| HOME Seminars by S. McCrea Go to Look For Patterns to find Multiple Ways of Learning Letter to Teachers Cell: 954.646.8246 globalcooling@comcast.net Other teaching web sites Visual And Active Store Multiple Intelligences and the FCAT MathForArtists.com Learning Styles The Fed Ex Arrow Welcome to www.VisualAndActive.com Level 2 Level 3 Level 4 |
| Welcome to Visual and Active.com, a web site devoted to teachers and students who use visual and active methods to learn and communicate. SEE OUR STORE Videos DVDS Card "activities" SAT Prep using large interactive sheets Letter to a Teacher (an extended way of introducing the Visual and Active teaching method) www.LookForPatterns.com A web page for students who have been labeled as "Gifted Students" and for other students, too, who want to "go farther." WETMATH (tm) Learn about Dr. McAlister's engaging way of discussing ocean engineering. www.MathForArtists.com What Should Students Learn www.whatshouldstudentslearn.com Mr. Mac does seminars and workshops for teachers and principals. Fees are negotiable -- I'd rather be busy than underemployed. Please contact me about my schedule. (It's amazing how quickly my schedule opens up with there's payment involved)... His colleague, Dennis Yuzenas, is available for seminars, too. |
| HOME Seminars by S. McCrea Go to Look For Patterns to find Multiple Ways of Learning Letter to Teachers Cell: 954.646.8246 globalcooling@comcast.net Other teaching web sites Visual And Active Store Multiple Intelligences and the FCAT MathForArtists.com Learning Styles The Fed Ex Arrow Welcome to www.VisualAndActive.com Go to Geography Olympics |
| An Open Letter to a teacher As you might know, I teach in middle school. I have a visual and active style of teaching, somewhat unconventional, and my principal asked me to change… and I saw an opportunity to move out of the classroom and develop some other skills. http://www.oocities.org/teachers2teachers/newfcatteach www.teachingtothetest.org is one of the projects I’m working on. It’s vision is connected to multiple intelligences and how the FCAT could be evolved. I’ve been working with students on how to adapt to the “linguistic/left brain” style of the test and how to approach it if the student has a “artistic/right brain” style of learning and expressing himself. Two videos that made a particular impact on me were: The Brain Game by Nancy Snyderman and Defending the Caveman by Rob Becker. I guess I’ve spent the past three years trying to adapt my teaching (and curriculum) to include these insights, along with Howard Gardner’s research. Cooperative learning (which involves interpersonal learning and emotional IQ, the work of Daniel Goleman and www.6seconds.org) has made me aware that a classroom is not a place, it’s an opportunity. That opportunity extends beyond the four walls, the hours of the class and the materials brought into the room. Most principals want classroom management and don’t want to hear about this theory of multiple intelligences. So, I’m switching to tutoring and SAT prep courses. I’m videotaping most of the important parts of the class in an effort to document how students are “performing their understanding” (a Gardner phrase). He advocates multiple ways of evaluating -- including video taping and building portfolios to demonstrate understanding. For more, see www.newFCAT.com. and THIS PAGE I’d like to get your reaction to some of these videos (on DVD and CD). One of my projects or one of the ideas that popped into my head came from research that shows “Middle school students don’t look to teachers or parents as role models…they look at their peers and cool people.” (I’m paraphrasing.) Hey, if that’s the case, and if most of my students in this underperforming school DON’T want to or like to read, why not entertain them (edu-tainment) and turn classrooms into “Walking Books”?! Don’t judge the book or the person by the cover. Read the book -- listen to the person. I found out that letting a visitor ramble and talk works with some assertive students and makes for some good watching for some adults (“Amen! I’ve been there!”), but to truly engage students, the ground rules have to be: RULES FOR VISITORS 1. Two minutes of talking from the visitor and then only response to questions. 2. No answer to a question can take longer than two minutes. 3. When the students are finished asking questions, the visitor leaves. 4. The visitor leaves after 20 minutes. (Better to leave before they want you to stop talking). “AWWW! Mr. Mac! Let him stay and talk some more!” Well, those visits have been more successful with almost every student in the room. (and the visitor, who usually loves the sound of his voice, is happy to not have to come up with a canned 15 minute speech – he/she can just walk in and answer questions). I can get around the room and monitor behavior in every corner and make sure at least half of the class has participated. The actual time in class extends to 30 minutes (since most visitors end up staying at least 30 minutes and the students STILL want to pay attention, since they know they have to keep asking questions to avoid having to return to reading class). When the visitor leaves, we make a venn diagram or a spider diagram to visually depict the story of the visitor’s speech/information. It’s a lot more engaging than watching a movie together. In short, how difficult is it to bring in a visitor? (Plenty – my principal requires a lot of checks and visitors sometimes don’t show because of other commitments). What if the visitor comes in via CD or DVD? Video on CD can be watched on a computer and the student can fast forward through stupid parts and Thanks for reading through the essence of this program. If you see any parts of this that would be useful for your school or class and you need more of them (I have 8 visitors on CD-video), let me know and I’ll send you the info. www.visualandactive.com is the essence of my style, a web site that pulls together the visual elements... www.LookForPatterns.com is the “gifted” student web site with exercises to pull the student into one or more of the gifted ways of thinking… etc. Eventually I guess my collection of videos and tutoring videos could form an “extended teaching packet” that could be used in home schools or in media centers or in “learning centers” in a corner of the classroom. Until then, it’s just a collection of videos that might be of interest to students who have trouble with math or hate reading or hate the fcat (I have an FCAT prep pair of videos that are fun, which I’ll aim to include in this packet). If you have problems looking at the DVDs, let me know and I’ll send you the materials on Video. If you have to start with one part, I’d say it’s the Snyderman piece (which I put in my SAT Prep video). Your suggestions and feedback are most welcome. I don’t have a business model yet to distribute these pieces, but it’s a direction that might emerge. I heard in passing that you are pursuing an MBA and I’d like to become one of your clients – I need a consultant who knows how to market a group of materials. I’m thinking a good start would be an Internet store, since it’s hard to find a store to take my less-than professional items that lack fancy packaging. My store could have items like the geoPuzzle that sells for $15 and maybe I could include it in my store. (You heard about the GeoPuzzle? The guy was a pilot and had grown up on three continents and thought that EVERY kid knew the difference between Austria and Australia, between Guyana and Papua New Guinea and Guinea-Bissau. Oops. So he created a puzzle so that kids can touch the countries. That item is a center piece in my SAT prep because some visual right brained kids who are disengaged with math and vocab prep like to put together puzzles and then draw on the back side of the puzzle. Their ‘performing of their understanding’ of new words is preserved in an artistic rendering of “what is gregarious and what is egregious?” and the NEXT class of students can put together the BACK of the puzzle, looking at the designs on the back that the artistic previous student drew in 8 colors). So this is a long-winded appeal for feedback. If you have suggestions for improvement and – better – if you have kids who can write or email or videotape their responses to the videos, let me know. a) Principals don’t like the materials because they are not professionally packaged and there’s some down time that could be edited out. When I bring in materials for kinesthetic and movement learners (especially magnets and puzzles), I’m told that the classroom looks messy and the school is not a place of play. Ouch. b) Parents generally like it because their kids didn’t take notes in class and now they can. c) Half of the students think I’m nuts (they don’t like visual learning, they prefer a structured quiet classroom) and the rest of the class are goof offs who don’t realize that they’re learning something (or there is a genius in the class who is happy that I let him study on his own or read his favorite biographies of Rudolf Valentino). The goof offs might be improving…I know that they are happy to “avoid work” and they are actually engaged in something besides talking with friends, text messenging and sleeping. They actually like to work with magnets and learn by doing… d) most math teachers say, “Manipulatives? That’s elementary school.” Well, it is and some of our students didn’t get it back then… so let’s let them have access to blocks and magnets. “Oh, it’s too messy and disorganized and the students don’t put the materials back and some kids take some of the items and play with them.” Ah, but the joyous moment when that kid puts down the tangrams and the blocks and magnets and says, “I wish you were my teacher in third grade, Mr. Mac. Now I understand fractions.” I look forward to your reaction. My cell is 954 646 8246 … I’m available as a visitor to a classroom, I give talks to teachers, I can set up an SAT prep classroom for two hours to help students and teahers create ways to integrate technology in the classroom (I bring in a camera, a CD burner, Digital video and a VCR and challenge the students and teachers to make copies of what they produce. Some people have a hard time figuring out how to get the INPUT of the VCR to connect with the OUTPUT from the digital video.) I work as a professional consultant at $60 per hour plus travel fee. The fee is waived if I’m in town on other business (visiting Disney to collect ideas for visual and active teaching) and if the teacher is a relative there is no hourly fee. J In the parlance of “freelance consultant,” I’m currently under employed (working as a tutor and SAT prep teacher for about 15 hours a week, so I have time to come up with visual and active ways to make lessons sing and “speak” to and engage students. If you have a fun lesson plan and you want to have it distributed on my www.visualandactive.com internet store, let me know. P.s. Have you seen the Miami Herald’s travel competition. It’s great! www.herald.com and click on Travel. www.herald.com/travel You can also get there at www.geographicolympics.com Steve McCrea PO Box 030555 Fort Lauderdale, FL 33303 954 646 8246 globalcooling@comcast.net www.visualandactive.com www.ihatetoread.com HOME |
| Visit my store....thanks. |
| Dear Reader If you want a sample of my videos, just ask. I'll drop a CD in the mail and you can review some parts of my work. Visual and Active teaching works on a number of different subjects. Let's talk 954 646 8246 |
 |
 |
| These students taught me about visual and active learning styles... |
 |
 |
 |
| I'd lose these students if my method wasn't active! |