The dominant paradigm showing signs of wear is the old style of teaching and learning that focuses on the teacher delivering information and the student memorizing and retaining that information. Today, students need to be learning skills and contributing to the learning process themselves so they can be able to adapt, problem solve, and think critically for their future work environment and the world we live in today.
Project based learning allows students to learn by doing, they have an active involvement in the learning and now have a real life experience to relate that learning to. These students have to use different brain functions and different parts of the brain to problem solve and complete tasks. This helps their ever developing brains continue to grow and get denser. Here is a quote cited from the article
"Shepherd (1998) studied the results of a unit in which a group of fourth and fifth graders completed a nine-week project to define and find solutions related to housing shortages in several countries. In comparison to the control group, the students engaged in project-based learning demonstrated a significant increase in scores on a critical-thinking test, as well as increased confidence in their learning. "
Students can learn better through problem based learning because they understand how to ask critical questions that will help guide them to solve problems and adapt to situations. This type of learning also causes them to collaborate to find other viewpoints for possible solutions and helps them understand that every assignment or task isn't always going to have an easy, clear-cut formula to solve a problem.
Learning by design seems to help students who are different learning levels progress based on their individualized plans and ideas. I think allowing students to learn this way helps encouarage that their ideas are important and students can contribute to a class or society just as much as a teacher or anyone else. Our main goal should always to help students feel empowered and build their self-efficacy.
Design-Based Instruction
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Students create, assess, and redesign products through stages of revisions. The work often requires collaboration and specific roles for individual students, enabling them to become experts in a particular area.
Project-Based Learning
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Students explore real-world problems and challenges, developing cross-curriculum skills while working in small collaborative groups. Also known as project learning.
Problem-Based Learning-
Students learn through the process of solving a problem. The approach is also inquiry-based when students are active in creating the problem.
*All three ways help empower students and help their brains think and learn in different ways which allows the brain to grow and become more dense and capable of higher levels of thinking.
I think the most common benefit to all of these learning approaches is that it helps build students confidence in themselves and builds self-efficacy. Also, I think it is very important to use these styles to break out of the normal routine. Anyone can lose focus, passion, and excitement if things become routine, predictable, mundane. Learning and education is no different. Students need to be challenged and taught in all different ways if they are to ever reach their full potential.
Wednesday, September 26, 2012
Tuesday, September 18, 2012
Double Entry Journal #5
Reverent listening refers to our ability to listen and give the respect and admiration the person we are listening to deserves. To know that we are not able to be all knowing, all powerful, or to have any sort of extreme supernatural quality. We can all become better and more knowledgeable people by reverent listening.
I think the quote refers to the fact that you are not just listening because you are being forced to or because that person has more powere or influence than you so you have to listen. It refers to the fact that you are listening to be respectful, and to gain something from listening to someone else's knowledge or insight.
I think the laundry list of value ethics refers to what teachers feel to be most important and the values and ethics they want children to learn and focus on in the classroom. I always felt that most of my teachers throughout school didn't have to broad of a perspective outside of their passion, teaching, or moral standards. I think in school we need to look at other people's perspectives and passions to help them relate to ours and what we are teaching.
I would definitely say I have experienced more of these types of teachers throughout college. Most professors will make sure the class feels involved, respected, and that their input and knowledge is useful and necessary. Most students would certainly thrive in this type of teaching environment because it does not allow the student to be passive and it builds their self-efficacy. Allowing students to believe they can achieve anything they work hard at and have a passion for is so important in today's culture.
Toxic culture's in school can be many different things such as allowing bullying to go on, favoring certain students, not having fair policies or policies not being followed through the same way for all students. Also, teachers only focusing on teaching CSO's and making good test scores does not necessarily mean students are gaining useful knowledge and are going to be able to take that knowledge out into the world.
"Children are like wax, not iron, and can be molded."
This is definitely a part of my philosophy already but as we have learned more about inclusive education and cultural capital in this class, I have definitely been more motivated to make sure I have more of a passion and make more of an effort to reach all students and understand that no matter what they can learn and be changed for the better through effective teaching.
http://www.sugardoodle.info/Reverence/Some%20Reverence%20Ideas.shtml
I hope even if it is in a simple way, I can teach all students how to be better listeners and show more respect to others. That respect will be reciprocated back to them.
I think the quote refers to the fact that you are not just listening because you are being forced to or because that person has more powere or influence than you so you have to listen. It refers to the fact that you are listening to be respectful, and to gain something from listening to someone else's knowledge or insight.
I think the laundry list of value ethics refers to what teachers feel to be most important and the values and ethics they want children to learn and focus on in the classroom. I always felt that most of my teachers throughout school didn't have to broad of a perspective outside of their passion, teaching, or moral standards. I think in school we need to look at other people's perspectives and passions to help them relate to ours and what we are teaching.
I would definitely say I have experienced more of these types of teachers throughout college. Most professors will make sure the class feels involved, respected, and that their input and knowledge is useful and necessary. Most students would certainly thrive in this type of teaching environment because it does not allow the student to be passive and it builds their self-efficacy. Allowing students to believe they can achieve anything they work hard at and have a passion for is so important in today's culture.
Toxic culture's in school can be many different things such as allowing bullying to go on, favoring certain students, not having fair policies or policies not being followed through the same way for all students. Also, teachers only focusing on teaching CSO's and making good test scores does not necessarily mean students are gaining useful knowledge and are going to be able to take that knowledge out into the world.
"Children are like wax, not iron, and can be molded."
This is definitely a part of my philosophy already but as we have learned more about inclusive education and cultural capital in this class, I have definitely been more motivated to make sure I have more of a passion and make more of an effort to reach all students and understand that no matter what they can learn and be changed for the better through effective teaching.
http://www.sugardoodle.info/Reverence/Some%20Reverence%20Ideas.shtml
I hope even if it is in a simple way, I can teach all students how to be better listeners and show more respect to others. That respect will be reciprocated back to them.
Tuesday, September 11, 2012
Culturally Responsive Teaching Reflection
The Where I'm From project is so important to help us realize everyone has a beautiful story and everyone is valuable and equal. Every student that comes into our classroom will have differences to a wide variety of extents based on their culture, family environment, etc. All students need to be believed in and taught based on their individual needs.
It is very important to realize relationships between literacy, language, and power. As teachers, we should feel responsible for giving every student a fair and equal opportunity to learn. A quote from one of the articles we read said this, "Some children bring literacy knowledge to school with them." Being able to identify students who bring different levels of literacy knowledge with them to the classroom is very important. Each students' experience and knowledge needs to be embraced, nurtured, and furthered. We need to use different strategies to make sure students with different dialects and backgrounds are not left with a poor educational experience because we refused to teach in any other way than the way people who have control and power dictate. Moll contends that "existing classroom practices underestimate and constrain what Latino and other children are able to display intellectually." (Moll, 1992) We should never judge students or assume they won't be able to learn just because they come from a different experience or come to our classroom with a different type of literacy knowledge. We should believe in ALL of our students!
I think teachers have contributed to poor literacy instruction over the years by neglecting how well we learn from working together and using each other's knowledge, experience, insight, etc. to relate to the material or skill we are learning. Teachers for too long have taught literacy skills in a straight-forward by the book way, refusing to break out of the typical ways of teaching that just want to achieve certain standardized testing scores and cover all their CSO's. We need more interactive work in the classroom with groups and activities. "Teachers, parents and students involved admitted that they had gained insights from the process of sharing information across groups." (Bolima, n.d.)
In this article, teachers used the fact that their students had cultural capital from their own heritage and funds of knowledge that could be valued and used to help them succeed and transition their own dialect into complete literacy."Collaboratively, these teacher-researchers compiled the rules and structures of their local dialect as a tool for transitioning young writers into Standard English." The students dialect and culture was embraced and was a big help for the teachers in transitioning them to write in Standard English. I plan on using many ways to reach all cultures in my classroom. Teaching health and physical education I will have many opportunities to relate the material to the different cultures in my classroom. I could be an inclusive teacher by teaching a sport or dance from different cultures in physical education or giving a cultural background to the foods eaten in those cultures and the healthy byproducts of eating those foods in my health class.
Sources
1.)
https://docs.google.com/file/d/0B6DFAmexYq7vMGQxMjI1OTEtMjAyZS00NzJmLTg1OTUtODlmMGQ0ZDIxOTVk/edit
2.) Moll, L. (n.d.). Funds of knowledge: A look at luis moll. In Retrieved from https://docs.google.com/file/d/0B38BSV_Zo7aHSGVoMWEtOFRGMVE/edit
3.) Bolima , D. (n.d.). Contexts for understanding: Educational learning theories. Retrieved from http://staff.washington.edu/saki/strategies/101/new_page_5.htm
4.)Epstein P., H. (2011, September 15). Honoring dialect and increasing student performance in standard english. Retrieved from http://www.nwp.org/cs/public/print/resource/3655
5.) The National Counsel of Teachers of English. (2007). Adolescent literacy. Retrieved from http://www.ncte.org/library/NCTEFiles/Resources/Positions/Chron0907ResearchBrief.pdf
It is very important to realize relationships between literacy, language, and power. As teachers, we should feel responsible for giving every student a fair and equal opportunity to learn. A quote from one of the articles we read said this, "Some children bring literacy knowledge to school with them." Being able to identify students who bring different levels of literacy knowledge with them to the classroom is very important. Each students' experience and knowledge needs to be embraced, nurtured, and furthered. We need to use different strategies to make sure students with different dialects and backgrounds are not left with a poor educational experience because we refused to teach in any other way than the way people who have control and power dictate. Moll contends that "existing classroom practices underestimate and constrain what Latino and other children are able to display intellectually." (Moll, 1992) We should never judge students or assume they won't be able to learn just because they come from a different experience or come to our classroom with a different type of literacy knowledge. We should believe in ALL of our students!
I think teachers have contributed to poor literacy instruction over the years by neglecting how well we learn from working together and using each other's knowledge, experience, insight, etc. to relate to the material or skill we are learning. Teachers for too long have taught literacy skills in a straight-forward by the book way, refusing to break out of the typical ways of teaching that just want to achieve certain standardized testing scores and cover all their CSO's. We need more interactive work in the classroom with groups and activities. "Teachers, parents and students involved admitted that they had gained insights from the process of sharing information across groups." (Bolima, n.d.)
In this article, teachers used the fact that their students had cultural capital from their own heritage and funds of knowledge that could be valued and used to help them succeed and transition their own dialect into complete literacy."Collaboratively, these teacher-researchers compiled the rules and structures of their local dialect as a tool for transitioning young writers into Standard English." The students dialect and culture was embraced and was a big help for the teachers in transitioning them to write in Standard English. I plan on using many ways to reach all cultures in my classroom. Teaching health and physical education I will have many opportunities to relate the material to the different cultures in my classroom. I could be an inclusive teacher by teaching a sport or dance from different cultures in physical education or giving a cultural background to the foods eaten in those cultures and the healthy byproducts of eating those foods in my health class.
Sources
1.)
https://docs.google.com/file/d/0B6DFAmexYq7vMGQxMjI1OTEtMjAyZS00NzJmLTg1OTUtODlmMGQ0ZDIxOTVk/edit
2.) Moll, L. (n.d.). Funds of knowledge: A look at luis moll. In Retrieved from https://docs.google.com/file/d/0B38BSV_Zo7aHSGVoMWEtOFRGMVE/edit
3.) Bolima , D. (n.d.). Contexts for understanding: Educational learning theories. Retrieved from http://staff.washington.edu/saki/strategies/101/new_page_5.htm
4.)
Saturday, September 8, 2012
Double-Entry Journal #4
Reading this article, a few things stood out. All of the articles we are reading seem to have people who truly care about reaching students who are getting left behind, forgotten, or suffering from some sort of an educational disadvantage. This is a really good thing. The article also talked about strategies that will help students with an appalachian dialect code-switch more efficiently. I also learned that there is no perfect or easy way to teach when it comes to literacy. We have to be open and willing to search for new ways to help our students.
They definitely used the principle of using a wide variety of instructional strategies to reach different learners. Allowing them to use their own language and to be accepting of it really seemed to help. Students could feel comfortable in themselves and were still able to code-switch properly when writing. The teaching strategies also allowed the students to feel pride in their heritage and culture they were brought up in. Confident learners and students who have high self-esteem will always perform better in the classroom. As teachers, we need to embrace this approach and continually build up our students.
Honestly, I can not remember being taught besides one specific way. Students who had special needs had to adapt to how it was being taught or they were sent to a specialist outside of the classroom.
Here is a link to a video with a good philosophy on literacty instruction
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fEV5GTwR0z4
They definitely used the principle of using a wide variety of instructional strategies to reach different learners. Allowing them to use their own language and to be accepting of it really seemed to help. Students could feel comfortable in themselves and were still able to code-switch properly when writing. The teaching strategies also allowed the students to feel pride in their heritage and culture they were brought up in. Confident learners and students who have high self-esteem will always perform better in the classroom. As teachers, we need to embrace this approach and continually build up our students.
Honestly, I can not remember being taught besides one specific way. Students who had special needs had to adapt to how it was being taught or they were sent to a specialist outside of the classroom.
Here is a link to a video with a good philosophy on literacty instruction
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fEV5GTwR0z4
Tuesday, September 4, 2012
Where I am From Poem
I am from snowy winters, from the home of the pepperoni roll and beauty most people have never seen.
From the rolling hills and beautiful streams and where everything is green.
I am from the Bible belt, where families act like families and God comes before selfish ambitions.
I am from big thanksgiving dinners and snowball fights and summer days by the pool, from grandparents who taught us songs about the Lord and parents who worked to give us everything they never had and loved us like they wouldn't see us tomorrow.
I am from the place that no matter where you go to chase fame, fortune, and glory.......... will always call you back home.
A place that will melt your heart and test it a time or two as well.
From never giving up on a person or a dream and always taking the time to help someone in need.
I'm from parents with multiple nationalities, who embrace and love diversity, from chocolate chip cookies and lasagna.
From the place where you love and protect your siblings, and family comes first, even if you never got the brother you always wanted.
I am from open fields waiting to be played on, from baseball and football until you fell asleep, and manhunt with neighborhood friends.
There's no trading where I'm from!!!
From the rolling hills and beautiful streams and where everything is green.
I am from the Bible belt, where families act like families and God comes before selfish ambitions.
I am from big thanksgiving dinners and snowball fights and summer days by the pool, from grandparents who taught us songs about the Lord and parents who worked to give us everything they never had and loved us like they wouldn't see us tomorrow.
I am from the place that no matter where you go to chase fame, fortune, and glory.......... will always call you back home.
A place that will melt your heart and test it a time or two as well.
From never giving up on a person or a dream and always taking the time to help someone in need.
I'm from parents with multiple nationalities, who embrace and love diversity, from chocolate chip cookies and lasagna.
From the place where you love and protect your siblings, and family comes first, even if you never got the brother you always wanted.
I am from open fields waiting to be played on, from baseball and football until you fell asleep, and manhunt with neighborhood friends.
There's no trading where I'm from!!!
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