Robert P. Echter
A lesson plan in education starts with a conception of what makes for productive learning in a classroom. What is the nature, what are the features of that context that make the attainment of other purposes more feasible. That's part of the lesson plan. That is even more important with special education students who've had a history of difficulty, deficits, failures and the like. You can count on children in a regular classroom to have ease, to some degree wanting to learn. I'm dealing with children, many of whom don't want to learn, because trying to learn is failure.
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• An example is what happened with RR, a very low scoring and school performing third grader, when I generated teaching the students fractions, and multiplication of fractions through a game of folding a piece of paper in half (or thirds) and a half of that, etc. RR was the first to get it, and he got it well. He understood it, could manipulate it and taught it to other students, including students in his regular education class who had not learned or understood this yet. He had the power to explain. What happens in this activity is I introduce the language of fractions (half, third, sixth, etc.) through having each student fold a piece of paper like me. They can fold it, open it, and inspect it for the veracity of any statement they make, in terms of how many rectangles are revealed, or concealed. For instance, folding a paper in half and then in half again would produce 4 rectangles. Thirds in half would produce 6, or vice versa. But make a game of it. I put it in terms of their action and perception, and ask them to recall and evoke an imagery of it. Then with a language attached it becomes a matter of play, slow at first for accuracy, then practicing with varying the problem. It is fun.
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• With a fourth grade class including special education students I, without any explanation, wrote on the blackboard as long a sentence as I could write, but putting a blank line where every other word would be. The point of this game is to force their explicit use of grammatical sensibilities (without calling them that). The challenge of course is to make a sentence that makes sense. It has to be intelligible, it could be funny or not, and the students could propose sentences with blanks of their own. The teacher adjusts the length and difficulty to accommodate the needs of the students, but stretching their abilities as in a very long sentence gives them a feeling of their power and provides practice, while letting many students work at different levels.
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• Another game I developed has to do with recognizing things from as little information as possible. Of course this could be done with spelling words by showing various bits and parts of words (as Gattegno did), and progressively more of a word until a student gets it. It is done to develop the power of recognition. I create a relationship then extend it to more formal subject matter, such as from pictures to words. I have extended this to a wide range of topics, over many years very successfully. Implicit in it, but made explicit in the rules I set is decorum. No one gets called upon if calling out, out of their seat or not raising their hand and waiting to be called upon. Some suggestions as answers are reasonable, but not what I had in mind, so I say, "It could be, but it's not". The first student who gives the correct answer with following the rules of the game gets to complete the word, etc. on the blackboard, or propose another problem. (Gattegno's phonic code chart with a pointer is also useful for this type of game).
In Conclusion
There are many different ways that I have learned whatever it is I have learned, but certainly one of the ways with the most impact by far is being able to see it done by somebody whose principles I know and I can watch in action. Caleb Gattegno was one. In this paper I can only give a reader some verbal impression of how I think and what I do and unfortunately in the training of teachers being able to observe and be observed is usually far less than it should be. The principles I'm trying to verbalize have to be concretized and by far the best way of doing that, short of being there or interacting in some way, is literally showing. I can talk about humor and trust, but if you see it in action it takes on a salience. The observer can see it's a game that has personal enjoyable aspects as well as educational. It isn't a matter of just having fun.
Things I say in this paper are illustrated in a movie,
Mr. Holland's Opus
. In the first half you see a slew of mistakes. In the second you see the change. When the point is made visually it doesn't need explanation. Teachers I know who saw that movie and I were deeply and emotionally impacted by it. Others who are not teachers did not respond in the same way. The emotional depth was not there for them. They did not feel it as deeply as we could and were forced to. They don't have that experience we do. They don't clearly understand. They don't have the concrete that it comes with. They don't have the experience or know how deeply felt the experience is for teachers. We realize what it meant. I suppose we felt understood or at least heard. There are limitations to verbal description and explanation. The very nature of words is to refer to categories of experience. That is why I have emphasized showing and acting with the students. Without reference in our own system do we have a way of conjuring up what could be shown or known with a root in our own experience? Verbal description does not have the educational impact for teachers that a movie like
Mr. Holland's Opus
might. Video can be forceful in a way writing is not. Although vicarious, too, movies are more like having been through it in contrast with only having been told about it. We can recall the meaning of what we have been through, whereas it is another to recall the meaning of what we have been told if it is not related to our experience. Teaching balance in Tai Chi is all one thing, physical, psychological, spiritual. The same is true in all teaching. It is one whole thing. How are they to have a sense of it unless they have done it?