Helping Math And Science Students Through Criticism

Helping Math and Science Students Through Criticism Paige M. Bartlett University of Washington Teaching to Transgress March 15th , 2015 When we read Tough’s (2012) How Children Succeed in class, some of my classmates were shocked by Spiegel’s frank and harsh tone with students. A line from her blog reads, â€Å" ‘I said some amazing things to kids, including ‘You can count to two, right? Then you should have seen that!!’ and ‘If you are not going to pay more attention you should quit chess, because you are wasting everyone’s time.’ † (Tough, 2012, p. 119) When Spiegel says, â€Å" ‘Most people won’t tell teenage girls...that they are lazy and the quality of their work is unacceptable’ † (p. 120) most people would respond, ‘Well,†¦show more content†¦121) Her lessons often revolve around examining students’ mistakes in their chess games by â€Å"reconstructing the student’s flawed games on the green felt practice boards hung on hooks at the front of her classroom† (Tough, 2012, p. 115) and making sure they learn exactly what they need to know. After every tournament game, Spiegels’ students come back and review the games with her, move by move. Both her criticism and her praise aren’t empty. She’s upfront and honest with her students about what they did right and wrong, even if that honesty doesn’t always look pretty. In one instance, she went over a game with Sebastian, a student who originally chalked up his loss to, â€Å"the other guy was simply better than him.† (Tough, 2012, p. 106) However, going over it with Sebastian, Spiegel showed him the exact moments when he could have gained an advantage and won. While she does compliment him when he makes a good move, when he makes a bad one she challenges him to make better choices. The whole time, she kept telling him he had to slow down. In this way she accomplishes two things. By showing each moment he needed to slow down, it not only teaches him how to recognize advantageous situations (which will serve him better in future games), it gives him a skill he needs to work on (slowing down). If he was simply playing on his own, he likely wouldn’t recognize that