Reflections on Week 9 Reading and Discussions

This week's reading focused on lesson objectives and assessments.  Reading the section on "backward planning" gave me some insight into why my school requires that we outline our units before we plan our daily lessons.  This begins with creating unit objectives and tests that will assess these objectives.  Then, as a history department, we discuss the objectives that need to be tested, and plan our daily lessons to make sure we reach our teaching goals by the review session date.  Since we adopted this method, we are finding that we rarely run out of time to cover all important topics in the school year.

Assessments can be summative or formative.  Summative assessment is used to determine whether or not the student mastered the required objectives at the end of a unit of study, and, in the case of my school, counts as a test score in our grade book. Summative assessments can be criterion-referenced (graded to determine how well a student understands certain material) or norm-referenced (graded to determine how well a student scores in relation to others). Formative assessment is used diagnostically--students are questioned or required to do some other activity that helps the teacher determine how much of the material the student has learned, and how well the teacher is teaching what is required.  In my school, we are not allowed to count formative assessments as grades in the grade book...only as a measuring stick to gauge how well material has been learned.  Formative assessments are most often criterion-referenced.

Discussion this week regarding the use of formative assessments reinforced how important it is to measure how much a students is learning and how well I am teaching.  I learned a few new formative assessment techniques (one, journal-writing, that I use every other day, but haven't thought to use as an assessment) that I will use in my own classroom this year.  It was interesting to see that my school is not the only one that is requiring the frequent use and reporting of these assessments.

Reflections on Week 8 Reading and Discussions

This week's reading focused on classroom management--making sure that students are able to learn through the implementation of structure, rules and procedures into the class. One of the most important elements of structure is using allotted teaching time for only that, not for trips to the office, pep rallies, assemblies, testing, behavior problems, and late arrivals to and early departures from class.  When a teacher guards his or her teaching time, students are more successful.

During my first year of teaching, my administration allowed a lot of classroom disruptions during the day. Intercom "all-calls," frequent meetings during instructional periods where a substitute would be sent to my classroom to relieve me while I talked to a parent, students being called out of the classroom without notice for testing, or to receive messages from their parents. I had a hard time keeping my children focused in all of that chaos.  In my second year at the same school, a new administrator took over. He promised to reduce the number of daily disruptions. He did this by installing phones in each classroom so that teachers could be reached without the intercom. He required that parents make appointments during teacher planning periods to discuss student progress.  Instead of calling students out of academic classes for individual testing, he had the school psychologist schedule testing during elective classes. This created an atmosphere that let the teachers and the students know that learning time was valued, and that nothing else was as important. The change in my students' focus was dramatic, and the faculty was grateful.

This week's discussion post was interesting, because I think it is important to share our failures as well as successes. Reading other teachers' posts reminded me that we all have common issues that we face--inattention, misbehaviors that disrupt the class--and we can all help each other to learn how to overcome these problems. Making sure that we teach rules and procedures at the beginning of the year, being consistent in our enforcement of rules and procedures, teaching the student, not just the subject, and teaching "bell to bell" goes a long way in solving a lot of the problems teachers face.

Reflections on Week 7 Reading and Discussions

In this week's' reading, I discovered the QAIT model of learning.  This method targets quality of instruction, appropriate instructional level, incentives/rewards, and time students have to learn the material.  These four aspects of teaching must all be present in order to have a successful lesson. Then, there was an interesting discussion on ability-grouping vs. heterogeneous grouping.  Studies have proven that tracking (between-class ability grouping) is not a successful way to group students.  Untracking is the practice of grouping students of all different abilities together, which becomes more difficult to achieve as students reach high school.

Individualizing instruction through differentiation is one way to keep students achieving at high levels in a mixed-ability (untracked) classroom.  Peer tutoring, and adult tutoring are two other good methods to help lower-ability students in a mixed-ability classroom.

In reading other students' posts this week, I realized that we all share the need to make at-risk students feel comfortable in our classrooms.  I have always heard that students don't care how much you know until they know how much you care.  I believe this to be even more true in the case of at-risk students.

In my classroom, I create an atmosphere of tolerance.  I believe that students can only learn when they have first felt accepted, no matter how different they may be or feel in relation to others in their class.  Meeting that need allows my students to feel comfortable enough to open up and have real learning conversations in class, without feeling that their ideas are "less than" someone else's.

Reflections on Week 6 Reading and Discussions

Constructivist theory was the focus of this week's reading and discussions.  Learning in this mode requires students to discover their own information, which takes the focus off the teacher and places it on the student. Social interaction is important in this type of learning; students are able to work together to solve problems, exposing them to their peers' thought processes.  Teachers become facilitators instead of lecturers.

The goal of constructivist learning is to produce students who self-regulate.  Self-regulation moves students from dependence on the teacher for feedback and direction to self-reliance.  This is "taught" by modeling the thought processes for solving problems--either by the teacher or peers.  Once students get used to "thinking about how they think," they become more adept at seeing logical steps in their own problem solving.

In my classes, I allow for a lot of group discussion.  I think it is very important for students to hear the opinions of their fellow students, and smaller groups allow students that are not normally outspoken in whole-group discussion to be more vocal.  History is sometimes easier to understand when students can discuss events with their peers.  Discovering patterns in historical events is also easier to do when students are able to talk about these events.  Group projects are the closest thing to discovery learning that I have used in my classroom. I give each group a different topic to research and teach to the rest of the class.  Usually, however, I have already given preliminary information on the topic, so I am not sure if that can qualify as true discovery learning.

It was interesting to read what some of my classmates wrote on the topic of student-centered learning this week. I remember one post in particular where a teacher was reluctant to give up control over her classroom in order to allow for group activities. I replied that you can still have control over your class while they work cooperatively.  As long as you have set behavior guidelines, and have been firm and fair in dealing with problems, your class is still well under your control when they work in groups.  I think it's very important for students to take more responsibility for their learning, and if that means less "stage time" for me, then that is how I need to teach!

Reflections on Week 5 Reading and Discussions

This week's reading focused on planning and carrying out effective lessons.  In order to plan effective instruction, teachers should incorporate direct instruction and small group discussions into their lessons. Direct instruction is more teacher-focused; the teacher gives information to the class that they will need in order to learn the focus standards for the lesson.  Direct instruction should include opportunity for students to participate, such as teacher questioning.  Teachers should be sure to give examples for every concept that they teach, in order to make the information relevant to their students. Variety in direct instruction keeps the students' attention, which is important in making sure students learn.  Independent practice is especially important for students who are learning skills, like how to work out a math problem, or identifying parts of speech.

In my classes, I teach my opening lessons using a direct-instruction approach.  Since I teach history and government, a lot of the information my students need comes from my lectures.  I use learning probes to make sure my students understand what I am teaching them--sometimes in the form of direct questioning, sometimes through finishing a KWL chart that they began before I presented the material, and sometimes through short quizzes at the end of the class.  I really like to use small-group discussion sessions, because I find that some students open up more freely in a small group, and discussing historical events with their peers leads them to understand the events better.  As some classmates and I talked about in our discussions this week, peer explanations are usually easier to understand than teacher explanations.

I think it's really important to teach history in relation to what is happening in the world today.  I try to incorporate current events whenever I can so that students can see that history actually does repeat itself. For example, wars are usually fought over religion or money, and these age-old concepts can be taught in relation to the conflicts in the Middle East today.  This allows students to see that history is relevant; the lessons we as a people don't learn from our past are doomed to be repeated.

I found it interesting to read what my classmates said about preparation and participation this week.  Even teachers of the youngest grades agreed that participation increases in small-group work, even though we ask questions of our students all during lecture sessions.  I would have thought that younger students would be eager to discuss what they know more openly than my high school students (who are so worried about what other people think), but I guess that's not true.  I also found that my classmates agreed that the preparation for delivering a small-group discussion lesson is a little lower than preparation for a lecture, at least with regards to the topic information.  Preparation for small-groups or one-on-one lessons involves more logistics--how I group my students, which objectives I want them to master, how they show their work.  As my preparation decreases, the preparation and participation that the students have to show increases.

Reflections on Week 4 Reading and Discussions

This week's study and discussions reminded me that not all of my students will be able to learn in the same way.  I have to vary my teaching to accommodate the needs of my learners.  In teaching history, I have to meet my children where they are, knowledge-wise, in my topic, assess what they need to know, and rebut what information they may have heard that was false, so I can build a plan to get them all to the final knowledge which is required by the curriculum.  I learned that I have to reach students though implementation of teaching styles that correspond with their preferred learning styles.  And I also learned that teaching the same way every time can get boring, and I might need to change up my classes to keep them interesting. 

I also read that students tend to retain information at the beginning of class and at the end of class due to the primacy effect (former) and the latency effect (latter), so I should not be planning my lessons like a hamburger...fluff, then the meaty details, then more fluff, but more like a huge garden salad...meat and seeds and cheese and dressing on top of the green "fluff." If my kids get to dig into the meat of the lesson, while getting some fluff, they will retain more of the information they need. (Sorry about the burger analogy! Cooking burgers for Father's Day supper tomorrow night...just made sense!)

In my interactions with some discussions this week, I learned about VAKT, which I had been doing in my class, except for the tactile piece.  I really think I will have my students construct a model of something as we learn about the history of a period (such as the Coliseum).  I think that will help my tactile learners in a way that my visual, auditory, and kinesthetic teaching didn't always reach them.

Reflections on Week 3

This week's study focused on behavioral theories of learning.  I reviewed Pavlov's and Skinner's theories on what makes a person learn, how behavior can be shaped through reinforcement of desired behaviors and how a teacher should aim to teach the students to be self-regulating.  According to Pavlov's studies, a trigger can be used to condition a response from a subject.  In my classes, I notice that when I stand at my podium, most of my students will open their notebooks and get ready to take notes from our discussion.  This is an example of classical conditioning. Like the dog that salivates when he hears the ringing of the bell, because he has associated the bell with being fed, my students pay attention to me when I stand at the podium.  I see Skinner's principles in my classroom when I reinforce behavior with good grades or praise.

Discussion posts helped me to remember that there are some time-tested, proven techniques to help mold my students' behavior in positive ways, such as using praise when a student performs as I expect them to, and ignoring negative behavior as much as I can.  Also, the office should be used as a last resort for behavior problems, because some students will misbehave just to get out of class, which is a positive reinforcement of their bad behavior.  I was also reminded that I should make more positive calls to parents, and that having a good relationship with my students' parents will go a long way to help shape the behaviors I want in my classroom.

A good teacher needs to understand what drives the behavior of his or her students, and that's what this week's focus was all about. Through positive reinforcement, conditioning, and teaching my students to be self-regulating, I will ensure that they do well in my classroom.