EDU 6657-Effective Classroom Design and Academic Instruction

Effective classroom design and academic instruction does improve behavior. It is likely that if a student is not engaged in a lesson, or does not have something given to them to complete, that they will engage in negative behavior. We, as teachers, need to come up with how will keep the students attention. According to what we learned in class there are five evidence based strategies for effective classroom management, which in turn will lower the negative behavior in a classroom. They are:

1. Make the most of your classroom space

2. Continually review and practice posted behavior expectations

3. Student should be actively engaged in class in a way that an observer would notice

4. Have a positive reinforcement system in place

5. Have a negative reinforcement or punishment system in place

By having these systems in place you help decrease the chance of problem behaviors in the classroom. These structures help keep students busy in a meaningful way. It also means that the teacher has in place a plan to try to redirect problem behaviors or give consequences for problem behaviors. This short list really gives classroom teachers a lot of tools.

According to the Article, Instructional Adaptation in the Management of Escape Maintained Behavior in a Classroom, “ Disruptive classroom behavior is a major factor contributing to teacher stress and discontent and significantly affects teachers’ capacity to maintain productive and orderly learning environment (Hawe, Tuck, Manthei, Adair, & Moore, 2000).” (Moore, Anderson, & Kumar, 2005). We can empower teachers with strategies to avoid having disruptive behavior, and using the above mentioned strategies is a great start to effective classroom management.

Moore, D. W., Anderson, A., & Kumar, K. (2005). Instructional adaptation in the management of escape-maintained behavior in a classroom. Journal of Positive Behavior Interventions, 7, 216-223.

 

EDU 6150- Goal Setting

In the article we read at, http://www.netc.org/focus/strategies/sett.php  it says, “Instructional goals should not be too specific. When goals are too narrowly focused they can limit learning (Fraser, 1987; Walberg, 1999).” I found this so interesting. I never thought about goal setting as being too limiting. We spend so much time learning about and enforcing the idea of goal writing, I had not thought much about it actually hindering the learning process. Basically everything we do with students is a result of objectives and goal settings. Either ones we pull from State standards or ones we create as standards in our own classroom. Even teachers set their own personal goals, they are all around us!

This is why the idea of making goals too narrow is such an interesting and important discussion point. If the goal is too specific it might make it difficult for the student to generalize the information to other scenarios. I think a great way to deal with this is to set goals often and to go over how you (the teacher) made the goal and why. It would also be helpful to set individual goals with each student. By making it personal for them you can give them feedback on how they are doing and they can really internalize the process of goal setting.

EDU 6150- The Great Homework Debate

Last year I watched a movie called Race to Nowhere. It was awesome. And it tackled this exact question. The movie was about more in that it talked about too much pressure in schools across America, not just in HW, but in classwork, getting into college etc. But HW is a prevalent question amongst educators across the country.

When I was a classroom teacher I constantly struggled with this concept. I did not like or do much HW when I was in elementary or middle school. When I got to high school I realized I needed to do HW and as I got to college I realized I needed even more discipline in getting HW done and done on time. So I realized that as much as I did not want to assign HW to my students, I had to assign some in order to give them the HW skills they would need to succeed in high school and college.

That being said I had to figure out how to give the HW so I was making it worth their while. I spent time talking with my Principal and other teachers in the school. I decided that each night they would be required to do reading. This was of utmost importance to me. There is reading in every subject all the time so developing and maintain their reading skills is imperative. It shouldn’t be just reading, but reading for meaning. So each night there was some form of a question or two that went along with either a specific reading, or whatever book the student’s had chosen to read. (This is also a form of differentiation, in that it is an open ended question so there is not one right answer, but students can answer it at their level). I also usually gave some math practice. The material would be something that was being reinforced from classroom learning and I would have different HW for students. Then a couple times a week there would be a social studies or science activity as well. The HW however would never exceed 40-50 minutes for a fifth grader. The importance of the HW was to learn not only the content but the discipline of HW as a skill. It is really hard to be motivated after an 8 hour school day plus after school activates to then sit down and do HW. Besides dinner this left little time for the students to play. The more efficient they could learn to be at HW, the more extra time they would have as well!

In the article we read at, http://www.netc.org/focus/strategies/home.php, it references the same issues that I had to think through, and more. I enjoyed getting some validation from that article and being left with more to think about.

EDU 6150 Blog Post #4- Summerizing and Note-taking

Summarizing and Note-taking

I loved the videos’ (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oF9Z8fXQ2jk) explanation of how to teach summarizing. This past year I had two students who really struggled with summarizing. The class had moved onto other writing/reading strategies. But when I took my two students with me into the Resource Room, we spent a lot of time practicing the summarizing skill. I never felt like my students really understood the concept of what a summary was so even though they were able to answer my prompts and end up with a summary, they could not replicate the process on their own. I had a hard time trying to think of another way of teaching it. I would give them reading passages, ask them for the main ideas, and then have them connect those ideas to form a summary. I tried all different kinds of reading passages, short ones, interest based ones, non-fiction, fiction, pretty much with all the same results.

This video we watched though put the idea of how to teach summarizing from a completely different perspective. The video looks at it almost from the opposite point of view. It suggests working backwards, instead of looking for the main idea first, look at your passage and cross out the unnecessary information, then cross out the redundant information, next you replace specific information with more general information, and lastly, find a topic sentence or make one up. This makes so much sense! Instead of asking the kids to think of the main idea first, get rid of the extra information they don’t need. Especially for my students where having too much information can be overwhelming; I think this strategy will eliminate some of the jumble of extra information, which will make the process easier. I am so excited to try it with them!

EDU 6134-Differentiation-Can we meet the needs of all learners?

How can we meet the needs of all learners? This is a really good question since it brings up more than just the idea of differentiation, but of, what do our students really need? This will vary for each and every child. The needs will look vastly different sometimes, in that some may be physical, while others are academic, or they may be similar in that you have two students who are excelling at math, but in different areas.

Once the teacher determines what it is the student really needs they can then go about deciding the best way to reach his/her students through the curriculum. Once the teacher figures this out, then he/she will plan accordingly to make any adjustments to the curriculum and differentiate it for the students. If the students’ needs are physical or emotional, he/she may need to address those even before the students can make academic gains.

There is no one right answer to how to meet the needs of all learners. It is situational. The best way to approach the situation is to get to know your students academically and personally and to determine what they need and how you can serve them best. Today in class we watched a video by Carol Tomlinson about how students differ as learners, but Tomlinson went took even farther to say that there are three things you should be thinking about when you are differentiating instruction.  They are readiness, interest and learning profile.

Readiness is where the teacher determines the readiness of a student based on the teachers’ Learning Goal for the class.  The students will not all be starting in the same place. An example of this would be in math. In 6^th grade students are expected to know their times tables. However, there may be some that don’t. This does not mean that they are not ready to meet a standard about ordering fractions, but you need to be able to recall your multiplication facts pretty quickly in order to this task. So the teacher may provide a multiplication table for the students who need it. It brings everyone to the same level of readiness and is an accommodation.

Next is Interest, this is really about motivation, if a student is interested in a topic, they are more likely to be motivated, and then if they are motivated they are more likely to do well. A way to do this would be to get kids to connect to the material. An example of this might be making a classroom constitution for classroom expectations and then teach them about the U.S constitution; they can then connect to the topic in U.S History, which may make it more interesting to them.

Lastly, is the Learning profile. This is about how do my students learn best? Or what type of learner is each of my students? An example of this might be to give an assignment to do a book report on an approved book of choice, (one differentiation piece) and then to have options of how the report could be presented (a second differentiation piece).

There are so many resources out there to help once you have figured out what your student needs. For example, the article we read for class called, “School accommodations and modifications”, put out in 2001 by The Alliance (Technical Assistance Alliance for Parent Centers), has an extensive list of ideas including ideas about accommodating grading, handwriting, classroom environments, test, and directions.

6134 Daily Reflection- PE/GLE vs. CCSS

Today we spent some time talking more about the Common Core State Standards. We compared and contrasted the CCSS with Washington State’s current standards, the PE’s or GLE’s. My group chose to look into the comparison of the CCSS- Algebra  vs. the PE- Algebra 1 and 2. Here is what we noticed:

Both

~Overall topics seem the same ~Level of difficulty is the same (for as far as the CCSS seems to go, see below)

 

PE’s		CCSS
~There are examples ~They are very specific about each expectation, but they don’t have the key word definitions in the beginning ~Seems a little more rigid in the order of presenting the information and how to present the information ~Seems that the Algebra 2 standards take the learning a little farther	But/ Although/ However…	~There are no examples ~Less specific, however in the beginning there is a pretty detailed description of some of the key math terms that are used throughout the standards ~Seems like there is a little more freedom in the order and way the information is presented ~Seems like it does not delve as deep as the Algebra 2 PE does

 

6150 Blog Reflection #1

Today in class we learned several teaching strategies. One of my favorite parts of how this was taught is that the instructor used the strategies he was recommending during class. This way he was also showing us the strategy of modeling in addition to all the others.

We learned about an activity called a Readaround. I really liked this experience. At first I was not sure how I would really learn with only a little information being shared about each person, but I learned so much about why the people in the program are there. I loved that not only did I learn a new strategy, but it was so cool how it actually worked. So much information from so little!

We also learned about think, pair, share- this is a great strategy that allows all students to participate in discussion in some way.

Wait time is also a strategy that I like to employ. It allows each student to think about a question posed, even if not everyone shares.

Here are some other strategies we learned in class today.

Half sheet of paper

Questioning

Set time limits

Large group recap