They have to fail in order to succeed
I am following one of the blogs that was mentioned in chapter 2 of our book (Bill Chamberlain). One of is blogs struck a cord with me because my students do this all of the time. Any time that we are in the science lab on experiment day I always have a handful of students that are so eager to begin their experiment that it seems all of the directions that I gave them ahead of time has flown out the window. Like Chamberlain mentions, it seems that some of the students minds start going full steam ahead at the word "experiment" that they forget to pay attention to the directions. This could end very badly especially if we are working with fire, gas, or chemicals that day. I don't want to squash their excitment, but the end result for not following the directions during a lab is an automatic 0. This has caught the eye of a few of my eager students over the past year and has seemed to help curb their eagerness to an extent (at least until AFTER the directions are given!)
Amy,
ReplyDeleteI find the same thing when giving directions to an exciting project! I also am finding that at this point in the year!!! What did she just say?! What are we doing?! It is important to hold our ground so they do get the point that listening is important!
I think it's interesting, Amy, that mistakes in a science lab like yours could lead to injury, or worse. I guess I never realized that students' ability to pay attention and follow directions could result in much more than just low grades or failed tests, annoyances really. And Whitney makes a good point that this problem seems much more pronounced now than in the fall.
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