Raegan Shaw, November Blog Post, Ch. 4: Teach With a Sense of Urgency

I found it interesting, immediately as I began reading this chapter, that the meaning behind "teaching with a sense of urgency" was not what I have come to know as urgency at all.  The author simply wants us to understand that urgency does not always mean quickly, but it means efficiently and with a purpose.  What I also learned from this chapter was that there is a gradual way of releasing responsibility on our students; we can't just send them off on their own to do a task right away without teaching them first.  The author provided the order of operations in order for student success: demonstration to shared demonstration to guided practice to independent practice.  Obviously, as teachers, our main goal is student independence; we just need to more carefully scaffold them in the right direction to ensure that they will all meet their goals.

When I read the section on "Understand and Apply the Learning Model," I realized that all too often, I ask a question to students and expect them to come up with the right response within a few seconds.  If they do not, I usually will give them the answer and move on, simply because of the lack of time to wait on them to think because I am stressed to complete lesson plans.  I read in this chapter that children need to problem solve on their own and that is what I am gradually working more toward.  I find it sad that a lot of students have this "learned helplessness" where they depend on their teacher to be the soul provider of information and to solve all of their problems but yet I realize that a lot of times, the way I am teaching is guiding the children to be more dependent on me anyways.  I need to gear my instruction toward students in such a way that makes them want to start solving problems on their own and only asking for help once they have tried their very hardest on it before they come to me.

After reading this chapter, I am realizing how important it is to teach skills and strategies up front.  I think that the more I teach students how to do something, the more I model and let them practice on their own before releasing them, the more good I will do as a teacher.  For example, I recently let my students make newspaper articles on Ellis Island and I did not teach them the correct way that a newspaper article should look.  I just assumed that they knew how they should be written, and low and behold, lots of them were confused at first of what types of things to write and the format to write it in.  I realize that as a first year teacher, I all too often assume that my students know a lot of things that they do not yet know.  I need to assume that they know nothing and start from scratch.  My goal for the very near future is to start from the ground up and build my students to positions where they can learn on their own and grow at a proper pace.