This week we watched the “Most Likely to Succeed” film. I found this film very interesting and knowledgeable. Although the film is 8 years old now, I found it was very ahead of its time. The concept of a school allowing freedom and trust from the teachers to create a learning experience of group sharing, natural conversations, and freedom of expression, has developed a new resource of learning. One quote that one of the grade 9 teachers mentioned that stuck with me, was “Without allowing students to make decisions in school, how are they expected to make decisions in life”. I feel that from what I observe this is what a lot of the teachers at High Tech High relate to for their students.
While I was watching this film I started up a conversation with my roommate, asking the question “If you could choose for your child to either study hard allowing them to succeed and get into a good college or university, or to be able to make all kinds of decisions and guide themselves in life well, what would you choose?” She then agreed that she would rather her child be set up in life, rather than focus on studying hard. We continued connecting what I was taking away from the film to the more important point that we as students, especially in our K to 12 years, should experience in a classroom, like doing to understand, rather than understanding to do! I thought the idea of an exhibition night was a key strategy in allowing authenticity and the raw ability to create a project that your friends and family would get to understand, and not just a teacher grading your work.
This week in class we also talked a lot along the lines of Copyright guidelines, certain websites, and tools to better your teaching, planning, and classroom experience. I thought the Fair Dealing Guidelines, were very important knowledge for us future educators to have a good idea on especially on how specific the types of copywritten work are presented, etc.
Finally, the last main point I took away from this week’s class was the OER resources. While I was exploring the website, I had chosen the category – Math for Grade 3 classrooms, and I almost immediately found this website ck12.org – another website providing content for certain grades, subjects, etc. This was perfect for possible resources that I and a group in my class can use towards a lesson plan around grade 3 “Computation Algorithms for Additions”. There are so many resources at the click of a button that I was fully unaware of!
I have posted this linked website for those who are possibly interested in a resource for math lessons and ideas!
