Wordle!

http://www.wordle.net/show/wrdl/7809426/Teaching_ 

After doing my observations, I saw a lot of very interesting practices and ideas. My one big take away from these observations is the in class; group read alouds that classes do when reading the core texts of the class. I struggle and applaud this approach to teaching the required texts and overall I can see a few pros and cons to the in class reading. From talking with the teacher who I observed, I learned that most of the students in her class struggle with reading and that most read at a kindergarten to a second grade level. More than half of her freshman class has IEP’s for reading. So a way to make sure all students are understanding the book and reading is for the entire class to read the book together during class time. Each period, students choose a character to read as, and there is a narrator. The class is usually structured with a work sheet being passed out with the key exercise for the chapter. On the sheet is the Do Now, space for notes, questions to help guide reading, important quotes, and the exit slip. Because class time is around an hour, the classes I observed managed to read anywhere between ten and twenty pages. The book the classes were reading was Lord of the Flies by William Golding. The book is around two hundred pages so on average; classes will spend between two and three weeks reading the book. That’s a lot of time just for reading. There are some advantages to this method, besides that students are practicing reading and public speaking. The teacher will stop the reading and do quick check ins when it is appropriate. Usually she will ask, so what just happened? Or, what does this word mean? Or how do you think this character feels? These low level, probing questions help everyone get on the same page and understand the story better. I personally remember reading Lord of the Flies in high school and I remember having some trouble picturing certain scenes because of the language. If I had trouble and I had at least the grade level appropriate reading level, I can only imagine the difficulty someone would have reading with a very low reading level. In fact, why would a student even bother if they aren’t engaged in the text to begin with? Reading can be very hard, but it’s even harder when you are stuck reading a text that doesn’t feel relevant to you. This book is relevant in a sense that it’s about a bunch of kids who get stranded on an island and have to fend for themselves. But the language in which it is written, and the fact that all the characters are British boys from a boarding school, makes it hard for most people to relate to now a days. Reading in class with assigned parts is a way to make sure students understand what they are reading. What really sells me on this practice is the check ins. Without them, I think this would be a giant time waster because yes students are getting the story, but they aren’t getting clarity on the story. The teacher, by asking questions during reading, is also modeling great reading strategies for her students. For example, when there’s a word that isn’t very familiar, she asks them what it might mean. She has them look at the context clues, and recall prior knowledge based on what they know about the story, setting, and characters. One aspect that I struggle with is that students are getting enough chances to discuss the novel. They do check-ins, and they do stop after chapters and fill out their work sheets, but I was hoping to see more detailed discussions about deeper meanings of the story. At the end of the book, the students were guided to start thinking about these bigger “So what’s” of the book, so there is a chance that I just didn’t get to see these desired discussions. There could also be other foundational reasons why the students read in class. There could not be enough books for each student to take one home. Is this exercise differentiated? Though many of the students have IEP’s in reading, not all of them do. From my observations, I did not see a lot of differentiation for students who may be meeting or excelling in reading. I feel as though this slow paced reading could get boring for them. In order to meet all the needs of each student, I feel as though she should have some sort of differentiated work to keep her higher performing students engaged. Overall, reading in class has many pros when done correctly. It becomes a hybrid of discussion as you go reading in such a way that is slightly more geared to the actual act of reading rather than longer, more in-depth discussions. I feel as though if there were more discussions, especially after the book, then the experience is worth it. If the book isn’t unpacked than I don’t see why it’s even being read besides for practice. But out of the snapshots I have from my observations, it does seem like a tool that assists students in reading and understanding the required text.

Building Communication Skills and Safe Spaces

One thing that is really standing out for me is the fact that every student is involved in Cooperative Learning. The fact that everyone has a role, an important one that is necessary for the team to thrive is incredibly beneficial on so many different levels. The biggest element being that students are learning fundamental skills of how to work in a group or team, and on a bigger picture, how to be a productive member of society.  I think about Congress, or other groups of government and most of the time I am disgusted with how these seasoned adults don’t even understand the basic principles of discussing important topics and ideas with other people who don’t share their same views. Meetings on topics like abortion, gay marriage, and healthcare become heated arguments that score closely with ignorant temper tantrums. CL is a way to teach students content as well as basic ways of communication, teamwork, and how to work together. Looking at our “Let’s Make Squares” activity last week, there were a lot of ideas going on at my table, and we all had to voice them clearly and precisely in order to have each member move their pieces how we thought would be best. We had to be courtesy of each other, patient, and cooperative (lol).

 

Another element of CL that I think is wonderful is the praiser. I’ll be completely honest, it did feel weird to have someone cheerleading the group and it was very sarcastic. But after we actually overcame making four squares, we all became praisers. It really is so unlike us to say “Good Job” sincerely to someone else. Eventually, if we were to do CL regularly it would most likely become a basic part of our nature.

 

I feel like CL is something that is more likely to happen in elementary schools rather than secondary schools, but that doesn’t mean it shouldn’t. There just needs to be more building up and working towards getting high school students ready for CL. Little kids enjoy playing pretend, and are at an age where it just comes second nature to them to want to assume a role and run with it. But that magic gets beaten out of students with age. CL is something I’d want to wait to do with students after they’ve had some time in class. But its something I believe can help harbor a healthy classroom space and community. If I’m told I need to know my students, and I believe I want a safe space, then using CL to build up student’s self-esteem and making everyone feel a part of a group is how I can do it.

A Menu of Options/ Do Your Own Assignments

One piece that is really sticking out to me this week is the idea of a menu of choices for students when it comes to projects and papers used for assessment. The cookie example displays perfectly why it’s important to give students equally weighted options when having large assignments. Not everyone thinks a like and approaches tasks the same. Thinking back to Gardner’s Multiple Intelligences Theory, not all people learn the same. So giving choices that are weighed equally, or as equally as you can get them, allows students to have a choice in how they want to best demonstrate their knowledge. But as stated in class, it’s important that students know that they may have a choice, but they must choose all the options presented to them at least once. So for example, give students an option to write a paper about “Of Mice and Men,” film and write a script for a scene from the movie, or create an eight page, multi-panel comic of their perception of the book along with a one to two page analysis of why they chose which scenes and how they accented the themes and motifs of the book using visuals.

 

The idea of choice and creative freedom was one I didn’t get to experience until college in some of my writing ad English classes. In SED 445, How to Teach Writing in Secondary Schools, we were required to create an assignment for students based on a wordless graphic novel.  One thing that stood out to me about that assignment, that I am reminded of again this week is the idea of weighted options. That stands for an important question: How can you be sure that your choices are fairly heavy? Well in my past SED 445 class, we not only created an assignment and rubric, but we did our own assignment. And let me say, it was a powerful experience and one that I’d advocate that teachers do more often. Doing your own project helps you see into the eyes of a student more effectively. It was hard to pick myself apart from what I knew about the assignment and just go off of what I had created, but the attempt yielded results that showed me how much or little I was asking from students. It also shows you what’s important about your assignment and what isn’t. For one of my classmates in SED 445, he had created a film project with a packet to guide their process. Doing it himself, he realized that the packet was confusing and asked way too many insignificant details that detracted from the actual content.

 

Giving choices to students allows them entry into the assignment. Students feel more invested and excited when they get the chance to break out of the norm of paper writing and get creative. Its where thinking outside the box and hands on skills can thrive and where students can get a sense of what they can really do when guided effectively and given the chance.

On Asking Questions and Giving Lectures

 

 

I find myself thinking about the fundamentals of learning and asking questions. To me, questions are powerful. Questions lead to thinking, probing, and searching for some sort of answer. I feel like in many senses, we want our students to ask questions. But yet when I was observing classes last class, I noticed that not enough students were asking questions. Instead, the teachers were which makes sense of course. Questions are a form of assessment, that’s why it’s important to focus on how we word our questions. Playing with Bloom’s Taxonomy and switching of the order in which we ask low level to high level questions is a key.  I feel like it’s not just can our students answer the questions, but can they take that answer and shoot a deeper, related question back out? To me, that’s more of an assessment than just an answer.

 

Looking at the second part of the class, I found the lecture on how to lecture really eye opening. The part that stands out to me the most is telling stories in our lectures. It opens up many different doors for our students. Not only is it in human nature to be drawn to stories, but its also a way to help them remember the content of the lesson. But more importantly it’s a way to build a relationship with students. By telling them a story from your life (an appropriate one) it’s a way to show them a side of you. It adds depth to who you are as a person. I can remember some of my favorite teachers from high school and one of the reasons I can is because I know something quirky about them that they told me one class. I know that lecturing is inevitable, but as long as you can keep it fun, productive, and human I feel as though it is a productive way to get information out.

 

 

               

Real Time Lesson Planning

Tuesday’s class was very exciting for me. It was reassuring and energizing to see lesson planning in real time. One of my biggest anxieties is creating a great lesson plans that drive a class and guide students to think and thrive. While watching the lesson planning I tried to be critical and question what I was seeing before me. One thing I found cool about that is as I would question parts of the lesson plan, Kim or the other teacher would address my question.  For example, I was concerned that students would start to give up or get frustrated with the Do Now exercise because they were being asked to categorize types of conflicts before they had even gone over the topic in class. Almost immediately after I wrote that in my notes Kim or the other male teacher said that it would be a good idea to walk around and reassure students that the point was not to try to be one hundred percent correct, but just to try. That was big for me because not only did it show that they were thinking about how their students may feel with the task, but they were taking the focus away from being correct, but rather, what the content was.

 

Before watching the co-teaching lesson plan I didn’t really think much of co-teaching. Now I am completely sold on the concept. I feel like team teaching is powerful and effective because it helps to create a more solid lesson plan. One of the things I’ve always been told is to try to not get too lost in my head as I plan, to keep checking that the plan is cohesive and step by step. Like with writing, it can be easy to move at too quickly of a pace and think that students will be able to follow along because as the teacher, you already know the content at hand.  Being able to talk out the plan and bounce ideas off of each other helps to create a plan that is fluid and compelling. You also can brainstorm how your students are going to act and what questions they may have.

 

Knowing your students has been a constant theme in this class. We all keep hearing that students want you to get to know them, that it’s your job to get to know them, and it’s like you’re a second parent to them while they are in your classroom. More so than ever do I see how crucial it is. Kim displayed that knowing is the key to guiding your students to effectively learn. Creating differentiated planning, and spicing things up with elements that not only aid audio learners but visual and kinesthetic learners helps for everyone to learn. From interest inventories to lesson plans, to just establishing a positive relationship with students, keeping their needs and strengths in mind is something that every teacher must do.  I’ve always known that to be at my core, but more so than ever I feel pumped up and energized to get to teaching.  I want more classes like that one.