Google Reader

I have been following my peers' blogs throughout the semester via Google Reader. I have never used an RSS feed before, so this was a wonderful new experience for me. After going back tonight and looking over the blogs of my classmates, I have found that the assignments we were given were as open-ended as I interpreted them at first. Although I may not have called them "open-ended" at first, I can now see that the assignments really were designed to have no "right" answer. Oftentimes, when asked to write a response or create statements, I felt a bit lost. I know now that this was done intentionally to cause students to form their own opinions. I feel overall that this is highly positive because they were questions that engaged higher-order thinking. Since they had no "right" answer (like a lower-order thinking question would), they put the gears of our brains in motion by having us apply and synthesize what we learned.

With that in mind, one particular sentence in Catherine's blog struck me as particularly inspiring. She stated, "A good teacher acknowledges that his or her top priority is not the teaching that takes place in his or her classroom but the learning." I have not considered this idea, and I think the way she worded it was excellent. The number one priority should always be student learning. Therefore, teachers should have a plan for what they want to teach, but if they find it going awry, they should reapproach their method to ensure student learning. Teachers should not become so attached to their lesson plans that they sacrifice student learning to maintain it.