Meet Me in the Middle: Chapter 4

Chapter 4:

In this chapter Wormeli discusses his belief of making sure that students are allowed and encouraged to be active during classes. Wormeli recognizes how this is a hard time for young adolescents during this time period because of the fast physical changes that take place in their bodies. Because of this he suggests getting students up and out of their seats at least every ten to fifteen minutes. He suggests allowing students to hand in their papers, switch seats, or work with another group. Wormeli recognizes that these suggestions are not the only ways teachers can get their students to be active. He suggests creating lessons that get students up and out of their seats. He used the example of going outside and using trees to demonstrate ratios.

I really liked this chapter and agree with what Wormeli suggested; I think that it is important to get students up and active. I liked a lot of the activities that he suggested especially measuring trees for ratio; when we did ratio in math, our worksheets would put pictures of a person and a tree, which now that I look back at it seems so funny. They gave us worksheets that we could have easily gotten rid of if we had just gone outside and done the work ourselves. The one thing that I disagreed with was his suggestion to have students get up every ten to fifteen minutes. I do think that students should have many different opportunities to stretch and move around, but if they’re up every ten minutes you’ll never have the opportunity to teach.