Talons' "Focus Time"

As TALONS facilitators, Ms. Mulder and I try not to make teacher-centered lectures and lessons too often the focus of our daily use of class time, preferring instead to use our common time and space for shared communication and collaborative problem solving based around many aspects of the class’ current learning. Especially in the spring semester, we often provide brief mini-lectures on topics or concepts for the day (or week), and then allow the class ample periods of “Focus Time” to be used for work and study of ongoing projects or problems.

There is a variety of different “focus” activities in the video above (Math, Socials, Adventure Trip planning, Leadership projects, etc) that attest to a diverse and productive use of class time the TALONS strive to produce on a daily basis.

Cross posted on the class blog, Defying Normality.

2 thoughts on “Talons' "Focus Time"

  1. Mr. Jackson,

    My name is Tiffany Fey and I am an EDM 310 student in Dr. Strange’s class at the University of South Alabama, ,majoring in Elementary/ Special Education . One of my assignments is to comment on two of your blog posts, write a summary of them and my comments, and then post the summary to my blog later in the month. This blog post shared a great idea that am going to uphold in my future classrooms: Group work. I believe that allowing students to work together in a classroom really helps them build character and teaches them social skills that they will need as adults. Many teachers that I know hesitate to let their students work in groups in the classroom because they get too loud or they are afraid they will just play instead of work, but a teacher needs to have faith in their students, because students will often live up to their teacher’s expectations. Teachers must give their students a chance to work in groups at least sometimes because students need interaction with each other during the learning process. Many times students learn better from each other than they do just listening to the teacher talk. Thank you for sharing this post Mr. Jackson, the video was very cute! If you would like to see my summary of your blog posts and my comments, later this month you can go to My Blog.

    Thank you! Tiffany Fey

  2. Hi, my name is Heather. I am a student of Dr. Strange’s EDM310 class at University of South Alabama.I am glad that the classroom is base on teacher-centered. There are students that do not do well on teacher-centered. I am a hands on person and I do not like to sit still for more than 2 hours. I like the idea of “focus time”. I wish some of the teachers I had made a “focus time” I may have done better in class. I enjoy reading the blog and watching the video. Thank you!

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