Wednesday, January 27, 2016
Time Management and Organization
In the high school Mild Cognitive Impairment classroom where I am student teaching, I have observed a lot of wasted time during class periods. The assignments the students are given to work on in class do not take most of them the entire period. Some students finish early and either sleep or play with their phones. There are also students who do not understand the assignment and therefore it takes them longer and are usually unable to complete it. There are class periods that make planning and time management difficult for the teacher as well. Some of the students return from Kent Transitional Center halfway into the class, and some students leave early for other assignments in the school. The teacher sometimes has meetings during class as well, during which the students are given tasks to work on individually. Teachers have so many responsibilities, that it can be difficult for them to give the students all the attention they need for instruction.
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That is definitely a tough problem to tackle. I think that if I were in this type of classroom, as the teacher, I would probably try to design a way for each student to progress independently on assignments. I think a lot of it would just be making sure that lessons/units are well developed, and done ahead of time. I'm not sure how successful it would be in a CI classroom, but I think it would definitely be worth a try.
ReplyDeleteMegan,
DeleteI agree that the students might need more individualized assignments to progress at their own level. CI classrooms are definitely more difficult because there is such a range of learning! Thanks!
Maybe in class, suggest splitting the students into group and do mini-lessons with each of the groups. This way you can teach a group and your CT can teach the other. I think that's what I will end up doing with my CT in order to fit the schedule and instruction to everyone's needs!
ReplyDeleteJust an idea :)
Alison,
DeleteI like your idea of splitting up the class, especially because they all seem to be at such different learning levels and paces. I will definitely suggest it to my CT! Thanks!
Celeste,
ReplyDeleteI have the exact same problem in at my high school placement as well. The students finish their work extremely early and then do nothing productive for the remaining twenty minutes of class! I really like your ideas, Megan and Alison. Megan, your comment reminded me of those MTH 225 and 226 classes we took pre-COE. For homework we were given workshops to complete. We all timed ourselves for 2.5 hours and simply stopped at that point. If we did not finish we had to take thirty seconds and write the professor a note explaining why we did not finish and where we ran into problems. The workshops also included "extension" activities for the students who finished the workshop in under 2.5 hours. I liked this setup because the extensions were usually related to real life, so if I hated a workshop topic I could finish it quickly, do the extension activities, and still finish 2.5 hours of learning! It was great. The only problem I could see with this setup is that a lot of our students struggle with self-monitoring so they would either spend too much or not enough time on the workshops. What other problems do you guys see with this type of workshop setup? I like it and want to use workshops in my classroom, but I want to address all of the problems before they start.
My CT also mentioned that when his lessons go extremely faster than what he expected them to, he has the students complete a mini lesson on Moby Max. The website has lessons on all of the core subjects and students are able to work at their own paces. Maybe you could use this in your placement, Celeste.
http://www.mobymax.com/
Good idea with MobyMax! What would be interesting to see is the completion rate of those lessons. Or, what was the motivation (did it count? if the students finished early and your CT said, "do this MM module," and they said, "no," what, if any, were the consequences?).
ReplyDelete