Teaching Content Outrageously E-Book

Stanley Pogrow

• Herausgeber: John Wiley & Sons
• Kategorie: Bildung
• Sprache: Englisch

Seitenzahl: 406

Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2010

Beschreibung

A powerful instructional method for "hooking" students on academic learning Drawing from a teaching model designed to banish boredom and student apathy, this book explains how dramatic practices can serve as powerful tools for enlivening lessons and captivating students, even the most resistant learners. Filled with intriguing classroom examples, Pogrow shows how any teacher can make use of dramatic techniques, such as surprise, humor, fantasy, role plays, games, and simulations to create standards-based content lessons that are riveting, effective, and meaningful. The author explains how to design such lessons into any content area. Stanley Pogrow (San Francisco, CA), a noted authority on teaching practices for disadvantaged students, is professor of educational leadership at San Francisco State University, where he coordinates the Educational Leadership for Equity Program.

Leseprobe

Table of Contents

JOSSEY-BASS TEACHER

Praise

Title Page

Copyright Page

ABOUT THIS BOOK

PURPOSE

SUMMARY OF CONTENTS

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Dedication

Acknowledgements

chapter ONE - Why Teach Outrageously in All the Content Areas?

MOVING FROM CONVENTIONAL TO OUTRAGEOUS TEACHING

DEFINITION OF DRAMATIC TECHNIQUE

THE POWER OF DRAMA AS AN INSTRUCTIONAL TOOL

DEFINING OUTRAGEOUS TEACHING

WHY TEACH OUTRAGEOUSLY?

IS THERE A METHOD TO DWIGHT’S OUTRAGEOUSNESS?

WHY IS DWIGHT TEACHING AN OUTRAGEOUS LESSON?

SUMMARY

chapter TWO - Perspectives on Dramatizing Content Instruction

INSTRUCTIONAL USE OF DRAMATIC TECHNIQUE: RECENT EVOLUTION

CAN DRAMATIC TECHNIQUES INCREASE LEARNING?

THEORETICAL BASES FOR TEACHING CONTENT OUTRAGEOUSLY

SUMMARY

chapter THREE - From Discipline to Outrageous Teaching: Classroom Use of ...

MAINTAINING DISCIPLINE

INSTRUCTIONAL MANAGEMENT

REVIEWING AND ENRICHING CONTENT LEARNING

DRAMATIC PRACTICES FOR INTRODUCING NEW CONTENT

WHAT CAN BE LEARNED FROM DWIGHT’S OUTRAGEOUS LESSON?

SUMMARY

chapter FOUR - How to Design Outrageous Lessons: Essential Steps

DESIGNING OUTRAGEOUS LESSONS: THE DRAMATIZED CONTENT PLANNING METHOD

COMPONENTS OF A DRAMATIZED CONTENT LESSON PLAN

DWIGHT’S PROBLEM IN PLANNING HIS LESSON

APPLYING THE DRAMATIZED CONTENT PLANNING METHOD: KEY STEPS

ASSESSMENT

ACHIEVING SELF-FULFILLMENT

SUMMARY

chapter FIVE - Outrageous Lessons: Examples from the Classroom

OVERVIEW

JULIE’S LESSON (LANGUAGE ARTS, MIDDLE SCHOOL)

DEVELOPING SOCIAL STUDIES LESSONS

TAMARRA’S LESSON (SOCIAL STUDIES, HIGH SCHOOL)

SHIRLEY’S LESSON (LITERATURE, HIGH SCHOOL SENIORS)

VIERA’S LESSON (LITERATURE, MIDDLE SCHOOL)

SERENA’S LESSON (POETRY, HIGH SCHOOL)

JOSE’S LESSON (SPANISH, HIGH SCHOOL)

A BRIEF EXAMPLE OF ANOTHER SPANISH LESSON

MATH AND SCIENCE LESSONS

JOHN’S LESSON (SCIENCE, MIDDLE SCHOOL)

STAN’S LESSON 1 (MATH, GRADES 5 TO 10)

STAN’S LESSON 2 (MATH, GRADES 4 TO 5)

COMPARISON OF THE LESSONS

SUMMARY

chapter SIX - Suspense and Surprise: Why Outrageous Lessons Work

THE PHYSICS OF OUTRAGEOUS LESSONS

THE NEW LAWS OF TEACHER-STUDENT INTERACTION

MAINTAINING DISCIPLINE

CREATING A NEW PHYSICS OF STUDENT ACHIEVEMENT

UNIQUENESS OF THE DRAMATIZED CONTENT METHOD

DEVELOPING AN OUTRAGEOUS LESSON IS A STATE OF MIND

A FORESEEABLE PROBLEM

SUMMARY

chapter SEVEN - Getting Started

GETTING STARTED AS AN INDIVIDUAL TEACHER

BASIC APPROACH: INCORPORATE OTHER USES OF DRAMA

ADVANCED APPROACH: INCORPORATE AN OUTRAGEOUS UNIT

EXPAND YOUR KNOWLEDGE OF DRAMA

GETTING STARTED AS A COLLABORATIVE GROUP

GETTING STARTED AS A SCHOOL

APPLYING OUTRAGEOUS TEACHING TO REDUCE THE LEARNING GAP

BUILDING A GRASSROOTS MOVEMENT

GETTING STARTED AS A PROFESSION

SUMMARY

chapter EIGHT - So. . .Let’s Do It!

OVERCOMING THE BARRIERS—ONE TEACHER AND ONE LESSON AT A TIME

IN CONCLUSION

APPENDIX A: THE ORIGINS OF DRAMA

APPENDIX B: GAMES AND QUIZZES—SELECTED RESOURCES

APPENDIX C: SIMULATION UNITS—SELECTED RESOURCES

APPENDIX D: LESSON PLANS FOR THE SAMPLE LESSONS

APPENDIX E: TEACHING OUTRAGEOUSLY IN THE EARLY GRADES

REFERENCES

INDEX

JOSSEY-BASS TEACHER

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More Praise for Teaching Content Outrageously

“Pogrow is one of the nation’s most inventive educators. He demonstrates his creativity, and that of the teachers he works with, in this powerful reminder that lively lessons produce engaged learners. A wonderful book demonstrating that creative teaching is within the grasp of all who are privileged enough to be called teacher.”

—David C. Berliner, Former President, American Educational Research Association, Former Dean and Regents’ Professor, Mary Lou Fulton College of Education, Arizona State University

“Dr. Pogrow tells not only what outrageous content teaching is, but how to do it effectively, and how to train others to do it. The book is vital for teachers and professional developers interested in accelerating student learning as well as in improving teacher practices. The book is informative, practical, and fun. It’s a must read for every serious educator.”

—Dr. Ahmes Askia, Director, Professional Development, National Urban Alliance, Atlanta GA

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Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Pogrow, Stanley.

p. cm.

Includes bibliographical references and index.

eISBN : 978-0-470-62344-2

1. Education—Experimental methods. 2. Teaching—Aids and devices. 3.

Creative teaching. 4. Drama in education. I. Title.

LB 1027.3.P64 2008

371.1—dc22

2008041908

PB Printing

ABOUT THIS BOOK

All teachers face a set of problems that at times seem unsolvable. For example:

• What do you do on those days when students are bored, uncooperative, uninterested—or even actively resistant to learning?

• What do you do when the required content objectives seem too abstract or too difficult for most students to understand or appreciate no matter how you try to explain them?

• How do you handle a class in which the moment you start to teach, half the students decide they need to sharpen a pencil or go to the bathroom?

• What do you do when the best instructional practices fail to work?

There are also ongoing challenges, such as the following:

• How do you get students who are two or more years behind in reading and math to write essays and solve math word problems?

• How do you get students to reflect on key ideas rather than just learn facts, and how do you get those who are preoccupied with doing well on test questions to truly engage fundamental ideas?

• How do you teach the YouTube generation, which expects on-demand, individualized entertainment and learning experiences?

These are everyday problems for most teachers and principals. In addition, as public schools in the United States become increasingly segregated by race, and as accountability pressures grow, all of these problems are exacerbated.

In such an environment, teachers rely on the old standbys of (a) telling students “you need to learn it because it is on the test and if you do not do well you will not get promoted,” (b) sending the unruly to the office and complaining to their parents, (c) ignoring passive learners after initial attempts to get them to respond, or (d) making the lesson “authentic” and telling students, “You will understand why this is important when you become adults.”

None of these techniques are ideal. The problems with the first three are obvious. The problem with the fourth is that adolescents go through stages in which they think adults are dorks, and most efforts to provide “authentic” curricula focus on applications from the adult world—which can serve to reinforce students’ belief that the content is uncool.

What is a teacher to do?

The best solution is to convert those content lessons into learning experiences that are so fascinating and entertaining that students cannot help but be drawn into what you are trying to get them to learn, and hang onto your every word and gesture!

Impossible? A pipe dream? A fantasy?

Not really. It actually is possible to draw all students deeply into what you are trying to teach, pretty much whenever you want to. This book describes a methodology for creating lessons and units for teaching any content, be it traditional or standards based, in ways that engage and inspire even the most reluctant, resistant, and superficial learner. The techniques provide a way for teachers to have fun teaching those lessons and units that have formerly been trouble, while increasing student learning.

In this book you will meet teachers across the content areas who are teaching in such an unusual and daring fashion that the only adjectives that apply to describe these lessons and units are outrageous and highly effective. These types of lessons and units are hereafter referred to in this book as Outrageous Teaching, or teaching content Outrageously. The Outrageous Teaching approach is designed to teach conventional content objectives more effectively and quickly than traditional approaches. It is the fusion of art, creativity, imagination, and emotion—and pragmatics.

The techniques of Outrageous Teaching are designed to be employed by any teacher with a bit of daring in any content area in grades 4 through 12. The focus is on these grades because they are the ones in which content objectives become increasingly specialized and complex, and because once students in these grades fall behind or lose interest in a content area, they tend to go downhill thereafter.

PURPOSE

This book presents a validated methodology for designing highly dramatic and unconventional lessons for meeting standards-based content objectives (or any other content objectives) that any teacher can use in any curricular area. Most teachers already use some of these techniques in their everyday instruction to maintain discipline and for other instructional management purposes. Outrageous Teaching incorporates many of these everyday techniques, such as the use of signals to get students’ attention, along with others such as role-playing. It then modifies and intensifies the dramatic intensity of these techniques in systematic ways that (a) immediately capture students’ attention, (b) captivate them throughout the lesson, (c) make them want to learn the content, and (d) make the teaching, learning, and application of the content a seamless process.

If you would like to experience this amazing transformation in your classroom, read and use this book, which provides a specific planning methodology called the Dramatized Content Planning Method. This method makes it possible for all teachers in all content areas to design such lessons. In addition, the book provides extensive examples of teachers using these techniques in different content areas. You will find here lessons that are masterful. Can you design such lessons? Yes! Although you may at first feel intimidated by how good these lessons are, please keep in mind that most of the highlighted lessons were designed by inexperienced student teachers. If they could tap their imagination to create these types of show-stopping lessons, you too can develop highly original and creative Outrageous lessons that convert even the most prosaic topics into captivating and effective learning experiences. All the sample lessons and units in this book are highlighted.

The techniques presented in this book are highly practical—albeit a bit weird. They are derived from my research and successful experience using drama as a curricular technique in the large-scale reform programs I have developed over the past twenty-six years, and from my work with student teachers at the University of Arizona.

The reform for which I am most known is the Higher Order Thinking Skills (HOTS) program for low-income and learning-disabled students in grades 4 through 8. This program integrated theories of learning, technology, and drama to create a powerful Socratic learning environment for developing the types of thinking and literacy skills that underlie all learning, and it substituted these activities for remedial instruction. I also designed Supermath, which is an alternative approach to teaching the pre-algebra topics that are most difficult for all students to learn, such as word problems. Supermath used technology to create fantasy contexts in which math content was critical for resolving dilemmas that were of interest to students, as a way to teach both mathematical reasoning and content objectives. Both of these programs incorporated heavy doses of dramatic technique, humor, and fantasy, and led to key discoveries about the conditions under which a dramatic approach could increase and deepen learning to a greater degree than relying on conventional approaches.

Could such knowledge be used by all teachers in their everyday teaching? To find out, I asked each of my student teachers to prepare a highly dramatic lesson for me to observe. Over time I refined how I prepared them to create such lessons. The result was some of the most amazing teaching I have ever seen. (Examples of these lessons and units are found in Chapters Five and Seven.) Indeed, it is the lessons taught by my student teachers that were the inspiration for this book, and the methods I used to prepare these students are the book’s backbone.

Thus, the techniques presented in this book have been developed, used, and validated over an extended period. All of the sample lessons and units described here are ones I witnessed teachers using successfully with students—often in the toughest classrooms and schools. In addition, to give a better sense of what it is like to develop and teach these types of lessons and units, each example not only describes the lesson but also describes the background of its development, the reaction of the teacher and students, and the aftermath and effects of the lesson.

So, every time you find yourself thinking, “This could not possibly work,” please keep in mind that it has worked. This means that if you open the creative part of your mind, you can make “it”—or something similarly different, strange, and wonderful—work with your students.

This book is designed to enable all teachers who have a sense of humor, a dash of daring, and a desire to reach their students more deeply to use the techniques of Outrageous Teaching to develop highly original, creative, and engaging ways of converting even the most prosaic content objectives and topics into captivating and effective learning experiences for their students. The book is also designed to be used by administrators and instructional leaders seeking a way to incorporate more creative instruction into their schools and districts, by teacher educators as a text for preservice training methods courses, and by teacher trainers for postservice workshops.

Outrageous Teaching has the following main advantages over conventional instruction:

• It can be used to teach concepts that otherwise might not be interesting or accessible to students, in ways that captivate them and increase their learning.

• It can make lessons meaningful and memorable to students.

• Although it helps all students, it can succeed particularly well with underperformers.

Clearly, Outrageous Teaching is not the first effort to enhance instruction through dramatic technique and the use of humor and fantasy. This practice goes back to ancient times. Many teachers already employ drama and other progressive techniques such as simulation, role-play, games, readers theater, and so on.

What makes Outrageous Teaching unique compared to traditional classroom use of dramatic technique is that, rather than relegating such techniques to review and enrichment, it is specifically designed to be the primary instructional technique for teaching targeted content objectives. Outrageous Teaching is designed to be used in lieu of rather than as an addition to conventional instruction to teach the most troublesome content objectives in your school or district’s curriculum. Why not teach the content “richly” in the first place? This is the goal of Outrageous Teaching, regardless of whether the targeted curriculum objectives are mandated by state or federal standards or by the independent decision of a school or district, or selected by you, the teacher, on the basis of your own instincts about what is important for your students to learn.

Outrageous Teaching is thus both effective and efficient. As readers will see in the sample lessons presented in the book, Outrageous Teaching not only increases content learning and transforms the student-teacher relationship, but also does so in less time than traditional teaching. Also, the techniques are optimized for content learning in grades 4 through 12. This means that the techniques can be used to teach rigorous and complex concepts. Indeed, the more rigorous and complex the concepts are, the more valuable the techniques are for making them interesting and accessible to students. In addition, Outrageous Teaching is so powerful that even a few such lessons are transformative for both teachers and students, both individually and in how they interact with each other. Students who formerly were passive come alive and reveal their true capabilities.

Because Outrageous Teaching is effective, efficient, and focused on complex content objectives, its use is consistent with, though not limited to, the current emphasis on standards and accountability. Standards and accountability dictate merely what content should be taught, not how the content should be taught. In addition, teaching Outrageously does not require additional funds or equipment—it requires only imagination and daring.

Enough about pragmatics and standards. The bottom line for teachers and students is that it is lots more fun to teach and to learn through Outrageous Teaching than through traditional instructional approaches. It is hoped that reading this book will put lots of smiles on your face, with an occasional belly laugh, and above all, inspire you to venture forth.

SUMMARY OF CONTENTS

Chapter One defines what dramatic technique is in general, and what Outrageous Teaching is specifically, and why Outrageous Teaching is a powerful tool for teaching content to all students, and particularly to the disadvantaged. The chapter also provides a glimpse of an Outrageous lesson.

Chapter Two discusses the history of incorporating dramatic technique into education. It presents the different schools of thought and describes how the use of dramatic technique evolved differently in the United States than it did in England. This chapter also discusses the theoretical and research bases that support the use of dramatic technique as an instructional tool, and provides a follow-up glimpse of the Outrageous lesson previewed in Chapter One.

Chapter Three describes the typical uses of dramatic techniques in the classroom—from maintaining discipline and providing instructional management to using student role-play strategies, including games and simulations, to review and reinforce content learning. The chapter then discusses how many of these widely used, valuable techniques form the building blocks of Outrageous Teaching. It then compares how Outrageous Teaching differs in its application of those techniques and why it tends to be more efficient and effective for teaching standards-based content, or any teacher-initiated content. The example of the Outrageous lesson glimpsed in earlier chapters is then presented in its entirety to show how the approach extends conventional use of dramatic classroom technique, and why the lesson is so effective.

Chapters Four through Seven focus on the how-to and practical aspects of implementing Outrageous lessons and units, along with lots of examples, and advice on how to get started. The sample lessons are highlighted with a gray screen.

Chapter Four describes the daily-lesson planning method used to create Outrageous lessons and links the techniques discussed in the preceding chapters to the sample lesson presented in Chapter Three. Lots of additional examples are presented to illustrate how to plan each part of an Outrageous lesson. A lesson-planning template is also provided.

Chapter Five presents additional examples of teachers conducting Outrageous lessons in a variety of content areas with students in grades 4 through 12. It discusses how the lessons were developed, and the reactions of the students and teachers to these very different types of lessons. The techniques used to develop the lessons are compared, and the lesson plan template for each lesson is provided.

Chapter Six describes what can be learned from the experiences of the teachers and students in the sample lessons presented earlier, in terms of the benefits for students and teachers and for the process of lesson development.

Chapter Seven discusses how everyone, from individual teachers to schools and the profession as a whole, can get started using Outrageous lessons. It also discusses how the planning techniques can be extended to create Outrageous units, and to develop lessons for the earliest grades.

Chapter Eight reviews the rationales for and benefits from teaching content Outrageously.

Together these chapters provide both a theoretical rationale and a specific, validated methodology that all teachers can use to apply dramatic technique, humor, and imagination to their teaching in order to enrich their professional practice and inspire transformative student learning. They also offer many inspirational examples of successful experiences.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Dr. Stanley Pogrow started his career as a math teacher in the New York City public schools. He currently serves as professor of educational leadership at San Francisco State University. Dr. Pogrow is also one of leadership at San Francisco State University. Dr. Pogrow is also one of the nation’s leading scholars in the formulation of policies and practices for reducing the learning gap, and is especially noted for his national reform efforts, including use of advanced instructional approaches for accelerating and enriching the learning of children born into poverty and for helping all students learn complex content. He developed the Higher Order Thinking Skills (HOTS) Project, a thinking skills approach to Title I and learning disabled (LD) students in grades 4 through 8. HOTS has been used in approximately 2,600 schools in forty-eight states and has served close to a half-million Title I and LD students. HOTS has won numerous state and federal awards. Dr. Pogrow also developed Supermath, a form of pre-algebra mathematics curriculum that develops math problem-solving skills in all students. Funded by the National Science Foundation, Supermath uses technology to create dramatic contexts for applying and inferring mathematical concepts constructivistically. His latest reform effort is the Hi-Perform School, a redesign of high-poverty elementary schools to reduce the learning gap.

Dr. Pogrow’s research and development work has been funded by grants from the National Science Foundation, the U.S. Department of Education, the Arizona Department of Education, the Edna McConnell Clark Foundation, the Ford Foundation, IBM, and Apple Corporation. Dr. Pogrow has served as professor at the University of Arizona, Seattle University (endowed chair), the University of Illinois at Champagne-Urbana, the University of New Mexico, and the University of Southern California (endowed chair), and has been a visiting scholar at the University of California, Los Angeles. In addition, he has worked at the National Science Foundation and the California State Department of Education. He is the author of four books, including Education in the Computer Age: Issues of Policy, Practice, and Reform (1983), and more than one hundred journal articles. He did a series of monographs on exemplary middle school curricula for each of the major content areas for the National Middle School Association. He has made more than 240 presentations around the United States and abroad.

Dr. Pogrow is a noted teacher educator. More than three thousand teachers have gone through his small-group, weeklong workshop on how to develop thinking skills in children born into poverty, and he has mentored more than one hundred student teachers. He continues to offer workshops on thinking development and schoolwide questioning strategies, and now plans to offer workshops on creating Outrageous lessons.

Photos of the author at work, taken by Hall Williams, Tucson, AZ.

This book is dedicated to the memory of my parents, Morris and Rhoda, for putting up with me, and to Deborah, for supporting my explorations.

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

I would like to acknowledge the wonderful teachers and student teachers I have been fortunate to work with, observe, and learn from over the course of my career. Without them, their ideas, and their dedication to students and to the craft of teaching, this book would not have been possible, nor would any of my other professional accomplishments have been possible. I would also especially like to thank the first teacher I ever observed, who was also the best—my mom, Rhoda (may she rest in peace).

A very special thanks goes to Christie Hakim, associate editor at Jossey-Bass, for maintaining her interest and support over the four-year period from when I first broached the idea for this book to when I had the time to start writing it. Her enthusiasm for new ideas is inspiring. In addition, her critical insights were always on target and an invaluable guide.

Finally, I would like to thank my research assistant, Penney Radillo, for her research on the history of theater, and Barbara (Bobbi) McKean, associate professor of theater arts education at the University of Arizona, for her suggestions on sources.