Activity #1

The students in this Social Studies classroom sit at tables with five to six students per table. They are not grouped according to ability and each table has a broad range of ability levels. I decided to choose a table where it appeared that the students were having difficulty staying on task and comprehending the material. I was hoping to work with these students very closely so that together we could finish several tasks and in so doing, increase their self-esteem and confidence. The topic at this time is South America and the students basically answer questions that are listed in the margins of the Teacher's Edition book. These questions are given out in the form of a packet and the teacher has the students at the various tables compete to see who can finish their packet first. I thought of my investigation task card as another form of packet but one in which there was more than one correct answer for each question.

When the students read the list of tasks on my task card, I had to deal with a tremendous amount of "I can't do this". As we all worked together to complete each level on the task card, the students seemed to gain a greater sense of self-esteem and tended to be more eager to complete the work. Many of the students told me they were glad that I had them actually doing things rather than searching through the book to find the correct answer. Of course, there was a great deal of complaining about not understanding and not being able to complete some of the items because they did not know what it was like to live in South America. I explained to them that the creativity they were learning in Language Arts would help them on many of the tasks. Of course, the students then looked at me as if I had two heads. They had never heard of using something they had learned in another class to complete an assignment in here. They soon found that it was really very simple and actually beneficial for them to use things they were learning in other classes to help them complete the different level tasks. Once the students at the table I had originally chosen to help began to become somewhat self-sufficient, I started to work with the other groups one by one. I think the hardest level of the task card for the different classes was the level dealing with synthesis-level tasks. The students seemed to struggle more in this area than any of the others.

Overall, I found that the students seemed to learn more by focusing intently on specific concepts and areas covered by this task card than they would have by merely answering questions. I guess this goes to show that anyone can search and find a "correct" answer in a book but it takes knowledge of oneself and the content to be able to complete each of the levels on an investigation task card. This experience has shown me that when I become a teacher, I definitely want to use these in my classroom. The possibility of covering a tremendous amount of objectives with "one" assignment should be an invitation to many other teachers to venture into the use of task cards but only time will tell if they are willing to change from their "comfortable" way of teaching!!!