> Maybe, just maybe...there is a strong tie between the 'Fourth grade > slump' > and the age at which we have schooled out all the curiosity of early > childhood... > Jennifer
I think this is very possible, Jennifer. One of the things I have battled is the feeling that students already come to me in fifth grade comfortable with the structure of unthinking schooling. They WANT me to just give them answers, to give them papers and more papers, to let the hand-up addicts control the class while the rest doze off into oblivion. Each year I battle this preordained culture and some years I am more successful than others. Understand, I am not blaming teachers here. They are working within the culture. It stretches way beyond the classroom IMHO. I generally start my fifth grade science unit by telling students I would feel very successful as a teacher if I can return them to their 3 year-old selves. They look at me like I am out of my mind and then I talk about how they had a natural curiosity back then that annoyed their parents and caregivers enormously. Usually, someone in the class knows a three-year-old, starts laughing and calling out, "Why? Why? Why?" Then we talk about how why, how, and what if can take us to wonderful learning places. When students ask fabulous and impossible questions in my class, I get very excited. I often have a posting for fabulous questions. If they ask me to answer them, I offer to help them know where to look. It is the start of rebirthing curiosity, but it takes time and patience. Some students will go overboard to begin with. Others will not see the value initially. Some things that I think stand in the way of curiosity in our classrooms are: --ditto on hurrying through curriculum. As Gardner once said, "Coverage is the enemy of understanding." --not listening, really listening, to children--if we are not interested in their observations, however simplistic they may sometimes appear, then they will refrain from sharing them and eventually (in some cases) from thinking about them. --classroom management--people I meet, parents, administrators, other teachers, mistake the quiet classroom for the better classroom. And I do value quiet thought (I love that about reader/writer workshop), I also notice that when you begin to value student thought, they act up more--they can be more argumentative, more passionately loud, more likely to call out thoughts and turn to their neighbor if the wait to share might be too long. These behaviors are not perceived as positive by outside audiences, even though I have come to be quite comfortable with them (much prefer them to a bunch of deadheads who do not care what we are discussing) --remembering to ask students why they think something...so much of curiosity is housed in the "Why" of things. :)Bonita _______________________________________________ Understand mailing list [email protected] http://literacyworkshop.org/mailman/listinfo/understand_literacyworkshop.org
