Creating and Teaching
The sixth graders are still studying writer’s craft in Writer’s Workshop, and it’s been quite an interesting journey! After an intense study of Cynthia Rylant and Mem Fox, we decided to do an experiment that would allow some of our students greater academic leadership. I often joke that a few students in my class could TEACH many of my mini-lessons. We decided to climb the Bloom’s pyramid and give it a try…
On Monday, our teachers were Christopher, Maggie, Callie, Jon Farrell, and Emma K. They lead groups of seven students through Libba Moore Gray’s “My Mamma had a Dancing Heart.” I thought their reactions to assuming the role of a teacher were interesting, poignant, and even a little humorous!
“I thought today was a great experience for both the participants of each group and the leaders. I learned what it was like to be in a teacher’s shoes and how to fulfill my opportunity of leading something that I am very passionate about. Today, I realized that people learn differently, have different motives, different personalities, and different ways of absorbing the information they are given. For example, some people are able to get the most out of a lesson and use it the rest of their life. Others don’t see the value of simple day-to-day lessons. I learned that people have different interests, and it takes a truly good leader to be able to connect to people and make decisions that will benefit the entire community—or group.”
“Just by participating in this one small event, I learned more about reaching and connecting to fellow peers. I found that leaders cannot truly teach a lesson well unless they not only appeal to the audience as intriguing, but they also have to reach down into individuals and make sure that they are absorbing the knowledge benevolently. I definitely believe this is something that should be done again–so students can learn what it is like to lead, and so group members can learn how to take full advantage of their position.”
“I learned that it is not that hard to tell whether or not someone is listening. It is really easy to tell by the way their body is positioned. For instance, I saw that when a person is looking around the room or lying their head on the table (even if they are looking at the speaker) they are not completely listening. I really enjoyed hearing new people speak about the things they found in the writing. I really enjoyed this entire process…I wish we could do this again, but I think that it might be an interesting experiment to make the people who are very quiet be assigned to the leadership role.”
“I thought it was helpful for the students to lead because it gets everyone involved in the conversation. We got more covered in small groups. Our group worked well on working together to contributelots of ideas. We each had our own thing that we did best. I would definitely do this again!”
“What I learned from this unique activity was that many people have many different ideas, and it is sometimes difficult to choose one idea over another. I liked having the ability to contribute ideas more often, but I feel like sometimes too many people talk at once, or not everybody pays attention.”
A couple of group members reflected on their experience in writer’s workshop on Monday…
“Interacting with people from other classes today was a chance that I really enjoyed. I realized that you don’t have to talk all the time to be a good group leader…my group leader didn’t talk the most by far, but he kept our group on track and on top of our game. I never knew how different it was to work cooperatively with people who voiced and contributed their opinions in very different ways and today gave me a chance to really notice those things. I appreciated the fact that you let us have independence and freedom to lead the discussion into the places that we wanted to lead it to. Our conversation went off into directions that my other ones hadn’t in class.”
“I would definitely like to do this again because I like working with other people in our grade. I think it also helped to have a leader because they kept things under control. I think that my group did a really good job with coming up with things for the chart and we didn’t really step on each other’s toes.”