Another child whose smile is so big that he can barely contain it. He covered up his smile in the first picture so I made him move his hand! I just love that his smile is so big that you can't even see his eyes. I awarded an unprecedented two Student of the Days to these students because they both tried so hard that it wouldn't have been fair to pick just one. The kids knew it too, I said I will award two today and a few students pointed at them. It's strange, at first I thought that I would always be choosing girls for the Student of the Day, but as I'm doing this I'm realizing that I almost always choose a boy. I think that this is because for the most part, the boys participate much more than the girls do, but the girls are better behaved. Of course, there are exceptions to this. 
For example, in the picture to the right are two twins who participate all time! They are super cute too, one time I gave one of them a sticker for her excellent reading and after I turned back around from walking up the aisle I saw that she was reaching across the class to give her sister the sticker because her sister didn't have any! They were trying to be so sneaky about it :) They bring me candy every class, and one time they brought me 4 pistachios and a chiclet, hahah.At any rate, I would prefer to give the award to a student who both goofed around and participated than to someone who was good but didn't participate at all!
My mom pointed out that I should be conscientious of the shy children and not neglect them. I definitely am- if I only have a few kids participating I start going around the room and calling on other kids. I've found that many of the shy kids lack a basic knowledge of English though and that's why they don't participate. They get very uncomfortable when I call on them and I've even had a few kids cry when I do that. The problem is that they are way behind where they should be and I can't fix that in a 35 minute class while keeping the attention of the students who are on track or ahead of the class. I have to admit that I do cater my classes to the higher level students. For example, yesterday I made up a game called "Guess the Question" where I would show an answer, like "No, I won't go to the zoo this weekend" and they have to think backwards to figure out what the question was (Will you go to the zoo this weekend?). It's actually a really great game that works on tense, grammar, personal pronouns and speaking. Anyhow, I played this with my second graders! I threw a few really easy ones in there like "Fine, thank you" for the lower level students but I think it's better to push the limits of what they know.
ReplyDeleteI think that in a 35 minute class this strategy is the right thing to do in terms of social welfare maximization. It also is not feasible for you to differentiate very effectively. However, I would caution applying this technique to schools in the States, because bored/overwhelmed children tend to become troublemakers rather than merely shy. Also, the ones that are behind probably need the most attention, whereas the ones that are ahead could conceivably be more autonomous learners.
ReplyDeleteThat's true about the states, although it sucks that the higher level students must sit through 5 or 6 hours of boredom. I guess that's why some schools use "tracks"...
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