Fires: Chapter 7 - Teaching Difficult Academic Material

In this chapter I found a lot of recurring themes when it came to explaining how different subject areas can go about teaching new and difficult material. First of all a teacher should take it slow. Weather it is doing a math problem or reading Shakespeare, it shouldn't, the teacher needs to stop and check for understanding. Also repeating the math problem over and over again in different ways and breaking down the text into different pieces is important. The two biggest concepts within this chapter was the plain fact that text books should not be completely relied upon in any class. As a student explained in the chapter, their history teacher had them take a few text books and look up the same event, and each text book had a different view on that given event. It shows that text books may put their own twist on things. Also relating the material at some point to the students is always important in all subject areas. This was a repeated idea throughout the text, so relating personal experiences to school can be very helpful.

This important thing I picked up from this chapter was the stuff that was continuously repeated, which was relate my material to the students in some way. I could possibly relate current events in some way to Shakespeare or a book that were are reading together. As the chapter pointed out, it is difficult to read something that is not only difficult in itself but something the student is not interested in. So I need to find ways to interest them in material that may not first appeal to them. I want to be creative in my teaching so that my students will be able to learn in different ways and from different things. I don;t have many ideas as how to do this. But that is what practicum is for and that is why I want to be a teacher. I'm going to learn from my experiences once I am a teacher, once I'm in the field I think it will be a whole lot easier to find ways of relating to my students once I know them a little better.