Week 5: Deviation from dispositions...

Roleplaying

My 4th grade class did a simulation activity with the 5th grade class. It was a colonial era simulation, where we each had a number of resources and land areas and had to trade with people and NPCs to try and survive. It was one of the most fun units we had, and I think we all learned a lot from it. It was somewhat of a role-playing activity, and it was really effective, so I would say that role-playing can definitely be a good teacher technique.

I think it makes sense that kids need to have a basic grasp of basic concepts before being expected to move on to super complicated things. It's going to be hard to someone to do calculus if they don't know how to do algebra; or just to do algebra if they don't know how to do basic addition etc. However, in some cases shortcuts can be taken.

It seems to me that if a kid isn't involved emotionally somehow in their learning, it won't stick. You have to care about something in order for it to be important to you, and if your learning isn't important, you won't invest anything in it, and you won't get anything out of it. A student might be able to regurgitate information for a test, but that doesn't mean they'll remember any of it a week later.

As someone who was in a "gifted" program in elementary school (both in 1st and 2nd and half of third in IL, and in 4th and 5th grade in SD), "accelerated" reading/language arts/math in middle school, and AP classes in HS, I didn't really see any "favoritism" toward said 'gifted' programs. I'm a big advocate of these programs, primarily because when I was in the "regular" class for the second half of third grade after moving to Sioux Falls, I was bored stiff. I didn't really make any friends, definitely didn't learn anything, and hated going to school, whereas before I had always enjoyed it. I needed some sort of mental stimulation to serve as an impetus to convince me it was worth it. As far as I know there were never any huge debates in Sioux Falls about the program, or any feeling of favoritism. As for listening more to influential people in the community, that seems fairly normal. The influential people are the ones who can get stuff done, and work either for you or against you and make a big difference.