I thoroughly enjoyed Marcia Tate. She kept my attention the whole time. I appreciated her humor. I have already heard of many of her strategies and perform them currently. Some strategies I use already are: I use a bell to get my class back to order and I repeat myself several times when I am telling them something extremely important. Ms. Tate is right, one of the ways we remember is through repetition of information. My students will laugh at me when I repeat myself over and over again. I explain to them the reason behind my repetition and they understand and seem to agree with me, because they do not forget when I do that. Another thing that I do is role play. They seem to retain the information that I am trying to get across when I do that. Especially when I provide them with some kind of visual that goes along with the text and lecture. I always make them draw a picture of the concept. I also use graphic organizers. My favorite is comparing and contrasting using a Venn Diagram. I also agree with her about keeping the children moving! That is what I try to do a lot. I use a lot of hands on activities for learning. I have also used the jigsaw method and let them teach a concept from the chapter to the class. They love to do that! It gives them a wonderful feeling of accomplishment and they feel they are part of the teaching process because they have gained enough knowledge over the concept in order to teach it.
One thing I want to try that Ms. Tate recommended is the music in the classroom. I use acronyms to help the students remember things like the colors in the rainbow or the order of the planets from the Sun. However, I would like to come up with songs to help them remember. I also would like to try to let them listen to some classical music as they are working. I feel as though it will help them stay focused on their work and that it will provide a calming effect for them in the classroom. I plan on reading her book that she wrote and gave us a copy of in order to try and implement some more of her strategies in my classroom.
Thanks! Cherie Jones
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Derick Pugh - Marcia Tate Post:
ReplyDeleteI enjoyed Marcia Tate's seminar. She had a way to keep me engaged by constantly changing what we were doing. She found ways to not only keep my attention, but inspire me to motivate my students in ways that I had not thought of before.
I think it was the perfect time for someone like Marcia to come in and speak. I personally was having a frustrating semester, so like I said, it could not have come at a better time. When we as "veteran teachers" have frustrating semesters, it is difficult (for me at least) to stay upbeat, movtivated, etc. about teaching (esp. to my mentee).
Marcia's workbook has really helped me this year, as I have used several of the strategies listed.
One that my students really liked was the music. I encouraged them to find new ways to learn our School Wide Vocabulary. Several of my students created rap songs (clean lyrics...don't worry) using all of the School Wide Vocabulary that we have covered thus far at HHS.
Again, I would like to reiterate that I truly enjoyed listening and adapting Marcia's strategies to my classroom.
Thanks,
Derick PUgh