INTERACTION


This weeks blog post was about interaction. I found that all three were very valuable reads and engaged me. The first one talked about what interaction is in general and how important it is to learn. I feel like when someone is interacting you can tell if they actually understand it or not. Interaction can also create more engagement which is very important. I have also been in situations where people do not interact and when that happens it can be less valuable because less idea sharing takes place.

Looking at the second article it talked about interaction during online learning because of COVID 19. In the article it talks about the huge gap between learning that happened and that didn’t happen due to lack of interaction. I had hands on experience during this situation and had to work extra hard to engage with my students to create as much interaction as possible. For some families it was easy because of easy and access to technology. Other families were less into it and didn’t want to engage, when that happened a weekly phone call happened to make sure the students had some interaction to know they were thought and cared about. I also tried to use all of the programs available for student to tech interaction so they could also learn at their own pace. IXL, Prodigy, Raz kids were all free during the time and I tried to take full advantage. For some seeing their peers through our daily video class chat where we could catch up, share and play games together made the difference in a lot of those kids lives. I feel that interaction with the teacher with the students and with content is very valuable and I saw that first hand during Covid learning.

The final article talked about assessment with interaction. I agree wholeheartedly that one cannot just assume students are learning because they are present. One must engage through conversations, gestures and open ended ideas. As a classroom teacher you can tell the more a student is engaged based on their interaction or lack thereof. At times you get kids who sneak a book or draw opposed to participating. This can be due to lack of interest, lack of sleep, hunger, attention struggled or distraction from something and they struggled to transition easily. Interaction is definitely the key to learning. It can help guide what you need to do next based on the student.