Smartest Kids in the World- Part one

In response to Mrs. Stevens' blog,

Amanda Ripley's book, The Smartest Kids in the World, is quite interesting. She delves into the lives of 3 students who go off and do study abroad for one school year in three different countries. Now, this is interesting because these students have no idea what they are getting into. Yeah, they may have a slight idea, but they don't understand the complexity of how Finland, Poland, and South Korea all work with their students inside the classroom. 

While I was reading the first part of this book (chapters 1-4), I was so interested in the way the students had been conducting themselves in the different countries. I think the country I was most interested in, was South Korea. It was so fascinating that one test was what judged what would happen throughout their whole life. I also thought it was quite odd that the teachers were completely okay with their students sleeping within the classrooms. I would have reacted the same way that Eric did while he was in the classroom. He was so confident when on his way their, but when he actually got to South Korea, he had ended up being a little concerned with the way things were going with the classes.

Even though the system for South Korea is a little weird, I would like to have some kind of system where you were pressured to get your life sorted out. I would like their to be a stricter system in the United States, because there are quite a few people that are just messing around, and don't want to figure out what they want to do with their lives, so having a system where your school can kind of lead you in that direction, would be pretty cool. 

What Will Revolutionize Education?

In response to Mrs. Stevens' blog,

Learning. There is a formula for learning, and there are plenty of ingredients that go into this formula. Some of the ingredients would include: the teacher, technology, class size, the student, parents, etc. Some of these ingredients have more of a meaning than the others, and are more important.

I believe that the most important ingredient to the learning formula would be the students and their minds. When it comes to the teacher helping the students be successful with themselves in school, it requires the students to focus, and to want to be successful in order for them to achieve that goal.

When the students put themselves out there to learn, and to be involved in what is going on within the classroom, they will be able to see what it is like to learn, and to achieve more within the classroom. I believe that if every student, or at least a majority of the student body does this, then we will see a major increase in the results of the students involved in their classroom.

Students are the main ingredient in the learning formula, and with each others help, we can see how much of an effect they can have on that formula.

The Tribes Method!

In response to Mrs. Stevens' blog,

What is the Tribes method?

The Tribes method is a way for teachers to be able to have their students in a learning environment that they are comfortable in. The purpose of this method is to allow the students to feel comfortable with their learning, and show a healthy development of their skills and knowledge. Withing the Tribes method, there are four tribes agreements that the students will have to follow. These agreements include:

1. Attentive listening
2. Appreciation
3. Mutual respect
4. The right to pass

I feel that this method is great. Student's should be able to feel comfortable in their learning environment. This method allows the students to feel positive about their learning and it helps them be more successful when they are able to work at the rate that they need to, The aspect of having mutual respect for others helps each of the students feel positive when they are working with others, because they hopefully won't feel judged about anything they are discussing in class.

In my opinion, I believe that there is a possibility that the Tribes method might work in my site school classroom. The reason I think it might not work, is because I am with a group of second graders. Second grade is still working on their main focusing skills, and my students are a group of kids that just love to talk. They will work together, but I'm not quite sure they will all have mutual respect for each other while working on a group assignment. The Tribes method would work best with a set of older students like middle or high school. This method could work in our classroom, however, we aren't a big class. We all work together as a group anyways when it comes to group assignments, so it would be pretty interesting to see our class use this method.