Don't be afraid to punt!

Maybe this is inspired by being at the Panther game Sunday, or the turnover prone Chargers...

Yesterday, I ended first period quite frustrated. We've spent 3 weeks now on the roots of American government (historic, philosophic, events, etc), and very few of my students are "getting it." I've used different methods such as lecture, question based learning, guided reading, journaling, standard discussion, etc., and not much was working. We've had some really productive class periods, but the assessments were falling short. So, today I remembered the advice I got from Dr. Eastman a few years ago: "Sometimes you gotta drop back and punt."

So we came screeching to a halt today. I typed up 30 why questions--why do we value limited government? being the first. I realized two things.

1) Many of the students don't have a grasp of the questions. For so long--too long--they've been taught memorization of facts and facts alone. They are accustomed to answering questions in a few sentences (that may be generous) and being able to find those sentences very close to the bold word in the text. And so today, all I wanted was for them to learn the questions. Not to regurgitate them later, but to begin to develop an understanding of what they are being asked.

2) They know that they value limited government. They may not know that it is "limited government" that they value--which is an argument for factual learning as well. But they don't want the police to barge in their houses at night and arrest them and hold them prisoner for an indefinite time. But they are not able to communicate these ideas very well. My brother and his compadres http://topics.typepad.com/pondering/ talk quite a bit about New Literacy and it is obvious--painfully sometimes--that many students don't have a grasp of new or old literacy. I'm developing as an educator, but still lack in many areas... we'll see how these next few days pan out.