The Truth about Silence

Yesterday was a fairly uneventful day. In the morning, I took the AP Chemistry exam for a grueling three hours. After taking the exam, I headed off to St. Barnabas for the remainder of the day. There were only about two class periods left when I arrived, one of which was a planning period. During these two periods, I sorted class t-shirts that the students received this morning, made an answer key for a quiz the seventh graders took that morning, and observed a lesson about a short historical fiction story called The Drummer Boy of Shiloh. 

            Today was a different story. In the morning, I observed two seventh grade classes and then taught the third. This lesson made use of the student’s workbooks, which we used to review strengths and weaknesses for both the Americans and the British during the American Revolution. There was a study hall between the second in third seventh grade class where I started to grade the quiz the students took on Monday. I am also in the process of grading a test the seventh graders took last Thursday on the beginning of the American Revolution. That leaves me with about 70 quizzes and 70 tests to grade. It can be a bit depressing when you look at the stack of papers and you realize that you are only half way through. After the seventh grade classes, I led a discussion with the eighth grade classes on the short story they read on Monday. I had a list of questions to help me guide the discussion, which helped. The most difficult part was getting the eighth graders to actually participate. The most frequent response I received was silence, despite my efforts to rephrase questions or hint at possible answers. I have found out that there is nothing worse than trying to lead class discussion where only a few individuals are willing to participate.