Week 4: Answers and Images

Looking for Answers
I've been struggling with my students and understanding whether they are not putting enough effort in or is it my teaching strategy. So for some reason I thought if I read this article I would get some sort of answer as to how much more can I do to help them understand a certain concept?

In this article, the author compares a classroom to a green house. This makes sense to me in many ways. Children can represent many different plants. Each requiring a different amount of water, sunlight, care, etc.

But how much can I expect? I don't know what every child's home life is. In this metaphor of a greenhouse, if these students are the plants then I'm not the only gardener. I only get a fraction of the time to take care of them. I'm beginning to find more of a balance and as I spend more time with them  I am learning as much as I can about each of them, what makes them excited. The article ends with more questions with the author reaching out for answers and suggestions for the readers. I'm looking forward to checking out the article comments for inspiration!

About Images and Pictures...
I love images. I've spoken before about being a visual learner. I'm also an artist and painter so looking at images and understanding them feels natural to me. I love the creativity that comes with images, even words when written become an image.

Furthermore, I love the idea of a "linguistic landscape", that Scott Thornberry describes in his blog. In my own learning of Hebrew I'm reminded of what its like to be a child and to walk around wording out signs to myself or others. My walk to school is my classroom, every time I look at a menu I'm doing language excercises.
 Israel being a globalized country and having english in many places I may have my own kids do the activity described where they take pictures and bring them back to the classroom and we discuss them.