EDU 6526- Meta Reflection

Meta Reflection

 

Overall I have found this class very useful and practical. Looking back, I think that it would have been more beneficial to have taken this course while I was teaching during the school year. The class is so rich with ideas that are spawned from the readings, that it would be so wonderful to be able to implement them right away, amidst the excitement of learning them. That being said, taking the class over the summer also has it perks and allows more time to explore and think about the different models of teaching and philosophies behind them.

For my meta-reflection, I would like to look back at some of the strategies and models of teaching that I plan on using in my teaching this coming year.

One of my favorite strategies that I have used in the past in my teaching and I read more about this term is non-linguistic representation. I love this particular strategy because I really believe that it opens up the material to so many different types and levels of learners. “When teachers use non-linguistic representation strategies, they help students represent knowledge as imagery. These strategies are powerful because they tap into students’ natural tendency for visual image processing, which helps them construct meaning of relevant content and skills and have a better capacity to recall it later (Medina, 2008)” (Dean, Pitler & Stone, 2012, p. 64). Examples of this could include using manipulatives in a math class or using graphic organizers (enchantedlearning.com is a great website with graphic organizers) in a Language Arts class. This strategy was in fact what I chose to write about as one of my focus strategies for this course because of its’ effectiveness and it is a fun strategy to use! Here is the link to my post on this strategy: https://rebeccaaf.wordpress.com/2013/07/11/strategy-1-edu-6526/

 

Another strategy that strikes me as particularly effective is concept attainment. Although I have taught many subjects over the years, I still feel like my strengths are in the areas of science and math. That being said, I think part of that is because of my affinity towards categorization and logical thinking. This particular teaching model is all about categorizing “item based on an analysis of their characteristics, or critical attributes. Critical attributes are the characteristics that define an object or idea and help explain what makes it unique” (Dell’Olio & Donk, 2007, p. 112). This is a useful tool because it teaches students how to categorize and organize so they can learn to apply this to new information they gather on their own in their future studies. I believe that any strategy we can give our student that teach them the “how” is the most powerful tool we can give them-one they can use when we are not around. (http://www.teachertube.com/viewVideo.php?video_id=162537– here is a video demonstration of the strategy).

It seems to me that in some ways direct instruction is a teaching model that has gotten a bad rap. I think it is less about direct instruction being “bad” and more about teachers losing what direct instruction really about. I find that a lot of teachers use what they call direct instruction, but it is really just frontal teaching; standing at the front of the room, giving a lecture and then have the students work on an assignment. This is certainly a piece of direct instruction, but without the rest of direct instruction, this piece is really not useful in reaching most students. Actual direct instruction is broken down into several parts, sometimes these parts are done in different orders, but most successful and true direct instruction lessons will include each of the following steps: Focus activity (or hook), stating the objective, giving over content and modeling, check for understanding, guided practice, independent practice, closing of lesson. I think that this strategy is so important because almost any other strategy in some way encompasses this. Even if you are working with other models of teaching, such as non-linguistic representation, you still need to employ the steps of direct instruction in order to teach your students. I particularly like the idea of modeling for your students, then guiding them, and lastly giving them independent practice. This idea is also related to one of our readings last week about character education.

As it turns out character education is something that different schools teach their students in different ways some schools choose to explicitly teach children, morals, or character traits that are important o function in our society. Others choose to model behaviors; still others incorporate it into their teaching and tie it to content. And some do all three. However, I think the most effective curriculum for character education is modeling, this can include tying it to content as well, but any good character education curriculum must be accompanied by teachers who model the appropriate behavior. As Kirk Russel said in an article we read by him, morals are “caught not taught”. So this idea of direct instruction really is a way to teach anything, and all types of models can be incorporated into it.

Another aspect of this course I particularly appreciated was the readings on Howard Gardner. As a Special Education teacher, I truly appreciate the idea of there being different types of learners and the earlier we recognize that and use differentiation in our classroom, the more chance each child has at success. Gardner and his team spent years researching and developing the idea of eight intelligences, which helped define the idea that people learn differently and the importance of finding different ways to reach our students. The eight intelligences he identified are: Musical, visual, verbal, logical, kinesthetic, interpersonal, intrapersonal and naturalistic.

I appreciate the books we got for this class because they are both so clearly laid out and describe the teaching models/strategies in a way that makes them both appealing and give easy to follow examples. I look forward to using these books as continuing resources throughout this coming school year and on. The two books are Models of teaching: Connecting student learning with standards by Jeanine Dell’Olio & Tony Donk and Classroom instruction that works: research based strategies for increasing student achievement by Ceri Dean, Elizabeth Ross Hubbell, Howard Pitler & Bj Stone. I highly recommend them both!

 

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

 

Dean, C., Hubbell, E., Pitler, H., Stone, B. (2012). Classroom instruction that works: Research based strategies for increasing student achievement 2nd ed. Alexandria, VA: Association for Supervision and Curriculum Development.

 

Russell, K. (1987). The wise men know what wicked things are written in the sky: Can virtues be taught? Washington D.C: Regnery Publishing Inc.

 

Davis, K., Christodoulou, J., Seider, S., & Gardner. H.The theory of multiple intelligences. Retrieved August 6, 2013 from http://howardgardner01.files.wordpress.com/2012/06/443-davis-christodoulou-seider-mi-article.pdf

H1 – Honor Student Diversity and Development.

H1 – Honor student diversity and development.

Teacher-candidates plan and/or adapt learner centered curricula that engage students in a variety of culturally responsive, developmentally, and age appropriate strategies.

What this principal means to me: Every student is different; whether it is culturally, developmentally or academically. When thinking about a child, we need to think of the child as a whole person, each of these pieces make up the child and we need to honor who they are in each of these areas in order to teach them. It is our responsibility to find ways to reach each of our children. There is a lot of curriculum that we need to teach and get through in order to meet standards. But we can find ways to teach this material in a way that is “…culturally responsive, developmentally and age appropriate…”. This does not only mean teaching based on interests of our students, but we need to be culturally aware as well. There may be assignments or readings that we need to change for different students so that we are being respectful and honoring the different cultures of our students. We may also have students who are at different developmental levels in the same classroom.

My school is a religious school so when thinking about cultural diversity, most everyone is from the same background. That being said there are certainly very different developmental needs of our students. I teach a section of 6^th grade math. This is the first year we have had two sections of math. After considerable amount of conversations between, the Principal, the Middle School Math teacher and me (at the end of last year); We decided the best way to meet the needs of all the different types of learners in this class would be to have two sections. What I have come to learn over the last several years of teaching is that every learner is different and unique. As it turned out this math class I teach has eight kids in it.  This gives me the time and opportunity to work with the students individually when necessary. The smaller class also allows me to plan lessons that are more tailored to the individual needs of the students.

I have however in my years of teaching taught bigger classes and one thing I have learned is that even when you have a class of “regular” students. Everyone has individual needs and getting to know your students will help you to meet those needs. Having opportunities for students that use different modes of learning can help you meet many different types of learners in one setting. An example of this is a learning menu. Here is a video explaining an example and purpose of using a learning menu to differentiate instruction. https://www.teachingchannel.org/videos/differentiating-instruction-strategy. This type of differentiation tool can be used in many subjects and across several different grade levels.

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)

Weekly Reflection 12: Math Lesson 2

I taught a lesson to my 5th grade math student on equivalent fractions. Before we started we wrote down our learning goal for the lesson.

Here is the assignment:

   

This student likes to work using a white board.  Here is some of her work:

Weekly Reflection 10

As part of my Internship Observation Assessment I was asked to fill out section 6.3 of the long form. This section asked me to look at three works samples from my lesson and answer a few question pertaining to them. Below are my answers and some screenshots of student work. The lesson was on finding the Least Common Multiple, using a certain method we learned in class involving prime factorization. Then they were to apply this to putting fractions in order.

Three work samples:

1- M- She is the strongest student in the class. She tends to work quickly so she sometimes misses directions or may make simple mistakes. However, she demonstrates understanding of concepts quickly and sometimes seems bored in class- this can make teaching her challenging. I am currently working on some enrichment projects for her.

M did meet the Learning Target of the lesson. She successfully demonstrated understanding of ordering fractions by finding the LCM of a given set of fractions and making the denominators the same.

In the above example it is clear she knows how to find LCM and use that to order fractions. She did have to be told to make sure to show all of her work and that her work is clear so that I could follow her train of thought. The assessment was appropriate because one goal she is working on is showing all of her work in a way that is organized and neat. She had to practice this a lot on this particular assignment.

2-E- She is not quite at grade level. She struggles with concepts, and works very slowly. This means that she does not often make it through all the practice that she really needs to solidify her understanding of topics. She is a slow starter, for example, one thing she did after I assigned the assignment, was to write out all the problem numbers.

This is a problem, because it is a way for E to pass time without actually doing any work. In addition to that, she does not really leave herself any room to do that work, and she forces herself to write in a small space. I had her start again on a fresh sheet of paper and just jump into the work, no writing out all the problem numbers first. Although she was able to demonstrate that she understood the overall concept, of making the denominators the same so that the fractions could be put in order, she did not go through all the steps to find the LCM that she was taught to do. And although she got the problems correct. I am concerned about her not showing all of her work because of her history of struggling when concepts become more challenging. She did meet the Learning Target of the lesson, but I will be watching her work carefully in review material of this topic.
3-S- This students has struggled with math for years, but in the last 1.5 years has begun to show more enthusiasm and less nervousness towards math. This in turn has led to more success for her. She is very hesitant to ask for help though or show when she does not understand something; unless I really push her to open up to me, which can take a lot of time. I do feel like I have made some headway though and that she has begun to be more open to asking for help, or at least taking it. S does NOT like to show her work. She will often work through problems in her head and then go back and show her work; this sort of defeats the purpose! At the beginning I made it clear that I needed to see her work along the way since one of our goals was to show how to find LCM and then use that to order fractions. She did that through the first ten problems or so, but did not on the last ten or so. In the following picture you can see how she was showing her work and then she stopped. She demonstrated understanding of the Learning Target, but it concerns me that she stopped showing her thinking. I will be watching her work carefully in review material of this topic.

Weekly Reflection 8: Child Find

Last week I went to a meeting at the Seattle Public Schools about Child Find. Child Find is the Seattle Public Schools obligation to find and evaluate children in private schools. This meeting was basically about a chunk of money that could go to the private schools for children who are not in IEPs, but who need more support than they are receiving. This money was referred to as equitable participation or proportionate share. We were at this meeting to help decide how the money would be spent. Students on an IEP cannot receive money from this fund. However, the student can be on a service plan or student accommodation plan.

An example of a child who would qualify for this proportionate share money would be someone who is evaluated by the public school and who qualifies for an IEP, but is not on one. A reason a child would not be put on an IEP, for example, is a situation in my school. We are a dual curriculum religious school. It is sometimes not worth it for the parent to choose to have their child sent to the public schools and miss out on some of the short amount of time the students have in general studies (since this would then defeat the purpose of a double dose of the subject) or the student might miss some of the religious studies, which the parents also don’t want. We (meaning a decision between the parents and teachers) often choose not put children on an IEP and send them to the public schools because it is not worth the time.

At this meeting we were asked to decide how we would use this money to support these students. One more important detail that played a part of our decision was that, if we have a student on an IEP and they are currently getting services from the public schools, we are to encourage the parents to keep their child on the IEP and not access this proportionate share money. The reason being they get more services through the IEP and the students are then being served through FAPE, which then requires us to service the student and move them forward. Where students on a service plan are not covered under FAPE and may receive services only once a week or not enough times to move them forward at the pace they deserve. And once this proportionate share money runs out for the year, and then it is gone. This is also the first year we have this money, so there is a lot of unknowns and we will just have to see how the decision we make works out.

We decided that a lump sum of the money would go towards equipment, such as FM systems. Then the rest of the money would go towards hiring tutors, particularly in reading. The tutors can be hired by the schools individually, but SPS would also provide a tutor that would come to each school for 1.5 hours a week. This was the proposal put together by the team that was at the meeting. It still needs to be approved. It was pretty cool to be a part of the decision making process that determines where and how a chunk of money is used to support our students.

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.

Weekly Reflection 6: Science Lesson

Today I met with the science teacher at the school to discuss a new idea for a lesson tomorrow. Several teachers have been having difficulty with one of the classes in the school. There have been some meetings around how to best handle them and a new discipline policy has been put in place. One of the modifications for the students is that they cannot be in the science lab for science class; they have to earn back the privilege. The science teacher had been trying to conduct some really engaging lessons, but they involved a lot of movement and the lessons were unsuccessful.

The science teacher thought about how she can plan a lesson that would be useful to the students and engaging, but for now, kept them in their seats. She came up with the idea to run Jeopardy like game using MSP questions.  I helped her today with some of the planning. We decided on how many categories there would be, point values of the questions, that the students would be in groups of two, and what the students can win with their points. There will be two adults in the classroom, the science teacher and myself. I will continue this post tomorrow with a debrief on the lesson.

The lesson went okay. It seems to me that the science teacher and I differ a little on how to best manage the behavior in the classroom, and I don’t think we did a good job of making clear to each other the difference in our expectations beforehand. It was also challenging, because since it is her class I felt like I was holding back a lot and not intervening to help her when she seemed to be struggling or making what I thought, was the wrong management decision.

Overall, the behavior of the students was improved and they were very excited about the prospect of earning back being in the science lab or having extra recess. I do think that most of the students were engaged, but there was still an undercurrent of the disrespectful behavior that she is struggling with. After class we had a short debrief together and though we agreed that it went pretty well and we agreed on some changes we could make for next time; it is seems we have a little different perception of the behavior. It is possible I have higher expectations than her, but I also know that having those higher expectations is the only way to get these kids to behave how you expect or want. This is something that we will have to work on.

Weekly Reflection 5: Team Building

This past week in school two days were dedicated to an all school activity (first thru eighth grade) called Color War. The idea of this activity is to promote team building among students as well as leadership skills in the middle school, particularly the eighth grade.

We have been doing this activity for several years; in fact, I participated in Color War when I was a student at the school! Since I have been teaching at the school there has been different formats that the activity took and different amount of time that has been dedicated to it.

At the beginning of the week last week, I felt pretty negative towards the Color War. Mostly because I felt like we have so much learning to do and it just did not seem a worthwhile use of time. Part of the way the students are able to demonstrate leadership is that the eighth graders pretty much plan the entire event. There are several activities throughout the day that have been the same year after year, but the students plan how to break out the Color War and how to organize the days. Teachers are assigned to each team to help monitor and provide supervision, but we barely did anything! It was amazing to watch the Middle school kids really take on the leadership. The younger student began looking to them instead of the teachers, when they had to leave the room for anything even to use the restroom.

Although I still wish I had more teaching time, it definitely taught the students strong team building and leadership skills and reminded me that there are other important skills we must impart on our children other than academics.