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NYC DOE officials are off their rockers
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and now we hear that there MUST be u-shapes in the classroom, a rug, rocking chairs, no chalkboards, etc.
Click here: New York Daily News - News & Views - Daily News Exclusive: Off their rockers. It looks like this policy was a decision of a rocking chair company that received a no-bid contract? After reading the emails concerning teaching styles, I too wondered if there were any studies which "proved" the value of teaching to students placed in rows, circles, or U shaped set ups. I surfed the Web for a few minutes and came up with the websites below on the issue, just to touch the topic. I think that a 'good' teacher can give any student a great deal of skills and knowledge, while a teacher who does not care to teach well, or cant teach at all, will be helped by circles because then the students can talk among themselves and not have to focus on the teaching going on. My four kids can tell in a flash whether the teacher is good or bad and whether the set up of the room is to reflect or deflect from the teaching style. They are not fooled by this maneuver. I believe a far more important issue is the fact that Principals cannot give teachers bad reviews if they want to get them out of the building. I've also heard that New York City has the highest number of 3020a hearings in the country - anyone know if this is true? Anyway, if anyone out there has any definitive study, or any other websites on the issue, I'd be interested. Betsy Combier solarmedia@aol.com learning styles data for college students: http://www.sosu.edu/cidt/briefs/tb1.htm Thinking styles - basically for adult learners: http://www.ldrc.ca/projects/projects.php?id=48& Howard Gardner and collaboration http://www.bena.com/ewinters/styles.html Teaching styles and WWW: http://web.indstate.edu/ctl/styles/tstyle.html research into small groups http://mathforum.org/~sarah/Discussion.Sessions/Yackel.html learning styles for new students http://www.virtualschool.edu/mon/Academia/KierseyLearningStyles.html learning via a corporate model and with the community, "real" world http://www.intellearn.org/media/Bldg%20Lea%20Com.pdf Gardner and cognitive Science http://www.netaxs.com/~jamesiii/gardner.htm The Learning Curve, Cognition, history of teaching: http://library.thinkquest.org/C005704/content_lt.php3 teaching styles http://library.thinkquest.org/C005704/content_teaching_it_styles.php3?tqskip1=1&tqtime=0920 |