For my third visit with Mrs. William’s class we got to work on brainstorming, which I thought was convenient since we just talked about this in class. Things got off to a slow start though. I went to my group and asked them how they were. They all replied “fine,” but made it perfectly clear they were ready for spring break. This was evident as soon as things got started. First of all, they had no clue what the assignment was. The majority of my group thought they were supposed to be writing a research paper, when in actuality it was a comparison contrast paper. So after I explained the assignment the best I knew how from the sheet I was given, we got started. The writing prompt gave several leading questions to help them get started with different avenues to explore. This was helpful because it gave us a jumping off point. First I had them think about different topics they might want to write on and how they might go about doing that with free writing. When I had told them that we would be brainstorming today and developing topics, I asked what type of brainstorming method they used. All of them said free writing, so I thought this would be a good jumping off point. Well, in the five minutes or so I gave them to free write, only one out of six people had more than three lines written down. I had originally planned on letting the free writing last a little longer, but I decided to cut it short when it wasn’t working. Then we just went around the table and talked about the topics that were picked and the ideas that were developed with the topics. Several of the people had the same topic. Because of this, I decided to do some clustering. For this, I took out a sheet of paper and asked a bunch of leading questions for them to think critically about their topics. When an answer was give, I would place it on the cluster. It was good because it got them actively involved in thinking about their topics, and it served as a cluster for actually doing it themselves.
One thing that did bother me was I felt like I was more of a teacher at points. When a group member would come up with an idea, they would always ask what I thought or if it was good. I didn’t want to tell them exactly what I would put in each one of their papers. Then they would be my opinions, not theirs. I want them to feel confident asking me questions, and it flatters me that they hold my opinion so high, but I’m not assigning grades. Really, to me, every idea is a good idea as long as it is explored fully and developed with support. All in all though, I’d say it was a productive session.
For my third visit with Mrs. William’s class we got to work on brainstorming, which I thought was convenient since we just talked about this in class. Things got off to a slow start though. I went to my group and asked them how they were. They all replied “fine,” but made it perfectly clear they were ready for spring break. This was evident as soon as things got started. First of all, they had no clue what the assignment was. The majority of my group thought they were supposed to be writing a research paper, when in actuality it was a comparison contrast paper. So after I explained the assignment the best I knew how from the sheet I was given, we got started. The writing prompt gave several leading questions to help them get started with different avenues to explore. This was helpful because it gave us a jumping off point. First I had them think about different topics they might want to write on and how they might go about doing that with free writing. When I had told them that we would be brainstorming today and developing topics, I asked what type of brainstorming method they used. All of them said free writing, so I thought this would be a good jumping off point. Well, in the five minutes or so I gave them to free write, only one out of six people had more than three lines written down. I had originally planned on letting the free writing last a little longer, but I decided to cut it short when it wasn’t working. Then we just went around the table and talked about the topics that were picked and the ideas that were developed with the topics. Several of the people had the same topic. Because of this, I decided to do some clustering. For this, I took out a sheet of paper and asked a bunch of leading questions for them to think critically about their topics. When an answer was give, I would place it on the cluster. It was good because it got them actively involved in thinking about their topics, and it served as a cluster for actually doing it themselves.
ReplyDeleteOne thing that did bother me was I felt like I was more of a teacher at points. When a group member would come up with an idea, they would always ask what I thought or if it was good. I didn’t want to tell them exactly what I would put in each one of their papers. Then they would be my opinions, not theirs. I want them to feel confident asking me questions, and it flatters me that they hold my opinion so high, but I’m not assigning grades. Really, to me, every idea is a good idea as long as it is explored fully and developed with support. All in all though, I’d say it was a productive session.