Weaver Ch 6

Quite frankly, I’m getting kind of tired of everything grammar related. I just want to throw it all out windows and down stairs. HOWEVER… I need to finish up this quarter. After saying that, it took me a while to actually get around to reading this chapter. All I kept thinking after reading the title was of prepositions and clauses and verb phrases.

Right off the bat, though, I was interested in the difference between transmission and transactionalism. Just going down the list and comparing the concepts of these two trends intrigued me. Then I got to the part of mini-lessons! I love it.

Taking just a few minutes to touch on something your students are struggling with is an amazing idea and I feel like more teachers should utilize it. Looking back on my days as a student in high school, my teachers didn’t use this concept all that much. They just met with students one-on-one every now and then if there was a really tough portion, but it would have saved them a lot of time and effort to teach the class as a whole.

One small component I really enjoyed randomly in the text was that the authors states that “constructivist teachers know that it is important for the options the offer to be genuine learning experiences that at least resemble the kinds of experiences from which students learn outside of school.” This small component should be remembered by teachers because there are so many times I see or hear of something modeled after something that isn’t relatable to the students. I think that everything we show the students in class should have the opportunity to be related to their lives.

Having the entire constructivist model laid out in this chapter helped me understand the theory and concepts better. Tying it in with the importance of mini-lessons and how to properly and effectively follow the constructivist methods helped even more.Weaver