Ms. Lim's Teaching Tragedies--and How J-Monkey Avoids Them!

I think that the teacher is moving LONGITUDINALLY in the direction of ABSTRACTION (But still the teacher is coming and going to OBJECT REFERENCE).   Good! J-Monkey has grasped the question (I think that Handyman missed this part!) She knows that she has to SHOW the teacher moving, either North and South, or East and West.   When we write teacher talk DOWN in a transcript, we sometimes imagine that it only moves one way, from the top of the page to the bottom, or from the left of the page to the right side. Like this: →→→→→→→→→→→→→→→→→→→→→→→→→→→→→→→→→→→→→→→→→→→→→ ↓ T       Look, here is grass,(draw some grass on the whiteboard) what? ↓S      Grass ↓T       Tell me some animals that eat grass. ↓S       (a rabbit, a goat, a sheep etc.)   Of course, we’ve already shown that’s not true. We know, for example, that teacher’s go UP, from EXISTENCE questions to ESSENCE questions. Here the teacher is going from a single-answer essence question to a multiple answer EXPLANATORY question, which is a big step up.   Ha-ha Smile has also shown us something important. Teachers go from T-S interaction (which we see very well done both here and in La Belle’s work) to S-S interaction. Here the teacher is going from TELLING the children about a picture to getting the children to TELL her examples (that is, she goes from T-S to S-T). So that’s ANOTHER dimension that the teacher can move.   Of course, topics change too: they go from abstract to concrete and back again, as we see here. Grass is quite concrete, but “animals that eat grass” is not so concrete, it’s much more general and abstract (it is general because it includes many different animals and it is abstract because it excludes everything about these animals except for their diet).   Now, the test question really focuses on this LAST form of change. But just as there is no reason to think that teachers ALWAYS have to go from existence questions to essence questions to explanatory questions, or from T-S to S-S, there is no reason to think that the teacher goes from concrete to abstract. The teacher can also go from abstract to concrete.   That means that J-Monkey really HAS to start with some data. Her answer will depend on what the data does, not on what she thinks teachers do in general.   For example, a grass eating animal -> a green  eater -> a herbivore . And then teacher gives the entire image ”food net” to students.   Good. “Food net” is certainly at a different level of generality from “grass eating animal” and “green eater” and “herbivore”. Now, does J-Monkey think that “grass eating animal” and “green eater” and “herbivore” are at the same level of generality or not?   A green eater IS just another name for a grass eating animal, isn’t it? Or do you mean that “grass eating animal” JUST means animals that eat grass (and not animals that eat tree leaves)?   In any case a “green eater” is the teacher’s word for “herbivore”. The teacher says they mean the same thing. Doesn’t that mean they are at the same level of generality?   There are some examples for the animals. Also the teacher is moving LATITUDINALLY such as herbivores, omnivores, carnivores.   There are some concepts about "food chain" and the teacher tried to explain with the color symbols for linking between a meat and red, grass and green. It seems to connect to the concepts and words.  But “rainbow“ is not clear to students.   Good. I think that’s right. But how could the teacher make it clear? What could the teacher say INSTEAD? What could the teacher say NEXT?   I think it’s often helpful if you QUOTE the data. I tend to use PARENTHESES, like this:   The teacher could make it clearer, by offering examples (e.g. “For example, YOU are a rainbow eater, Hichang! You eat red things. You eat green things. You eat yellow things too!”)    How could the teacher move TOWARDS A MORE EVERYDAY CONCEPT? How could the teacher move TOWARDS A MORE ACADEMIC CONCEPT? What SHOULD the teacher do and HOW should the teacher do it (viz. What should the teacher SAY?)      T       Look, here is grass,(draw some grass on the whiteboard) what? S      Grass T       Tell me some animals that eat grass. S       (a rabbit, a goat, a sheep etc.) T      Good. (write those words on the whiteboard) Make a name for those animals. S      (a grass hunter, a grass eater, a grass eating animal. etc)   Notice that “grass eating animal” and “grass eater” refer to the SAME object—they are the same act of thought.   But they aren’t the same act of speech, are they? “Grass-eating animal” has more grammar, while “grass-eater” has more vocabulary. One has its structure OUTSIDE and BETWEEN words, and the other has its structure INSIDE and WITHIN the word (e.g. “eater” or the hyphen between “grass” and “eater”).   We could say that one is INTER-VERBAL and one is INTRA-VERBAL. Which is closer to the word “herbivore”?   T      Is the rabbit a grass eater or not?(The teacher intend to link the words to color in the data.) S    Yes, it’s a grass eater. T    We have another word for a grass eater “an herbivore” S    an herbivore. T    We call this group herbivores. Can you tell me the word “herbivore” in Korean? S    풀 먹는 동물들, 초식 동물 T    How about an animal that eats meat? Give me some examples. S    a snake, a tiger, etc.  ....   The first thing to notice about J-Monkey’s answer is her PERFECT mastery of the article. This is not just unusual, it’s almost unheard of (and it makes her student talk a little unbelievable, but never mind!).   Yet J-Monkey’s absolutely CORRECT use of the article is an essential part of what she wants to teach. She wants to teach EXAMPLES, and as we all know, the DEFINITE ARTICLE is the sign of an example.     교사의 수업 방향의 순서를 조금 바꿔 정리해보았다. (14 turns)   Good. Of course, there is this kind of METALINGUISTIC, terminological moment in the data too. Remember?     구체적인 예  a rabbit->낱말 유추 a grass eater from students->.낱말 an herbivore -> 개념 정의  a concept definition from students   Good.     같은 순서로 육식동물과 잡식 동물의 개념정의가 이루어진 후에, 각각의 개념간의 관계에 대해서 생각해보고, 비교 구분하여 논리적 관계를 확립하여 최종 개념 "Food chain"으로 도달하도록 수정해보았다.   I think there are a few teaching TRAGEDIES here. One is the tragedy which J-Monkey has fixed—the problem of articles. Her solution is perfect.   But there’s another problem. A “food chain” is NOT a pyramid. It’s a much lower level concept. And the teacher really DOESN’T want to teach food chains, or even food nets.   The teacher wants to WARN the children about what happens to CARNIVORES if grass dies. This is really a SCIENTIFIC warning, not a moral one (“Take care of the grass, and the grass will take care of you.”). But the children interpret it as a moral warning; they think that the teacher wants to warn them about what will happen to HUMANS if grass dies. That is not the teacher’s meaning at all.   How could the teacher have avoided this problem?   초식동물이라는 낱말의 의미와 대상과의 관계 파악 (마찬가지로 육식동물, 잡식동물의 의미) - 각각 개념의 수직적 이동, 초식동물, 육식동물, 잡식동물 간의 관계(각각 집합간의 관계성)파악- 각각 개념의 수평적 이동, 수직적 이동과 수평적 이동간의 상이성 파악이면 이 수업의 목표를 어느정도 달성하지 않을까 생각해 보았다.    Good! We’ve got TWO kinds of relationships:   a)    “Is a kind of” (e.g. “A rabbit is a kind of grass eating animal”) b)    “Eats” (e.g. “Rabbits eat grass.”   Which one is a HIERARCHICAL, “North-South” relationship (at different levels of generality)? Which is a HORIZONTAL (“East-West”) relationship (at the same level of generality)?   Which one is mostly PARADIGMATIC, SEMANTIC, “THINKING”? Which one is mostly SYNTAGMATIC, PHASAL, “SPEECH”?   6-6-27] 개념의 성질을 결정짓는 특징들 a 대상 및 낱말의 의미와의 상이한 관계, b 상이한 일반성의 관계, c 가능한 정신작용의 집합간의 상이성   Good: “In each of the sphere the properties which appear are determined by the nature of the concept: a) a different relation with the object and with the signification of the word, b) other relations of generality, and c) another circle of possible operations”!   Remember J-Monkey’s GREAT strength on the midterm. She was the ONE person who was really able to show us the three DIFFERENT properties of a chain complex (that is, that they include elements “added on”, that they are added on the basis of factual, empirical, physical attributes, and that the end of the chain sometimes has nothing to do with the beginning).   This made J-Monkey’s answer on the midterm one of our best. She was able to SHOW that the data included factual, empirical attributes (PHYSICAL resemblances between words), and that the end of the conversational chain had nothing to do with the beginning.   Now, here she’s not that strong. She HAS given us three attributes of the new structure of generality that the teacher is trying to build (“food pyramid”). She wants to show that the food pyramid has a different relationship with the object (i.e. the animals, the food) and the signification of the words, that the food pyramid makes necessary and possible other relations of generality, and that the food pyramid makes possible new operations.   But she doesn’t really do it. Now, PART of the problem is the teacher’s—poor Ms. Lim really ABANDONS the idea of the food pyramid for the food chain (by abandoning the idea of quantity and simply taking a qualitative look, and also by accepting that humans, who are omnivores, are at the top of the pyramid). She’s also not very careful with her articles and plurals, and that makes it VERY hard to see the shift in generality.   But PART of the problem is also J-Monkey’s. We know that the key to all the exam problems is to have one foot in the data and one foot in the book—to be able to give examples from data for ideas in the book.   It seems to me that we can INTEGRATE the quotations from the book with examples from data. Like this:   Vygotsky says that there are three important properties that change in development of the child’s thinking: the relation between the object and the word meaning, the other relations of generality that are possible, and the new circle of possible operations. So for example, the relationship between “rabbit” and rabbits is quite different from the relation between “herbivore” and rabbits. ….   6-6-47] 개념들의 정의, 그것들의 비교와 구분, 그것들 사이의 논리적 관계의 확립- 이 모든 사고의 작동은 개념들을 일반성의 관계들로 연결하는 선들을 통해, 한 개념에서 다음 개념으로 이동하는 잠재적인 경로를 결정하는 선들을 통해 일어난다. ... 개념들 사이의 논리적인 관계를 정립하기 위해서는 개념 체계의 수평적이고 수직적인 축에 따라 일반성의 이러한 관계들에 부합하는 움직임이 필요하다.   Vygotsky says that all operations of thinking—definitions, comparison, differentiations, establishing of logical relationships—cannot be effected, as the study shows, except in following the lines that tie concepts together by relations of generality which determine the possible directions that movment from one concept to another might follow.   Good! Examples from data?   “The establishment of logical relations between concept in judgments and deductions both require movement following the same lines of relationship of generality, both horizontal and vertical, in the whole system of concepts.”   Good! Examples from data?   That’s what we do as teachers, J-Monkey. We give examples!