Choice book 4: Disrupting Class Reflection

I have to say that this book was not was I expected to read. I was hoping for help on how to use technology disruptions in class to help teach. Instead, the book was filled with information about the job of a school and a possible computer based school.

Christensen explains four key jobs of schools when educating students: 1. Preserve the democracy. 2. Provide something for every student. 3. Keep America competitive. 4. Eliminate poverty. Right now, American is not achieving all of these jobs because schools in this country are focused on standardizing the way teachers teach and test (p. 29). The book goes on to explain how the structure and class sizes of schools may be part of the problem when differentiating instruction. Also, the structure of the school is outdated and needs to change. I agree. Student motivation is also a problem. To add some of my own problems would be that teachers are not given enough time to differentiate a lesson 30 different ways, the resources, or the help. Also, the public education system has too many opinions about how it should work and what teachers should teach from people who are not necessarily qualified such as the government and businesses.  

One solution is to teach to Gardner’s multiple intelligences that include: linguistic, logical-mathematical, spatial, bodily-kinesthetic, musical, interpersonal, intrapersonal, and naturalist. The book also offered definitions for each and examples of famous people each style fits, which was a nice review.

Another way to solve the problem would be to turn schools into a computer based learning environment. This is scary because a computer could someday replace me and my job. I recently was told that my team taught 101 class might be using a program called Reading Plus instead of following the 101 curriculum. First, I have not been trained on the program so I don’t know what it has to offer. I am, however, against taking a group of students out of the 101 curriculum and sticking them in front of a computer. I fear that these students may lose out on important discussions, vocabulary, grammar skills, interpersonal skills, literature, etc. It comes down to that I don’t think a computer can teach these students better than I can. Students need encouragement and to see improvement. Can a computer program offer this? As of right now, I think and hope the program will be used in the study halls of these students. I know that I need to differentiate my instruction for these students, and I am prepared for that. I don’t think a computer is the answer. What I would love to happen is to use a teacher and computer program together. I would like the 101 class to become a block again. One block they have 101 class with the teacher, and the other block, they are on the program with the same teacher. The teacher can assist and view results right away. This allows the teacher to save time in looking at the results and using the results in his/her teaching methods.   

All in all, this approach is nice for some students but not all. I think the best thing a teacher can do is to find out what motivates his/her students and create lesson plans from that. 

Choice book Productive Group Work Reflection

Productive Group Work is filled with many suggestions, rubrics, and ideas for teachers who wish to use group work daily. The ideas were not new to me, but it was nice to have a refresher. Sometimes, mostly because I time, I forget to explain how to function as a group. I just assume students know how. I also just count students off for time sack. I like changing my methods to keep the novelty of group work. 

There are many approaches teachers can take to make sure that all students participate in group work. I will briefly explain the approaches by the authors. The first is called down and up or Cube it. On page 17, the authors explain the method as students “going around the table to give each student a chance to speak. Each member of the group folds a piece of paper into six sections and takes notes as others speak. The discussion leader creates a bulleted list of notes that captures the key ideas and main points for each question. These notes become visible record of the group’s collective thinking and also provide each member of the group with a record of his/her own thinking and the thinking of other group members. The students know that after their group discussion, groups will be asked to participate in a while-class discussion of the topic, during which any member of a group may be asked to answer any of the six Cub-it questions.”

Another approach, that most of us use, is jigsaw where “Students meet in their home group to discuss overall goals. Then they meet in their expert group to focus on one specific aspect of the content” (27). Students then return to home groups to report.

A third approach is called reciprocal teaching that asks members to take on roles such as:

1.      questioner-ask a question that can be answered in the text, ask an opinion question, show your teammates where you find answers.

2.      

      Clarifier: ask if anyone got stuck on a word or an idea, help team by using resources.

3.      Predictor-tell your teammates what you think the author will tell you about in the next section.

4.      Summarizer- tell your teammates the main ideas of the passage and the important supporting details. (30-31)

In order for a group to function, each member needs to know what to say. The authors suggest having students use quickwrites to first gather their thoughts and then share. A graphic organizer might also help. Another method that might be new to students is to create role playing or simulations such as mock trials.

None of the above approaches are new to me, but I forgot about them. I plan on using them next year right away hoping that my students will work well together for the semester.

The book also suggests having students practice listening skills, provide peer feedback, and consider having a group discussion from different perspectives-much like the five minute conversation activity we did with Dr. Parks.

Many teachers, including myself, sometimes veer away from group work because it may create problems. I especially do this with my LA 201 students because the work usually ends up on one person’s lap. To avoid this, the authors suggest and supply rubrics for grading and checking in with groups. I cannot share the rubrics, but I plan on using them so stop by my room if you would like to see them this fall. Also to help with accountability, the authors suggest:

1.     

       Design tasks that emphasize larger learning goals (like a driving question)

2.      Give students experience with small tasks before asking them to tackle longer projects.

3.      Establish timelines

4.      Create steps

5.      Self evaluations (56-57)

The book also stresses the importance of setting expectations first, observing students, and providing feedback on how the group functions. Another idea is to make the role of a group checker who is in charge of keeping track and explaining each member’s thoughts and roles in the group.

Another check point that teachers can have for students to make sure every student is doing his/her part is to have students write one paper, but change colors when writing. At the end of the project, the teacher would then interview each student individually to explain the content of the entire paper, not just their part.

The last stressful part in grouping students is how to group students. On our Moodle page, Keith supplied us with a list of ways to pair students. I have printed it out for my class next year. I would suggest that you check it out. The book suggests that teachers do not group by ability.

Overall, this book made be excited about incorporating more group work next year with a refresh of ideas. I especially like the rubrics that will help me make my students more accountable in groups.   

Choice book How to Assess Higher Order Thinking Skills Reflection

I was eager to read this book, but am left with an empty feeling that I cannot explain. I think I expected more, but I found this book to mostly be a review of what I already knew. To summarize the book, Brookhart suggests that higher order thinking includes transferring information, applying critical thinking skills, and being able to problem solve. When planning an assessment, a teacher needs to:

1.     

      Specify clearly and exactly what it is you want to assess

2.      Design tasks or test items that require students to demonstrate this skill

3.      Decide what you will take as evidence of the degree to which students have shown this skill

She also suggests making blueprints for higher order thinking based on Bloom’s levels to make sure that a teacher is assessing his/her target points and goals. What I took away from this book was that a teacher should supply feedback that “is important to apply criteria about the quality of thinking” (30), hold conversations with students discussing their thinking skills, use rubrics that assess targets, not tasks, focus on one idea, separate the grade for thinking and writing, have students self-assess, make sure students and teacher understand what the results of an assessment means about the students’ thinking skills, and to use Bloom’s taxonomy or some form of it. This stuff I already knew and I think I do pretty well. I guess I was hoping for a perfect rubric, but I guess that does not exist because of different assessments, standards, classes, etc.    

Brookhart also suggested making test questions that are deductive and inductive and to have students on an assessment identifying assumptions and premises, reasoning from data, and reasoning by analogy. I appreciated the example assessments and have a better idea on how to write tests. I appreciated the idea with multiple choice tests. For time sake, I cannot also provide feedback and assign papers. With a multiple choice test, though, I can have students prove their thinking skills as part of the grade.

I personally struggle with assigning a grade to creativity. Brookhart helped me with this. According to some, creativity shouldn’t be part of a grade, but instead be graded through critical thinking. I realize now that I was thinking that creativity is something pretty and interesting to me, but not to everyone. I was wrong. When and if grading creativity, one should think of creativity as new ideas, reflective, reasonable, and productive practices. I also like how the author suggests the creativity needs to:

·       

             Recognize the importance of a deep knowledge base and continually work to learn new things

·         Open to new ideas and actively seek them out

·         Find materials for ideas in a wide variety of media, people, and events

·         Look for ways to organize and reorganize ideas into different categories and combinations, and then evaluate whether the results are interesting, new, or helpful.

·         Use trial and error (128-129).

The last thing I took away from this book was the acronym, IDEAL. I think I will teach my students this with my first unit that is project based the ideas of solving the problem in these five steps:

IDEAL-

1. Identify the problem

2. Define and represent the problem

3. Explore possible strategies

4. Act on the strategies

5. Look back and evaluate the effects of your activities.

I also like the idea of solving problems backward, which is something I can have my students do with Speak once they know the whole situation. They will be able to come up with alternative ways to handle the situation with different outcomes.

Overall, this book was decent. It sparked some new ideas for me with assessments. 

Reflection on Catching Up or Leading the Way

Zhao makes a good point in his afterword: “We all want to provide our children with an excellent education, but what that looks like divides us” (p. 199). Unfortunately, the United States is running backwards toward standardized testing, while the Asian countries are moving forward with less pressure on testing and more rigor on creativity. The United States is decent at embracing creativity at the younger ages. Zhao shares a story of a talent show that is “inclusive…encourages imitative and responsibility…sends a strong message to the community, the public, and the parents that our schools value different talents, that their children are all talented in different ways…last, the activity helps all the children to be proud of their strengths rather than focusing on their weaknesses” (48-49). Asian countries want more of this, while the U.S. wants less and more testing. The talent show can be compared to project-based learning in that projects show creativity and embrace the talents, not the weaknesses. It showcases what each individual is good at, not what each individual is behind at. The current trend in the American educational system is that we cannot teach this method because it cannot be assessed on a standardized test. No standardized, fill in the blank test can assess creativity, which is a sought after skill in the 21^st century.

According to Zhao, some of the challenges in the 21^st century include: securing job in global market, teach students how to interact with other cultures, and help students become global citizens. Students are no longer competing for jobs with people from the same area. The 21^st century really makes the world flat in that anyone can be hired from anywhere with what technology has to offer today. In order to get the high paying, stable jobs, we need to also teach and embrace creativity, which a standardized would receive a mark of ‘beginner.’ Again, this proves that the U.S. is following behind, not leading the way.  

Although the current American educational system does provide room for some creativity, there are problems. Some problems with American education system include: “inequalities between the rich and the poor; the outdated, irrelevant, and America-centric curriculum; the lack of qualified teachers; the disengagement of students; and the increasing faith in testing” (58). I think that some of these problems can be solved with project based learning. I think the government also needs to take a step back and let teachers lead students into the 21^st century. The outdated curriculum is still being taught because of NCLB and 

standardized testing. Testing needs to go away because, according to Zhao, standardized testing:

1.     

      Does not produce creative and innovation talents

2.      Produces an economy built on cheap labor instead of technology

3.      Creates low ability

4.      Creates high demands on students may result in low self-esteem and suicide

5.      Produces unhealthy children both psychically and mentally

6.      Can cause cheating in order to achieve high standards

In conclusion, I fell that we as a country are far behind in that we are turning the clock backwards. “American education has been moving toward authoritarianism, letting the government dictate what and how students should learn and what schools should teach. This movement has been fueled mostly through fear-fear of threats from the Soviets, the Germans, the Japanese, the Koreans, the Chinese, and the Indians” (Zhao, 2009, p. 40). We are not catching up because we are devoting more money and recourses into standardized testing that clearly does not test every element that a student needs in the 21^st century. We are going back into time, which is proven by the Asian countries, that excel at standardized testing, are completely revamping their curriculum by 180 degrees. “While the United States is moving toward more standardization and centralization, the Asian countries are working hard to allow more flexibility and autonomy at the local level” (63). It seems to me that the United States and the Asian countries are flip flopping, which would conclude that we are not only behind but behind while running backwards into the 21^st century…  

Done with final presentation

I finished my final presentation using glogster! I have to say, I had fun creating the online poster. I was able to upload music, images, and videos to add my personal touch. I am excited to share it with all of my classmates!

Now on to reading books.

Final Presentation

I am no longer using Pixler for my final presentation. I am only using Glogster. If anyone wants  to use Pixler somehow, you can :)

Unit plan for EDL 719

Here is my link to my problem based unit. Please let me know if something does not open.

http://hollfergunitplan.pbworks.com