Apirl 2, 2008

To challenge students can expose their weaknesses and frustrations but can allow grow. This is the realization I came today as I reflect on my lesson today, many of my students are prefectionist by nature and they enjoy and strive to be right. My unit being cultural dance can become complex if I want to take it to the next level, such in the dance today I had the students work first individually, then in pairs and progressed to groups of four. Individually and with partners they grasped the concepts and were able to succeed with the dance, but as I increased the numbers within the group the dance became more difficult. The students had to really think about how the dance was to be performed, for the perfectionist it was hard to let go of some of the power to other students in order to make the dance work. I believe it was a learning experience for all, I saw growth in my students and I was proud to be there teacher as they began to critcally think and problem solve in this dance. My question for the journal asked which dance they liked better the one on the pervious day (indepentant) or the one today (groups) and then asnswer why they felt that way. The perfectionist in the class answered they like the indivdual dance as it was easy to do (they could succeed). I think by challenging my students I'm allowing growth so they realize they don't have to always be perfect they must always try and never give up. I explained to my students after the dance was complete how proud I was of there accomplishments in todays class as I wanted to let them know although the dance was not perfect it was a hard dance to do and they did a fabulous dance. By giving this encouragement I hope they are proud of what they achieved in this lesson as they are becoming critical thinkers and problem solvers.