As always, well written. Love hearing your thoughts and for putting everything together for me! And thank you for the resources. I was jotting them down as I read and now have them in the CL!
Thanks for writing such a thorough and thoughtful piece on BTC. I am just starting on my BTC journey, but I am a music teacher so there is much to adapt and think about. After I read the book I realized that I was doing many similar things in my classes anyway, but now I have new tools to work with. But the obvious thing is that BTC is not the tool for everything we do in a music class. Mimicry and copying is a large part of what we do, out of necessity, and that simply has to be done in other ways.
The thing that I find funny on both sides of the argument — the DI and the MGI — is that methods of self-instruction are completely derided, yet people teach themselves things all the time. In music education, we thankfully have Lucy Green who has conducted research on how popular musicians learn and how to promote those conditions in the classroom. Yet, even in very formal Classical Music instruction, the centuries-old paradigm is that you have 30-60 minutes once a week with an expert and the rest of the week, you're on your own, baby. Every lesson is both a formative and a summative assessment, the time in between is for the student to problem solve alone, and it goes on like that for years. Maybe it's inefficient, maybe not so much.
Thank you so much for this well researched article. I have been using BTC daily for 14 months in my 4th grade classroom. I am worried that is misunderstood by many. The white boards are the most visible and "showy" aspect of BTC, but I argue not the most important. The consolidation is where we "tie the bow" (Peter's term I think?) on the learning. I love how you describe the random groups using the whiteboards as the way for teachers to know what students are thinking. The value of the whiteboard is the formative assessment. Some teachers are uncomfortable with not having the entire lesson mapped out but dependent on the daily work of the students. However this is where the joy of teaching comes in and those rare "aha!" moments.
I also become frustrated with people commenting on BTC without having read the book. Thank you for a great read and further suggested readings.
As always, well written. Love hearing your thoughts and for putting everything together for me! And thank you for the resources. I was jotting them down as I read and now have them in the CL!
Thanks for writing such a thorough and thoughtful piece on BTC. I am just starting on my BTC journey, but I am a music teacher so there is much to adapt and think about. After I read the book I realized that I was doing many similar things in my classes anyway, but now I have new tools to work with. But the obvious thing is that BTC is not the tool for everything we do in a music class. Mimicry and copying is a large part of what we do, out of necessity, and that simply has to be done in other ways.
The thing that I find funny on both sides of the argument — the DI and the MGI — is that methods of self-instruction are completely derided, yet people teach themselves things all the time. In music education, we thankfully have Lucy Green who has conducted research on how popular musicians learn and how to promote those conditions in the classroom. Yet, even in very formal Classical Music instruction, the centuries-old paradigm is that you have 30-60 minutes once a week with an expert and the rest of the week, you're on your own, baby. Every lesson is both a formative and a summative assessment, the time in between is for the student to problem solve alone, and it goes on like that for years. Maybe it's inefficient, maybe not so much.
That's a super interesting perspective, thanks for sharing that!
Thank you so much for this well researched article. I have been using BTC daily for 14 months in my 4th grade classroom. I am worried that is misunderstood by many. The white boards are the most visible and "showy" aspect of BTC, but I argue not the most important. The consolidation is where we "tie the bow" (Peter's term I think?) on the learning. I love how you describe the random groups using the whiteboards as the way for teachers to know what students are thinking. The value of the whiteboard is the formative assessment. Some teachers are uncomfortable with not having the entire lesson mapped out but dependent on the daily work of the students. However this is where the joy of teaching comes in and those rare "aha!" moments.
I also become frustrated with people commenting on BTC without having read the book. Thank you for a great read and further suggested readings.
Dina Allen
Schenectady, NY