chat center
SUBSCRIBE MY LINKS:

Latest Posts Full Chatboard Submit Post

Current Issue » Table of Contents | Back Issues
 


TEACHERS.NET GAZETTE
Volume 3 Number 2

COVER STORY
Harry & Rosemary Wong say, "...effective teachers do not employ tricks of the trade, the latest fad, or untested opinions..." This month the Wongs feature Liz Breaux, a most effective teacher...
COLUMNS
Effective Teaching by Harry & Rosemary Wong
Promoting Learning by Marv Marshall
4 Blocks by Cheryl Sigmon
Ask the School Psychologist by Beth Bruno
Online Classrooms by Leslie Bowman
The Eclectic Teacher by Ginny Hoover
The Busy Educator's Monthly Five (5 Sites for Busy Educators) by Marjan Glavac
Around the Block by Bridget Scofinsky
Ask the Literacy Teacher by Leigh Hall
The Visually Impaired Child by Dave Melanson
ARTICLES
Seussational Reading Excitement - NEA's Read Across America: Too Much Reading Fun for Just One Day!...
The 100th Day of School
100th Day Activities
Television--Don't Trash It--Control It
Remediation Doesn't Work
Behavior Management Tips
Stress
Children and Stress
Children Do Grieve
Infuse Test Preparation With Life-long Learning
Technology Integration Has No Hope of Succeeding!
Technophobia to Technophilia
Cooperative Learning
Why All Students Need Fine Motor Skills
Teaching Gayle to Read (Part 3)
The Role of EFL learners' Heterogeneity in Terms of Age in Their Use of Communication Strategies
The Importance of the School Administration to Student Achievement
Using Non-Fiction to Motivate Reluctant Readers
Quantity over Quality--The Problem with Writing Instruction in Our Schools
Tips for Substitute Teachers
TEACHER INSPIRATION FEATURE
From "I Don't Care" to "I Did It!"
ON-SITE INSIGHTS
Rules for Secondary Classrooms
Block Scheduling
REGULAR FEATURES
Special Days This Month
The Lighter Side of Teaching
  • YENDOR'S Top Ten
  • Exceptional Normalcy
  • Schoolies
  • Woodhead
  • Handy Teacher Recipes
    Classroom Crafts
    Help Wanted - Teaching Jobs
    Featured Lessons from the Lesson Bank
  • Famous Black Americans
  • Valentine Village
  • Upcoming Ed Conferences
    Letters to the Editor
    Chatboard Poll
    FYI
    Arecibo Radar Gets 11th-Hour Reprieve
    Planetary Society Offers New Scholarships
    Gazette Home Delivery:


    About Jay Davidson...
    Jay Davidson has been teaching in San Francisco since 1969; he teaches first grade. He is the author of Teach Your Children Well: A Teacher's Advice for Parents, which is available for $12.95 at Amazon.com.

    He can be reached through his Web site at www.jaydavidson.com.
    His column appears Thursdays in the Daily News.

    Email: teacher@jaydavidson.com.


    Best Sellers

    Teach Your Children Well: A Teacher's Advice for Parents
    by Jay Davidson

    $12.95 from Amazon.com
    More information
     


     

    Browse through the numerous centers here at Teachers.Net.

    Grade Centers
    Pre-School (EC)
    Kindergarten
    Primary Elementary
    Upper Elementary
    Middle School
    High School
    Higher Ed
    Multiage Classroom

    Message Center
    Opinion
    Ed Advocacy
    Current Events
    Politics
    Inspirations
    Humor
    Website Feedback
    Golden Apples
    Teacher Gatherings
    Social Chatboard
    Teacher Postcards

    Interest Groups
    Administrators
    Montessori

    Prof Readings
    Beginning Teachers
    Student Teachers
    Substitute Teachers
    Gifted/Talented Ed
    Special Education
    Private School
    Classroom Mgt
    Brain-Compatible
    Counselors
    Retired Teachers
    NBPTS/EC-GEN
    NBPTS/ES-GEN

    Subject Centers
    SS/Geography
    Science Teacher
    Math Teacher
    Music Teacher
    Arts & Crafts
    PE/Coaching
    ESL/EFL
    French
    Spanish

    English Center
    Read Across Amer
    Reading/Writing
    HS English
    Books/Literature
    Librarians
    R.R.
    A.R.
    4 Blocks Literacy
    Bldg Blocks (K)

    Tech Forum
    Apple Classroom
    Computer Tech
    Educ Software
    Web Authors

    Project Center
    Project Switchboard
    Grant Writing
    Fundraising
    Eco-Chatboard
    100 Days
    Traveling Buddies
    Classroom Pets
    Pen Pals
    Postcards


     

     
    Teacher Feature...

    Cooperative Learning

    by Jay Davidson


    A reader from Menlo Park, California has written with the following observation and question:

    Dear Jay,

    My son is in second grade. I have noticed that seating arrangements in his kindergarten, first and second grade classrooms look different from the way they looked when I was in these grades in the seventies. There is more emphasis on working together. I remember teachers saying, "Do your own work." Why the increased interest in what the teachers call "cooperative learning"?

    My response:

    You are correct that there is much more cooperative work in schools than during the years you were in these grades. The changes have been implemented since the late eighties. I remember taking a class in cooperative learning during the summer of 1988.

    Drs. Roger and David Johnson, of the University of Minnesota, have pored over more than six hundred studies concerning the benefits of cooperation and its effect on learning. Their conclusion is that building community in school through cooperation is a vital method to counter the violence, drug abuse, gang membership, dropout rate, suicide, and alienation that many young people experience. Cooperation is a significant way to include those students who have been alienated and isolated, both in and out of schools.

    In kindergarten and first grade, the most common ways that children work cooperatively is in pairs. Starting in second grade, children may work in groups of three or four.

    The following tasks lend themselves to working with partners or groups:

    • proofreading of writing assignments
      Children read each other’s work, let each other know if it makes sense,and look for spelling and punctuation errors.
    • discussing reading material
      Children share what they got out of reading assignments.
    • going over math facts
    • comparing the way they solved math problems
      This is especially important, as children understand from peers that there is more than one way to find the answers.

    Research has shown that teaching another person is an effective way of learning something oneself. Therefore, this happens all the time in cooperative learning settings.

    Parents should also understand that while we encourage children to learn in partnerships or groups, all assessments (tests) are done individually. This remains the place where we tell children to "keep your eyes on your own paper."

    Following are some of the benefits of students working in cooperation with each other:

    • Their social competence increases. This is the way for them to learn to trust others, gauge different perspectives, and become aware of the interdependence that exists among members of a group.
    • Their academic achievement rises. No longer isolated at their own desks, and expected to come up with their own answers, they learn from each other in addition to learning from the teacher. (We adults must recognize that we are not the only ones with the right answers!)
    • Their social support system widens. As academics and social interaction are intertwined, social circles expand. This, in turn, has a positive impact on stress management and life extension. People recover more quickly from illnesses when they know that they have people who care about them.
    • They are more motivated. Understanding that others are depending on them for their own contributions, they are more willing to contribute than when they had only themselves to depend upon.
    • They improve their own thinking skills. Others solve problems and approach situations differently. If they are left to their own devices, they may solve problems with the same approach time after time. However, when they are exposed to the thought processes of others, they have new ways of gathering data, forming strategies, and analyzing situations.
    • Their psychological health improves. Being able to improve and maintain relationships is a skill that is carried on into later life.
    • Their self-esteem is raised. They are now working in an environment with better peer relations. Because this also leads to better academic achievement (grades), they feel better about themselves.
    • They are better world citizens. In working with students of different backgrounds, racial groups, and who may speak different languages at home, they learn to look beyond these superficial identifiers and move toward the common good that can be gained from working together. There is a decrease in racism and sexism as they learn to work with different others.


     


     
    Teacher Feature...

    The 100th Day of School

    by Jay Davidson


    Celebrations for the 100th Day of School have become very widespread around the United States. Depending on when your child's school year began, this should be coming up within the next few weeks. I don't know how or where they got started, but it is meritorious for several reasons:
    • Children like big numbers, yet they don't often have a grasp of their meaning. In my class we put a penny in a jar every day of school, starting with the first day. Whenever we get ten pennies, we exchange them for a dime. On the 100th day of school, we trade the ten dimes for a dollar. In doing this, kids begin to have a sense of the meaning of the number 100. We are making a previously abstract idea both concrete and understandable.
    • Many teachers assign students to bring in and display 100 items. This is a project in which family members can work together by deciding what will go to school, count them out, and find ways to display them.
    • Kids begin to understand the concept of volume. After all, 100 grains of rice take up a different amount of space than 100 marbles, beads, cookies, or baseball cards.
    • It's fun for kids to see the variations among the work of all their classmates.
    • Once we get the items contributed by each class member, we practice counting by 100. In a class of twenty students, we reach 2,000, and now everyone has a better sense of what 2,000 means.
    • Many of these activities lay the foundation for the understanding of multiplication, as children display 100 items in five rows of twenty each, ten rows of ten each, or any other such variation.
    Teachers and parents can have instant access to lots of fun activities by entering "100th Day of School" into one of the Internet search engines.

    Visit www.jaydavidson.com for more information about Jay Davidson.

     

    #