Specific Methods of Teaching

Meeting #7 Chance Chap. 7, 8, 9 & 10

1. How does Chance define assessment? What can a teacher expect to learn
from the assessment of students?
2. What is the difference between formal and informal assessment?
3. Chance provides six rules for assessment:
a. The best reason for giving a test is to find out what you need to teach
b. Tests should be short and give frequently
c. A test should be a learning experience
d. Provide immediate and specific feedback
e. Test on what you want students to be able to do
f. Make tests, not the teacher, the enemy
Select two of these rules and explain what they mean to you and why they
are important.
4. Do rewards systems have a positive effect on student learning?
5. Chance offers eight guidelines for the use of rewards:
a. Provide rewards when interest is low
b. Emphasize intangible rewards
c. Use the weakest intangible reward that will motivate
d. Use rewards as surprises more often than as incentives
e. Give rewards when they have been earned
f. Identify the behavior being rewarded
g. Vary the reward to fit the student
h. Point out the natural rewards
Select three of these guidelines and explain what they mean to you along
with why they are important.
6. What are some of the techniques Chance suggests for increasing student
comprehension, understanding, and learning?
7. Chance discusses how recall can be improved? Name at least three of the
things students might do to increase their recall of material.
8. One of the problem-solving techniques that Chance advocates using is to set
the problem aside for a short time. Why do you think that doing so can help a
person improve their success in solving the problem?
9. What do you think the following sentence means, or how would you interpret
the meaning? To be successful at classroom management, the teacher must
first own the problem.
10.Chance shares a poem by David McCord: The Decent docent doesnt
doze; He teaches standing on his toes. What is Chance trying to say
about classroom management?
11.What are some of the other techniques that Chance suggested (or that you
have in your own toolbox) for dealing with student misbehavior?