Week+7+-+Jessica+Walsh

Week 7 - Getting to know your students - 12/5/09 This week we had a guest lecturer, Tanya Fitzgerald, who spoke to us about getting to know our students. Tanya emphasised that as a teacher we have a responsibility to get to know our students as well as ourselves: how we teach, what we teach and why we teach.

The lecture was opened with a case study where a teacher was given a list of 30 names (of his new students) at the start of the year. Each student on the list had a number next to their name. Some of the numbers were 92, 120, 140, 94 and 100. The teacher made an assumption that these numbers were the students’ IQ scores. Throughout the year, the teacher taught the children according to what he thought were their IQ scores and at the end of the year did some more testing. When the teacher presented this to the principal at the end of the year he found out that these numbers next to the students’ names were not actually IQ scores, in fact they were locker numbers. This teacher had made an assumption and subsequently could have done some damage to these students’ learning in the process. The point of showing us this case study was to emphasise that teachers should never make assumptions about a student, rather we should actually get to know them and find out who they are for ourselves. It is important for teachers to get to know their students for many reasons. Firstly, in order to know how to bring out the diverse and special talents that students have, teachers need to know what these talents are. They need to know what each student’s strengths and weaknesses are and the best strategies to use. Also, some children need to learn in a particular style, and if they don’t it can be psychologically damaging. Finally, Tanya mentioned a study by Russel Bishop that found that students who had teachers who knew their name and knew how to pronounce it correctly, reported that school matters more to them now than if their teacher didn’t know their name. Some strategies and activities to help get to know students include:

·  Class slideshow – you could get the students to create this ·  Classroom web ·  Observing interactions – yard duty can be a good place to observe students in their friendship groups ·  Asking respectful questions – without being intrusive ·  Not making assumptions ·  Not grouping students inappropriately (i.e. according to gender, ethnicity etc)

Knowing your students well can assist you in: ·  Know their goals, interests and strengths to build upon ·  Being able to be more inclusive when interacting with students <span style="font-family: Symbol; mso-list: Ignore; msolist: Ignore; msofareastfontfamily: Symbol; msobidifontfamily: Symbol;">· <span style="font: 7pt 'Times New Roman'; msolist: Ignore; msofareastfontfamily: Symbol; msobidifontfamily: Symbol;"> Not making assumptions about them and the knowledge that they bring to a task

We do need to be mindful though of students’ individual backgrounds when teaching and encourage openness about backgrounds, beliefs and families in all students as well as ourselves. A way to do this could be by using the curriculum and classroom activities to emphasise and celebrate individual differences.

Jessica Walsh