Friday, July 18, 2008

A picture is worth a thousand words (and looking at pictures is a reading strategy anyway)


click to enlarge

One of my commentors mentioned teacher creativity. My daughters teacher expressed her creativity by the use of blue paper and fancy fonts. Note the same old "looking at pictures" as a reading strategy, it even gets higher billing than sounding out words.

5 comments:

nbosch said...

I do owe you an apology---having read your blogs over the last few years I do know you think you know what goes on in elementary classrooms, at least the ones you've been stationed near.

Being creative does not mean being artistic. A creative teacher will think critically about how to teach or reach each child, not use blue paper and funky fonts.

BTW, I couldn't enlarge your graphic. Have a great day--is summer in Alaska cold?

TurbineGuy said...

nbosch, I think I fixed the image.

No apologies needed. I think we probably have a different definition of creativity.

I imagine what you refer to as creativity, I would refer to flexibility and problem solving.

I come from the premise that there is a certain base of knowledge that must be communicated and learned by kids. With millions of kids, thousands of teachers, and thousands of schools, the method of doing it should be pretty much established and perfected, but it's not.

As a parent, I am not worried about creativity (of the teacher), my bottom line is my kids learn the background knowledge they need to go on to the next level. I want them to learn it as efficiently and quickly as possible. Mastery is assumed.

nbosch said...

I think you and I are on the same page but see getting there a bit differently. We actually had a huge discussion about that a year or so ago here on your blog.

I was thinking about you today and decided you'd make a great high school teacher of the gifted. You have a lot of interests and a low tolerance for remediation, so why not consider work with very bright kids. There are several online certification programs, don't know if you'd have to have a teaching certificate first.

Anyway, whatever you do I know you will be successful.

CrypticLife said...

Grrrr. . . make sure your daughter doesn't pick any books that are "to" hard. I guess she's using that "guess and go" spelling.

I've seen far too many teacher notes with basic errors.

TurbineGuy said...

I throw no stones when it comes to grammar. Not my strongest suit... well actually I know the rules, I just suck at proof reading.