EDU 6526- Post 4

This was my discussion post for class this week. I got some really helpful feedback from it and wanted to share it here.

“Advanced organizers are a model for helping students organize information by connecting it to larger cognitive structure that reflects the organization of the discipline itself” (Del’Olio & Donk, 2007 p. 388). The idea behind advanced organizers is a good one; give students something to relate to so that when the new information is presented, it is easier for them to make connection, and then remember the information. In the example in the book of Ms. Wolters class, she gives them an advanced organizer that presents them with a dilemma about oil and the cost/benefit of it. She asks the students to engage in a discussion where they begin to form opinions using the organizer and prior knowledge. By doing this she is giving them a context for what they will be learning and more importantly, she is giving them a connection that she can keep referring back to. This will help them to retain new information. In this particular example, she is also making it personal by asking their opinion, which will help solidify the information in their memory as well.

I can see using this with a small group in the resource room. Although we do not typically learn social studies units or science units and typically we focus on reading, writing, and math skills. I can see this being useful when supporting what the students are learning in their gen ed classrooms. For example, I know that the 5^th grade studies the Revolutionary War, it could be cool to make an advanced organizer, similar to the one used by Ms. Wolters, and have it end with a question about who was right, the Colonies, or Britain? This will help them in class and I can refer to it when we work together. I can also provide it to the teacher so she can help support the students we both work with when they are in her Gen Ed class.

One piece of feedback I received was in reference to what my organizer could look like per the specific example I gave above. He suggested finding an appropriate picture of the Boston Massacre as illustrated by Paul Revere and have students read text that presents the perspectives of both the British and the Colonies. This seemed like a great way to present this particular organizer. He also pointed out the idea of working with the Resource Room and how my discussion post solidified the importance of this the cooperation for him; as well as was a reminder to share materials he develops in his class with the Resource Room. I found his response helpful and I think the corporation between a Resource Room and gen ed teachers is crucial to students’ success, so I was really pleased that my post helped perpetuate that relationship.

I was also reminded that the idea of advanced organizers can help with the teacher assessing (informally) for prior knowledge and was glad that was pointed out to me as well.

 

Dell’Olio, J., Donk, T. (2007). Models of teaching: Connecting student learning with standards. Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage Publications, Inc.

EDU 6526 Instructional Design

Blog Post 1- 7/2/13

I just finished my 11^th year teaching. I taught middle school science for two years at a school in New York then moved to Seattle where I taught 5^th and 6^th grade math and science. That job evolved into teaching 5^th grade general studies. Three years ago I moved in the Leaning Center at my school. I love it there. For the last two years I have been working on getting my masters in Special Ed. I completed the ARC program this spring and am taking my last two classes this summer to complete the masters.

Although in some ways it may seem that I went about this backwards- compared to the traditional way of getting into teaching, I feel fortunate for the way I went about my career. (I have been teaching in the private school system so I have not needed a teaching certificate). I feel like I was given an opportunity to learn from other teachers in a different way than I would have if I had first gotten my certificate. This way also allowed me to learn on my own and sift through what I have seen other teachers do to develop strong opinions and strategies. Over the years I have attended various workshops and have learned that lot of strategies I was employing had names. Going to school this past two years has been awesome. I feel like it has either validated what I have been doing or helped me fine tune my teaching. It has been really helpful to learn new strategies as well. I have not had my own full classroom the last three years, I have continued to work with students in small groups, and even more so I have been given the opportunity to work with teachers to help them with strategies in their own classrooms. I love working with teachers and figuring out ways to help them reach their students- particularly students who struggle.

So for me, a big piece of learning about instructional design strategies is how to help teachers employ them in their classrooms. I really like the book Classroom Instruction that Works. I love books that clearly lay out practical ideas for use, and this book does just that! In this book the nine strategies that are referenced are:  1-Setting objectives and providing feedback, 2-reinforcing effort and providing recognition, 3-cooperative learning, 4-cue, questions and advance organizers, 5- nonlinguistic representations, 6- summarizing and note taking, 7- assigning homework and providing practice, 8-identifying similarities and differences, generating and testing hypotheses.

When thinking about goals for my self- Homework is constantly on my mind. My feelings towards HW are that we should minimize the amount of HW that is assigned. However, it seems there is never enough time in a class period to finish all the practice that students need in order to be successful. Interestingly enough the research about HW is not concrete and furthermore it suggests that HW is more effective for children older than elementary age. Additionally, HW can have a negative effect, for example on family time or physical activity (Dean, Hubbell, Pitler & Stone 2012).

This is an area I would like to try to help teacher really hone in on and make decisions that will really be the most useful and effective for our children. I also work in a dual curriculum school and this leaves less class time for general studies so teacher often feel pressured to assign HW to make sure that they are covering all that needs to be covered; it is a really hard balance! I would like to work with teachers to help figure this out and make sure teachers, students, parents and administrators all feel like the HW that is being assigned is useful.

E2-Exemplify Collaboration within the School

E2 – Exemplify collaboration within the school.

There are several ways that I collaborate within my school. I attend a weekly lower school teachers meeting. I meet weekly with several of the teachers to discuss students we share. I meet weekly with the principal, two assistant principals and head of the Teacher Learning Project to plan for our Teacher Learning Project meetings that take place once a month with the  whole staff. I also meet once a week with the Learning Center team.

I think that collaboration and communication among staff and administration will result in a well-run school. It can be challenging to find time and people to be a part of different teams and meeting in order to keep all lines of communication open. At my school, the Teacher Learning Project has really opened the lines for us. It not only means meeting among our peers and staff, but part of the program also encourages us to spend time in each other’s classrooms, learning from each other. It is amazing how many resources we have right within our own schools. I think it is important that leaders in schools take advantage of the vast amounts of knowledge that already exist in our schools. In addition, we need to remember the importance of reflection and goal writing as part of our daily decisions and planning.

Below are some of the worksheets we have used in our Teacher learning Project meetings:

March study group

Reflective Journaling

EDU 6139: Where to begin?

When thinking about my job as a teacher, there are many facets. Being a teacher does not just mean giving over content. Being a teacher means giving over skills as well. This includes social, emotional and study skills.

When I am planning a lesson or unit the first piece I think about is the content, what material do I want the students to learn? What academic or content based skill do I want them to walk away with? For example, if I am teaching a math lesson on division I might make a learning target like this: You will be able to accurately solve a long division problem, with no more than three digits in the dividend and no more than two digits in the divisor. Typically, I do not write any other learning targets for my students. The other learning targets are internalized in me, but I don’t usually verbalize them to my students.

This year, I have learned through my experience in the classroom and through the guidance of my coordinator, that there is no reason not to be explicit with my students about ALL of my goals for them. In fact, it is better than not telling them (this is particularly true for students in middle school and above).  In truth, I think that many teachers, including myself, have told these goals to their students, but never explicitly at the beginning of each lesson, or the goals are under the guise of expectations. Meaning, that at the beginning of the year teachers typically set up some sort of list of expectations for their students. Usually they are behavioral, but some teachers may also set up study skill expectations as well (I think it is rare that a classroom teacher sets up social/emotional expectations with their students- but more on this later). Once these expectations are established, whether the teachers are just telling these expectations to the students or they are developed together, it is the same each day. There may be slight changes over the year depending on the class, but there is not typically a goal explicitly pointed out each day. The reason for this, I think, is that those goals don’t change. For example, students are expected to raise their hand when they want to say something, this can’t be made a goal for a day, in that it is an expectation for every day.

But what if it was? What if teachers were more explicit about setting expectations, and then worked on a different one each week, perhaps? Wouldn’t this help students become more aware of their behavior? Might this be a way to avoid having individual behavior plans because it would essentially put everyone on the same plan? Of course, there still may be individuals who need different goals, and these can be worked out separately, but maybe having behavioral/study skill goals in ADDITION to our learning goals would help run a better classroom.

Back to the social/emotional skills, this is a much deeper and more challenging area to investigate. Perchance this is because these feelings may change in us on a regular basis? As a classroom teacher there are certainly basic courtesies that we expect to take place between our students, such as, one person talking at a time or looking at the speaker. These are common courtesies that by applying them in our classroom, we hope students will apply them in other settings as well and generalize these behaviors, but what about when a student is having a bad day, or a teacher for that matter? What about the teacher who had a difficult time getting his kids out the door in the morning, so he started his day frustrated? Or what about the teacher who feels like her students are just not paying attention to her that day? What about the teacher who is distracted because he is going to his first football game this weekend? All of these feelings a teacher is experiencing will affect his decisions and reactions on any given day.

In the article, “The inner game of teaching” by Marzano and Marzano, the authors refer to an inner game that is being played in the mind of teachers (although there is no reason not to think that everyone plays this game regardless of whether or not they are teachers).  This game is not always conscious. A person does not always realize that on this particular day he is making a decision that might look different on a different day. The goal here of the teacher is to try to make this game conscious. “… it is possible for human beings to actually play the inner game by taking metacognitive control over it.” (Marzano & Marzano 2010)Why should we try to take control over this game? The article gives some examples of why it is good to take control over the game. The bottom line is that if we are able to be conscientious of why we feel the way we do, we can reframe our thoughts to understand why others may be acting the way they are acting and adjust our reactions accordingly.

I now want to relate this back to our students. If we find it important to learn how to play this game, because it helps us understand student’s behavior and our own reactions, so to this is a skills we should impart on our students. How can we best do this? What if we were to discuss with our students why we have the expectations we have? What if we were to have weekly goals relating to our expectations? What if when a student has a behavior we address it in terms of why the students is behaving the way he/she is? This also all ties back to PBIS (positive behavior intervention and supports). The idea that as teachers we want to identify the antecedent or what immediately preceded a behavior in order to squelch it, should we not be helping students to be more meta-cognitively aware as well?

I regularly struggle with the idea of making sure I can cover the entire content of my curriculum and in addition we are really expected to teach so much more- even though it does not say it anywhere in a typical teacher job description. As it happens to be at the school I work at, I have been part of a team who has developed standards for our teachers. Included in these standards are not only academic expectations for our students, but professional standards for teachers and standards about setting up a student environment to enhance learning. These standards are shown to new teachers who are hired and are used regularly with current teachers.

Although there will, I believe, always be some ambiguity in a teacher’s job, and we do need to be able to think on our feet and be flexible. Having these standards really helps define the teachers’ role. The article, “What’s my job?” the author’s intent is to bring to light the idea that the teacher’s job as we know it is not defined. And in being such, makes it hard for teachers to be measured both by administration and by themselves. As of now we have curriculum standards of content that our students are expected to know and our success is dependent on the students’ success on standardized testing on content only. But as I illustrated above, we are doing so much more than just teaching content, so is this really a fair way to assess teachers? No, it is not fair to teachers, but it really is not fair to the students either, because if the teacher needs to spend so much time on the content of curriculum-and are worrying about making sure to cover all the content that will be on the test, the students are really losing out on learning skills that the teacher can be teaching and incorporating into the content curriculum.  In addition, having these other skills, study, social/emotional skills, will in the long run, actually help students access content better. So now what?

As I stated above, one step in this process can be schools developing teacher standards, which is a way of defining the teacher job as well. The other is a form of teacher evaluation. I think this is important, but I also think this is complex. I know that there are teacher evaluation models out there. And I know that the models have different focuses. For example, Marzano’s model is a developmental model versus a measuring model. The purpose, according to Marzano, of a developmental Model is to take teachers that we have and develop them to make master teachers. This would seem like the best model to me. A model that is about measuring teachers would, to me, feel demeaning. A developmental model is encouraging, and would make me feel believed in. Ultimately, I realized that whatever model is used, it is still about making sure that we as teachers are doing our jobs and meeting goals for us and students, but it also feels a little backwards to me. How can we be developing tools of measurement of teachers- or development, if the jobs of teachers are undefined?

The article “What’s my job?” attempts to define the role of a teacher. I thought that the article pinpointed a lot of crucial aspects of being a teacher and of how we can define the job of teaching. I think this task though is monumental. Had this all been thought of at the beginning of the formation of schools, it might have been easier. But there are thousands and thousands of schools across the country, both private and public, how do we get continuity across the board, because that seems to me the only ‘fair’ way to start evaluating teachers, is that if we are all evaluated on the same premise? I think the idea of the common core is a good start, getting the goals for our students to all be the same across the country (this inevitably does leave out privates schools, which may choose to follow different standards, but that is then a choice those schools are making). I am not sure though that implementing any of the evaluation tools on teachers should be started before there is more uniformity across standards for both students and teachers. I am; however, open to hearing all sides of this issue.

As I said before, this is an issue full of entanglements, and I am not sure how it can all be rectified. However, it seems that everyone sees these issues and are working on ways to pursue fixing the issue. I just think we also need to be careful about giving more work to teachers who are already doing so much and are often overwhelmed. This could be a solution to these feeling, but it could make it worse too… tread carefully. “The job of being a teacher has arguably never been more challenging. But let us not conflate challenging with stressful. So much of the current real stress of teaching comes, like all stress, from a lack of conscious awareness about the point of it all, the absence of clarity about priorities, and the resultant feeling that little is in our control. But once we are clearer about what our mission is, what the priority learning goals are, and what the job logically demands from us, we will be less crazed and more focused.” (Wiggins 2010).I hope that these sentiments from Wiggins are true. And I think it is a crucial point he makes about differentiating between challenging and stressful. If a task is challenging, but purposeful, it is not necessarily stressful. Tasks become stressful when they are undefined or seem to serve no purpose.

One last piece to this puzzle I mentioned in my original post on these articles is a mentor program (which can be viewed here https://rebeccaaf.wordpress.com/2012/08/10/edu-6198-reflection-on-articles/) . Even the most well trained first year teacher will inevitably have many challenges that without proper guidance, he/she may lose motivation to continue in the field.  A mentor program can help bridge the gap between an undefined role and a defined one. For example, in the school I work at we have a mentor program. It is a program that originally was intended for new teachers. Each new teacher was paired with a teacher who had been at the school for some time. There were weekly meetings between the pairs. The first month of meeting typically was about the role of the teacher in the school and about educating the new teacher on the culture of the school. After that, the new teacher chose a teaching standard he/she wanted to work on and the mentor helped the mentee to grow in this area. I was a mentor teacher for two years and it was an amazing experience. What made it so special is that the new teachers I worked with not only learned from me, but I learned from them as well. We grew together and both felt supported by each other and the school. As new teachers continue to come into our school they are paired with a mentor teacher. The program has evolved however and now every teacher has a peer mentor, if they are not part of a new teacher team. This gives teachers time to meet with each other and grow and develop skills to make themselves better teachers. To me, this kind of a program really supports the idea of teacher evaluation and should be an integral part of a school system.

Wiggins, G. (2010). “What’s my job? Defining the role of the classroom teacher.” R. Marzano (Ed.) On excellence in teaching (op. 7-29). Bloomington, IN : Solution Tree.

Marzano, R. J., & Marzano, J. S. (2010). “The inner game of teaching.” In R. Marzano (Ed .) On excellence in teaching (pp. 345-367). Bloomington, IN: Solution Tree.

Extra-Curricular Observation- Math Night!

Last week I went to math night at my school. It took place on 3-14, Pi day! Each grade from Pre-K through 8^th came up with a couple of math games and activities. The games/activates were set up and run by the classes (the activities did not have to do with Pi, although it was encouraged to try to come up with connected to Pi). Teachers worked with the students to help them generate idea and prepare for the evening. When I walked into the gym my students had prepared the table with my partner teacher. The gym was bustling with activity. It seems like this is the most popular evening activity at my school. Student and parents were all moving around the room excitedly changing from table to table.

My students had two activities at their table. One activity was to write Pi Poetry. We cut out circles for the poetry to be written on. The idea of the poetry was that the first word should be a three letter word, the second a one letter word, the third a four letter word and so on. In class my students came up with word lists that we had hung up for people (since figuring out the different words is challenging on the spot). The second activity was called “Discovering Pi”. People were to measure the diameter and circumference of several different circles and find that the relationship is that the circumference is about three times the diameter, or Pi! How fun!

Students were to take turns, in shifts, manning the tables. There was one student who very much wanted to man the “Discovering Pi” table, so he spent the whole evening at the table. All the other students rotated between the tables and engaging in activities run by the other grades. It was so fun to see the students having such a good time learning! I also loved the opportunity to watch the students take leadership roles with both adults and other children.

Extra Curricular Observation 2- Carnival

Last week we had the annual carnival at our school. Each year there is a day where students get to wear pajamas to school and the Middle School students are in charge of running a carnival. The day is structured so that each grade gets 30-45 minutes of time at the carnival. At the end of the day the Middle School students had time to play at the carnival as well.

At the carnival there were stations with games like a ring toss. There were also a couple of activity stations, like cookie decorating and face painting. At each of these stations the Middle School students rotated around helping the younger children. In addition, there was also a bouncy house, giant blow up slide and blow up obstacle course.

When it was the Middle School student’s turn to play at the carnival teachers were in charges of each of the stations. I was asked to go into the blow up maze and sit at the top because some students were congregating in the back and it was hard to keep track of how many students were in the maze. It was such a blast!

As the students were coming through I was supposed to keep them moving. The students were excited and friendly. Some students wanted to scare others as they came up to the area I was at. They were having the best time and it was so great to see them enjoying themselves and playing with each other. It was a lot of work to keep them moving through the maze, but still fun. When I have a chance to see students outside the classroom it really gives me so much more information about their personalities and interests. I also got a clearer picture of which students are friends and how close they are with each other.

There is one student who is an English Language Learner. I have not worked with her very much; she is my mentor teacher’s student. However, I have had interactions with her and she struck me as very shy and introverted. She also was very blunt, which made her hard to read. While I was supervising this maze, she asked me to help her up the ladder, I helped her and then she said she wanted to stay with me. I laughed and told her that would be fun, but I am here because I am supposed to keep people moving through the maze. She said ok, and told everyone else, “Keep moving!” I told her she can come back around and sit with me for a minute again. She was hilarious and so much fun; we have something that has connected us so now when I see her in the hall, she always smiles and says hi to me. Just that, made the whole supervising experience worth it!

Observation 2: 8th Grade Social Studies

What I See                                                                                          What I Wonder

–          Kids walk in, Teacher checks who is late, gives a lunch meeting-          Kids are reading while waiting for class to start –          Teacher reminds students to raise hand when they want to speak –          Holocaust unit –          Defining of terms- perpetrator, bystander –          Student asks what is worse, being the perpetrator or bystander? Teacher says- I am throwing that question back at you. Student gives her opinion –          Teacher lists some words the students need to know –          Age of reason- do you know what this term means? Teacher calls on a student for an answer, student answers, the age a person becomes responsible for their actions –          Teacher reviews questions she wants students to be thinking about while they are watching a film called Confessions of a Hitler Youth. –          Students are given 5 minutes to answer three questions before watching the film –          Students are quietly working and are given the instruction to read silently while they are waiting for all to be done, and have their pencils down, that is how teacher will know the students are ready for the movie –          Student raises hand and asks for clarification on a question- teacher gives explanation through examples relating to the students life, asking him questions so she can get him to see the answer –          After kids are finished, she calls them together to give a short explanation of the film- who narrates it and what it is about –          There are three more questions to be answered while watching the movie –          After they watch the movie they are to read one of three articles –          Video is already set up and ready to go –          The movie begins –          Teacher covers over some of the film because the images of the holocaust are particularly graphic –          The story is about one child who was part of the Hitler Youth –          Students are all engaged in the movie (9:35) –          A student shows the teacher how to get rid of the menu bar on the bottom of the screen –          (9:40) Teacher reminds students that if they don’t think they will remember, they should take notes while watching the movie –          Some kids are taking notes, some are just watching the movie –          Teacher repeats one word that the narrator says often, because it is hard to understand with the narrators accent –          A students asks a clarifying question, teacher says, I will come over to answer that (teacher was on other side of the room when the question was asked) –          (9:45) A student gets up to go to the bathroom –          Teacher points out the boy was ten at the time- this related back to one of the pre-movie questions –          Teacher clarifies for another student a question –          More students are writing now while movie is going on –          Teacher clarifies a historical piece alluded to in the movie-she whispers more details to a few interested students –          One student is leaning back in his chair –          Student asks a question- teacher answers –          Student asks another question- starts to be a domino effect, Teacher says this is important I will answer questions after the movie –          Movie glitch-it pauses in the middle of a sentence- teacher quickly comes to remedy it- it is not working –          Students start to have a side convo –          Teacher says she will fix it by the time of their next period and says let’s switch to what we will do now then –          Let’s look at the first three questions- actually the bell will ring in one minute, so pick a spot for your sheet, put it away, bring it to 6th period class where we will finish the movie then move into L.A –          Students begin packing up their stuff and quietly conversing while teacher then continues to try to figure out movie glitch –          Bell rings, teacher opens up door, and lets kids go.

-This teacher has taught Holocaust to 8th grade for five years and works closely with the Washington State Holocaust Education Resource Center. She attended a Jewish Foundation for the Righteous Lerner Fellowship. -This movie is so intense; I wonder how she does this whole unit now. I appreciate the difficulty of planning and implementing this unit so much more after being in this one class period. I spoke to the teacher after to learn a little bit more about how she does the unit. The teacher teaches ideas- Pre-World War 2 European Jewish life, bystander, perpetrators, rescuers, resistance, and implications for the future etc., not the history of the Holocaust. The history of the Holocaust is not developmentally appropriate. The Holocaust is a mode to teach these big ideas without getting into the details of the camps etc… If kids ask, the teacher answers (ie what is the Third Reich, you might think that the teacher is not doing their job if kids don’t know what the Third Reich is, but it is not about teaching the holocaust or how Hitler came to power)

Observation 1- 5th Grade

Observation 5^th Grade

What I see…

What I wonder…

-Classroom has posters around the room with -Norms for different   activities, lesson norms, independent reading norms, and inquiry/writing   norms -Teacher is using a document camera and projector   -One other student is working independently on the computer in the   back   -Student: when explaining exponents, 2 to the power of 3. You do 2   times 3 Teacher: I am so glad you said that, I have taught 5th and   6th grade, that is the most common mistake, that students would do   2 x 3 – and then she explained what it again -Students are copying notes into a notebook -Teacher puts a problem on the board and asks for student’s   participation. She calls on one student, several students call out to correct   student. She ignores the comments, and says to the student she called on to finish – Teacher- “Thank you for raising your hand” student has a question   about a different scenario- she says, let’s do it. -Teacher-“thank you for those of you who are raising your hand” -Student- “Do the parenthesis really matter?” Teacher-“Yes, it does matter, sometimes it won’t, but in this case it   would, so let’s do it without and see.” -Teacher refers back to order of operations list -Teacher models how  and when   she can use mental math- she is incorporating other strategies they have   learned -Transition- students are taking out their white boards and writing   down a sample problem from the board. -Students solve the problem then hold up their white board so teacher   can check for understanding -Transition: after the check for understanding, teacher is handing   out the next assignment, giving the title and due date for students to write   down. -Students get right to work as they get their sheet -Students are quietly working – 8:30 -One student is finished- teacher walks over to check, she tells him   to get the HW packets, he goes back to his desk, teacher gives him grade book   to check off who has turned in the HW packets -Two students have come to the back for extra help- one asked for it,   one had to be asked to come back for the help -A second student came back to help with the HW packets -Class blogger has gone back to his desk to work on the math   assignment -Some small conversations have started happening Teacher:” Boys and Girls   quiet time, she is handing out “way to go cards” (part of our PBIS program)   for students who earned them based on the week- (she tracks behavior over the   course of the week) -Several students have gathered around  the back table, teacher comes over and   tells students to sit down and reminds the students who are working on the HW   packets of their job -Students turn their “way to go” cards in after they have written   their name on the cards, then teacher chooses from the bin one students’   name, student can now choose from a prize bag. Student chooses. Transition- “Ok I am going to hand out the HW, waiting for your   attention so we can talk about how”. About 1 minute goes by; teacher also   shows a visual queue with her hands.” Eyes up front so there is no confusion   about HW”- She goes through each page in the packet on the document camera.

I wonder why the student is working by himself in the back on the computer. I found out later that the student is the class blogger. The blogger   blogs on Fridays-  a different student   each week                                                         Great way to do a quick check in during class, does not take much   time and gives teachers a quick overview of what students got. Love the white   boards!

 

This was a great observation, this teacher is amazing, and I love when I get the opportunity to spend time in her classroom. I also collaborate with her closely to help support several of her students. Most of the time I am in her room, it is working with students, so it is really nice when I have a chance to just observe great teaching.

Are we there yet?

Above is a view of Prensky’s that is rather like Carr, a little more cautious about technology perhaps? I think his introduction here is not about being cautious about technology, but it comes from his desire to show that he sees “the other side”, he even refers to the book The Shallows as being one that is overly cautious of technology. He uses his ability to see the other side as a way to make sure that the reader sees he is being fair and that his conclusion is right. At least that is how I see it. His bottom line: it is about how we use technology not whether we should use it. I think he is right here. This is the first time where he seems more even keeled, than he has seemed throughout the rest of the book.

Carr spends a lot of time in this chapter sharing research and studies that were done that demonstrate some of the challenges of reading and retaining information that is read on the computer.

He also shares a metaphor that I think really helps visualize what is happening in our brain when we read on the computer, with all the “extras” vs. reading a book.

This is interesting.

I love thinking about how much more reading kids are doing than before, but it is al little disturbing to think about there being less in –depth reading. The whole idea Carr focuses on throughout the book is about how we are rewiring our brain. The real questions here are, I think, are we changing our brain for the better? How do we know?

This too is an interesting picture, especially in light of the dense history of communication through print, does it seem like we are going backwards?

Carr also counteracts with some small studies that indicate there could be some benefits to surfing the Net as well.

This particular study indicates that it may be possible to expand our working memory. That seems to me to be a huge benefit, if it is in fact accurate and would work for everyone.

SO what is the bottom line? Carr quotes the writer Sam Anderson here:

According to him, the bottom line is, we are not going back.

This might bring one to conclude we should look at the positives of the Net and move on. I do think that we should be doing this. It is not going anywhere, it would be wise,and I think Prensky would agree, for us to embrace it, BUT as Carr indicates, it is also wise to be wary. That although we may be gaining some kinds of intelligece that is different or good from the use of the NET. We are losing other types of intellegence. Is there a final answer? A single answer of what is best, or what is the most wise?

No, there is not one answer. The most wise action we can take is to educate our students with technology since they WILL be using it OFTEN in both their schooling and in their work as they get older. BUT we should also be giving them skills to work off the computer. We should make sure we are also developing their deeper level thinking skills. It seems to me that there is not much of a medium ground when you ask teachers’ their opinions on technology. People seem to feel pretty strongly for or against the use of technology in the classroom. And it seems that it is taking a long time and is a slow process getting technology in the classroom.

I know for myself, before this class, I was more on the side of the fence of people who discouraged the use of technology. That does not mean that I did not use it, or that I did not give my students assignments that they were required to use technology, but I was SO wary. After reading these books and seeing how much more there is out there for teachers than I even realized, I feel like my eyes have been opened a little bit more. I still want to make sure I am giving my students skills that develop higher level thinking, but I also feel pretty strongly about making sure that my students will be well prepared for what will be asked of them as they move through the years, which means using technology and encouraging the use of it throughout the school.

~I still prefer reading a book, but since I am savvier at reading, highlighting and taking notes now on the computer, it is not annoying and does put me a little ahead when it is time to put my post together. Since my notes are already typed, it is easier to make them into a post.

Carr, N. G. (2010). The shallows: What the Internet is doing to our brains. New York: W.W. Norton.(Kindle)

Prensky, M. (2012). Brain gain: Technology and the quest for digital wisdom. Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan. (Kindle)

Weekly Reflection 7: Sustained Silent Reading

This week my Principal gave out an article to the Lower School teachers entitled, “Making Sustained Silent Reading Really Count: Tips on Engaging Students” by Katherine Hilden and Jennifer Jones. We discussed the article and what this could look like in the different classrooms. The article focuses not on the research as to whether or not sustained silent reading is good for kids, but about how to make sustained silent reading (SSR) meaningful and useful time spent for each student. The authors of the article put together a profile of different types of readers. It is written on a continuum and shows types of readers and how much teacher support is required for each level. For example, the student with the highest need for teacher support are the ones they reference as “fake readers” and the ones that need very little teacher support are called, “bookworms”.

The article mentions that in order to keep tabs on the types of readers you have in your classroom; it will take regular conferencing with the students. At this point in the article we spun off into an engaged discussion about how to find time to conference with all of our students in the classroom. We are a dual curriculum school; this means that we only have about three hours to teach all of our general studies to our students. This does not leave much time per subject and our teachers have to be creative as to how to spend their time. The fifth grade teacher was struggling with how to find time to conference with so many students. One idea that was suggested in the meeting was to conference with a few students per day, and expects to get to each student once every two weeks. This would be enough meetings to gather data to find out where the students are in their reading, but not be overly stressful or overwhelming for the teacher to find time to do this. Another suggestion was to conference with a couple students at a time who are about the same level, or perhaps reading the same book. The fifth grade teacher had another great idea involving a journal. Instead of having the students write a summary in their journals of their reading that week, she has the students write her a letter. She provided the students with a rubric as to what she wants included in the letter and a sample that she, the teacher wrote. I thought this was a great idea, it gives the teachers specific information about the book (because of the rubric) and allows her to monitor if her students are actually getting through the books since she has expectations of how many books they should read by the end of the year. I really enjoy these meetings with the Lower School teachers because we tackle practical issues the teachers are having. It is inspiring to see that when teachers get together and have the opportunity to share, how much they can learn from and help each other!

Hilden, K., Jones, J. (2012). Making Sustained Silent Reading Really Count: Tips on Engaging Students. Reading Today, 17-19.