EDU 6526: Meta Reflection Blog- An anchor to the Big Ideas
This week has been a culminating week for me and my classmates. We’re wrapping up finals, making last minute submissions all in order to “get the grade” we deserve. I’ve thoroughly enjoyed reading some of my colleagues’ papers and their great topics, including: Cooperative Learning, Inductive & Inquiry model, Multiple Intelligence & Non-Linguistic instruction, Character Education and Developmentally Appropriate Instruction in Kindergarten. I’ve had the opportunity to explore so many great ideas, excellent connections as well as wonderful use of quotes to support topics. I made sure to give credit and constructive feedback in order to ensure my peers that their papers were read and understood, just as I hope that they would do the same for me.
I feel that I’ve worked hard this quarter and put a lot of conscience effort, thought and reflection into most every module. I was eager about each topic study and made it a point to make connections from the readings to my personal experiences in the classroom as well as my beliefs. I feel this class has helped prepared me for to come in the future of education. I think we can expect to see buildings and districts making use of all the educational research and theory behind student learning and best practices, and having teachers utilize these in their classroom environments. Through the course of this quarter I’ve read, examined and applied many pedagogical styles as well as teaching and learning strategies through readings and studies. I’ve used my experiences as an educator to make connections to topics and answer questions that have caused me to analyze the structure of my classroom and the nature of my teaching styles. This course has emphasized what I do “right” as an educator but has also highlighted what I need to work on and modify in order to ensure my students’ well-being, help my students achieve success and cultural competence. We read brilliant works by authors in the past and great minds writing about today’s schools and classrooms, all which have made me reflective in my teaching. I made some very strong connections to the ideas of: Positive student behavior, Marzano’s Instructional strategies, Concept Attainment, Cooperative Learning and Direct Instruction. These identified study topics were the most influential to me during this course.I plan on carrying though the rest of this year and years thereafter utilizing them in my classroom and advocating for them in my building.
EDU 6526: Blog 9- Direct Instruction, it works!
This last module we were asked to consider direct instruction and how structured, direct instruction promotes student learning and well-being. After reading Dell’Olio and Donk, Models of Teaching, direct instruction has shown to have positive effects on student learning, especially students who are considered “at-risk”. Direct Instruction, “has been found to be particularly effective with elementary and secondary at-risk students academically; furthermore, it promotes self-esteem and positive social skills” (Dell’Olio & Donk, 2007, p. 93). Due to the nature and design of direct instruction it promotes student learning and well-being based on the elements that make up a lesson using this approach; focus activity, stating the objective, providing rational, modeling, checking for understanding, guided practice and independent practice.(Dell’Olio & Donk, 2007). I typically use direct instruction for math since I have a diverse classroom of learners, my students who are higher don’t need all of the elements involved with direct instruction. Most of them are ready to “fly” on their own into independent practice after we’ve seen the video that correlates with the lesson topic.
During the discussion on this topic a few of my colleagues brought up some great points about direct instruction versus indirect instruction. Jessie S. stated, “ It is important to balance direct and indirect teaching in order to encourage individual learning while guiding the direction of the learning process”. We have such a diverse classroom of learners that not all students benefit or need direct instruction for every lesson, however I think to adhere to the needs of all students it is important that we use direct instruction especially when we want to prevent any misconceptions of ideas so that students don’t leave a lesson confused or with false information.
Dell’Olio, J. M., & Donk, T. (2007). Models of teaching. Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage.
EDU 6526: Blog 8- Citizenship and Virtue
Module 8 was all about looking at Values and Citizenship in classrooms and schools. We were asked to think about and discuss how we implement lessons and activities about citizenship and virtues into our classroom situations. Personally, I had to confess that while I truly value the concept of citizenship it’s been difficult for me to “teach” virtues and values to my third graders this year. I would maintain that I foster citizenship in my classroom through the use of Character education, Bucket-filling and modeling. Character education has been slightly diminished by the installment of Bucket-filling at my building this year. Bucket-filling is a program that focuses on positive student behavior and the idea of invisible buckets that everyone has, it can be filled or dipped into which in turn determine our good and bad feelings. By doing weekly lessons with my students we have discussions that talk about how to be bucket fillers rather than bucket dippers, this in turn helps maintain a classroom environment that has students viewing themselves as “citizens”. As part of our weekly readings, we read Russell Kirk’s “Can Virtue Be Taught” and what I found intriguing was how Kirk cited Simone Weil, especially when she stated, “It is as though we had returned to the age of Protagoras and the Sophists, the age when the art of persuasion—whose modern equivalent is advertising slogans, publicity, propaganda meetings, the press, the cinema, and radio—took the place of thought and controlled the fate of cities” (Kirk, 1987). To me this speaks volume about where our generation and the younger generations are getting their influence and “virtue education” from, media propaganda. He also discusses exemplars or role models that children are growing up with today, such as “rock stars” or TV personalities, as opposed to responsible exemplars like grandparents or mentors.
EDU 6526: Blog 7- Positive human relations = Positive achievement and success
This week’s module topic, Learner-Centered Approaches, had me very excited at looking at how students’ emotions and personalities should be considered by educators. I think this is such an important issue for all teachers to be educated, trained and have ample practice with since having a safe and comfortable learning environment is one of the key factors to student achievement and success.
One of the many resources we had in this module’s readings was Carl Roger’s article “Researching Person-Centered Issues in Education” (1983). It discussed his idea behind positive student behavior and it’s relation to a positive human relationship, namely with the teacher. He concludes, ” the research evidence clearly indicates that when students’ feelings are responded to, when they are regarded as worthwhile human beings capable of self-direction, and when their teacher relates to them in a person-to-person manner, good things happen” (Rogers, 1983). I think this is amazingly worthwhile for all educators or any person who deals with people on a day-to-day basis to be reminded of and apply to their relations. People in general like to be validated, it doesn’t matter if they’re 5 or 75 years old, people inherently like to be noticed and applauded for a job well done. When I first started fractions with my students a few weeks ago, one of my very soft-spoken students really seemed to grasp and have a firm understanding of them right away, I complimented her by simply stating, “Wow, *student* you’re really good at fractions girl” and from then on you could see a difference in her work ethic and success with our fractions topic. Even making a small comment like that inspired her to keep up the hard work and effort in learning fractions since I validated her knowledge early on.
In Dell’ Ohlio and Donk we read chapter 10 on the model of Role Playing and its key importance with aiding social problems that arise commonly within schools. “Role Playing allows students to clarify an interpersonal problem and then experiment with a variety of ways to address that problem when it occurs again” (Dell’Ohlio &Donk, 2007, p. 282). We as teachers should NEVER assume that students come to school prepared to solve and handle the many interpersonal and social conflicts that may be encountered daily. Role Playing is a strategy that teachers and students participate in together, where teachers can pre-plan or even take problems that occur within their classroom and have students “act out” scenarios. Students reactions can be pre-determined by teachers during initial instruction or even occur naturally through role play to ensure authenticity, then a classroom discussion would follow to outline what went right, wrong or could have been different. The post-play discussion, in my opinion, is where the true lesson lies for this model.
Dell’Olio, J. M., & Donk, T. (2007). Models of teaching. Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage.
Rogers, Carl. (1983). Freedom to Learn: Researching Person-Centered Issues in Education.
EDU 6526: Blog 6- Cooperative Learning in Jigsaw fashion
Cooperative Learning can be deemed as socially constructed knowledge at its finest, some would say, especially this week with our module’s readings about Jigsaws and John Dewey’s Pedagogical Creed. I have to be honest and say that I didn’t quite make the connection right away between our module’s readings and our discussion question which was “What is meant by the phrase ‘knowledge is socially constructed’?” It wasn’t until halfway between my initial post that I made the association between them, socially constructed knowledge and cooperative learning strategies such as Jigsaw. However, leave it up to many of my classmates to see the parallel between the two and provide some great discussions and ideas about the two. For example, Josh A. stated, “knowledge is a direct result of the social interactions and interpretations of the knowledge presented and processed by the students as a group. Very few people learn, or learn well, in solitude” (Blackboard discussion post, Feb. 13th, 2012). From John Dewey’s perspective children’s “unconscious education” starts at birth and is shaped throughout their lives by their experiences, their knowledge is socially constructed by their interactions and encounters with others. When students are introduced to a topic, skill or concept and then given a task to complete with a small group of learners they’re truly able to make meaning in their own language, their knowledge is socially constructed and extended by and with their peers. This is a very powerful interaction and can be fostered through the use of cooperative learning strategies such as Jigsaw.
Using a strategy such as Jigsaws fulfills five essential components of cooperative learning according to Johnson and Johnson (Dell’Olio and Donk, 2007) the five components are: positive interdependence, face-to-face interaction, individual accountability, social skills development and group processing opportunities. Jigsaw also fulfills academic and social objectives for students. Jigsaw uses home groups as well as group “experts” to carry out a lesson, expert groups review and learn material then carry out instruction and teach the expert material to their home groups. The home group students participate in discussion and the lesson with the experts while learning the material. There’s time for group processing as well as individual accountability either through a quiz, journal entry or homework. The accountability piece is huge for all involved, it can serve as an assessment piece. Jigsaw can be a time constraint activity at first but after ample practice can serve as a great way to “socially construct” students’ knowledge.
Dell’Olio, J. M., & Donk, T. (2007). Models of teaching. Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage.
EDU 6526: Blog 5- Advance Organizer
Module 5 was all about the model “Advance Organizer” developed by David Ausubel and is useful for aiding students in organizing information (because they get so much!) and connecting it to a larger framework. At first I felt a little confused by the idea and really engrossed myself in the chapter to fully understand the method of instruction, it finally sunk in for me when I read that they, “are designed to bridge the gap between what the learner already knows and what he needs to know before he can successfully learn the task at hand” (pg. 393). I appreciated how it discussed what the model wasn’t, a summary or overview of the topic, which helped cement the idea for me. When looking at the two different categories of advance organizers, one must decide which would work better for the lesson material and then also deciding which type to use with the students, text-based or visual advance. Text-based would be literally what the name suggests, a text-based piece that students would read, whereas the visual would be video or pictures to share with students. The two categories include, “Expository organizers function to provide the learner with a conceptual framework for unfamiliar material, and comparative organizers are used when the knowledge to be acquired is relatively familiar to the learner” (pg. 394).
While I find that this method would most certainly benefit students at the beginning of a theme or unit in a subject area or discipline, deciding on the “what to use” would provide some difficulty for myself. I can deduce that using this strategy in my social studies unit for Pacific North Coast Indians would be highly beneficial for my students. With the amount of information that students are given during this unit, using an advance organizer in the beginning would help, “provide the ‘hierarchical framework’ for students so that they can move information into long-term memory efficiently and effectively and in a connected manner” (pg. 402). This will then allow students to make connections to more information as they continue learning. Thinking about how to utilize this strategy in my classroom, I found myself feeling overwhelmed about how to approach a lesson without doing an “overview” or giving too much information away about Pacific North Coast Indians. After posting to our discussion my concern about how to use this method with my social studies unit I was given some “food for thought” by a colleague who offered this, “I wonder if the concept of conservation could help. Or perhaps posing the students with the question, how would you survive if you found suddenly found yourself stranded in the middle of the Olympic National Forest?” I truly appreciate having the wealth of knowledge and ideas of my peers so handy when thinking about all these strategies that we’ve been reviewing and learning about together.
Dell’Olio, J. M., & Donk, T. (2007). Models of teaching. Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage.
EDU 6526: Blog 4- Concepts vs. Facts
This last week we read and looked at an instructional model called Concept Attainment developed by Jerome Bruner, Jacqueline Goodnow and George Austin. This model based on the critical thinking skill categorization has students and teacher looking at a concept by exploring exemplars, non-exemplars and making hypotheses. “In Concept Attainment lessons, students will be asked to observe, analyze, classify, develop hypotheses, verbalize their own ideas and learn to analyze the ideas of others” (pg. 112). This model as well as this week’s discussion had myself and my colleagues looking at concepts versus facts and their relationship.
After considering and developing my own definition based on experience I look at concepts as being derived and conceived in the mind based on information given or learned. I believe that facts help to build concepts in students’ minds, which is why students can sometimes have misconceptions because they’re not using the right facts or don’t have enough of the right facts to form a correct concept. I had a few of my classmates comment on my post and agree with the idea of misconceptions with our students. A few of my classmates even shared their personal experience with students having the wrong or limited amount of facts to truly support and show understanding or mastery of a concept. This is when teaching truly comes into play, when we as educators need to go in and “prevent” or “fix” errors and misconceptions. One of my classmates provided a very helpful chart that looked at the scientific method and he compared the scientific method to the concept attainment model. I would agree that both seem very closely connected and utilize many of the same kinds of skills: asking a question, construct hypothesis, test, analyze results and draw conclusion then report findings. I thought this was a great parallel to look at this new model idea for teaching.
Dell’Olio, J. M., & Donk, T. (2007). Models of teaching. Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage.
EDU 6526: Blog 3- Inductive Strategy: pros and cons
Module three: Induction/Inquiry had us looking at readings about the Inductive thinking model as well as Inquiry -Based lessons and a look at Common Core standards. A heavy and popular topic for this week’s discussion was on the subject of pros and cons for inductive teaching strategies on student learning. I noted that many of my colleagues, as well as myself, noted similar pros and cons for this strategy, the pros seemed to highly benefit student learning while the cons fell on the teacher’s side.
Many of the pros included: collaborative learning, use of higher order thinking domains and a great introduction or culminating assessment. The Inductive model allows for students to be able to, “generate their own information, organize that information, make sense of what they have collected, and communicate their understanding to others” (pg. 146). By looking at Bloom’s Taxonomy, when students are able to participate in an Inductive model lesson they’re able to access and work within the categories of: Analysis, Synthesis and Evaluation. I read in other posts during this discussion that this strategy can aid student “critical thinking skills” and how many are wanting to exercise this type of opportunity more often. I also believe that this strategy will help foster and keep a “community-like” environment within a classroom, when students can come together with their “guide” and create organized lists of learned information it can really bring a group of kids, students, adults, people together. As mentioned earlier, the cons of this strategy I noticed fell upon the teacher more so than the students. The issues of time, conformity, organization, limited use of and participation seemed to circulate in some of the posts for this module. I would agree with my peers that time is precious and very much limited with the amount of information to be taught and pressure to get through. I also acknowledge some of the other barriers or obstacles that would make this strategy difficult to carry out in a classroom setting. I’m very much one for trying new things and experimenting with my teaching strategies and instructional methods, therefore I find myself excited at the thought of giving this a try in my own classroom setting.
Dell’Olio, J. M., & Donk, T. (2007). Models of teaching: connecting student learning with standards. Thousand Oaks, Ca: Sage Publications, Inc.
EDU 6526: Blog 2- Effectiveness vs. Under emphasized: Which Strategy takes them all?
Module 2: Classroom Instruction that Works, had us reading the very popular Robert Marzano and colleagues and looking at nine research-based instructional strategies. The strategies included: Identifying Similarities and Differences, Summarizing and Note Taking, Reinforcing Effort and Providing Recognition, Homework and Practice, Nonlinguistic Representations, Cooperative Learning, Setting Objectives and Providing Feedback, Generating and Testing Hypotheses and finally, Cues, Questions, and Advance Organizers. As educators we were asked to reflect on which strategies we noticed were being utilized in schools and classrooms and which were being under emphasized. After going back and reviewing my peers’ posts I can vaguely conclude that the majority of us felt that Homework and Practice was the most commonly used instructional strategy in classrooms with Summarizing and Note Taking close on it’s heels, followed by Cooperative Learning. Speaking in general terms, it seems to me that those who identified Homework and Practice as a popular strategy seemed to be in the Elementary-age bracket while those who went with Summarizing and Note Taking were in the middle and high school-age bracket. This would make sense since Summarizing and Note Taking is a popular and well used strategy to get important and large volume information to students. Cooperative Learning seemed to be a strategy that was emphasized across all grade levels, which I think is brilliant, since it’s an effective strategy for all-age students and as my colleague, Josh Auckland stated, “Companies are not just looking for individuals that have the aptitude for a job, but are also highly interested in finding workers that can work cohesively in a group and make decisions together.”
In the under emphasized category, Generating and Testing Hypotheses seemed to be the strategy that many of us felt was not as well utilized as some of the others. I believe that this strategy is under emphasized since it can generally be viewed as a scientific strategy, however as Marzano & co. state, “this basic cognitive skill applies to a variety of tasks that are applicable to many subject areas” (pg. 110). This strategy out of the others feels a little intimidating to me since it seems to rely on students having many experiences in order to procure a hypothesis. However, as defined in our reading, “By definition, the process of generating and testing hypotheses involves the application of knowledge…something we do quite naturally in many situations” (pg. 104). With the amount of PLC (Professional Learning Community) time that schools are dedicated to, this quite possibly could be a strategy focused on and incorporated into a research or study group. For some of my peers in this course, this action has already begun!
Marzano, R. J., Pickering, D. J., & Pollock, J. E. (2001). Classroom instruction that works. Alexandria, VA: ASCD.
