Meet Me in the Middle Chapter 4

Chapter 4 of Meet Me in the Middle was all about active learning inside and outside of the classroom. The chapter begins by bringing up the point that not only are young adolescents growing and need to be active, but being active can even result in deeper learning. I really enjoyed the story that the author tells about his student who just was not understanding ratios, so he took them outside to learning about them. I like how he framed the lesson around that one student, but in a way that didn’t make it obvious that he was the student that wasn’t getting it. Instead the lesson was turned into a meaningful experience for all the students in the class. The remainder of the chapter offered ideas for teachers to use to get their students more active in their classrooms. From that list of ideas there were a couple that really stood out to me. The first was having student actually get up out of their desks to pass papers in. It is so incredibly simple, yet it is so effective. I know this is something that I did with my freshman during student teaching, and it just gave them an opportunity to stand up move around, maybe even be goofy for a few seconds, before returning to their desks. The other idea that stood out to me was the carousel brainstorming. I did a similar activities during student teaching with my students and I thought my students really enjoyed them. Again, it gave them the opportunity to get out of their desks and work with the content in a different way.