Group Differences Forum

I think that this forum was a very valuable experience for students going into education as it gives the oppurtunity to look at our biases and misconceptions on equality. I really enjoyed hearing the insight my classmates had on these issues. Personally I did not participate much as I was intrigued by other's answers  and felt that my opinion, where I had one, had been expressed. I believe that this should be a type of assignment in many classes and should even be addresed in education with students. It is important that we see ourselves as different but equal and realize what we all have to offer.

If I had to change anything about this forum it would be to give it more time so that  the issues  that garner more excitement can be discussed more heavily. I also think this should not necessarily be an assignment as much as a regular format for class during certain classes. I bekieve that at this point in our education, most students have so much to offer that class should be more of a sharing of ideas rather than a lecture style class. Naturally from time to time lecture is needed as the teacher is more prepared to share the information, but often class discussion should be more idealized.

Barb Retenbach

I read in a classmate's blog post that they thought that Barb was going to start her presentation by saying, "dear utk, autism is my prison." However she said it was her prism not her prison. This statement is where my perception was changed the most. I by no means expected that Barb was not intelligent as I have had experiences with children and adults who have autism. I did however expect that Barb would feel trapped inside her autism and feel as though it hindered her personality and intelligence from coming out. She felt the exact opposite. Barb explained through her writing that she believed that autism was a benefit to her. This sentiment blew me away. Barb is not dealing with a condition she is working through her position, and that is a powerful message.

One thing that spoke to me directly was when Barb's "SS" was talking about medicating away creativity and entrepreneurship and said that as teachers, if a student needs to be mobile or stimulated to learn, we should let them be that. Because I agree with this statement,  when I begin to teach my goal will be to have "my space" be a place where students feel comfortable and can learn in whatever way works best for them. If a student in my class needs to move to learn, I cannot fathom why anyone would stop that.

I enjoyed this presentation and I think it really opened eyes about the capabilities of those we so often say are incapable.

Post #10

After looking at table 2.2 on page 51 and considering the content relevant to grades 9-12, I believe that the strategies mentioned would be very helpful. One strategy that I think is necessary to education, and that I would certainly use is the use of academic vocabulary that is necessary to the course. This would help as it would help to build the already expansive vocabulary of my students. 

Another strategy that I would insist upon using regardless of how tedious it may seem to my students, is the insistence that all students use the correct words. By this I mean if a student mistakenly uses a word that has a different meaning or that they have simply misunderstood, I would correct them. I would not do this in a condescending way nor would I attempt to embarrass them, instead I would simply establish that in my classroom grammar is important, just as it is in the real world.

Beyond simple grammar and insistence on correct word choice I would also ask my students to find the meaning of certain readings done in class. As a history teacher, I would expect my student's to read some historical writing and explain what information can be learned from what is and what is not written. I would do this because I believe inference into the text is a very important aspect of education and that students can benefit from it in all situations.

One strategy that I have never considered but that I will use based on the table on pg 51 relates to the use of native languages at certain times. The table suggest that students use their native language in informal conversations but use standard English in formal classroom settings. I believe that I would do this as students need to be able to speak their native language for comfort and to stay close to their culture, however proper English is important in the classroom. Therefore I would encourage the use of English and only allow or rather promote the use of a native language in certain situations

Using these strategies I believe that I will be able to best help my students in the classroom as it relates to language and vocabulary.

Self-Efficacy and Intervention

There are  a few things to consider when thinking about the contributions of Self-efficacy and Self-regulation to my intervention plan. The first of these is whether or not my cueing will have an effect on the students belief that the can pay attention and do their work. That is, if students perceive that they are being chastised regardless of how subtle I may attempt to be, will it harm their level of self-efficacy. Another thing to consider as it relates to self efficacy is whether or not the students possess a low self-efficacy to begin with and whether or not that plays a role in why the students were misbehaving to begin with. If it were to be determined that this was the cause then this could be a place to begin in planning an intervention strategy.

As it relates to self-regulation and intervention strategies, the teacher would want to ensure that the students had the ability and motivation to change their behavior. It is possible that the students have an issue affecting their interest in the course and this would make it difficult for them to regulate their personal change of a certain behavior. It would be necessary to relate the class to the students to allow for the students to have a reason to want to change the behavior prior to them being expected to change and regulate their behavior.

This article by Sharon Zumbrunn et. al characterizes these attribute and their contributions well: http://merc.soe.vcu.edu/Reports/Self%20Regulated%20Learning.pdf

Case Study and Learning Theories

High School Case Study

You have started to dread your fifth period history class. It is made up entirely of seniors who are counting the days until graduation and seem to care very little about learning. Most of the students are obviously members of one clique or another. Whenever they think your back is turned, they start passing notes and text messaging. Worse, three boys have started disrupting those engaged in learning. No matter what you say, they laugh at the students who present their group projects to the class. Yesterday, Tony, Jeff, and Morris started roughhousing; then all three of them refused to sit down and follow the class procedures that the classroom community agreed upon at the beginning of the year. Although you have been using a set approach to handling infractions of rules, you decide it is time to change these procedures.

In my case study, students are beginning to lose focus and act out as the majority are approaching graduation. Behaviorism would work in only two approaches here. The ways to deal with this as I see it are through cueing and talking to the students directly. Cueing is a subtle way of attempting to get the students to behave without chastising the students outright. Cueing might include simply telling the students to get out their books and not to talk as they do it or something similar. If this does not work then I could ask the students to who I identify to be the instigators to come to the hallway and I can talk to them personally. This conversation should happen privately because calling them out in class may reinforce the behavior. This gives me the chance to explain why the behaviors need to stop and allows the student to explain why they acted out.

When reading this article I learned that constructivism is helpful when the writer said, "By engaging students in novel, relevant, hands-on activities, they become fully engaged in the learning. When this happens, the need to “manage” their behavior all but evaporates." Constructivism often appears in classrooms when students are able to use their hands-on activities to construct their knowledge base. This article tells the readers that when students are engaged in this way, they do not continue to misbehave. The article goes on to say that it is not enough just to show them a movie that captures their interest, as this does not keep children from acting out only engaging them with something that they can personally experiment with helps them.

I believe that behaviorism works better in most situations as it is easier to do and speaks right to the psychological nature of students. However, in this case I believe that constructivism would work better. I believe that getting the seniors involved with a hands on activity would engage them and prevent them from acting out. The study mentions a presentation, instead maybe the student could work on a website or wiki and create it to be posted on the internet for actual use. This would incorporate technology into the classroom, provide cross-curriculum training with web-design classes, and give the students a sense of connectivity to and responsibility for their work.

PLE Post #7

I observed a lesson that involved what the teacher explained to be choice boards. I would like to modify this type of project for my class. I could see using it for many units, but for the sake of this post, I am going to say i will use it for an American history class and the main ideas of reconstruction. I think it would be good to use this for reconstruction as many history lessons and classes gloss over reconstruction and focus on the civil war or jump all the way to World War I. My Choice board would have several didn't items ranging from guided practice to independent research. The reasoning behind having such a broad choice of activities is to provide for differentiation  in the lesson plan. Lower level students would do guided work like worksheets and using the book to answer questions. Average student could use projects that require outside research, while the highest level students might have to do research and open-ended questions to consider.

The skills that are involved in this lesson would be self-regulated learning. Students would be allowed to pick their assignments which they could pick based on interest. I could help guide them to the choices that would be best for them allowing me to have some say. The choices would be fairly relaxed in requirements, meaning that the choices would allow them to pick what type of sources they use. I would hope that they could explore their interests as it relates tt these topics so that they could learn what they want to about reconstruction while still allowing them to learn the required information. This articled guided me in thinking about this, especially pages 50-53.  

http://schoolwiresold.dentonisd.org/5222085105852403/lib/5222085105852403/diffedincludeall.pdf 

In looking for the sequence of skills necessary for ultimate mastery of content I think it is first essential to assess students' prior knowledge. This can be done in a variety of ways such as class warm-ups with open-ended questions or by drawing concept maps to illustrate student knowledge. From this point teachers should focus on finding misconceptions in the student's prior knowledge and have the students find a way to replace the erroneous parts of their knowledge with proper knowledge. This can be done by having students research a topic  or do a project that deals with the misconception so that they can see what they are getting wrong. From here teachers should guide students in the way of learning new information and find a way to organize this knowledge in some way. This is important to help students retrieve this information at a later date. This again can be done through research, projects, or a paper or an efficient grouping of the three. this helps students construct and remember the knowledge the teacher wishes their students to learn. Once a teacher believes that their students have learned what the have planned the only step is to re-assess knowledge in order to ensure students have acquired knowledge in the correct way with little to no misconceptions. 

I was very happy to find this article as it speaks directly to my area and this topic. While it is difficult to plan a lesson with this type of learning in mind, this article points out that constructivism in history classrooms only requires students to put a historical hypotheses together. That is, ask students why America may have made the decision to drop Atomic bombs in Japan. Students would be required to research information on the topic and  create a hypotheses as to why historical figures may have acted in this way. Students can then research and discuss whether they would have made the same decision given the information they have found. This will allow students to learn about WWII through their research of American bombings. This allows the student to personally build their knowledge base.

Memory Processes

       When trying to imagine how the information I am learning about memory processes will help me to direct my teaching, two main things strike me. The first is the section on organization. This is because organization seems to fit well into  my field of history. Organization refers to making connections between new information and forming a cohesive structure. This would fit the teaching of history well because as the the teacher I could connect each new event to the last and attempt to add on to my student's knowledge rather than attempting to create new knowledge all together. The second of these things is the use of visual imagery. This refers to mental pictures that are formed to store information. I like this one as I believe that one thing that has helped me with education is attaching a mental image to it. Due to this, I believe I can help my students develop a good image to help them store the information.

http://www.ascd.org/publications/newsletters/education-update/jun00/vol42/num04/Enhancing-Teaching-and-Learning-Through-Visual-Imagery.aspx

Cognitive Learning

        Considering the fact that I wish to teach history, some might find it strange that I have no interest in rote memory learning. I do not believe that it is necessary for students to memorize and be tested on endless dates and minute facts about history. Instead I hope to have my students learn broad concepts and understand the reasons behind the decisions made in history, while also gaining a firm understanding of the chronological order of events. The skill that students will need to be able to do this relates to  the meaningful learning principal and is known as elaboration. Elaboration requires students to use prior knowledge to better store more information than creating all new information. This process will be important in students learning beyond rote memorization of facts. University of Illinois education professor Brenda M. Trafenenko says that rote memorization causes students to think that history is boring, and therefore, they learn less. For this reason I hope to rely as little on endless recitation of facts and focus more on the actual history.

Link: http://www.news.illinois.edu/news/09/0212history.html

Formal and Informal Assessment in Class

When trying to think of possible ways to assess student knowledge in my class, I immediately think of testing. My thought process is that assessment is testing, and I have to get away from that.I have to understand that testing is just one form of assessment.

With that being said I must think about a way to assess my student's acquisition of knowledge in an informal way that does not require traditional testing. The first way I believe that I could do this is simply to ask my students to discuss with me their feelings on what I am teaching that day. This simple discussion would allow me to evaluate both individual and class feelings on the material. Another informal assessment would be journal entries both before and after classes. I see using these journal in lessons that I perceive to be particularly difficult for my students and  I would ask them to journal before the lesson and after the lecture So I can judge how they have grown in the material. This would allow me to see my students growth as it relates to their own prior knowledge.

Formal assessments in History always make me think of horrible multiple-choice question tests that only aim to teach you specific answers to questions. Education is and should be so much more than just asking a student to repeat an answer their teacher gave them. Due to this, my preferred form of assessment would be open-ended essay questions that ask students to give an answer and explain it. While they may have an answer I was not looking for, it may still be right. This would allow me to assess their ability to reasonably answer a question rather than regurgitating answers. The last form of assessment is the classic projects history is known for. Without the specifics of a project, I can say that the assessment of these projects wold be rubrics that describe exactly what I am looking for and would have an analytic form. That is, the rubric would be on a continuum that would have specific criteria for each aspect of a portion of the project. The specific criteria would be helpful in performing the task and not contain any "unnecessarily negative language"

I believe these assessments  would help me to judge where my students are. I also believe that they are especially conducive to history classes. In writing this I was able to find an amazingly helpful article on this matter specifically. The article is from the Serve Center at the University of North Carolina at Greensboro, and is called, "How to Assess Student Performance in History: Going Beyond Multiple-Choice Tests."

Classrooms Conducive to Learning

       The task of this post is to discover how I plan to create a classroom environment that is conducive to learning. The first thing that must be mentioned comes from this blog post which talks about the necessity of an environment conducive to learning. The article says that as teachers, the focus of the classroom should be to educate the students. When accepting this as your primary goal it becomes clear that having a classroom that makes this easier should be a component of any teachers lesson planning. If a teacher cannot provide this classroom I believe that learning becomes harder if not nearly impossible therefore this should be the first focus of a teacher, in my opinion.

      The question remains, how do you make a classroom to this specification? I believe the answer begins with an atmosphere that promotes both an appropriate relationship structure between the student and teacher and an atmosphere that promotes collaboration between the two. The first is necessary to have a structure that shows that the teacher is in charge and responsible for the instructing. It also requires that the student know that he/she is the student is in charge of learning and all that that entails. The second of the two ways to promote a descent atmosphere is to have an atmosphere of collaboration. This ensures that the student knows that the teacher is there to help them and that the teacher understands that the student and their learning is what comes first. The article also mentions something else that I think is important in this process. Teachers need to understand that teaching requires some collaboration with other teachers and should not be afraid to take advice and learn new things. I believe these things help to promote a atmosphere that leads to the best learning environment.

Motivation in the Classroom

     When talking about various factors involving the education of children in the classroom, I have found that I believe one of the most important factors is motivation. I believe this because I think that children are capable of any assignment that fits into the curriculum. Where I think many students run into a problem is when they do not see the value in learning about a particular subject. Many people, me being one, are able to do their work simply for the fact that there is a grade given. I personally would try my hardest for any class just because I could pass it. Beyond that I believed that passing classes was vital to going to college which I thought was the way to success and happiness. I still feel this way and I still use this for my personal motivation, but I know that that is not the case for everyone. The question becomes, how do we motivate students to try harder and want to succeed in the classroom.

     I tried to find some answers to this, and I think I got close with this article. In this article the author talks about using the things that motivate students so much to relate the material and get the students to care about the lesson. I believe that relating information in this way may be the best way to influence intrinsic motivation. I believe that students would really benefit from an attempt to associate information with something they care about. This could be something about a pet they have or a car they own. It can even be something on TV. I once went to a teacher's conference and the speaker mentioned that he had a student who believed that he was incapable of taking notes and keeping up with information and keeping  it in a organized manner. Because the student did not believe he could do this, the teacher accepted it and did not push the student. That is until the teacher found out that the student watched professional wrestling and kept a detailed notebook of every wrestler and their profiles, skill sets, and moves. He also kept a detailed record of the story lines  This student did this not because he had to but because he wanted to and cared about the information. This tells me that if a student cares about something they can be dedicated, they can work hard, and they can succeed at something.

     It is because of this that I believe motivation is so important to the success of students, and that I believe that relating information to something the students care about can really change how a student performs. 

Intial Post

After two sessions in Educational Psychology 401 I feel that I have a deeper understanding of what the purpose of this class is. I think my personal goals for the course are somewhat corny but probably not uncommon. I really hope that through this class and other instruction I am able to learn more about how to be a better teacher. I don't necessarily just mean the information I know or the lesson plans I use, but also the techniques that work for connecting to my students. I also hope that I am able to be better at my job than I would be without the information in this course.

It is because of this that I wonder what specific psychological things help students to connect with me and retain knowledge that I attempt to teach them In addition to that I hope to find out what type of information I should be concerned getting my students to learn. I need to learn what is best to teach students that they can retain for long periods of time. It is one thing to teach my students information to pass a test, but to actually retain some information is a key goal. Other than these concerns I think I am just looking forward to learning so I move forward in this process.