Technology

Dr Robert’s Presentation on Media

I thought that Dr. Robert’s presentation was extremely interesting. This concept of media multitasking is creating such growth in media exposure for kids. One of the most relevant parts for me was seeing the growth of exposure throughout the 3 times that they did the study. I assumed kids were spending more time with media but I had no idea that there was that much growth. I think this is really valuable information for teachers because it shows just how interested and dependent our students are on this technology. If we want to get our students engaged, media would be a great resource to get our students excited about their learning.

Although I have not taken a closer look at Dr. Robert’s study, I am curious to see the media usage compared to the children’s socio-economic background. Since I work at a school in a low-income neighborhood I know that they have less opportunities for media exposure. Many of them do not have a computer at home and many of them cannot afford video gaming systems, which are big contributors of media exposure. I know that Dr. Robert mentioned that the sample size was representative of the population so I would love to see a comparison in media exposure among different subgroups.

“More pupils are Learning Online, Fueling Debate on Quality”:

I have very mixed feelings about the New York Times article about online education. I think it would be a beneficial resource for the student in my school community that want to take elective courses that are not offered by our district. I am however very fearful of the “click-click credits” that were described in the article. I see how online courses could be used to increase graduation rates. In California funding for education is such a big issue and I could see how this resource could be abused to cut costs at schools.

Another aspect of the article that concerned me was the research about the effectiveness of online courses. They mention in the article that there is very minimal research done about the online courses. Without research to support that student can receive the same level of education from an online course, I don’t know how we can trust using them. I have taken online courses before and although I did learn a lot, it did not have the same effect that a regular course has. Since I work with elementary students that face to face contact that I have with my students is crucial to their development. Online courses seem like a great idea but I just don’t know if it can replace learning in the traditional classroom.

Technology Resources for the Teacher:

The technology resource document had so many amazing resources for me to explore. I chose four that I could see implementing in my classroom during this upcoming school year.

1.     http://rubistar.4teachers.org/ : I had heard of this site but had never actually gone onto the site. This seems like a great way to generate rubrics. I am always trying to let my students know my expectations for an assignment. This is a great way to create and keep rubrics so those expectations are clearly presented to my students. There are also a lot of already existing rubrics that you can use. As a newer teacher it is always so helpful to see what other teachers have created to use as a base for what you would like to use in your classroom.

2.     http://www.freetech4teachers.com/: This is an amazing site filled with resources. I love that the front page has some weekly popular posts from teachers. This site is such a great way for educators to share their experiences and learn from one another. Since trainings and staff development can be expensive, this is a great free way to read through the information on this site and learning new things to apply to my classroom.

3.     http://prezi.com/: I could absolutely see myself using prezi in my classroom. I create powerpoint documents all of the time to present information to my students but prezi seems like a fun spin on that type of presentation. It is such a user friendly tool and can easily be shared. My 401 teacher actually used them quite often and I found them very visually impressive. Since I will be working with 3^rd graders, fun visuals is a great way to get their attention and get them engaged in what they are learning.

4.     http://quizlet.com/: This site will be an amazing resource for my students. Since I work with a lot of English Language Learners I do have them make flashcards for vocabulary terms. This could be a great way to spend our computer lab time. It is also a great study tool that my students will be able to use as they continue their education.

Interdisciplinary Teaching

Since I am a multiple subjects teacher there are a lot of topics that I commonly teach. I decided to look in science and the third grade life sciences standard. This topic has to do with students knowing a variety of life forms that are in different environments. I wanted to see how I could incorporate art and music to help enrich student understanding.

The first resource that I found was through a blog on scholastic.com that has a list of different types of art projects relating to animal habitats.: http://blogs.scholastic.com/prek_k/2009/04/learning-about-habitats-rainforest.html

This resources showed students projects where they paint a desert habitat. This sparked my interest because I know that I could have different students pain different habitats. I could see turning this into a research project where students choose a habitat where they would describe it and include their own art work of that habitat. It also showed students molding animals for a particular habitat out of clay. The site said that some students painted background for their clay animal to sit in front of as part of a display. This are great ideas that I could use that would give my students a hands on and very visual way of learning about animals habitats.

The other idea that I had was to include music in our learning about animals environments. I found this great youtube site: http://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PL3A473A82C5FB4D40 This page has a wide variety of songs that talk about where certain animals live and describing various habitats. It was great to find a place that a lot of songs that I could choose from. I could see my kids learning and singing some of these songs or even using them as background music while they worked on some of the art projects that I described above. Hopefully this can help to incorporate music into my teaching.

I think that there are so many values in interdisciplinary teaching. I as a multiple subjects teacher it feels almost impossible to fit every subject into every day. Since testing has put such an emphasis on language arts and math it can be more challenging to find time for other subjects like science and social studies. Being able to teach a lesson that incorporates two or more subjects seems like such an efficient use of time. I also think that it helps engage students when they do not like a particular subject. I know that some of my students do not really enjoy reading but when we are reading something that is science based some of them become more engaged. When you combine two subject areas you open the opportunities students have to connect and become interested in the lesson.

 It can however be extremely challenging to find time to write these kinds of lessons. It requires the teacher to have content knowledge in more than one area while teaching a single lesson. Finding interdisciplinary resources and making these types of lesson plans can be very time consuming. This is the exact reason why I have chosen interdisciplinary teaching for my capstone project. I know how hard it is to develop these types of materials so being able to complete this project and then use it in my classroom is something I am really looking forward to. 

I replied to Betsy Varellas's blog on movement in the classroom.

Mind the Gap-Session 2

1. “What should we think of someone who never admits error, never entertains doubt but adheres unflinchingly to the same ideas all his life regardless of new evidence? Doubt and skepticism are signs of rationality. When we are too certain of our opinions, we run the risk of ignoring any evidence that conflicts with our views.”

I found this quote on page 2 very interesting. We assume that people have very strong opinions and that they will stick with them. When they change their opinion we assume they are weak. Instead we should be rewarding their ability to admit when they are wrong. We should appreciate that when they learn new information they are able to evolve and change their opinion. I appreciate Ravitch’s honesty and that she is able to write about how she realizes that something she once believed in was actually a huge mistake.

“In education, this belief in market forces lets us ordinary mortals off the hook, especially those who have not figured out how to improve low-performing schools or to break through the lassitude of unmotivated teens. Instead of dealing with rancorous problems like how to teach reading or how to improve testing, one can redesign the management and structure of the school system and concentrate on incentives and sanctions. One need not know anything about children or education”

I think that this quote on page 11 embodies some of the frustration we were discussing on Tuesday the administration that runs education. We discussed how teachers feel that they have very little voice in decision making and that it is possible for people who know very little about education to be making those important decisions. Instead of focusing on the serious problems like how to reach reading, we are continuing to try to reconstruct the school system thinking that it will fix all of the other problems.

2.  I agree with the description that Ravich provides of a well-educated person. They need to have knowledge in a variety of subjects. They need to be able to express their own ideas but understands that there are other opinions out there. I agree with Ravich’s definition that a well-educated person needs to be able to listen respectfully to others. They need to have the ability to learn new information and be able to connect that knew knowledge to their prior knowledge. I feel that a well-educated person knows that being educated is a work in progress. They must continue to be well read and be knowledgeable on current events.

3. When discussing the reading of chapters 1 & 2 the topic of standards really stood out to me. On page 20 Ravitch writes, “without specificity and clarity, standards are nothing more than vacuous verbiage”. If each state is to write its own set of standards then how to we know that a student in California learns the same things as a student in another state? After getting a change to examine some of our own standards we found that many of them were extremely vague and do not insure that classrooms through our state are being taught the same thing. We were frustrated that attempts to improve these standards in the past had been derailed.  My hope is that the common core standards will somewhat improve this situation, but in reality I think that it will bring on a new set of problems that we have yet to discover.

I am still new to these standards but for those of you that have had more exposure to them, what do you think? What changes are you excited about and what changes are you worried about?

4. When looking at the gaps that I have in my subject area one stood out in my mind. “Use knowledge of root words to determine the meaning of unknown words within a passage.” There are so many different root word that it seems almost impossible to narrow down a list of roots to focus on in my classroom. Was I supposed to rely on my district adopted language arts textbook to provide my students with the roots that they would need? I wanted to figure out how to provide my students with useful and common roots. I was also wondering How to teach and practice using these root words. Through some research, I was able to find 3 great resources:

Article: Teaching Elementary students to use word-part clues by Thomas G. White

Website: http://www.internet4classrooms.com/skill_builders/root_words_language_arts_third_3rd_grade.htm 

Book: Red Hot Root Words, Book 1 by Dianne Draze

The article and the book gave me some important roots that I will want to teach to my students. The website is an amazing resource because it provided online games and quizzes that my students can use to test their knowledge of these roots. My students love their time in the computer lab and this site has a number of ways to keep my students engaged while practicing their root work knowledge. Not only was I able to learn a few more roots to teach my students, it also gave me some great ideas for fun lessons to try with my students.

5. The first article that I found really useful was by Fernando Rodrigues-Valls called “Interdisciplinary Teaching in elementary schools: educating English Language Learner (ELL) students with multidimensional practices”.  One of the reasons this article was so helpful to me personally is because it focuses on a school with many English Language Learners and their primary language was Spanish. This is a very similar make up to my school so I was able to read about strategies that help language development. Prepping my students with content area language is going to be very important for my ELL’s

The second article that was useful was by Marlow Ediger called “ Language Arts in the Science Curriculum”. This article was helpful because it focused on science and was not mixed with information on other content areas. I found it interesting because it brought up a variety of science resources that students can read. There are times that I have seen a page out of an encyclopedia used as a reading comprehension exercise on a standardized test. We are used to exposing our students to textbooks and experiments but there are so many other resources that students can learn about science. This article also gave some ideas for science projects which will be helpful as I try to implement more project based learning in my classroom. 

The Blogs that I responded to are:
 

Jennifer Temple

Melina Rinehart

Ben Spencer

Content Knowledge (Course II): Session One-Blog Post

I have always felt that outside school experiences are necessary for deepening content knowledge. Growing up, I always knew that what I was learning was important but I never truly understood its importance until I was able to use those skills in the outside world. For example, I really struggled with finding percents of whole numbers in middle school. Although I tried to learn how to solve these problems I didn’t see the point in trying to learn them. One day, I went shopping with my mother in a store where everything was 30% off. She so easily found the reduced price for each item she looked at. Once I was able to see the practical use of what I was learning in the outside world, I was instantly more engaged in the topic. As a teacher it is my job to show my students these connections so that they see the importance of what they are learning.

This idea greatly connects to one of the topics we addressed during the class discussion of the Ball article. On page 5 Ball writes that, “teachers in all subjects influence students through their own engagement in ideas and processes. Teachers’ intellectual resources and dispositions largely determine their capacity to engage students’ minds and hearts in learning”.  I’ve always felt that engaging your students is one of the most important jobs that a teacher has. However, I was also enlightened to hear the different perspectives my classmates had when reading this section.

We discussed that a teacher’s enthusiasm can greatly effect how your students receive a lesson. Also, a teacher’s lack of interest in a subject can negatively affect a lesson. Ball also mentions on page 10 that students begin to determine which subjects they like or dislike and this can shape their interested in their education. Just as my own tastes can form my enthusiasm for a subject, my students also have their own dispositions.

Overall the discussion of the article raised a lot of questions for our class. We were able to discover that ultimately teachers do not always have deep knowledge of the subject matter that they are teaching. As an elementary school teacher, it seems almost impossible to have the knowledge that is needed for every single subject area that I am expected to teach. Since I am still early in my teaching career, I find that the only way to improve this is by reflecting at the end of each school year and determining how I can better my knowledge for the next year.   

Coming into the program I had an initial idea of the line of inquiry I would like to pursue. My current school district has begun exposure to the new common core standards. One of the major challenges that I see with the common core standards is push towards non-fiction text and expository writing in Language Arts. With so few hours in the school day I want to find a way to examine this type of text using our own Social Studies and Science resources.

The question that I will be perusing is: How can I teach Language Arts Strategies in other content areas such as Science and Social Studies. Through conducting some research I have found that there is a significant amount of information available in this area. My goal is to take the information that I have collected from my research and design lesson plans, mini lessons, and other strategies to test in my classroom during this upcoming school year. These experimentations will allow me to collect some experimental learning sources for my final capstone project. I hope to create a venue to share all of this information with other teachers so that they may use these strategies in their classrooms.

The blogs that I responded to are:

Karen Vigna

Jocelyn Brodeur (Rohan)

Kelly Giotta

Guiding Questions

1. What language arts reading comprehension strategies can be used when teaching social studies?
2. What language arts reading comprehension strategies can be used when teaching science?
3. What is the best way to teach vocabulary across content areas?
4. What are the best ways to teach nonfiction reading and writing?
5. How can I prepare language arts lessons now that can still be used when the new common core standards are adopted?