Cantu, Chapter 4

As new teachers, there are going to be many unknown obstacles that are going to come at us from all angles and we have to be ready to go with the flow and make adjustments. The fourth chapter in Cantu goes into detail on several classroom strategies that will help get students involved in discussion and hopefully also keep the class engaged and on track with the day's lesson. There were many strategies that I would definitely implement in my classroom. Graphic organizers are probably one of my top picks to help students gain an effective tool for note-taking. In addition to helping students make connections between parts of our lesson, graphic organizers can be used in so many versatile ways. If you need students to understand a chronology, you can have them construct a timeline of events. Flow charts of cause and effect would also be  a great way to help students link important events or people within a unit of history.

Aside from the note-taking aspect of class, discussion is going to be a great way to keep history alive and interesting in the classroom. Cantu offered some helpful hints to get students involved in class. I like the idea of having student's call on one another to participate, because this helps them hold each other accountable. Another idea that I believe is a good way to keep discussions lively is to use some form of think-pair-share, because students might feel more comfortable sharing if they had a chance to get a second opinion on their answers first. Finally, I think it is crucial to watch how we respond as teacher's to student answers. Sometimes students might respond with something completely incorrect, and we have to watch their feelings when we correct them. Cantu argues that we should respond to student interaction in a non-evaluative way to help coax further thought out of them. You have to give students time to collect their thoughts and fully articulate their beliefs, and sometimes this may take a minute. While we do have to keep the discussion moving, it is important to be mindful of brainstorming time.

One question that I have about incorporating numerous strategies into the classroom is how can we be sure to fit in all of the multiple intelligences without dragging on a unit past a reasonable time frame?

The following page could be a helpful tool for teacher's to use to coach them through a successful lesson conducted via student discussion: Teaching With Discussions