As a participant in the International Baccalaureate program, discussion has become a huge part of my academic journey. With any assignment we have been given, my class has picked everything apart to fully understand the material, feeding off of each other’s perspectives to shape our own views. Similarly, The Common Core allows for students to participate in an open exchange of ideas and interpretations while using others’ inputs to form our own. I would like to take the understanding I have grasped as an IB student and develop it to reach a deeper level of understanding that is only possible at Columbia. Discussion within my tightknit class has allowed me to broaden how I look at an assignment or subject. To take my own observations and analysis
and compare it to others’ enables me to question how I came to my conclusions and why mine differs from theirs. I truly believe that communicating with my classmates has led me to have a stronger academic voice and a better comprehension of the world and society. The Core is appealing because it takes this concept of interaction within a student body and makes it an independent endeavor. Columbia does not force students to talk to each other about an assignment outside of a classroom setting. It is up to the student to make connections with others on their own time, which enables an element of independence.
These discussions need to be meaningful and have purpose to create a higher chance of student engagement and participation. The article states, “cooperative learning is a natural way to provide opportunities across the curriculum” (Wright, 2016, p. 28-29). The smaller the group, the more likely the ELL student is to add to the conversation, as native English speakers typically dominant whole group discussions. It is important that every student in the small group contributes so the ELL student can hear and practice their own oral language. There are many activities that could be used to ensure this engagement, such as think-pair-share, that requires students to work together and actually get information from each other. Activities that cannot be completed alone and require the thinking of another student would be best for this
Also throughout our discussion, when using evidence we added page numbers, which helps out Ms.Karhu and our classmates on where to find that specific text evidence. Although we need to keep working to improve on moving from one topic to another. We spent half the discussion talking about the same idea, while we needed to work on saying the idea and then move on. I know I need to work on asking more questions. When talking about a certain idea I have to be more detailed instead of general. What I mean is to make people think about my ideas and let my classmates ponder on what I have to
Leo argues that a lively debate is crucial to education, as it encourages “intellectual roughhouse” and allows people to challenged by, and become open to new ideas and discussion topics. Leo provides an example of a fellow columnist who agrees with him; E.J. Dionne has told his class at Georgetown that he encourages debating without fear from dominant groups.
The thesis, or the main idea of the book, is that by using specific communication techniques, we can turn difficult discussions into productive learning conversations.
...that we can openly discuss anything with each other, even the things that used to cause arguments. I am also proud to say the regularity of our arguments has decreased dramatically. I am grateful for the knowledge I have gained from this course, and look forward to employing these new found skills and tools in all of my future communications.
...d uses its appeal to make the student engaged. Students respond well when class discussion is open and formal. All too often, teachers design their lectures to. Students respond well when class discussion is open and formal. All too often, teachers design their lectures with the mindset that they need to facilitate their job through PowerPoint presentations and long lectures with little student interaction. There is something to be said about the accessibility of professors being approachable; however, having a class discussion that operates well creates the small interactive community both inside and out of the classroom. Ultimately, universities have the opportunity to mold the rather plastic minds of young adults; they need to be willing to take a hard look at how they instruct their students and offer new and invigorating teaching techniques in their classes.
Overall I do agree with Freire that students should have a hand in the discussion to help them learn to think more critically about what they are learning. I think every teacher or professor should try and incorporate the problem-posing model in their classrooms. But, the problem-posing model will not always work for every subject. All students should be able to think critically about what they are learning, express their opinions, concerns, and thoughts especially in the
As a student, there are so many ideas and concepts that surround us and can be overwhelming. The secret to investigating the ideas of others is to be inquisitive, yet believing. It is extremely difficult to balance these two contradicting ideas, but when one masters this skill they will be able to elaborate upon the ideas of others. Learning from other people is a great way to develop your own ideas as well.
I was introduced to do something that was very much out of range to do a presentation on chapter we were assigned or “teach” in our own way was inviting us to this thought of a discourse community. Having be taught to work with using a rubric as a guiding tool or the five-paragraph essay which gives little room for argument and has a lot more of a choppy flow. Having to present about the chapters was a lot more stressful none the less, with a new sense of freedom for my creativity to actually matter in the classroom was very different than what was normal to me, having the opportunity to express these thoughts in a classroom based discussion on that chapter I now can relate back to college as team learning
Based on my limited experience of college, I have been able to understand and become a part of a particular Colgate discourse community. In understanding discourse community, I have learned that the term identifies a grouping of people who share common language norms, characteristics, patterns, or practices as a consequence of their ongoing communications and identification with each other. A particular Colgate discourse community that I can associate with is the Office of Undergraduate Studies (OUS), which I feel has been an advantage because I have had the ability to connect to other students even before the fall semester started. The OUS Summer Institute began on June 26th and ended on August 1st and during that time I received a small preview of what would college be like. Therefore, I was more prepared the first day of college because of my discourse community. The main point I take from my experience with this discourse community is that I was able to better transition, academically and socially, from a high school student to a college student. In addition, OUS is a discourse community because we share similarities, such as being underprivileged students who have overcome many plights in their life but still have managed to reach for success. For example, many of us still managed to be the top student in our classes during high school.
The purpose of this reflective essay on the debate is to analyse my team and my own personal learning style and experience of participating in the debate and in the preparation period - that started in week 7 with the mock debate - by structured and based on Honey and Mumford’s Learning Styles theory, and examine some ideas for my future practice.
This module has encouraged me to delve into many new experiences and different thought processes. It exhibits an environment that allows people to think outside the box and come to the realisation that what they may perceive as the right idea or approach to a task may be completely different to what other people think. Personally, I feel I am developing the skills to think in a broader minded perspective, outside of confirmative thoughts. I have realised that I have become so used to being told exactly how to think, that it can be difficult to put this logical thought process aside and let my mind be unrestricted and impartial. In this way, I feel this module is benefiting me greatly, as even though I do not express my opinion often in class, it is very interesting to gain an insight into other people’s opinions and through this, modify how I think and perceive things in a creative way.
Together with the teacher and classmates, students are given the opportunity to speculate and question the world around them and the world awaiting them. Within small peer groups, for instance, students are encouraged to discuss, share, and compromise. The teacher is there to encourage this process, rather than to provide prescribed solutions. Similarly, the learning environment is collaborative and democratic, giving opportunities for all to speak their minds and receive feedback from peers as well as the teacher. This continuous loop of feedback, potentially positive or negative, serves as the means of assessment for problem-solving based instruction.
Therefore the lack of what I felt was inadequate discussion and contribution by the other members at the initial stages was quite unsettling for me. In this sense I believe I display the characteristics of a converger and certain aspects of an accommodator. Convergers dominant learning abilities are abstract conceptualization and active experimentation and are best at finding practical uses for ideas and theories whilst accommodators use concrete experience and active experimentation and enjoy new and challenging 'hands on' type experiences (Kayes, Kayes and Kolb, 2005; Kolb, 1981). On the downside, convergers may disregard ideas and information that they think may not be important and can rush to a decision without gathering all the details while accommodators can be impatient with those that lack the same sense of urgency and may focus on the whole problem overlooking or delegating details (Turesky and Gallagher, 2011).
Closed ended questions can be used to quiz if students understanding the basic principles behind the learning outcomes. The use of effective open ended questioning should be used during discussions with students to obtain a deeper level of understanding. Marsh (p. 188 – 189, 2010). Petty mentions how questioning should encourage all students to think. He goes on to say that students should be given time to respond to the question asked and praise if correct answers given. (2009, p. 193). But traditional questioning has its limitations as can be hard to include all of the class. Assertive questioning on the other hand is more active and engaging for the students. It is the pair or group work that that make assertive questioning all inclusive. It shares student knowledge on a topic and helps weaker students to learn by doing. (Petty, 2009, p. 282 - 284).