Teachers, older siblings,& OT storms in the UK

[Heather Edmonds]

No: HPFGUIDX 4936



> Susan wrote:

"> it's the teacher's responsibility not to call on the smartest/best
prepared
> student and equalize the answers. The student's responsibility is to
answer
> the questions."
>
> Simon wrote:
"Which leads me to the question: Why do several of the teachers always seem
> to ask Hermione for the answers. They seem quite bad at getting student
> participation in classes."
>
Couldn't resist puttting my oar in here since it concerns differentiation
which I am struggling to write 1500 words about for Monday. Susan is 100%
right, it is the teachers job not only to encourage and call on all the
students to answer but to ask questions at different levels which everyone
has a chance of being able to answer. A student such as Neville paraphrases
GoF who never volunteers in xclass except Herbology should be encouraged to
take an active part by his teachers. Snape is a particularly poor example
but I don't recall anyone practising it properly. Hogwarts apeears to be run
rather like a selective private school where excellence is all and only top
students count. Not that I can talk I went to one like that and loved it
(but then I was top when I wanted to be, not so much fun if you are always
bottom.) However when all is said and done the books are written from
Harry's pov and to a lesser extent Hermione and Ron and I doubt if they
notice or care about teaching methods.

> This can work the other way as well. I have always been the academic of
the
> family and my brother has always been the more social of the two of us. He
> is 3 years older than me and teachers spent ages trying to get him to do
> more by comparing my achievements to his.

A similar situation exists between my brother and myself I always did well
at school and at eleven passed entrance exams for a selective school and was
moved out of the state school system. My brother who is dyslexic decided he
could not live up to this and so stopped trying. I regret to say when I was
younger I deeply resented what I considered to be the exaggerated and out of
proportion praise he was given for getting 4 out of 10 or a C when I
regulary scored 9 out of ten and got A's and was not nearly so heavily
praised and consequently I gave him a very hard time. I regret this now.
Worsts of all our younger sister takes after me abd well-meaning relatives
still make comparisons. "your sisters doing post-grad, your younger sister
can read more than you can aren't you ashamed etc" This comes under the
guise of encouragement! Needless to say I no longer mind if my parents
lavish praise on his achievements

As for the Weasleys I do think Molly over praises Percy but I think she is
trying to compensate for his poor social skills and lack of charisma (which
lets face it his other brothers do possess) and he doesn't appear to have
any friends. I suspect Ron gets better marks than the twins although JKR
never mentions it.

As for the storm I can't answer for everyone else but I am fine except that
as there were no trains it took me 3 hours to get to college. Out of 200
students only 50 arrived. I did wonder why I'd bothered when I could have
stayed in bed instead.

Heather