​​​TashaDavis​

   This year was the first in which our school has started encouraging some teachers to use a new style of teaching called "the GRID method".

 

   The GRID method is a teaching aid for teachers, specifically designed to allow students to work at their own pace while still being able to complete the work required by the teacher.

 

   And so, during January, 2017 of the third quarter, my Chemistry teacher introduced our class to a method of teaching/learning called the Grid Method. The Grid is meant to be self-paced with a clear focus on increasing the functionality of student’s time management and goal-setting skills. The Grid itself is the sheet that accompanies this style of learning. Of the course of many weeks, students in the class would complete a series of tasks that were established on the Grid, while using materials that the teacher had prepared in advance. Each of these tasks were “blocks” on a different “level” of the Grid, and each “level” was devoted to a different aspect of the learning process (Notes, Application, Prediction, Design, Evaluation).

 

   When using the Grid, one of the first things we had to get used to was the new Cup System for getting the teacher’s help on something. Because the Grid Method is self-paced, the teacher needed a way of reaching students that wouldn’t work normally in the lecture based lesson of a Chemistry class. Instead of answering questions from the front and already having the context of the question, she would literally need to find out exactly what the student was working on and the reason for the question. To fix this, she implemented a Cup System to help her reach students who needed immediate help first, and then reach students who could keep working on something even though they had a slight bit of confusion.

 

   The Cup System actually had a very large influence on our learning, simply through the routine that it brought to the lessons. Every morning we went get a set of three colored cups from the front of the room: green, yellow, and red respectively. The Green Cup was on top of the three cup stack we were to keep at our desk. That cup meant that we were working fine and wasn’t having any problems. We switched to the yellow cup if we didn’t quite understand the practice problems given to us in our notes, or if we had a question about things that the notes may have only mentioned briefly. Last was the Red Cup, which might have been the most important. The Red Cup was used when we were either stuck so much that we couldn’t progress, or if we needed her to grade our work so we could move onto the next block or level on the Grid.

 

   The reason that my teacher took a chance and tried the Grid Method is because teachers around the world are beginning to see that “work-at-your-own-pace” systems have worked well in alternative school systems around the world. One of these alternative schools that I personally have experienced in the past, and had success with “work-at-your-own-pace” methods would be the River’s Edge Montessori School. In Montessori Schools, students worked on materials that they learned by themselves with the teacher, and occasional group lessons.

 

   The problem with the self-guided Grid Method lies in the structure of traditional school systems. Even STEM, with its Project-Based Learning, falls short.

While enrolled at the Montessori school I used to attend, some of those self-guided lessons took up a whole half of a year. We might have focused for two or three hours on a single subject, just because we were engaged and focused on learning it. And that might have just been learning double-digit multiplication!

 

   When our teacher planned out the grid method, she was already at a disadvantage in more than a few ways. She planned for every student to be finished with the Grid in only three weeks after the start. In keeping with her traditional method of teaching, she continued to have notes as part of her “lessons”. She would upload a video of a PowerPoint with herself speaking through it. The quizzes were not nearly as helpful in ensuring that we understood the subject material as some of the non-mandatory practice problem sheets were.

 

   Using a traditional method of thinking works fine if you are using a traditional method of teaching, but does not work out if you try to use that way of thinking with a newer method of teaching. The whole point of the new method of teaching is trying to turn you away from the older methods that don’t work as well. Instead, she combined them and instead of making learning easier by replacing an old method, she used an old method in a new format which resulted in a recipe for disaster.

 

   Most schools try to avoid those practice sheets as much as possible, hence why they were not mandatory. They give them the name “busy work” and tell the teachers that giving these to students is almost a form of neglect in and of itself, but I must argue otherwise. While a beautiful project gives the school something to show as a sort of badge, it pushes students into doing something that they might not even understand yet. Projects like that should only be given after the initial understanding.

 

During the GRID, I completed writing an essay about Chemical Bonds. This essay reflects the final project I did during the GRID.