Learning Communities

Daniels and Zemelman were correct in there assertion that some of the practices teachers’ use to create a learning community would contain a “few surprises” (171).  Out of all the strategies, the perspective that really countered my preconceived notion was in regards to students creating their own class rules. (174). When I first read that the strategy was for “hold{ing} meetings with students to set rules for the class,” I just thought of how a teacher would do this in their classroom (174). I have thought of this issue at great length due to my CEP (below see how I would incorporate setting class rules with a lesson about government.) I didn’t realize the larger school wide response could also work in the same away. Reason being is that the feedback I get from most teachers about behavior management, is that I should try my best to avoid sending students to administration. For if I constantly have students in the principal’s office it looks like I can’t control the class. With this desire to look competent, I wouldn’t think to show administration an issue I was having with my class right away. I would definitely go to a more experienced teacher or mentor I trusted first, which is maybe how it eventually ended up with administration. If many teachers noticed the trend, the group of teacher’s then go speak to administration as there is strength in numbers. I keep saying administration was somehow involved although the principal or other members of the leadership positions were not explicitly mentioned in the section because I feel like for teachers to have a large group conversation, administration would have had to realize something big was happening at that point. Who knows, maybe no one ever notified administration. Regardless of what actually happened, I am curious about the politics within the school and how I will best negotiate my way through them later. As CF shows through its school wide approach to cultivating a new atmosphere, when all or the majority of teachers and administration work together change can happen for the better. So I see the value in working with administration even if I don’t quite have the politics figured out yet as each situation and institution will be different.   

Most of time though, chapter 7 was great for describing approaches I could envision myself using. In some of my other courses, I have been told you need to get the students to trust you. That is all fine and dandy to say, but telling me to do something and actually showing me the way to do so makes a huge difference.  I figured out a while ago that actually being able to speak with a student one on one would gain trust, but I have never known how to really implant this into a class without drawing attention to the student I was speaking with. Reading how the English teacher, Ms. Vaughan, had a small conference with all the students over a stretch of a few days during independent work completely cleared up that problem. Students get her attention thereby increasing trust because she can show that she cares in that station, but she also did the conferences in a natural manner.  All the students were receiving her attention. No one was being singled out and no one was being left out, which I think is important because it shows respect for all of her students feelings and needs. (173). I could go on about all the other ideas I enjoyed from this chapter, as most of the strategies gave good specific instructions for enactment, but I chose to focus on the trust aspect of the classroom because I see the sense in Maslow’s hierarchy of needs. According to his pyramid before any learning can occur a student must feel accepted by the environment where he or she works. I have personally experienced such a situation, as reflected in my literacy profile, so finding ways to enhance the caring of a classroom really excited me on a personal level.

 However, I believe that this section should be thought of in connection with the ESL Brief and Subject Matters, Chapter 5. Chapter 7 went into some detail about how to scaffold difficult work for students who are attempt a challenging task, i.e. small group work to learn from one another (178). However, I think more goes into choosing and teaching a challenging lesson so as to avoid frustration especially with less resilient students or students with some sort of learning disability. The ESL had just pages upon pages of suggestions for how to make a subject’s content, assignments, and class environment better for ESL students (3-8). Ideas like reinforcement, non-verbal delivery strategies, modified assessment were missing from Chapter 7, but present throughout the ESL brief because such notions are important to these learners ability to learn. If I don’t recognize that then I doubt an ESL student would ever really respect me enough to trust my learning environment as a safe place to learn. In contrast, Chapter 5 has a wide selection of reading strategies that could enhance a lesson to increase comprehension. I am sure some students will like some more than others, which is why having a variety to pick and choose from until you know their strengths is helpful. I personally enjoyed the before reading activities (102-112). I never realized just how many tasks I could give a student to get them in the correct reading mindset. Yet, starting off correctly will have a huge impact on how the student executes and understands the overall assignment. In an attempt to garner more success from my students so that they will want to continue learning, I will be sure to include more activities that formalize the students with the text now. Each of the other readings display that there is a great deal of information that goes into a learning environment.  I am feeling more confident about working with my future students because I think these readings have greatly expanded my idea of a learning community.

How to Create Rules & Teach About Government

Picture from: http://www.scholastic.com/teachers/top-teaching/2012/08/we-people-%E2%80%94-constitutional-approach-classroom-rules#.UNum5vMPXf4.pinterest

Lesson plan Idea: http://www.uen.org/Lessonplan/preview.cgi?LPid=499

Advice From Strong & Subjects Matter

Many who read Strong’s Chapter 6 can quickly identify dull “busy work” as the reason for students’ lack of motivation. The picture Vader paints in the opening section clearly set the aforementioned scene (94-95). However, there is one sentence that I think was overshadowed by the overall portrait. On the first page Vader asserts that “By making students fearful of errors, both real and imagined, we reduce motivation” (94). Until recently I would do any school work despite the drudgery, but only so long as I received a good grade. Unlike the students primarily discussed by Strong, my lack of motivation stemmed form a fear of failure. Thinking back this attitude developed under the testing craze started under Bush. The school environment at the time sent messages to students that one grade was what mattered and not the overall picture. I learned to treat every test like this, which created a high anxiety to perform well. So I made sure to pick classes that I could get A’s in rather than be challenged. Clearly, I had the wrong attitude for any type of learning to occur. I am finding similar issues in today’s school too. For instance during a recent volunteer session that coached students on the how to pass Classical; entrance exam, I had to use half the session time to remind the eighth graders that a score does not define them. I had to do this at the start of every due to the negative vibes they were getting outside my class time with them. Their anxiety came on years before mine did, which is frightening given the negative results that can follow (below is a link to handle perfectionist).   

Luckily, the Strong reading displays important solutions to the problem of both kinds of “reduced motivation.”  To make work less dull a teacher can use assignments that encouraging creativity, like CRAFT. Strong gives a good argument for why this woks (97). However, on top of his reasons I also think CRAFT is particularly good for high school students because it allows them to pretend to be someone else. During adolescence, teenagers are trying to figure out who they are. Being in someone else’s shoes is a good way to for them to explore values and ideas that they can incorporate into their identity, which as we know anything that relates to a student’s life can raise to increased motivation. Furthermore, who you have the students writing about will make a huge difference. I never thought of the students acting as lawyers before the Supreme Court, but this could be an exciting task given how much is mentioned about the Courts as of late (100). Furthermore, it opens the students to a possible career choice, which some will be curious about as they are thinking of life after high school. Despite all the benefits of CRAFT, I never saw this used in my classes before or during any of my recent observations. I just have to wonder, why don’t teachers use this more?

CRAFT alone can’t increase motivation for failure avoidant student, but the teacher’s attitude toward grading can. Sarah, the math teacher who had the creative rubric, showed grading can be done in a manner that allows for her class to have a second change (101). Doing this puts the learning process first and the grades second because you aren’t putting so much pressure on one grade. I am not sure if I would suggest that everything handed in be allowed to a second chance because a teacher might not be able to grade that quickly. Plus, in the “real world” students will not always be given second chances. However for some of the bigger writing assignments that are new, I think it is something that should be used to ease student’s concerns. A teacher could maybe even work something into their testing system that could help a student’s overcome high text anxiety.  

The content of my reflection keeps straying back to high stakes testing and anxiety, but it’s an issue that will clearly affect all of us as new teachers. Fortunately, Strong isn’t the only author with ideas to help the student succeed. Previously, Subject Matters showed that there are different reading strategies that need to be taught in order for students to become better learners so that they could once more like learning (24-30). Daniels and Zemelman, also displayed that another way to make classwork more interesting was to substitute the reading for genres like nonfiction book rather than relying on the text book all the time (53). Chapter 3 went into great depth as to why teachers should supplement the text book (i.e. inaccuracies, difficulty level, poor design, etc.) (40-44). However, what I appreciated most from Subjects Matters was the section in Chapter 6 that explained how to use the text book so as to increase the student’s comprehension level. Let’s face it, we will all be using textbooks so we are going to need to know what to do with them. While all the activities seem useful, my favorite is the first one in which the teacher actually educates the pupils about the text book by having them explore the book and writing their findings in a graphic organizer (150-151). It is so simple, but could make a great difference in how the class paces their reading, organizes themselves for the test, and deciphers the text. Plus this fed back could even help me assign readings or classwork to the students now that I understand their frame of reference.

The advice from Subjects Matters will clearly have a large impact in my teaching as will Strong’s advice. I won’t say one is better than the other because the authors are both focused on different aspects of the learning (i.e. resources vs. assignments). What matter though, is that both resources and assignments need to be used so as to increase the student’s success, which is obviously the focus of each author and the reason I will heed aspects of their feedback.  

Link

1. http://www.educationworld.com/a_curr/shore/shore008.shtml

English Language Learners

Before I read the assigned content, I already knew that learning a second language is a challenge for students. During my secondary education, I couldn’t even master French after taking it for six consecutive years. So I could never understand how ELL’s would be expected to learn a language and their academic content. I realize ELL students are given more than the 45 minute class periods I had to learn French, but that is only for their first year or so. My observations at CF reinforce my belief. As I previously noted, one of the teacher’s is learning Spanish to communicate better with her students because the students have issues understanding English. A lack of clear communication between teacher and students means that some students aren’t retaining as much as they could. As such, I always thought the students should be able to have classes in their native language until they made a better transition into their second language so the process would better for them.

Now that I have read this brief I never realized just how daunting it is to learn another language. Under the section entitled, “Differentiate the content” the ELL brief clearly outlined what ELL students need to know and by the end of that section my mind was spinning (2). Grammar, academic content, social skills, and all the subsets of these categories must be accessed in order for the student to grow as a student. I have thought about teaching many of these concepts to ELL students, but never thought about everything they had to do all at once. Seeing it plainly on paper is what caused me to feel extra sympathy for these students. Even though I think ELL students clearly need more time and attention, I am now re-evaluating just how much of my time and attention they need. I have never really thought about teaching the “social” language because I don’t see that as my responsibility to ELL students. I view learning slang as something people pick up as cues from their peers. There is no doubt in my mind that the students need to learn these words. Without the everyday slang, it will be hard for any student to fit in with their peers. As we all know, lack of friend's has detrimental effects on the student’s mental and academic well-being. So I am wondering, how much time should the student be spending with their non-ELL peers? Or was my original idea of keeping them in a separate classroom actually the better option? Have a let my sympathies for these students result in an over analysis of a simple issue? I need more time to process this before venturing at some firm answers.

In regards to academic content, the ELL brief in conjunction with Subject Matters helped me resolve some issues I have with teaching ELL students my subject language. I especially became aware of just how hard it can be to communicate with ELL students, when I was asked to help out in the all ELL room at CF a few weeks ago. Since then I have been troubled with the task of how I can reach these students. While I am still not entirely clear how to help a pupil who speaks close to no English, I realized many of the suggestions for helping ELL learners are similar to reading strategies that are prescribed for every student.  For instance, Daniels and Zemelman discuss how “prior knowledge is the main determinant of comprehension” (25). While the brief also advised to keep student’s background knowledge in mind when “differentiate(ing) the content” (3). The brief also mentioned the need for “variety,” which is a concept Daniels and Zemelman explore throughout chapter 4: “Towards a Balanced Diet of Reading.” From this chapter, I think the idea of using shorter texts to introduce a concept is something that would definitely be applicable to ELLs (60). It gives content at a rate that is unlikely to overwhelm them so as not to distract from the main instructional point. It is important to realize this overlap when planning a lesson. During many of my daily plans I will try to differentiate texts for the ELLs. However, I am now more apt to use a strategy that benefits more than one group of students because I will want to reach as many students as I can in one lesson (see an idea of a technique I would use that helps ELL and another group of students below). I am sure there are other factors I will need to take into consideration when focusing on my ELL students, but understanding how to balance the needs of many puts me one step closer to better serving all my future students.

               

Image taken from: http://www.pinterest.com/pin/232850243204256989/

*Last semester one of my teachers would use flash cards as a means to learn new vocabulary and I found it incredibly helpful. It was a simple activity, but using just a few of the same flash cards throughout the semester highlighted the information he really wanted us to know. He didn’t have pictures on the cards, but I know many visual learners would appreciate the extra touch. Also, as the brief mentioned ELL students would like it too because it enable them to associate the word better. Thus, I have an easy method of furthering students vocab with a tool that helps a couple different kinds of learners.

I also want to point out that I realize Pinterest isn’t exactly the most academic of websites, but I like looking at some of the education ideas there because some teachers will post some pretty creative ideas. The guess who game with historical figures that is on Jenifer’s blog is actually something I saw on Pinterest first.