Summative Assessment

Throughout this semester in SED 407 instructional methods, design, and literacy I have learned many valuable lessons that have had a tremendous impact on me as a future teacher. In this course we have learned literacy based teaching methods and strategies through reading, research, observation, and implementation. In addition to learning how to be a good teacher I also discovered things like who I want to be as a teacher and what makes a good teacher. I have learned about teaching and teaching methods in SED 407 through many valuable learning experiences such as classroom observations, various panels, and through the implementation of two lesson plans in a history class.

            Classroom observations were a very valuable learning experience for me throughout the duration of SED 407. I was able to see examples of both good and bad teaching and implementation of the teaching strategies that we learned in class and in through readings. I also learned how to observe in a classroom through different protocols where we were asked to look at things like classroom management, questions, understanding by design, and student and teacher actions. These observations also allowed me to see what it is like for teachers and students in an “urban” high school that has a diverse array of students with different educational needs and how these needs addressed and met by teachers.

            The various panels that we participated in throughout the semester were another great learning experience for me. We were able to discuss many important subjects with teachers, administrators, students, parents, and student teachers. One of the most important things that I learned from these panels is what all of these different people think makes a good teacher. Though I believe what the teachers, administrators, parents, and student teachers had to say about this subject I think that the most important and my favorite answer to this question came from the student panel on September 18^th. The students said that they believe a good teacher makes learning fun, connects with and cares about their students, knows and loves their subject, is kind, understanding, patient, a friend, and a mentor. This answer was very valuable to me and is something that will stay with me in my future career as a teacher. 

            The most important learning experience that I had this semester was teaching and implementing two lesson plans in a class at CF High. This was my first time ever teaching in front of actual students and I have to admit I was a little nervous. Overall I believe the lessons went well. Most students were engaged, participating, and doing their work. I did learn that it is difficult deal with classroom management and teach at the same time. I enjoyed having the opportunity to actually implement some of the reading and writing strategies that we learned about in class in a real life situation. I came out of teaching these lessons feeling confident in my teaching skills and that this is really what I want to do as a career.

            Based on the RIC Conceptual Framework I believe that I was able to successfully experience and accomplish planning, action, and reflection during many different experiences in this class such as the three important ones that I have previously discussed. I also believe that I was able successfully experience and accomplish the course outcomes through these activities. I learned about and implemented various reading and writing strategies and how to use them as a teacher of history including Understanding by Design, cooperative learning, and direct instruction. I was able to analyze my teaching beliefs and practices and discover who I want to be as a teacher. Finally I was able to broaden my professional identity and gain confidence by leaning from Dr. Horwitz, various members of the CF High community, my peers, and my cooperating teacher.

            Now for the most difficult part of this assessment, grading myself. I honestly believe that I deserve a B plus in this class. I tried my best at everything I did throughout the semester however I know that there are some areas where I could have done better. I know that classroom discussion played a major role in this class and I often did not speak up during discussions. One major reason for this is that I think very deeply before I talk. Maybe I should have just gone with my gut instinct and said whatever was on my mind without the fear of being judged. I know that this is something that I need to work on as a professional and is something I strive to get better at.

            Overall I have found SED 407 to be an extremely valuable and enjoyable experience in my journey towards becoming a teacher. I am grateful to have had the opportunity to take this class at CF High. I learned many important lessons from my experiences in this class and look forward to implementing what I have learned in my next chapter of teacher education and throughout my future teaching career.

Observations

What:

I observed many things during my three observations in two different ninth grade United States History one classes at Central Falls High School. I could go on and on about important details like class size, activities that were done in class, how the room was set up, and so on. However, the “what” that stuck out to me the most during my observations was that during each class there was always at least one or more students that were not doing and refused to do their work.  This is something I also struggled with while teaching my two lessons. There are many questions that can be asked of the student who does not want to do their work.

So What:

            This is an important issue that needs to be discussed because it is something that I’m sure every teacher has to deal with at some point in his or her career. There will always be students who do not want to and refuse to do their work. There are many questions to ask here. Why is this student not doing their work? Do they not understand what is being asked? Are they not proficient enough to complete the work? Do they need extra help or differentiation to complete the work? Do they simply not want to do the work because it is not fun? There are endless questions than can be asked on why a student may not want to complete their work. So how can we address these questions and get the student or students who do not want to complete their work to become interested and engaged?

Now What:

            How can these students who are not willing to participate and are being overlooked be motivated? This is something I struggled with when I was teaching my two lessons. There were a few students each time that would not do their work. I was going around to each student to make sure they understood what they were doing, had everything they needed, and answer any questions. Whenever I got to one of these students I would ask them, “Why aren’t you doing your work?” Some students didn’t have a pen so I got them a pen. Still they wouldn’t do their work. I would ask them to try their best and do as much as they could before the end of the period. Still, they would not do their work. I realized at this point that I was not really sure how to deal with a student who refused to do their work.

It was extremely difficult for me to get these students motivated. I was trying my best but they still would not cooperate. Also, since I only had two lessons to get to know these students and get them engaged this was an extremely difficult task. Had I been able to spend more time with these students and teach more than two lessons to them I would have tried different class activities with them to try and get them more interested and excited about learning. I would have loved to try some type of cooperative learning lesson with them. Perhaps this would have gotten them excited about learning and motivated. I think that building relationships with students is also an important part of student engagement. I would try to set up a safer classroom environment. Students need to feel as though they are in a safe environment where they can take risks and I’m not sure if these students felt that way in the classroom that I observed and taught in. Overall, I think that this is a common and difficult problem that all teachers including myself will need to address at some point in their career. In my future career as a teacher I never want to let students like this go unnoticed and I will try my best to make sure that all students are actively engaged, participating, and doing their work.

            

Chapters 11 and 12

      

           In chapters eleven and twelve we are taught how to help struggling readers and recommendations from reading research. Some key strategies for helping struggling readers are to build supportive relationships, model thoughtful reading, use activities that build engagement with text, promote self monitoring, use material students can successfully read, and provide books and articles on tape. Out of these strategies the one that I liked the best was modeling thoughtful reading. This strategy would be done though think-alouds where the teacher reads to the class while stopping to go through what their thought process is.  This allows the teacher to model for their students how to go about reading while actively thinking and questioning. I saw this strategy being used during my observations and it seemed to work really well and help students to understand the reading better.

            Chapter twelve lists many recommendations for struggling readers based on research. I feel like this chapter repeated many themes that were already discussed in the book such as the idea that cooperative learning is a comprehension strategy that has a solid scientific basis and students should read a wide variety of materials in class. There were many other recommendations listed in this chapter that I believe were discussed at some point or another in this book. Overall this was a summary of everything that we have learned about literacy from Daniels and Zemelman.

Overall the main idea that I have gotten from this book is that it is our job as teachers to facilitate reading in the classroom. Though this may not always be an easy task this book has provided us with some very useful reading tools and strategies that we will be able to use in the classroom to help all students at all reading abilities and levels. Since the strategies that we have learned have not been content specific I decided to do some research on helping students with reading in a history classroom and have provided an article below on how to do so.

http://teachinghistory.org/issues-and-research/research-brief/25421

Promising Practices Letter

                                                                                                                              November 3, 2014

Dear Elizabeth Ochs,

Thank you for your Expanded Learning Opportunities presentation during the Promising Practices conferences at RIC. It was great to learn more about the different ELO’s at Central Falls High School and how they allow students to get involved with their community while working with teacher mentors and earning credits and community service hours. It was especially enjoyable to learn about the School/Community Emergency Response Team and Community Garden first hand and how they provide students with after school enrichment and learning opportunities. I really enjoyed the presentation on robotics from the former CF High student and community hero who saved a child’s life using his training from the SCERT ELO.  He is a prime example of how these ELO’s work.

            I found that this session connected to the ideas discussed by Dr. Christopher Emdin and promising practices theme of how there are necessary changes that need to be made in education. These ELO’s are a form of alternative learning that get student out of the classroom and allow them to learn from things that they are interested and passionate about. I also feel that it relates to a common theme that keeps coming up whether it is in Dr. Emdin’s address or my SED 407 class. That common theme is taking risks. I’ve learned that in education taking risks is necessary to facilitate change. Through taking risks you may fail but you learn from these failures and move on. I believe that these ELO’s are a way for both teachers and students to take educational risks and try new things. That is why this session stuck out for me.

            This session has me thinking about changes that must be made in education and how we must try to transform our classrooms from “traditional” classrooms to classrooms that use new and exciting methods of learning. Do you think it might be possible for any of these ELO’s to be offered as a class during the school day for students? Do you think it should be a mandatory requirement for graduation that all students participate in an ELO so that they gain real world experience and skills? I personally think that perhaps there should be some kind of class that students are required to take during their high school career that is done during the school day and requires students to do ELO like activities that they are interested in. I also think that it might be beneficial for students to be required to join an ELO for at least one year of their high school career. Overall this session was incredibly valuable to me as a future educator and I learned a great amount from it.

Sincerely,

Jennifer McGill

Book Clubs and Inquiry Units

Chapters nine and ten of Daniels and Zemelman discuss the use of book clubs and inquiry units in the classroom. With book clubs students are given a list of books to choose from that relate to themes or ideas discussed in class. They are put in to groups of three to six students based on which book they choose and divide the book in to sections. Depending on what the teacher decides students meet in their groups a number of times until they are done reading the book. During each meeting students discuss their reactions and thoughts on what they have read. They should question each other and their ideas. These questions should come from the students and not the teacher. The teacher does not lead book clubs but is the facilitator.

            While reading about the structure of book clubs I had a number of questions and concerns. The authors then addressed these questions and concerns later in the chapter. My first concern was how to make sure that students are actually doing the readings. It was explained that the teacher could go around to each group to make sure that students have taken notes on their reading. These notes do not need to be collected however, if there is concern that the students are creating fake notes the teacher can let the students know that notes will be collected at random. My other concern was how student learning could be assessed or evaluated with book clubs. The authors explained that there does not need to necessarily be a formal assessment for student learning for book clubs. However, should the teacher feel that assessment is needed they could give point values for student preparedness and note taking for each book club. Students could also be required to write a final essay on their book. This essay should not be a summarization of the book but ideas, themes, thoughts, and questions that were brought up in their book club.

            I’m not quite sure how I feel about book clubs. I think that they sound like a good idea in theory. However, I feel as thought it would be difficult to make sure that students are actually doing the readings and participating in group discussions. If they are not being formally assessed students might not have the motivation to read the text. I do think book clubs would be worth trying in the classroom. They would just require a lot of work and student practice.

            In chapter ten the idea of inquiry units is discussed. Inquiry units help students explore bigger ideas and allow for cooperative learning and connections between subjects. They give the example on page 222 of a project where students design their own civilizations. This project allows students to learn and use skills in geography, English, and art. With inquiry projects students work in groups and share the ideas they have learned through presentations, activities, or displays and learn from each other. These projects are assessed using a rubric. Inquiry units help to engage students more deeply and help students to understand specific topics more in depth. I think that this is an important tool in teaching. It is always great to get students excited about learning, work in groups, make connections, and practice public speaking.

            While learning about these two classroom tools I thought about previous readings in this book. It sounds like these two ideas are what were discussed in previous chapters with the Fast Food Nation project. Students read a specific book, discussed it together, and worked on projects in groups in a number of different subjects about this book. Overall I think these are useful classroom strategies that help students learn to work together and make connections.

Here are some books that could be used for a history book club:

http://www.hudsonlibrary.org/Teen/historicabooklist.pdf

Reading and Writing Strategies

            In chapter five of D and Z we are introduced to various strategies for reading and writing. There are mental strategies that readers use to understand what they are reading, instructional strategies that teachers use to help students learn mental strategies, and whole class or individual strategies that combine both mental and instructional strategies. Teachers must introduce these reading strategies to students and guide them on how they are done then allow students to practice them on their own. While reading through all of the suggested strategies in the chapter five I was thinking about which strategies I thought to be the most effective and that I could see myself using in the classroom as both a teacher and a student.

            One specific strategy that I liked was brainstorming. With brainstorming the teacher gives a key word from the reading that is going to be done and the students tell the teacher words or ideas that they associate with that word. This give both the teacher and the students an idea of what they already know about a topic prior to any reading that is done. This also allows students to have input in the lesson right from the beginning. I think that this strategy would be very useful in a history classroom because students might have some kind of knowledge about historical subjects prior to learning about them in class and that information is useful for the teacher to know.

This made me try and think of an example of how I would use brainstorming in the classroom. The first subject that popped in to my head was the Civil War. I could possible start by asking students what words they think of when they think about the Civil War. Or I could narrow it down to a specific term and say slavery, freedom, or secession. The opportunities are endless when it comes to brainstorming about historical topics.

I felt that clustering which was the next strategy in the book could be used as a way to organize student’s brainstorming. With clustering students identify a key word, which they write down, and circle on a piece of paper. Then they think of words and ideas that they associate with that word and write them around and connect them to the key word. Students then connect outside words that are related to each other. Students get together in groups and share their ideas and draw connections between each other’s ideas. Again I thought of my Civil War example and how this strategy might work well in the classroom with this subject. Chapter five goes on to discuss various reading and writing strategies all which can be useful for both teachers and students in the classroom.

I found a website with blank graphic organizers that could be used for both brainstorming, clustering, and other strategies that were described in chapter five: 

http://www.eduplace.com/ss/socsci/tn/books/bke2/gfxorganizers/index.html

Finally here is a quote that I found this week and wanted to share just because...

The Problem With Textbooks and How To Use Them

            From this weeks readings I learned many important lessons about textbooks.  Chapter three of Subjects Matter discussed why textbooks should not be the only reading material used in the classroom.  The authors claimed that textbooks have a number of issues for both teachers and students. Some of these issues are that textbooks are superficial, hard to read, badly designed, authoritarian, inaccurate, not written for students, and cost too much. While there are many issues with textbooks they do serve as a useful reference guide however, they should be supplemented with other kinds of readings.  

            In chapter six Daniels and Zemelman discuss how to use a textbook. They explain that what we really want to do as teachers is to help student understand the big ideas and that to remember the big ideas students must act upon them. There are six ways to help students use textbooks more effectively that are listed in this chapter. These six ways are checking out the textbook, jigsawing, guide-o-rama study guides, vocabulary word sorts, textbook circles, and SQ3R. My favorite method of these six is jigsawing. With jigsawing students are assigned to focus on a certain topic or chapter of the textbook to read. After reading their section and writing down the big ideas they meet in a group of their peers who read the same section as they did or an “expert group” and discuss what they read. They then decide what they think were the key ideas of the chapter and present their findings to the class. I have experience this type of activity in high school and seen it used in a class at CF High School and think this is a great way to make textbook reading more interesting for students. It allows them to focus more on their assigned section and allows them to work with and learn from their peers.

Overall theses chapters got me thinking about how I want to use textbooks in the classroom as a teacher. As someone who never enjoyed reading textbooks I agree with everything the authors are saying in these chapters. Textbooks should be used sparingly and only as a reference material. While using textbooks it is important to help and guide students to understand the content they are reading in fun and creative ways.

           

            

What is the future of textbook use in the classroom?