Meta-Reflection EDU 6120

 

I have really enjoyed this class. I learned a lot, but my biggest take away is that there is so much history and there is so much more to the history of education than I realized. The funny thing is, based on my 11 years in the field of education, there have been so many changes, why would I not expect that over hundreds of years there would be more history than I can even sift through in a summer class. What I appreciated about this class is that it exposed me to so many facets of history and to so much more of the details of how we got to where we are than I realized.  In fact I have often felt that classrooms today still seem so traditional that it really seems like education has not changed much at all over the last hundred years, but after all of the readings, I realize that there has been a lot of thought into how we pursue education for our children. It still does not change the fact, for me, that there seems to be the need for change in the classroom in terms of differentiating education. I do think that over the last few years there has been exponential growth in the right direction here and I am really excited looking forward in so far as how technology will begin to inundate  education. I think it took a long time and technology has taken way longer than it should have to filter into education, but it is and I think things are going to change quickly now. I am sure that there were times in the past that people felt just like that, that things were going to change quickly. In the mid 1700’s Ben Franklin along with many other like-minded people met regularly to discuss education and share knowledge. This pursuit of knowledge and finding more effective ways to educate our children is not new and I am excited to be a part of this exciting time of new technologies in education. There was even an article about Sal Khan in Costco’s magazine this month!

“Franklin also noted the value of individual correspondence as an enterprise in self-education. He engaged in extensive correspondence with knowledgeable men and women on both sides of the Atlantic, tapping into their investigations and opinions on matters relating to science, religion, politics, agriculture, and scores of other topics” (Jennings & Urban, 2008, p. 60). The engaging discussions across the world have been happening for generations and will continue in the years to come.

Wagoner Jr., Jennings L.; Wayne J. Urban (2008). American Education: A History. Taylor and Francis. Kindle Edition.

Strategy 1- EDU 6526

Non-linguistic representation, when I first read about this strategy I was not sure what this meant besides pictures. After reading more about it I realize that there are so many ways that this strategy can be employed. What I like about this strategy is that it is a way to differentiate the instruction and reach learners who may have different needs. For example, according to the Ohio department of Education website, “Kinesthetic activity – Specific knowledge associated with a specific physical movement generates a mental image. Most children enjoy learning and expressing ideas in this way (Marzano et al, 2001).” Some children learn best when they are using their bodies. It also helps them remember what they learn.

Pictures are another great way that you can help children learn. According to Classroom instruction that works, “Psychologists believe that information is stored in memory in two ways; as words (linguistic) and as images (nonlinguistic)…Imagery is expressed as mental pictures or physical sensations, such as smell, taste, touch, kinesthetic association, and sound (Richardson, 1983). Such nonlinguistic representations provide students with useful tools that merge knowledge presented in the classroom with mechanisms for understanding and remembering that knowledge (Jewitt, 2008; Kres, 1997)” (Dean, Hubbell, Pitler & Stone, 2012).  It seems to me that any way we can increase a child’s chance of remembering information, we should. This type of learning includes many different modes, such as, kinesthetic learning, mental pictures, graphic organizers, and manipulatives. There is a way that one of these styles of learning could be incorporated for every lesson.

As I mentioned earlier, this also helps with differentiated instruction because it often helps students who struggle to be able to physically hold something, or act something out. By incorporating this style into a lesson you are allowing for a broader range of learners to retain the information. According to the National Council for mathematics, “Researchers frequently focus on manipulatives (or hands-on physical models) as tools for teaching students with learning disabilities. And they have based most studies of the concrete-representational-abstract (CRA) learning sequence on work with learning disabled populations. However, evidence is emerging that shows that manipulatives and CRA can be very effective tools for teaching certain concepts to all students ” (Berkas & Pattison, 2007). As this quote emphasizes, manipulatives are great for Special Ed students, but they are in fact useful learning tools for all students.

In thinking about the implementation piece for this post, I will be focusing on math. Math is an area that lends itself to the use of manipulative, but I like curriculum or lessons that really try to incorporate other subjects with the math. This helps give math context in the world outside of the classroom. I taught 5^th and 6^th grade math for a long time, so I will be focusing on that age group for the purposes of implementation of a lesson using this strategy.

Some websites that share great graphic organizers are readinga-z.com, and enchantedlearning.com.

Here is a graphic organizer I have used to help students identify the problems and solutions in a story:

Problems and Solutions graphic organizer

 

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.

Using effective instructional strategies: Non-linguistic representation. Retrieved from http://ims.ode.state.oh.us/ode/ims/rrt/research/Content/nonlinguistic_representations_what_we_know.asp

Berkas, N., Pattison, C. (2007). Manipulatives: More than Special Education intervention. Retrieved from http://www.nctm.org/2007_11nb_intervention.aspx#sthash.fsp4dAcl.dpuf

P2- Practice differentiated instruction

P2-Practice differentiated instruction

Differentiation is an important skill for a teacher to employ. Finding ways to reach all of our children through differentiation can be difficult. However, there are a lot of resources available that I found helpful in planning for differentiation. One such book is called Teaching Gifted Kids in the Regular Classroom: Strategies and Technique Every Teacher can use to meet the Academic Needs of the Gifted and Talentedby Susan Winebrenner M.S.

One idea from her book that I really liked was called “most difficult first”. This is a way to help plan for students who are gifted and talented. What you do is choose five problems that are representative of a unit and the student has to get 4/5 correct. If the student is able to get 4/5 crest the student can move onto the next unit. When I first saw this I thought, why not have the student get 5/5 correct? The answer has to do with the student’s feeling the pressure to be perfect, and then he/she may not try at all.  I used this method with a student I have in my 6^th grade math class and it has worked great (although I used more than five problems to get my representation of his knowledge. It has helped give me direction as to what topics I should be planning for him. It has also made him more confident and happy in class since he is working at his level. He is so excited that he is having the opportunity to really show what he knows and learn at his level.

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.

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 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.