How to Teach Students to Not Guess the Teacher’s Password?

Petruchio

As a teacher, I wonder if it is possible to instill this skill into students the skills of rationality and critical thinking. I teach the third grade, and it is not immediately apparent how to apply this with my own class.

The problems I foresee are as follows:

Young children often do not know the basics on the subject which they are learning, be it math, science, art, religion, literature etc.
Many children are very shy, and try to give as short of an answer as doable to a verbal prompt.
Written prompts are arduous, straining the attention span and writing capabilities of the students. This is not a bad thing, but it presents difficulties in the economy of time and material to be presented.
Attention spans in general are very short.
Experiments can be very infrequent, and nigh impossible with certain subjects.
Children, at this age, are likely to take the words of a parent or teacher at face value, and naturally parrot it back. This may be a hard habit to break.

In the sequences, it is suggested teachers should drill into students words don't count, only anticipation-controllers. How practical is this for an elementary school level? Also appreciated would be any ideas or experiences on how to do this, or how to combat the above problems. Hearing from other teachers would be excellent especially.

The problems I foresee are as follows:

Young children often do not know the basics on the subject which they are learning, be it math, science, art, religion, literature etc.
Many children are very shy, and try to give as short of an answer as doable to a verbal prompt.
Written prompts are arduous, straining the attention span and writing capabilities of the students. This is not a bad thing, but it presents difficulties in the economy of time and material to be presented.
Attention spans in general are very short.
Experiments can be very infrequent, and nigh impossible with certain subjects.
Children, at this age, are likely to take the words of a parent or teacher at face value, and naturally parrot it back. This may be a hard habit to break.

I think it would probably be more effective to have the students work on samples provided for them by the teacher, perhaps ones written by students from other classes, so as to avoid bickering and posturing between students.

Students are used to receiving corrections and critiques from their teachers. Having a peer critique one's work and offer corrections, and not take it as a status affront, is and act that requires some maturity, and many people never learn to do it at all.

Learning to receive correction from peers gracefully is an important skill which is probably worth taking the time to teach to students, but I don't think that paired peer critiques would be the best way of doing this. Some students will naturally produce better work than others, and thus have more criticism to offer and less to receive compared to their peers. The exercise would provide an element of "smart people don't have to receive criticism from their peers, ordinary/stupid people do," which the teacher would have to actively work against.

To teach students to accept correction from peers without taking it as a status challenge or an affront, I think I would try an exercise along these lines. Split the class into two groups. In each group, students work solo on a task provided by the teacher. However, the teacher provides different information to the students in each group. Neither group has all the information needed to perform the task correctly. After the students have tried and failed for a while, integrate the groups and pair the students up together, and tell them to pool their information.

Another way to get students to accept critizism would be to let each student rewrite his text after the feedback and then grade the revised version.

Having a peer critique one's work and offer corrections, and not take it as a status affront, is and act that requires some maturity, and many people never learn to do it at all.

Saying many people never learn the skill at all is just another way of saying that today's schools are very bad at teaching the skill.

To me the skill seems on of the most important that children should learn in school.

I think it m... (read more)

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How to Teach Students to Not Guess the Teacher’s Password?

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How to Teach Students to Not Guess the Teacher’s Password?

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