Skip to main content

Classroom Controversy

By Tim Pappageorge
Constructive Controversy  

I want to draw my students into a supportive classroom environment that normalizes struggle and controversy. Argument does not have to be a winner-take-call debate or (on the other extreme) a series of head nods to a commonly agreed-upon platitude.  Democracy takes  more work than that.  The empathy and rationality of rich humanism requires greater depth and search, as well.  

Even after 21 years of teaching, I am still learning so much about how to set the stage for respectful and engaged discussion.  What about you?

Praise, Pressure, and Performance

This short unit focuses on setting the norms of inquiry and engagement that will lead to constructive controversy.  Please check out any of the lessons, or the whole unit!  I taught this in the 2013-14 school year in grade 9, but it could easily run in grades 8-11.  
This topic is so compelling, I think, because it will help students to become more reflective on how they receive feedback from teachers and classmates and how they give feedback, too!  Feedback is all around our students--in the classroom, hallways, athletic field, home, etc.--and navigating all of this information presents a key opportunity for young people who are carving out their lives. 

Please be invited to join me in this inquiry by checking out some of the lessons and leaving feedback on the site where they are published.

The menu in this unit: 
 The day of high school! "This is Me in Grade 9!" - using humorous song lyrics to get us started talking and thinking.
Evidence and Explanation- analyzing the song a bit.
The Praise Paradox - starting to introduce the theme of praise, pressure and performance. This is an easy-ish non-fiction essay.
Summer Reading Assessment - a written diagnostic of summer reading PLUS a window to pre-assess how well the student write argument. 
Praise Paradox Cause/Effect -- Why praise is so interesting!  We will analyze cause and effect here.  Is praise always, sometimes or never good?
Inferring character motives in Vonnegut's short story, "The Kid Nobody Could Handle" -- Enter, a longer, difficult short story that is about a loner who just needs a little bit of encouragement and belief.  Like all of us?
Writing Argument "The Kid Nobody Could Handle" -- It's important to get some writing down in order to firm up our thoughts.  
"I Just Wanna Be Average": tracing the idea of persistence in a personal essay -- A looong, non-fiction essay, not for the faint of heart, but very challenging, writerly, and complex.  If you go this route, you'll be opting to challenge your students!
Questioning "Two Kinds" -- A well-known short story, but an uncommon approach using student-generated questions.  Fun

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Affective Learning

By Tim Pappageorge
Pundits abound with promises that technology can "replace the middleman" in education.  Although I grate against the idea that a thoughtful, concerned, reflective, intelligent, passionate, caring adult--a teacher!--is the equivalent to a business owner who marks up merchandise for profit, the metaphor of the middleman forced me to think about just what, exactly, does the teacher add in a cloud-based, post-2007 , MOOC world, where a myriad of apps and sites (e.g. Khan Academy) can tailor feedback and where content has gotten so cheap (e.g. MIT's free courses, or sites like Coursera --featuring coursework from Stanford, UPenn, and Johns Hopkins--or nifty-looking courses like "Analytics in Course Design" through Dartmouth via Canvas ). Surely, teachers are not simply haggling with students for a better price on learning!  But just the same, I am asking myself what is the value-added I am bringing to my students that cannot be replaced. But if teachers are middle...
Post a Comment
Read more

Intention Deficit? Try hooking students with Why?

By Tim Pappageorge
Lesson Hooks-- Cultivating an intention-rich classroom. Cognitive scientists point out the massively effective habit of recruiting and maintaining focus in the learning process.  For learners--be they adults, children, or teens in between--the challenges of staying focused in our "intention - deficit" society can create real challenges to meaning making.  In schools, we throw unending stimuli, ideas, facts, and figures at our students and wonder why they have trouble retaining.  The point of starting a lesson in an interesting, purposeful way is to set the course of intention forward. One potential issue arises from the importance of setting the stage for students to become vested in what they are learning .  Why are they being asked to learn a given topic?  Why is it significant or important?  Of course, drawing on their prior learning through discussion can create important bridges of learning as students connect old understandings and new co...
Post a Comment
Read more

BOOK REVIEW

By Tim Pappageorge
Book Review If this book is filled with so much common sense--offer choice, give students a voice in their learning-- then why do I find myself invigorated by the potential of my students as I read it? We want to offer answers, students want questions. We offer safety, they love risk. We want them to play the role of the dutiful student, and they want to play a socially important role, an expert or daring personality. Basically, Armstrong drives home the point that the intense neuroplasticity of adolescent brains makes teaching teens a bit of wild fun, but it's not a game whose rules we, as adults, often fully understand or remember. For example, one chapter focuses on peer learning communities. In my experience, and through my home school district, we have focused consistently on Cooperative Learning modalities which are informed by the research of David and Roger Johnson at the University of Minnesota. They remind us that cooperative learning is not an activity to do, ...
Post a Comment
Read more