Week Eight: Practice

I’ve read a few other classmates blogs….in a way I feel I’m intruding on others private thoughts. And then I wonder, is anyone besides Dave reading my blogs? Can I make these blogs less formal than they’ve been? I mean, I do like to write, but I’ve always been short and concise with “school” work. In my perusal of others’ blogs, I’ve noticed a few posting photos and not that the photo has anything to do with the Discussion, but I find I’m a visual person and I like that small little addition.

So today I add a photo. I took it a few weeks ago, but I took a long walk today and the signs of fall are everywhere. The crinkling of the leaves, the vivid colors, the crisp air….oh, I do love fall. :-)

Onward to the discussion: Last week we were still divided into our smaller groups, I think there might be three, but we had two different discussions to participate in. My intention was to participate in both, but I found myself wanting to practice responses to students or conference participants and so I did, but between the six questions and the other discussion, the group discussion in the practice section was sparse and I felt myself wondering if I misread the directions or if the other in the group misread the directions, because we didn’t seem to be responding in the same way. Most of the other group members responded to the question…..I felt very strongly that we weren’t to respond to the question, but to redirect the “student” that had responded or rephrase the question, so that’s what I did.

I think my most valuable contribution was:

This question has bothered me all week. I'm very frustrated with the student response because it is very obvious that it does not answer the question, but I thought the questions was very straight forward and didn't leave room for this sort of response, so I don't know how to reword it and to the student I just want to say....did you read the directions? Start again, which is not encouraging at all and will just cause the student to be frustrated and give up. Help anyone?

Unfortunately, no one in my group wanted to discuss this with me, but I thought I was asking a very valuable question. Maybe everyone felt the same way I did and couldn't shed any light on it either. Thankfully, Joni was very active in our "discussion" this week. Joni’s insight into the fact that sometimes we have to encourage students and “remind them of the directions” was very helpful. Sometimes when I feel my direction can not be improved and still the student isn’t responding correctly, I get frustrated and feel like I’ve failed. It was good to hear that sometimes, all we can do is remind them, that it isn’t always MY fault, there are a variety of reasons why they might have answered incorrectly and in the online environment isn’t probably that the rushed through reading the directions.