After class this week, I have a lot more ideas for getting to know my students from multiple perspectives. I really like the Scholastic interest surveys for parents and students that were posted on Angel. I could see myself using these, or perhaps my own variation of these. I think it's important to get to know not just the students but the parents as well. A lot of times parents will have more insight into their children's lives, personalities, and behaviors than the children themselves would be able or willing to share. More than just getting to know how parents see their children, however, I would like to get to know the parents as people, too. I would probably create my own interest survey with many of the questions mirroring the Scholastic survey, but I would also include some questions to get to know the parents themselves.
To get to know the diversity of my students better -- their ethnic backgrounds, cultures, languages, gender identities, etc. -- I would like to do some sort of activity dealing with those identities during the first week. Here is one way that I thought of to do this: Students could choose which identities are important to them(example: Latino, female, Spanish-speaking) and then express in some way why their identities are important to them and how these identities affect their lives. Students could choose to express themselves in a way that is meaningful to them -- writing, drawing, dancing, verbal explanation, etc. Students could then share their identities with their classmates in a show-and-tell format. I think this activity could be risky because it deals with issues of identity, which can often be sensitive. If approached correctly, however, I think it could really teach students to appreciate the richness of the diversity in their classroom learning community. It could be a good way to set up a school year of learning from each other's identities and backgrounds, and could push students to see each other's differences as valuable learning tools. Students will also know from the very beginning of school that their identities are safe, respected, and valued in their learning community.
I also really liked some of the ideas we came up with in class, such as "star student." I think having a star student or a student of the week is a great way to get to know students on a deeper level, but as we said, the problem with this is it could take 25-30 weeks to get to know all the students. For that reason, I think it's important to have activities that allow you to get to know your students at the beginning of the year, and then star student or similar activities can help other students get to know each other, as well as give me/the teacher a better and deeper understanding of each student. I also liked the idea of having a literature show-and-tell, where students could bring in their favorite books and tell why they like that book, who read it to them, etc. This would be a great way to gauge the home environment for literacy as well as the students' interest and comfort levels with literacy.
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I really like your idea of doing activities within the first week of school to get to know your students; by using their heritedge or some aspect of their identity that is important to them, I feel as though they would become comfortable much more quickly. I had also talked about the student of the week idea in my post. I love the idea of each student getting a chance to express their story and be the "star" for the week. If a child isn't getting much attention at home, this would be a great way for them to feel important. I had not thought about incorporating literature, or a book share, into their student of the week activities, but I think that is a great idea. Since literacy is such a large part of each classroom community, this would be another way to expose the children to more literautre, and perhaps genres or authors that they had never heard of before!
ReplyDeleteI completely agree with you and with Jackie about the heritage idea in the first week. The plan I linked in my post also relates deeply to the ideas of heritage. I like the way in which you would allow the students freedom of expression to present their heritage or identity. This would allow you further insight in each student's personality and what they feel are their own presentation assets. I say assets because in a new classroom, at the beginning of the year, when asked to present something like this I think that most students would choose not just something they liked for their expression but also something they felt they were really good at or would help them shine with their classmates. I think another extension with this idea would be to revisit this 'activity' at intervals throughout the year to see how each student's idea of their own identity might change. It could also be a way to provide the students with a challenge for their form of expression. As a teacher, you could perhaps use your insight and knowledge of each student's assets and needs and encourage each one to try something new. For instance, a student might choose dance initially but you see great ability in his or her poetic skills and ask him or her to write a poem for the next presentation.
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