Tuesday, April 5, 2011

Meet Me in the Middle Chapter 3 Synthesis

This chapter was about brain research, and applying that to teaching middle school.  The beginning of the chapter focused mostly on helping students make memories, so they can remember the material they are learning.  The chapter also talked about how important emotions can be for young adults, and how we, as teachers, can use this to our advantage, and use emotions to help students learn.  Another thing this chapter talked about was helping students think for themselves, and be have reasoning and logic skills, and Wormeli provided a list of argument fallacies that students can recognize.


Most of the students in class liked this chapter.  We all pretty much agreed that, at this age, children are going through a lot of changes, and need their minds and brains taken care of, as well as their bodies.  Most students pointed out that we need to cater to students' emotions, in addition to teaching them academic stuff.  And we also liked how Wormeli talked about how we need to teach students to think on their own, and use their brains to learn.