Class Activity

I'm not really sure what is expected of us this week in terms of blogging, which is why I waited til now to see what everyone else did.  But I get the impression everyone may have the same idea - so I'm just going to throw something out there and see if its right. 

I honestly can't remember the wording of the first problem I was talking about (this is the one I was the 'expert' on, ironically enough). 

The general theme was to do with students feeling safe to talk about their opinions, thoughts, feelings etc.  Matthew and I were talking about creating a safe environment for students to feel comfortable expressing their opinions, regardless of how contraversial they may be, yet being careful to make students fully aware that their words could be damaging to others if they are not put forward in a sensitive way.  We talked about how this may be acheived through the teacher offering his/her own opinions on topics that are being discussed and putting the students into pairs/small groups rather than having discussions in large groups. 

Secondly, I moved to Joseph who became the 'expert' on  trying to please the teacher.  Joseph pointed out that this was a positive thing as long as students realised that pleasing the teacher would require them to give an oppositinal reading.  We talked about how there is often silence in a classroom when the students aren't sure what answer it is the teacher wants to hear (often students may wait for a clue to what the teahcer thinks before giving their own views on the matter).  We discussed that this could be overcome, again by working in small groups and offering their agreed opinions to another group first.  Joseph also talked about how in his class he makes at least two statements every class that he strongly disagrees with (his students know that he will do this) so that students will never be sure if they are really agreeing or disagreeing with their teacher or not.