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