How to Get Students to Talk in Your Class

Most elementary students like to talk, so it usually isnt a problem when you ask a question that you will have a lot of hands go up into the air. However, most activities in an elementary classroom are teacher-directed, which means the teachers do most of the talking. While this traditional way of teaching has been a staple in classrooms for decades, todays teachers are trying to steer away from these methods and do more student-directed activities. Here are a few suggestions and strategies to get your students talking more, and you talk less. Give Students Time to Think When you ask a question, dont expect an immediate answer. Give your students some time to gather their thoughts and think about their answers. Students can even write down their thoughts on a graphic organizer or they can use the think-pair-share cooperative learning method to discuss their thoughts and hear the views of their peers. Sometimes, all you need to do to get students talking more is just let it be silent for a few extra minutes so they can just think. Use Active Learning Strategies Active learning strategies like the one mentioned above is a great way to get students talking more in class. Cooperative learning groups offer students the opportunity to work together with their peers and discuss what they are learning, rather than having to take notes and listen to the teacher lecture. Try using the Jigsaw method where each student is responsible for learning part of the task, but must discuss what they learned within their group. Other techniques are round-robin, numbered heads, and team-pair-solo. Use Tactical Body Language Think about the way students see you when you are in front of them. When they are talking, do you have your arms folded or are you looking away and are distracted? Your body language will determine how comfortable the student is and how long they will talk. Make sure that you are looking at them when they speak and that your arms are not folded. Nod your head when you agree and do not interrupt them. Think about Your Questions Take some time to form the questions that you ask students. If you are always asking rhetorical, or yes or no questions then how can you expect your students to talk more? Try having students debate an issue. Formulate a question so that students will have to choose a side. Divide students into two teams and have them debate and discuss their views.   Instead of telling a student to look over their answer because it may be incorrect, try asking them how they came to get their answers. This will not only give them a chance to self-correct and figure out what they did wrong, but it will also give them the opportunity to talk with you. Create a Student-Led Forum Share your authority by having students pose questions. Ask students what they want to learn about the subject that you are teaching, then ask them to submit a few questions for classroom discussions. When you have a student-led forum students will feel freer to talk and discuss because the questions were posed from themselves, as well as their peers.

Essay on My Senior Year of High School - 636 Words

Having spent twelve years of my school life in just one small red brick building, the years tend to fade into each other. But the year I remember most clearly and significantly is my senior year of high school, where I finally began to appreciate what this institution offered to any student who stopped to look. Before, school had been a chore, many times I simply did not feel motivated toward a subject enough to do the homework well, and seeing the same familiar faces around ever since I was 5 years old grew very tiring soon enough. But I began to see things from a different angle once I became a senior. First of all, there are roughly only 800 students in my entire school, from kindergarten up to upperclassmen and women, and my†¦show more content†¦Teachers came in a variety. Some were genuinely interested in what they were teaching us, and some seemed even more bored than the students themselves. But for the most part, all the teachers cared about each student as an individual, and would always greet you in the hall or ask how you were doing. As I entered 12th grade, I began to notice a change in my classes- most of the time, there was more emphasis on participating in discussions than just completing homework exactly to the mark. For instance, my AP English class solely focused on debates over what we were reading, to the extent where everyone, both students and teacher, had a particular view to express. My schools philosophy on teaching was to turn out well-rounded individuals who did their work, and everyone was treated equally. The only exceptions were that since my school was very focused on athletics, kids who played a lot of sports seemed to be the most popular with teachers, while the abilities of drama students and musicians seemed almost entirely overlooked. Also, because of the small size of the school, once you gained a reputation it really stuck to you, so there was definitely a difference between how the slackers and the responsible ones were treated by teachers. In 12th grade, everything seemed to come together for the departing seniors, and I noticed a change come over us. For once,Show MoreRelatedMy Senior Year In High School760 Words   |  4 PagesMy Senior Year in High School was More Fun than Work As I walked across what appeared to be a mile-long stage to receive my diploma, I realized I had put in a lot of hard work leading up to that moment, but my senior year was not one of them. I enjoyed myself as much as possible during my senior year and was able to have some of the best times of my life that I will remember forever. I participated in fundraising events, prom king competition and matured leading up to my senior year which was notRead MoreMy Senior Year Of High School893 Words   |  4 Pageschanging my past for it is has led me to who I am now. However as I grow and reflect on circumstances that have occurred, I realize that there are instances in which I yearn that I would have done things differently. One perhaps being, I wish in my senior year of high school I would have worked less hours at my job and enjoyed my classes, events, and token opportunities in school. The summer before my senior year of high school began my parents had taken the decision that after twenty years of marriageRead MoreMy Senior Year Of High School1210 Words   |  5 PagesI am not sure what about my senior year of high school led to so many times of reevaluation as opposed to other years. Maybe it was because of the overshadowing of closing one door while knowing I would have to open another one very soon that led me to think through who I was and how I was taking in information. But, nonetheless, that year brought forth many opportunities for me to learn about myself. I consider myself an individual who knows a little about a lot. Being a history major that seemsRead MoreMy Senior Year In High School747 Words   |  3 PagesI have been anticipating my senior year since the day I walked into my Kindergarten classroom. I always adored the older kids that only had one year of torture left. However; now that I am a senior, I absolutely cannot wait for the amazing opportunities that will come with this year. As my highschool career comes to an end, I have set some goals to ensure that I will have the best year possible. Although I have moved to a new place, and have been forced to start everything completely over againRead MoreMy Senior Year Of High School1360 Words   |  6 Pages Towards the end of my senior year of high school, I was preparing for the next chapter of my life. I would be attending UC Davis in the summer for a four weeklong orientation program, specifically for first generation college students. This was the first time I would be leaving home by myself to a different country and it was the first time in over eight years that I would be exposed to the American culture. I did not have any roots in any American city nor did I have a so-called â€Å"home state.† HoweverRead MoreMy Senior Year Of High School965 Words   |  4 PagesMy senior year of high school and I still felt like a freshman. The typical freshman vibe of not fitting in due to the fact that I was a new kid in school and the majority of people had been there since junior kindergarten. These four years at Cann on School have been an emotional rollercoaster. Due to the fact that I couldn’t find any friends for the first two years. I thought that I would find a group that I could hang out with but, it didn’t seem like I was fitingt into any of the cliques. I hadRead MoreMy Senior Year At High School1649 Words   |  7 Pageswhere they want their lives to go. What path they want to take, where they want to be in 5 years, but there are also some people who have absolutely no idea what their doing. I, unfortunately, am one of those people. Towards the end of my senior year in high school I wasn t thinking of what I was going to do. I didn t have a job and I hadn t even applied for one college yet. And this of course was getting on my mom s nerves. â€Å"It’s time for you to grow up and get serious, I don t want you to endRead MoreMy Senior Year Of High School949 Words   |  4 Pagesan education was important. My mother was not able to afford high school in Mexico so she always advised my sisters and me to take full advantage of the free school system in America; and that is what we did. My senior year of high school was tough. For the first few months of my senior year I did not feel excited about college the way that my peers. That is until I visited Trinity Lutheran College on one of its Fall Visit Days. I instantly fell in love with the school. The professor were amazingRead MoreMy Senior Year Of High School1022 Words   |  5 PagesDuring my senior year of high school a program called Genesys Works started at my school. Genesys Works is a non-profit organization that teaches high school seniors professionalism. Genesys Works takes upcoming high school seniors through an eight week training program that trains them in Information Technology (IT) or Accounting as well as ways to become a better professional so they will be able to have an internship during their senior year of high school. When I finished my training I had earnedRead MoreMy Senior Year Of High School1105 Words   |  5 PagesAs the spring semester of my senior year of high school began, I still wasn t sure what I wanted to study when I began college in the fall. I always had been a good problem-solver, and I was fairly certain I wanted to study engineering, but I didn t know which discipline interested me the most. As my high school graduation date loomed closer, I began to get anxious about not having chosen a major. My parents, both having worked in the oil and gas industry in parts of their careers, encouraged

Working Mothers and Its Effect to Children Free Essays

Mothers’ involvement in the labor force displays significant increase in the last decade as well as reliance to non-parental child care. Considering the traditional view of motherhood and parenting, this condition raises the question regarding children’s welfare while their mothers are engaging in professional work. Such question is generally not a new one. We will write a custom essay sample on Working Mothers and Its Effect to Children or any similar topic only for you Order Now Various studies have engaged on researches about children’s welfare in relation of their parent’s behavior for many years now. However, there are still no conclusive results particularly in answering the question whether a condition where a mother is working part or full-time result in a worse condition for the welfare of the children in comparison to a condition where the mother is constantly at home. This question is also in line to questions whether enhancement in working hours has particular effects to children’s condition. In this paper, I will address the issue by reviewing the proponents and opponents of the sentiment that ‘working mothers causes negative affects toward their children’ and present my own opinions and arguments to the discussion. I. Summary of Positions The proponents of the sentiment are supported by the traditional view of mother hood and parental roles. Thus, they generally become the more popular side of the debate in social studies. In empirical perspective, proponents of the sentiment uses numerous studies which relate children’s behavior to parental behavior and discover that children with working parents at different ages performs poorer than other group of children in several cognitive and social tests and observations (Brooks Gun, 2002, Aizer, 2002). One study revealed that infants in the age of one to three years old will have a poorer cognitive performance when their mothers are working in their babies’ first year of life. Another study indicated that adolescence who spend more time unsupervised by their parents will have poorer academic performance and more likely to engage in socially poor behaviors. The opponent of the sentiment uses the flaws of the researches above. Most of the studies that generated acceptable results were studies about how children would be negatively affected by poor care or poor environment. One study even results in the increase in children’s academic performance as their parents gained better jobs which mean longer working hours. Opponents of the sentiment argued that it was not the fact that the mother is working that negatively affected children’s welfare and development, it was the fact that the children was placed on worse care than their parents while their parents were at work. In the basis of this argument, better jobs would result the ability to provide better care for the children while their parents are working, and thus would not necessarily result negative effect for the children (Conger 1994, Dearing, 2001). II. Statement of Position My personal position in this matter is based on logic and empirical studies. Although traditional sentiment and our intuition let us to believe that working mother would obviously resulted poorer care of the children, there is no actual proof of the sentiment. Statistical researches have so far failed to conclude in positive that working mothers do cause negative effects toward their children. Some have clustered results and some even produce the opposite of the sentiment. In short, I stand in negative that working mothers generate negative effect toward children. Another reason of my standpoint is the consideration that children’s welfare consist of various factors rather only few. Researches who attempt to find correlation between children’s welfare and parental behavior are mostly concern over children’s cognitive abilities and academic performance. Few actually consider the social and actual psychological and physiological effect of working mother toward the children. On the contrary to the discussed sentiment, a study revealed that there is no correlation between children’s poor dietary quality to the mother being active in professional work (‘Working Mothers, 2005). There is also no statistical correlation between the development of children’s behavior to the fact that their mothers are working or not (Anderson, 2003). Most of the cases where children having poor cognitive and physiological development and academic performance, and their mothers are working, displayed other factors behind the ‘working mother’ factors. They were these other factors, like poor environment, poor and unprofessional care given by the people in charge of the child while the mother was working, poor education and insensitive mothers, which causes the negative effect toward the children (Brooks-Gun, 2002). III.Multicultural Application The state in which the sentiment is popular is different in different cultures. In Europe and the United States, working mothers are considered more common phenomena. There are fewer concerns over the issues of child care by working mothers especially with the availability of professional caretaker services. Within these cultures, the fear over neglected children is also less due to the presence of various studies revealing that there is no actual evidence that working mothers generate children with poorer state of mind, body and soul. In other cultures, especially more traditional ones, the sentiment has a stronger existence. Some cultures even consider the sentiment as a general truth. In these cultures, leaving the child in their growth stages are considered taboo rather than generating adverse effect toward children. The consideration is influenced by socio-cultural thinking rather than scientific thoughts. However, if researches are to be conducted within these countries, the result would be in the advantage of proponents of the sentiment. This is caused by the state of the culture which may not be able to provide alternative care (beside the birth mother) with similar or better quality. Furthermore, beliefs and cultural suggestions contribute to making the sentiment a reality within these countries. IV. Critical literacy Despite the popularity of the sentiment that working mother has negative effect on children, statistical researches revealed otherwise. A study even revealed that children at the age 10-12 displayed increased cognitive and academic performance as their parents’ working hours increased. The researcher believes that this odd result has several explanations. The first is the fact that increased working hours means better pay and increased ability to provide better care or assistance to children’s daily life and education. The second is considering the psychological effect on children as they watch their parents achieving success is life. In some families, parents’ achievement is considered to have a significant influence that boosted children’s self esteem and efforts (Conger 1994). This strengthened my argument that most researches neglected psychological factors in children’s development as they define the correlation between working mothers and negative effects toward children. V. Civil Literacy A large portion of working mother throughout the world has no choice but to engage in professional work. Thus, getting the truth out about how working mothers affected children’s conditions and development is very much important because it will influence the lives of these women and their families. In the developed world where people have more access to researches and studies, it is more possible for working mothers to understand the risks that they might face and how to reduce them. In the developing world on the other hand, this sentiment might lead to poorer condition of children and the entire family because mothers are not allowed to engage in professional work and bring in financial contributions. VI.Science Literacy Researchers discovered that in the age of 3, children whose mother are working in the first year of the children’s life have poorer cognitive performance compare to children’s whose mother are not working. However, similar results are not discovered when researchers observe other stages of children’s life and age. Some argued that in further ages, the test instrument is no longer able to take into account various factors that influences the children cognitive behavior and therefore, unable to display conclusive results (Brooks-Gun, 2002). In my opinion, this is just scientific evidence that there is no actual justification to the sentiment that working mothers negatively affects their children VII.Values Literacy Scientific and cultural discussions are not one and the same. In most occurrences, their encounter generated contradictive opinions regarding the same phenomenon. This is also the case within this particular discussion. Culturally speaking, mothers are the natural caretaker of children at any age. Going against this sentiment is not something many of us would agree with, especially in a more traditional society. Nevertheless, in the latest decade, we have witness a change of culture, especially in the United States and the European countries. The change was first caused by necessities and later become a trend. Today, there are many women who voluntarily choose to work rather than stay home with their children all day. Therefore, I personally believe that culture can be gradually shaped by altered way of thinking in the community. VIII. Conclusion In conclusion, despite the growing new trend, I believe that being a working mother can be a necessity rather than a choice. In light of this condition, it is necessary for us to justly identify whether being a working mother means generating negative effect toward one’s children. Researches showed that there are no actual correlation between a mother who actively engage in professional and the negative effect suffered by children. On the other hand, other studies revealed that factors like mother’s insensitiveness, poor environment, poor quality of the caretaker and other factors are the ones who actually have a negative effect toward children’s cognitive performance, academic performance and dietary quality. Bibliography Aizer, Anna. 2002. ‘Home Alone: Supervision After School and Child Behavior’. Center for Research on Child Wellbeing, Wallace Hall, Princeton University, Princeton, NJ 08544 Anderson, Patricia M., Kristin F. Butcher, Phillip B. Levine. 2003. â€Å"Maternal Employment and Overweight Children†, Journal of Health Economics, 22(3), 477-504. Brooks-Gun, Jeanne. Han, Wen-Jui. Waldfogel, Jane. 2002. ‘Maternal Employment and Child Cognitive Outcomes in the First Three Years of Life: The NICHD Study of Early Child Care’. Child Development, July/August 2002, Volume 73, Number 4, pages 1052-1072. Conger, R. D., Elder, G. H. 1994. ‘Families In Troubled Times: Adapting to Change in Rural America’. Hawthorne, NY: Aldine DeGruyter. Dearing, E., McCartney, K., Taylor, B. A. 2001. ‘Change in family income-to-needs matters more for children with less’. Child Development, 72, 1779-1793. ‘Working Mothers do not Adversely Impact on Children’s Diets’. 2005. Sci Tech. Retrieved July 11, 2007 from How to cite Working Mothers and Its Effect to Children, Essay examples