Today my peers and I taught a lesson about perseverance and collaboration. The lesson was the first lesson to be done in a unit about coding and since the unit involved a lot of collaboration and learning from mistakes, we decided to open up the unit with an activity that would address those skills. Our group decided to do a lesson with 20 toothpicks and 10 gumdrops that the students would build into a structure to withstand the weight of an object. The students came in and we explained the activity to them. It was a little rough getting them into the groups we needed them in, but when we finally got who was sitting where the rest was smooth sailing as far as the organization of the activity goes. The students built the structures pretty quickly, but none of them were able to withstand the weight of the object we chose. I even thought that using a lighter object like my cell phone would work, but when I tried the student's structure would collapse. Therefore, I believe that the room that we were working in was so hot it was melting the gum drops. After we finished the activity, I asked the students what would make this project easier, they stated more materials and cooler weather so the candy wouldn't melt. My partner also started a conversation about collaboration and the students were able to say that if they did the activity over again, they would collaborate better and use their materials wiser. I feel that we met the lesson objective we had about collaboration, but we were unable to talk about failure and perseverance and that was something I really wanted to hammer with this activity. I think that if I am to do this activity my age group, I would do something like the marshmallow challenge.
Overall I really enjoyed every activity we did that involved the students. I teach much older students so it was amazing to me to see how engaged and how capable they are of higher level thinking if we just give them the opportunity and something fun to do. I am definitely taking this experience with me to my site and my classroom by creating more collaborative activities and creating lessons that would be fun for me to do if I were the student. I definitely gained empathy for my students in this course and it has opened my eyes to a lot of ideas and strategies that I can implement, or work toward implementing, in my classroom next year.
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In class yesterday we learned about different types of blended learning techniques. I really enjoyed watching the videos about blended learning and then creating the presentation about the flex model of blended learning. Although I really enjoyed watching and creating a presentation about the flex model, I was the most interested in the station model. I feel that I can incorporate stations pretty easily in my mathematics classroom. I was thinking about breaking my students up into 3 groups and doing small group instruction with one group at a time. The second group will do khan academy, watch a video, or an activity on demos while the third group will work on a poster, a worksheet, or some other hands on collaborative activity. I am really excited to incorporate this and I think that small group instruction will work wonders for my students in my math classes. I am also always looking for an opportunity to incorporate demos or khan academy into my class, therefore, stations are the best way for me to do that and incorporate blended learning as well!
Today in class we did the marshmallow challenge that really had my group and I engaged. Our task was to build a structure out of 20 pieces of spaghetti, one yard of tape, and one jumbo marshmallow. Time went by so fast and my group and I found effective ways to work together and balance the marshmallow on top. Our group was able to balance the marshmallow the first time, but the second time around we were not able to keep the marshmallow up. I feel like this activity, in addition to the TED talk would be a great first day activity to do with my students. I could discuss how students will collaborate and explore different concepts in my class. I also think that this activity would create a great discussion about failure and how students didn’t quit trying to keep the marshmallow up when it continued to fall. Also, if students were able to keep the marshmallow up, then they continued working to improve the height of their structure and demonstrated growth mindset. I feel like this discussion will be a great way to start my year and set a good foundation on collaboration, growth mindset, and positive self-efficacy in my class.
Chapter 8½ Discussion Question 4: Tell about a time when you were aware that your knowledge and potential—or a student’s—was misrepresented by a standardized test.
When answering this question, I mainly want to talk about the students at my site. The students that I teach are involved in MESA, STEM, and Engineering and are doing AMAZING thing at my site. So last year when we got our SBAC results, I was appalled at how low they were. In fact, our brand new superintendent though that the highest level of math that should be offered at my school is Algebra 2 rather than Calculus after he saw the results. My department chair and the other teachers on campus threw a fit and we worked so hard this year to raise our SBAC scores this year. I found this to be really disrespectful to our students. Our students do amazing things every day and prove to us teachers their own learning and it was totally misrepresented by the SBAC. I am nervous to see last year’s results because I really don’t want my students to lose out on higher level mathematics courses that they could have the opportunity to take. Chapter 9 Discussion Question 1: How can you foster the ability of the students or people around you to think “outside of the box”? I think I can foster student’s ability to think outside the box if I stop training them to think within the box. I mean that I should stop telling my students how to do things and let them explore it a little bit on their own. For example, during some research online, I found these inquiry activities that I could do with my students. The main idea of these inquiry activities is to show something mathematical to the students and let them ask questions about it. The teacher doesn’t do any probing or questions it is mainly students just thinking aloud about what they are seeing. I really want to try some of these activities next year and see how I can get some of my students to think outside of the box about math. Chapter 7 Discussion Question # 5: In what ways are teachers the amateurs and parents the experts?
In some ways the parent is the expert because the parent knows the student better than the teacher does. The parent has also known the child for much longer than the teacher in most cases. Also, the parent knows everything and everything about the child such as learning style, strengths, weaknesses, and interests. Although it isn’t that hard to find out this information for a teacher, the parent will always first and foremost be an expert in their child and how they learn. The parent also gets to focus directly on their own child, while a teacher has to be diverse and differentiate between students. For example, a regular family doctor may know a lot about different illnesses, but this doctor may send you to a brain surgeon if you need brain surgery. In this example, the family doctor is the teacher and the brain surgeon is the parent. The teacher knows a little bit about every one of their students, but the teacher is always the expert of their child. Chapter 8 Discussion Question #4: Dewey writes, “[In] the traditional method the child must say something that he has merely learned. There is all the difference in the world between having something to say, and having to say something.”6 What does this quote mean to you? I believe this quote means that there is a difference between saying something for the sake of receiving credit versus having something to say because you actually learned something that holds meaning to you. For instance, I like to check my students’ understanding sometimes by giving them a ticket out the door. Most recently I asked a bunch of summer school students what the exception words were for writing numerical expressions. Every student was able to tell me the exception words on their way out to break; however, when students came back in from break, only about half of them were able to demonstrate that they knew what to do with those exception words on the quiz. Therefore, some of the students said something, but really had nothing to say. Dennis Littky Reading:
I read this short article about a little boy named Joe and how he was really interested in Japanese culture. The article discusses how Joe's education changed when he transferred to The Met School created by Dennis Littky. Castleman, B., & Littky, D. (2007). Learning to love learning. Educational Leadership, 64(8), 58-61. Authentic Assessment reading: I read this article about authentic assessment which stated that authentic assessment engages the person as a whole. This means that the assessment is about what students know, who they are, and how they act. Authentic assessment gives students the opportunity to learn and become who they want to be. This article reminded me of The Big Picture book when it stated that assessment has to be real to the student's current world. Vu, T. T., & Dall’Alba, G. (2014). Authentic assessment for student learning: an ontological conceptualisation. Educational Philosophy & Theory, 46(7), 778-791. doi:10.1080/00131857.2013.795110 College and Career Readiness: This article discusses how schools should first create a culture of college and career readiness on their campus and the strategies and goals suggested to get there. Some goals that they stated schools should reach for are: 1. understand the nature of college 2. Recognize that a college education may be important to his or her success 3. Gain positive perceptions and aspirations about college 4. Prepare academically for college admission 5. Set short and long term goals that support becoming college and career ready. This article also states 8 strategies that create a college going culture on campus. Instead of listing all 8, I decided to list 3 that my site either does, or ones I could easily implement at my site. 1. Visit colleges with students 2. Plan school related goals that help prepare for college/career readiness 3. Create stories: Possible titles "My Positive School Experience" or "My future Career and How to Prepare for it." Overall I found this article to be more College-Ready based rather than Career-ready. However, I found it a good read and gained a lot of new ideas to do with my Algebra and AVID students. Radcliffe, R. A., & Bos, B. (2013). Strategies to prepare middle school and high school students for college and career readiness. Clearing House, 86(4), 136-141. doi:10.1080/00098655.2013.782850 Chapter 5 Discussion Question #4: Did you save any of the papers you wrote for school? Why or why not?
I saved my actor’s portfolios from high school and all of my calculus notebooks from my undergraduate career. I went to a magnet high school where I got to choose an area of focus. I chose to focus on Theater Arts which included acting and behind the scenes design work. These classes were my favorite classes and a lot of the bulk of the work was put into portfolios. I had one for acting which had monologues, headshots, and character sheets. For the design portion, I had another portfolio for my research on the play write, the era the play was written, the time period in which the play took place, and my design of costumes, sets, color schemes, etc. These classes were my passion for my entire high school career and I graduated with my normal high school diploma and my theater diploma. I chose to keep these because they remind me of how much I loved theater and how I would like to get back involved with design again; however, I lived in a time where California needed more math teachers rather than Theater teachers, so I ended up majoring in education and Mathematics. I kept all of my Mathematics notebooks from college because math was NEVER something that came easy to me; in fact I always had to work at it. Therefore, I keep my old calculus notebooks so that I can reference them when I need to. Chapter 6 Discussion Question #5: What would it take for you to want to be a mentor to a high school student two days a week at your workplace? It wouldn’t take very much for me to decide to be a mentor to a high school student two days a week because I actually had a mentor my Senior year of high school to be a math teacher. I was in the Teacher’s apprentice program offered through the county office of education and I was given the opportunity to work as a glorified TA my 6th period of my senior year. In this class my Mentor let me create warm ups, lessons, games, and give one-on one and small group instruction. I learned a lot about teaching that year and it was then that I learned that there was so much work outside of the 8-3pm realm. Because I had this mentor, I knew what I was getting myself into and I still keep in contact with him on Facebook. Therefore, I would volunteer in a heartbeat to be another student’s mentor because of how beneficial mine was to me. Chapter 3 Discussion Question #2: How could a school go about showing its students that they are trusted and valued members of the school community?
I think a school can go about showing students that they are trusted and valued members of the school community by giving them a choice in their own learning and how they handle conflict. This chapter discusses how senior students mentor the younger students in a way and then model appropriate behavior. i think that trusting students with how they want things to go in school will show them that we respect and value their ideas. For example, my school site has a large problem with first period tardies and they have wracked their brains about what to do about it; after reading this, I am going to suggest that we take a poll from our students to see what they might think is a good solution. Chapter 4 Discussion Question #5: Tell about a time when you were in school and your learning matched your interests. How was that experience different from times when your learning didn’t match what you were interested in? When I was in high school, I was really into theater and participating in the behind the scenes action. My junior year, I enrolled in a styles of theater course which mainly worked in all of the behind the scenes work for the school plays, such as building a set and costuming. One unit in particular really grabbed my attention. The unit called for us students to build a scale model of the play. This required me to use proportions and fractions which I absolutely hated! However, I found myself engaged and focused every day we had scale model day and the following year when we did the same unit, I loved it! I believe that during this application and creating something using math is when I really started to like math and try harder in my math courses. However, science was another story. My science teachers in high school required us to memorize things from our text book, color a model of it, and then do a lab on it. I never felt like it connected to any of my interests which is sad because as an adult, I see many opportunities my science teacher missed just by discussing science with my friends. I chose to shadow a 6th grader named Hannah at Sequoia Elementary school. During the first rotation our group was given the task to construct a device that would protect an egg when dropped. Our group was given a lot of random materials and were told to be creative. Our group had a lot of good ideas and the students who didn't have a suggestion gathered materials around the room. Our group finally had enough materials and a game plan when it was time to move on to the next rotation. My group seemed pretty bummed and wanted to keep building.
At our next rotation we were given a worksheet to work on about adjectives. We were told to sit there and work on the worksheet and then turn it over when we were finished. This was a boring and quiet task for my group. When we finished the worksheet some of us started playing games and drawing on the back. When it seemed like everyone was finished, students were asked to volunteer to read aloud their paragraphs. Students seemed excited to share their paragraphs, but I noticed that the majority of the students were listening for their name on the radio so that they could go home. At about 12:45 we were asked to draw a picture of our story on the back of our paper because we didn't have enough time to do the next worksheet. Some of us drew a picture, while others of us discussed sports and played tick-tac toe. Overall, I think myself and the other students had more fun in the first rotation because we were all working and collaborating on something together. The kids were all very respectful to one another and listened to each other's ideas. When we moved to the second rotation I felt bored with the worksheet and spent more time talking to the students about their interests and they asked questions about mine. It was interesting to me to see how students went from such a high level activity to a simple worksheet and how the students started to behave and act differently. The first rotation was loud and messy, but I felt so much more engaged. Whereas, the second rotation was clean and neat, but I felt bored and ready to go home. Chapter 1: The Real Goals of Education
Discussion Question #4: Do you agree that learning is personal? If so, how would you go about explaining the concept to someone who may not be as convinced? I agree that learning is personal because everyone thinks, interacts, and behaves differently which in turn effects what people do with that information that they are learning. If I were to explain this concept to someone who may differ in opinion I would explain to them that in order to really learn and remember something it has to be meaningful to the student. Then I would ask them about something that they may find meaningful and why, followed by a brief explanation about something that is meaningful to me and why. I would then follow up my argument by stating that what people find meaningful is unique to them just like our thoughts and our beliefs. Therefore, learning must be personal because how we interact with the information or how meaningful the information may be varies from person to person. Chapter 2: Kids, Schools, and the Bigger Picture Discussion question #6: Why do you think kids drop out of school? If you have known a high school dropout, what was his or her experience after leaving school? What do you think needs to change in the way schools and society deal with dropouts? I believe that kids drop out of school because they feel like there is no other option, no point of school, or they feel that no one cares if they go to school or not. I know two different people who dropped out of high school and have gone in two completely different directions. The first dropped out of high school because he didn't see the point of it and his parents didn't really care if he went to school or not. So instead he dropped out, got his G.E.D, and then joined the electricians union as an apprentice. He now is a very successful electrician in the bay area. The second person got pregnant as a freshmen and didn't see how she could possibly be a good mom to her daughter and go to school. She dropped out her freshman year of high school and has not attempted to get her G.E.D yet, but has expressed interest in it. She currently works for Denny's as a server. The two people I discussed above did not have good family or school support when it came to their education. I believe that if schools started incorporating more CTE and made content more relatable, the first student would have never dropped out because he would have seen a purpose in going to school. The second person got pregnant and society viewed it as an "end" to her life and so she thought the most logical move was to drop out. Therefore, I think that society should be more accepting of teen moms continuing their education and teachers should give young women the encouragement and the knowledge of programs made to keep teen moms in school. |