Hey girls, speak up!
I just watched this video clip posted by Upworthy , and it reminded me of how we helped our 6th grade girls find their voices. While we were self-contained in the morning for math and literacy, we switched for science and social studies, keeping homerooms together. It didn’t matter which homeroom group I had. The girls were more than willing to let the boys take over all class discussions and do the science labs. My teammate noticed the same thing in his social studies classes. At wits end, I tried all the usual methods to draw them out- name sticks, mixing up lab groups, self-evaluations of group participation as part of their lab grades, jigsawing, but the girls continued passively learning while the boys took over. Something had to be done because the girls were every bit as knowledgeable as the boys, more so in some cases. Their reluctance to participate was simply not acceptable! My solution- split them up! We would create ...