Prompt: How do you plan to implement active engagement strategies in your classroom? How will this impact your instruction?
I believe that active engagement is a choice that students make. Certainly, teachers can create an environment or structure that keeps students actively engaged, but it is ultimately a choice that they make. There are a couple of ways that I think teachers can engage students, and a few of these ways I intend to try for myself (since I just learned about them):
1. Changing the method of questioning to include all students (e.g. instead of: "Who can tell me?" use: "I want everyone to think about...")
2. Creating roles for each person when students are grouped together (e.g. Student A will describe as many ways as they can on how to graph a linear function, Student B will hold up a finger for every correct response)
3. Allowing for sufficient think time (i.e. 3 seconds) and a signal for responses (especially for choral responses)
What worries me most is the disparity in student understanding for these activities. There is often a tendency for one student to dominate the activity (especially during group work or choral responses) and a culture of allowing that one student to mask the participation of other students. Creating those expectations and helping students overcome their own tendencies to be non-participants is tricky, since many students struggle to do even basic arithmetic and have developed a learned helplessness that has persisted for many years. Still, there is merit in allowing peer learning to occur, and engagement is definitely higher when such activities happen. If there is more active student engagement, indubitably, instruction will improve as well.
Friday, November 28, 2014
Blog 17
Prompt: How can you incorporate the STEM concepts to a particular project or lesson plan in your classroom?
The wonderful part about math is that it is a critical component of science, technology, and engineering. To incorporate science concepts, it would be particularly beneficial for me to work with the science teachers in my school. I know that after talking with our biology teacher that some of our standards like probability and exponential growth are related. Co-teaching a class or lab together would really reinforce these concepts for our students and show them how our disciplines overlap. To incorporate technology, I know that many websites contain games or activities that teach programming or require logical reasoning to complete. Using these discovery-type apps and web-based games can provide students with an opportunity to grapple with challenging situations or sandbox their ideas in a virtual complex. There are also many engineering challenges and activities that can be found online. My favorite is the Marshmallow Challenge, since it is relatively easy and cheap to facilitate. The activity is also great for team building and has a TED video to go along with it.
The wonderful part about math is that it is a critical component of science, technology, and engineering. To incorporate science concepts, it would be particularly beneficial for me to work with the science teachers in my school. I know that after talking with our biology teacher that some of our standards like probability and exponential growth are related. Co-teaching a class or lab together would really reinforce these concepts for our students and show them how our disciplines overlap. To incorporate technology, I know that many websites contain games or activities that teach programming or require logical reasoning to complete. Using these discovery-type apps and web-based games can provide students with an opportunity to grapple with challenging situations or sandbox their ideas in a virtual complex. There are also many engineering challenges and activities that can be found online. My favorite is the Marshmallow Challenge, since it is relatively easy and cheap to facilitate. The activity is also great for team building and has a TED video to go along with it.
Blog 16
Prompt: Have you had to go to your school counselor to assist in a situation? What was your experience in working with the counselor? Were you able to get the student or parent the resources they needed? If you have not had an experience with a school counselor, after hearing this webinar...what scares you most about the topics discussed? What thoughts did you have reflecting on the content of this webinar?
I haven't had to actually go to my school counselor for anything on my end. In fact, he has come to me multiple times to talk about certain situations. We do have a personal friendship outside of the school, so sometimes the lines between working with each other can become a bit blurred. He has come to me once about a parental complaint (concerning a student's eligibility for Homecoming queen of all things), several times regarding transferring students (he is also responsible for scheduling), and occasionally to talk about students who have had certain traumatic experiences that I should know.
In all cases, I've benefitted from being notified about these situations. I was able to call and reason (to an extent) with flustered parents, discuss the consequences of transferring students to certain classes, and adjust my engagement with students that I know are suffering from problems outside of school. I am very thankful for our counselor, who does so much on top of his required role. He has definitely given me good warnings in many cases, and I know that I would be more scared to approach parents and students without his help.
I haven't had to actually go to my school counselor for anything on my end. In fact, he has come to me multiple times to talk about certain situations. We do have a personal friendship outside of the school, so sometimes the lines between working with each other can become a bit blurred. He has come to me once about a parental complaint (concerning a student's eligibility for Homecoming queen of all things), several times regarding transferring students (he is also responsible for scheduling), and occasionally to talk about students who have had certain traumatic experiences that I should know.
In all cases, I've benefitted from being notified about these situations. I was able to call and reason (to an extent) with flustered parents, discuss the consequences of transferring students to certain classes, and adjust my engagement with students that I know are suffering from problems outside of school. I am very thankful for our counselor, who does so much on top of his required role. He has definitely given me good warnings in many cases, and I know that I would be more scared to approach parents and students without his help.
Blog 15
Prompt 1: Common Core and You! After participating in the webinar about Common Core Standards, what are your concerns? What ah-ha did you have about CCS? What will you continue to do or do differently to ensure that you are teaching to the CCS?
My initial concerns about the Common Core mainly surround how standardized assessment data will be used. I'm all for the method of using alternative questioning techniques because this pushes educators to focus on deeper understandings on learning objectives. Still, the structures are not in place at our school for rigorous learning and remediation. Currently, I do not think that the results will be favorable. And in some ways, I almost think that policymakers and CCS designers are hoping for districts to fail just so they can provide some fodder for education reform. I fear that teachers will feel punished if this data is used for evaluative purposes, but what else is data used to do?
I do like that the movement is focusing more on less standards and more in-depth and rigorous learning. Certainly, the pacing is key to ensuring that teachers feel prepared to provide adequate learning experiences for all students. Structures need to be in place that support students needing remedial practice, and students in need of enrichment also need challenging and creative ways to apply what they have learned (sounds like a lot of SolutionTree-speak, I know). Perhaps all of this will just take time to develop. I certainly hope another reformational program or movement doesn't swoop in soon to wash over this.
Currently, our school uses Beyond Textbooks for its curriculum, which isn't very helpful as far as resources. I've been told that the curriculum is CCS-aligned, but our benchmark assessments don't even model the same type of questioning that our students are expected to tackle for PARCC. While I do use the BT formative assessments, I believe that I need to start incorporating more formative assessments that ask students to find multiple ways of arriving at solutions. For example, I could teach multiple ways to graph linear functions (using slope-intercept form, creating a function table and evaluating the function, etc.) or show students how to rearrange the same formula multiple times to solve for a certain variable. Whatever the case, our students just need more practice.
My initial concerns about the Common Core mainly surround how standardized assessment data will be used. I'm all for the method of using alternative questioning techniques because this pushes educators to focus on deeper understandings on learning objectives. Still, the structures are not in place at our school for rigorous learning and remediation. Currently, I do not think that the results will be favorable. And in some ways, I almost think that policymakers and CCS designers are hoping for districts to fail just so they can provide some fodder for education reform. I fear that teachers will feel punished if this data is used for evaluative purposes, but what else is data used to do?
I do like that the movement is focusing more on less standards and more in-depth and rigorous learning. Certainly, the pacing is key to ensuring that teachers feel prepared to provide adequate learning experiences for all students. Structures need to be in place that support students needing remedial practice, and students in need of enrichment also need challenging and creative ways to apply what they have learned (sounds like a lot of SolutionTree-speak, I know). Perhaps all of this will just take time to develop. I certainly hope another reformational program or movement doesn't swoop in soon to wash over this.
Currently, our school uses Beyond Textbooks for its curriculum, which isn't very helpful as far as resources. I've been told that the curriculum is CCS-aligned, but our benchmark assessments don't even model the same type of questioning that our students are expected to tackle for PARCC. While I do use the BT formative assessments, I believe that I need to start incorporating more formative assessments that ask students to find multiple ways of arriving at solutions. For example, I could teach multiple ways to graph linear functions (using slope-intercept form, creating a function table and evaluating the function, etc.) or show students how to rearrange the same formula multiple times to solve for a certain variable. Whatever the case, our students just need more practice.
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