's a formal category when you are learning that you have to fill out.  An inspector actually asks to see this paperwork.  The first part is called "Aims".  There's a broad aim, and the school board (back then at least) also set this out.  Example from before: awareness that matter has three states of solid, liquid and gas.

The next part is "Objectives"  Here it's broken down into smaller things; by the school board and/or the teacher.  In the example: that matter changes its state, that with the exception of water it expands when heated and contracts when cold, that it remains what it is even though it has a different appearance.  (Water is an exception because of what happens when it turns into ice.)

You have now fleshed out what you will be teaching, what this thing consists of, and this brings you into a series of lessons on those separate topics.

Next comes "Materials" (can't remember if this is the right name).  Here you look at what kinds of teaching tools you have available.  A textbook and a workbook may be one of your materials.  In the physics unit I had: popcorn, an air popper, the environment with sagging telephone wires on hot days, a water tank on an activity table, paper tissues, notebooks which were half lined and half blank for pictures.

"Activities"  What kinds of activities will your students do so that they will learn.  What will they do so that you can check this learning?

Readiness:  Not in the formal outline but we were to keep this in mind - where kids were at age-wise.  For example, at a certain age they don't have "conservation" - they cannot tell that if you pour a cup of water four times into a container, you have four cups of water.  You have to fill four separate cups with water and pour it in.  At least that's what child psychology says.  Your planned activities will be guided by this kind of thing.

Lesson plans:  You now flesh out a series of lesson plans from the above.  Those plans in return have a presentation where you teach.  This teaching can include activities by the students during the teaching.  Then there are activities where they might carry out a prescribed experiment, maybe in small groups, might write down what they find, might discuss it in class afterward.  They may also be asked to read something in a textbook, and do exercises in that textbook.  The teacher decides what to assign in that textbook and is expected to have thoroughly studied it.  There may be homework to check what the kids know or to reinforce that knowledge.  There may also be a test at the end of the teaching unit.

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So this is how I was taught to teach.  You will notice that it does not start with any textbook.  There are guidelines from an authority - the school board with its curriculum guidelines.  But those guidelines expects the teacher to create the lessons along those steps (so there isn't total freedom) and textbooks are a resource.  There was no science textbook in grade 2.  However, we had math textbooks, a speller, and readers.  HOW you teach spelling, and how you get the ability of reading while using these books again involves a lot of planning and thought.

What I am saying is that this scenario of a teacher starting with a textbook, and deciding whether to comply or rebel against its instructions, is not a scenario that I had.  It was a different world.  If you do have that scenario, then I agree with the principles.

[keyboardclass]

So this is how I was taught to teach.  You will notice that it does not start with any textbook.  There are guidelines from an authority - the school board with its curriculum guidelines.  But those guidelines expects the teacher to create the lessons along those steps (so there isn't total freedom) and textbooks are a resource.  

That's exactly how it was when I started as a classroom music teacher - there were no text books in existence (though I know one teacher who spent a fortune on a set from the US) because there was no National Curriculum.  Every Local Education Authority had a music inspector who helped/advised but the individual music departments came up with their own schemes of work.  A National Curriculum was introduced shortly after I started teaching - textbooks got written - hideous things.