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Elementary Education: GoodWork habits of mind are a natural for elementary school students

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    • CommentAuthorjweissman
    • CommentTimeSep 24th 2009
     
    Students are inspired by the idea that what they do is important. I discuss GoodWork theory with my gifted and talented students, whose intrinsic motivation is fed by the idea that something worth doing is worth doing excellently, ethically and socially responsibly. Engagement is a natural development when student work is self-directed, authentic, and personally meaningful. My fourth and fifth graders discuss concepts of good work, and discover that big ideas transcend the neat and timely response.
    • CommentAuthorfischmwe
    • CommentTimeOct 7th 2009
     
    June, your comments remind me of Ron Berger's work and his work with Expeditionary Learning. As a teacher, his main focus was to get students to care about the quality of their work because he believed that if student's care about its quality and others (teachers, other students, parents, community members etc) appreciate it too, students will strive for excellence. His book An Ethic of Excellence describes his incredible work with students and is a must read! Expeditionary Learning is a movement that several schools throughout the country have adopted and the results exempilifed in student work is incredible.
    • CommentAuthormayus69
    • CommentTimeOct 9th 2009
     
    In young students it is more easy to do their best, because sometimes they are learning, experimenting, and enjoying what they do, and they like to do efforts to get what they want, but as they grow this willingness seems to diminish, in my own experience, it is because they feel some pressure about what adults expect from them and they loose their natural instinct to do Good Work, I am now encouraging teachers to be careful to let them work as they did at first, and guide student's work to excellence with a different perspective.
    • CommentAuthorjweissman
    • CommentTimeOct 16th 2009
     
    My gifted/talented program does not assign grades, which I hope encourages risk-taking and somewhat eases the pressure to follow another person's format and expectations. Students assess themselves through self-evaluation and reflective processing of their work. I write weekly letters to them and they respond, so we have some true one-on-one correspondence about the quality of their performance. They are equally evaluative about mine. I try to create a community of learners with myself as a member.

    I will be ordering a copy of Expeditionary Learning. Thanks for the recommendation!
    • CommentAuthorlizette
    • CommentTimeOct 28th 2009
     
    It is important to expose students to interesting topics. Our goal as educators should be raising children not as isolated entities with logical thinking structure on one hand and the problems they need to cope on the other but encourage them to discover how enjoyable it could be thinking and solving daily life problems so they learn in a meaningful way
    • CommentAuthorbibianne
    • CommentTimeNov 10th 2009
     
    I think that nowadays we sould also try to encourage parents to let their kids learn everyday things by having the kids solve their problems on their own, but as a society it's hard to cope with old habbits that parents are the ones that solve everyting. In my experience I have seen really smart and capable students being obstructed by their parents, just by trying to give them as we say in México "Everything in their hands without the minimal effort". Let the kids be themselves and not just a shadow from their parents!!!

    Bibianne
    Jules Verne School, Mexico City

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