C4T #1

My assigned teacher's name is Heidi Siwak, she lives in Ontario and teaches 7th graders. Before a comment can be publicly seen on her blog she must approve it first.

On her September 4, 2012 post it was about setting a collaborative foundationin a classroom. She shared an experience she had with her students, she put her students in random groups and gave them a 'meaty' topic to discuss amongst themselves first and then with the whole class. Asking her students to do this she was able to help them better learn critical thinking skills, communication skills, and collaborative skills.

Afterwards Ms. Siwak saw how each of her students were engaged in their conversations. They each handled who would do what task of the group and many of the groups gave moral and skilled responses. I admired Ms. Siwak's creativity. She told her students they needed to look like a group, meaning they should gather around in a circle and not have stragglers. I had not thought of that before, she made a good point because it would be hard for all members of a group to collaborate together if some were not fully focused.

I wrote to her how I enjoyed reading her posts and how she has helped give me some ideas for when I begin teaching. Also, I mentioned how I really agreed with her last paragraph; as a child I loved when my teacher would ask us to write or discuss a touchy subject because we all were anxious to say our opinions on it. I was so excited to finally see that she approved my comment and also commented back to me saying it was nice to meet another EDM310 student and she was happy that her blog intrigued me so much.

On September 18th, Ms. Siwak posted another blog. This blog goes into the elememts of a thought. She made a very colorful hands-on bulletin board for her students to use. It's broken into 7 parts, 2 of which are labeled "purpose" and "assumptions". Ms. Siwak read to her students statements about a person, the statements gave assumptions that the person was bad and good. Examples were: "He smokes and drinks." "He was arrested for stealing." "He stole baby diapers and formula." "He has a girlfriend and a 1 year old child." One could see how those statements couldn't directly enable someone to tell what kind of person this was.

Ms. Siwak then asked her students to discuss assumptions they had about this person, of course this led to a rather rich discussion. She is trying to get her students to become more aware of their thinking. Making assumptions can be productive but making assumptions too quickly without deeply thinking them through can lead to the wrong conclusions.

I commented back telling her that once again I thought she did a great job coming up with a fun hands-on activity to intrigue her students to be involved in the exercise meanwhile they are un-noticingly learning. I don't recall being a young student and any of my teachers ever teaching me to make assumptions like she does. Many teachers teach just the main academic subjects but fail to teach their students life lessons. When I become an educator I will definately remember to help teach my students life lessons that will help them evolve into a critical thinker.

Click on her name to view her blog. heidisiwak