Internship Post 4

Standard:

2.1 Using Questioning and Discussion Techniques

2.2 Engaging Students in Learning

Interpretation:

2.1: Teacher uses a question-based method to help students reach information and conclusions.
2.2: Students are asked questions appropriate to their level, and are interested in the lesson by the teacher’s efforts.  

Evidence:

In my class last week, we discussed human rights. The lesson plan I used was one my mentor teacher found on the internet and asked me to try. I would cite it but I have no idea where she found it – I only have a printed copy. It was largely question-based, and focused on asking students questions to get them thinking about, and defining in their own words, the topic and vocabulary for the lesson. I found it interesting how successful the kids were at tackling such a complex topic, and I was proud of them for how well they did with it. The lesson started by asking kids what made someone human, with the teacher writing the answers on the board in a bubble. Outside the bubble went student-volunteered words that described what one would need to protect the things that make us human.

It should look like this:

The teacher was then, according to the lesson plan, to explain that these things were human rights – what makes us human, and the things we require to protect that which makes us human. And that we get human rights just for being human.

For me, this exercise proved that my students can operate at this higher level of questioning, and that this was a style of teaching that the kids not only can access, but can do well with. I worry though that they did not take notes, or appropriate notes that will be useful later when they are tested on the material. I wonder if there is a good way to show students to take notes on this.

Summary:

Asking questions of students to help guide their learning can work very effectively and can allow students to show an ability to handle higher-level questions. But I wonder what the best way to teach students to take notes from this style of teaching is.

Next Steps:

Continue to use question-based learning methods

Research note-taking methods that might be effective for this style of lesson

              Consider Cornell note style

              Consider teaching a lesson that is purely about how to take notes from a speaker

Internship Post 3

Program Standard:

5.4 Managing Student Behavior by Establishing Expectations

Standards of conduct are clear to all students.

Interpretation:

Teachers must figure out ways of working with students to prevent bad behavior from impacting learning.

Evidence:

I have a particularly rambunctious 4^th period class. I’ve expended a lot of my time and effort and thought trying to come up with ways to get them to settle down quickly so that we can spend more time learning, and less time discussing why it’s not acceptable to refuse work, or wander around the classroom, or talk while I’m talking, or any of a dozen other misbehaviors they exhibit. It finally occurred to me to try being upfront and specific about my expectations for the class. But being upfront and specific about my expectations is not enough. I also had to stand by what I said – no student could be allowed to breach my behavior instructions. To allow such a breach is to allow inconsistency, which means my rules can be broken – and therefore freely ignored without penalty. This means that they WILL be freely ignored by my students, and the point of the exercise is rendered moot.

So I tried it. And I was a little surprised to find that it worked.

(Sorry, I’m not exactly an artist.)

My 4^th period ruffians were magically transformed into cooperative, diligent students who raised their hands and stayed in their seats. I didn’t yell, I didn’t have to call Security. They did what I asked of them, because I was upfront about what I wanted. I suspect my students have spent a lot of time wondering this year exactly what it is that’s expected of them in this class. Moving forward, I intend to continue using this strategy of telling them exactly what I expect, and then holding them to it.

Summary:

If you’re clear and upfront about what you expect from your students in terms of behavior, and you are firm about enforcing those behavioral norms, your students will behave.

Next Steps:

Continue to be clear about expectations

Continue to stick to these expectations and to enforce them When expectations shift because of different lesson styles, be sure to note what behaviors are expected of students.

References:

The brilliant minds of my mentor teacher (Mrs. Shaw) and field supervisor (Mrs. Huff), who suggested I try this.

Scaffolding, Assessments to Inform Planning, and Providing Useful Feedback Kids can Understand

Program Standard:

Assessment

6.3 Designing Student Assessments to Inform Planning

6.4 Using Assessment to Provide Feedback to Students

Interpretation:

6.3: Teachers need to design assessments so that the assessments can be used to determine what should be taught next, and how.

6.4: Teachers need to provide useful, timely feedback to students so that kids can improve on or before the next assignment.

Evidence:

In my class, we worked on an assignment that involved students developing questions about a reading, swapping questions with a fellow student, and then attempting to answer that fellow student’s questions. I designed the assignment to serve as a formative assessment to inform my planning, because I wanted to assess what students’ question-writing and answering abilities were. I somewhat scaffolded the assignment by providing sentence-starters for the questions.

According to an Edutopia blog seeking to provide educators with useful resources, “Scaffolding is breaking up the learning into chunks and then providing a tool, or structure, with each chunk” (Alber, 2011). Scaffolding is a useful tool to help struggling students understand and complete difficult or complex assignments. But I am not convinced, after this lesson, that I scaffolded adequately.

I then provided feedback on the students’ work so that they could improve or move on before a future assignment, which was supposed to build on question-design and question-answering. I learned from this that sometimes, even when you think you’ve adequately scaffolded something, it’s not enough for all the students. Of course, that’s the whole point of feedback – to help students understand where they went wrong, so that they can do better next time. And scaffolding is meant as a guide, not to guarantee perfection.

Feedback is tricky, though, because it’s predicated on the assumption that students actually read what the teacher wrote. And often the students who struggle the most don’t read the feedback, or don’t internalize it. I realize now that I need a way to get kids feedback that they understand and then proceed to use in order to improve.

Sample of student work from this assignment:

Summary:

Students need practice with new styles of assignments, and they need feedback to improve. But that feedback has to be accessible to them, and it has to be feedback they’ll actually pay attention to.

Next Steps:

·       Scaffold more thoroughly, and consider providing at least one or two starter questions that all students must answer first, before proceeding with the activity described in my lesson above.

·       Provide student feedback that MUST be paid attention to. This might mean meeting with some or all students individually, in order to ensure that the student hears and understands their feedback, so that they can do better moving forward.

·       Some students invariably need more help and support than others. For the students who are desperately struggling, consider allowing them to work as pairs or with additional supports like worksheets, in order to help them catch up.

References:

Alber, Rebecca. (2011). Six Scaffolding Strategies to Use With Your Students. https://www.edutopia.org/blog/scaffolding-lessons-six-strategies-rebecca-alber

Internship Post 1

Program Standard:

5. Learning Environment

5.2 Managing Classroom Procedures through Transitions

5.4 Managing Student Behavior by Establishing Expectations

Interpretation:

 The program standards 5.2 and 5.4 set out, respectively, to define how a teacher should best establish classroom management through procedures to facilitate transitions, and how to manage student behavior through setting reasonable achievable expectations for student behavior in the instructional setting.

Evidence:

One sure-fire way to have the wheels come off the bus, metaphorically, in one’s classroom is to remove or suddenly change procedures that a class is familiar with. I learned this lesson recently with my particularly rowdy fourth period class. In a bid to gain an extra ten minutes at the beginning of class to use for our day’s review activity, I jettisoned the do now my students usually do, and which serves to both review the previous day’s lesson and to put the students in “work mode.”

Never have I ever experienced a more object lesson in the importance of procedures, and sticking to them. When Wong wrote in The First Days of School about the importance of procedures in establishing the classroom as a learning environment so that it doesn’t devolve into chaos, I had thought that the occasional break from routine might be welcome and helpful to student learning (1). And while I would still argue that my assumption was true in some cases, I now know it is certainly not true in all or perhaps even in most cases.

The review activity I had chosen was to have students rewrite song lyrics to tell the story of history topics they had covered recently, in preparation for their coming test. I decided to omit the do now for all of my classes. This was perfectly fine in my first two classes of the day, which are fairly studious groups. My fourth period class, however, is rather raucous – they have a very different  make-up and “personality” as a class, and because of that they generally need more structure and procedure than the other two classes. While fourth period did manage to do the review, they did it in a much messier, less academically sincere, way than the first two classes did, and it was (I believe) to their detriment, because their review consequently had less academic substance to it.

Here is a student work sample from fourth period, to help you understand how little substance the kids put into this:

I spent a lot of the class period corralling students who had wandered away from their assigned groups, and encouraging/coddling students who were refusing to do the assignment. In some ways, the wheels came off the bus in that class, and by the end of it, I felt rather harried and frustrated. I realized that this group of students could not handle a procedure shift, and needed a more regimented, structured, procedural review than the other classes, in order to actually get something out of the review that would help them on their test. Wong had been right all along - the structure and procedure was what allowed them to learn, by setting clear boundaries and limits on what was acceptable behavior in the classroom (1).

Summary:

Generally speaking, a little variety is the spice of life, and can be acceptable with some groups of students. But for other groups, variety in the procedures of the classroom can be disastrous and frustrating. A teacher must use their best judgement to decide which groups of students can handle a procedure change, and which can’t, and to then adapt their lessons as needed to accommodate the needs of each group.

Next Steps: In this case, these are lessons I learned from my experience with my fourth period class:

·       Never omit procedure for a class that needs structure and procedure, even if it costs you time. You’ll end up losing at least as much time corralling the kids, as you would on the procedure you want to omit.

·       Always reinforce procedure – do it often, do it with repetition, and do it sincerely. Because if you don't, it won't work when you really need it to.

·       Have a method for quieting students down quickly. Something simple like turning the lights on and off, or clapping your hands three times. Something, anything, to get attention quickly so that you can proceed with class. I prefer to say "Flat Tire!" And have the kids respond with "Shhhhh!" And yes, skeptics, believe it or not this does work with high schoolers.

·       Work hard to develop a strong rapport with difficult students – this increases the likelihood that they will obey procedure, and will stop being an obstacle to other students’ learning and to your teaching. This is the only reason I was able to successfully get fourth period to finish the review - but with a stronger rapport, maybe I could have had a more organized, meaningful review with that class due to less wandering off, and less refusal to do the assignment.

References:

(1)    Wong, Harry and Wong, Rosemary. (2001). The first days of school. Mountain View, CA: Wong, Harry K. Publications

Learning with Technology Individual Project Phase 5 Post

This blog post will evaluate how I would expect a technology-based lesson plan to have gone, and what I would change to deal with any expected problems. Because I did not teach this lesson before the end of the class, this is purely hypothetical, and largely consists of my worst-case scenarios.

The Lesson: The lesson itself is straightforward - students will conduct research to write a paper about an assigned emerging nation, explaining that nation's process of emergence.

The Problems:
There are several problems I could imagine cropping up. First and foremost is a computer shortage due to some of the computers not working. To compensate for this, I would pair students who have the same topic for their papers, and allow them to research together, so that fewer computers are needed. I would then contact the school's tech support staff member, to have the computer issue fixed.
The next possible fail point is language issues with English language learners. To compensate for language issues, I would pair the ELL student with another student who is either fluent in the ELL student's native language (as well as English), or with a student who has a knack for helping others, so that the two can work together on one topic, so that the ELL student has the support they need from a peer.
Third, are computer-illiterate students who can barely figure out how to log on, let alone run a competent search in Google. My solution here is similar to that used for ELL students - pair them up with kids who can teach them the skills they need. As with ELL students, I only have so much time to devote to helping them - I could spend all class helping one kid, but I have 30 students in each class - I can't justify spending that much time with just one kid. In order to be fair to as many of my students as possible, that means I have to get the kids to help themselves and each other.
Fourth, something could go wrong with the search engines and databases themselves. That, I can't do anything about. However, it's extremely unlikely that all the search engines and databases would be down all at once. What's more likely is that one or two search engines or databases won't be accessible when they should be, and I'll just direct students to use other engines/databases, while I write a report/complaint email to the customer support for the database or search engine to get the problem resolved.

Content Methods End of Quarter Post

Standard Four:
Content Knowledge: The teacher uses content area knowledge, learning standards, appropriate pedagogy and resources to design and deliver curricula and instruction to impact student learning.   

To me, this standard describes aspects of lesson planning that relate how one will effectively communicate content to students so that they actually learn. Content area knowledge is, simply, information about the topic you’re teaching. Learning standards are what you’re required to teach students in a given unit or lesson. Appropriate pedagogy and resources means using an relevant and proper method to teach, and relevant and proper resources to teach with that method. For example, if you’re teaching students how to do an online research project, you would use laptops or a computer lab – not a regular classroom with no computers.

The standard is broad, so I will narrow my focus for this blog post. I will discuss my increased understanding of academic language. Academic language is the language needed to discuss academic content. It can be particularly challenging to English language learner (ELL) students, who have varying levels of proficiency with English and therefore might struggle not only with content-relevant vocabulary, but also with specific academic terms used to describe content  (and some content-relevant vocabulary). Native English speakers will also sometimes need a refresher with such terms, as they usually are not accustomed to speaking with formal language. ELL students are particularly likely to struggle where academic language terms have different formal and conversational meanings, as noted in the Coleman and Goldenberg reading for this course (2010). The same reading also notes that it is important to “include not only the vocabulary of the content subjects, but also the syntax and text structures” (2010). One must go beyond simply words, and must also describe and teach how and when to correctly use those words.

My emerging competence on academic language has increased significantly. I went into this class thinking academic language was simply a fancy term for vocabulary words – I now know how very wrong I was, and how much more there is to the idea of academic language. Academic language can include everything from simple vocabulary like “tank, bomber, bunker” to “read, write, listen, analyze, critique, describe.” It must also necessarily include instruction on how to the terms – one cannot allow sloppy term usage like “The Germans bombered that target,” or that a student has “analyze Winston Churchill’s speech.”

It is part and parcel of academic language to be able to use it correctly, not just to know the words exist. Students must be taught this, especially ELL students, so that they can develop competency of their own both in my classroom and in their other classes – I’m realizing that all opportunities to practice language use must be capitalized on, so that they can become proficient in both conversational and formal English.

In summary, I’ve learned a lot from this class, as well as from my own personal experience, regarding academic language. There are several ELL students in the classes I’m currently student teaching, and I’ve realized I need to focus in with them specifically on how to correctly use the terms I’m mentioning as I teach, and the vocabulary words as well. They need as much support as I can give them, so that they can be successful in history class and also elsewhere.

Some changes I can make to increase effectiveness of my academic language instruction would be to provide more examples of proper usage, both in my teaching and also in worksheets for the students to complete. I could additionally provide worksheets just for ELL students and students who struggle with using academic language, so that they can get extra practice with this specific verbiage. I can also deliberately seat struggling students next to students who easily grasp academic language, in the hopes that the students who “get it” can help the students who don’t. All these changes might increase students’ understanding and absorption of academic language.

Learning with Technology - ISTE 5 Post

ISTE 5: Digital Citizenship

Relevant question: What is cyberbullying, and how can I talk to my students about it?

To be perfectly frank, this isn't a topic that lends itself easily to the anachronistic, technophobic atmosphere present in most history classrooms. But it is a very important topic to discuss with students, particularly as they reach an age where their parents allow them to have a Facebook account, and to become less supervised in their digital explorations. What I'm trying to say is that I think it's important to sit kids down and explain both what cyberbullying is, and how it can be hurtful, when they're in middle school or are starting high school.

Let's start by defining cyberbullying. According to the government website stopbullying.gov, "bullying that takes place using electronic technology." That technology can be physical, or it can exist as part of the internet - whether it's by cellphone or by Facebook or Twitter, if it is bullying and involves technology, it's cyberbullying.

How to talk to kids about cyberbullying is a little trickier. Because the internet offers kids a degree of safety in their bullying because of the physical distance and, sometimes, anonymity it provides, cyberbullying can get more vicious, and can be scarier to kids, than other more conventional forms of bullying. Add in the fact that cyberbullying can be done by adults, and is often not within the purview of a school to punish, and cyberbullies can get very scary and very out of control, very fast. All this makes it harder to talk to kids about, because the scarier a thing is, sometimes the less likely, and less willing, kids are to discuss it with a grown-up. Also kids entering their teens tend to want to handle problems on their own, and so are doubly less likely to consult or alert an adult to a problem like cyberbullying.

Which brings us to, how do you talk about cyberbullying with students? And how do you get them to tell you, if there is a cyberbullying problem?
Admittedly, I've never had this conversation with a student. But I have talked with students about other bullying problems, so I don't feel totally clueless. At any rate, here's my two cents. I think there are two important things a teacher can do, to talk to kids about cyberbullying.
First and foremost: Get to know your kids. The more you know them, the more they'll get to know you - and the more comfortable they will be with telling you things that are going on in their lives. That'll range from who they're crushing on to how annoying your fellow teacher is, but it will also include social conundrums like bullying and cyberbullying. Make it clear to kids from the beginning that if there is a problem (of any kind, but of the cyberbullying variety too), you are a person they can trust and can come talk to. Flat-out say it, at the beginning of the school year.
Second: Make a point of setting aside some time in your class to discuss what bullying and cyberbullying are. Sometimes kids find themselves in situations and don't know what's going on, or how wrong it is. Get the kids to talk about it - chances are they've heard of cases where it happened or have themselves experienced it. Use the examples to point out when a kid should bring an adult in on the situation, and be sure to give examples of what you could do, as an adult, to help.

**Note: While it's important to teach what cyberbullying is, and to encourage students to report it, it's just as important to teach students how to interact on social media and using technology in a way that is *not* cyberbullying. In other words, students need to learn proper nettiquete. I feel that this is an important topic, which deserves its own blog post, which is why it's not discussed here.