TPE 8: Learning about Students

It is completely crucial to understand students as individual in order to successfully engage them in the curriculum.  There are various ways that educators can come to know their students while maximize learning opportunities for all students. The first weeks of my classroom involves various games that allow students to share who they are and various interests that they have. My students enjoy playing games to build a classroom community and also to share about themselves in a low-risk way. One game that they love is "Two truths and a lie," where students say two things about themselves that no one knows with the third fact being a lie, of course out of order, so that their classmates can guess. Such types of community building games not only allows the student to share their individuality but also builds the relationships and empathy amongst the classroom community. Such type of community building is key in order to gain the trust and respect of the students and also facilitates buy-in and investment into their success in the class.

I acknowledge that there are some students who might feel uncomfortable sharing in groups or infront of other students, therefore I created a survey to get to know the students on a personal level, which allows me to incorporate their interests into the curriculum. I give the survey at the beginning of a course in order to gage the talents and interests of the students and tailor the content of the class. It also provides me with the information of the students relationship with reading and writing. I am interested to see if they read outside homework obligations, and if they do, what kind of literature do they prefer, so I can also apply that knowledge to the layout of the content and the media used in class.

Attached is a link to the student survey.