The one quote from our reading that I truly loved was “real learning occurs when a student can transform his/her understanding in a different form of content interpretation: visual, verbal, tactile, etc.” That couldn’t be more true. The reading then goes on to say that learning is active and interactive. I think that this is also important to remember when teaching- if your kids aren’t interested, there will be no learning. But this is somewhat of a catch 22- If the kids aren’t interested, then they won’t learn. But, if they are not paying attention, they won’t know when (or if) the lesson does get good! Dr. Hall said the trick is to plan, plan, plan and make sure you have everything prepared in advance. Indeed, transition is a time when you can loose the kids and possibly waste more time getting them back; I have seen it time and time again as a Teaching Assistant. These are the lessons they really need to teach in school, and I am so glad Dr. Hall gives us those little tidbits of information. She is saving us a lot of aggravation by preventing us learning these things the hard way!
Our February 7th class began with microteaching on performance objectives. Marcia had made a “Jingle” that gave an example objective. I think the clapping rhythm definitely helped everyone remember the objective because we were repeating the phrase while we were clapping. I also absolutely loved the witch and frog example!
The microteaching team definitely did a good job engaging the whole class, and I also thought that students would love how she made it “more fun” with speeding up the rhythm. That is another excellent teaching tool! Their anticipatory set definitely did get the class started. Their presentation explained Bloom’s, which I believe goes hand in hand with objectives, and also gave us a great working model to work on improving an objective. Our class also worked on an objectives worksheet that contained several objectives that needed tweaking. Many of these objectives were written in the special education format, which I think I am prone to writing because I just took Teaching Students w/Disabilities I last semester and I am in II now. I have written lesson plans for other classes before, and I do feel somewhat comfortable writing goals and objectives, but I think I can always use more practice. I need to get into the habit of writing objectives differently based on the needs and abilities of my students so I know this activity definitely helped me start to distinguish between a special ed and a general ed objective. In class we also did some exercises identifying standards- which are directly related to goals and objectives. I think the key to a good lesson is incorporating content from other areas in an interesting way because it helps kids make connections. As I quoted above, learning is when a student can take information and make it their own, Only when they can relate information from one source to another do they really understand it. Using multiple content areas in a lesson definitely sets up the ground work for doing that. Also, another reason I was happy to discuss standards in class is that I had to find out the hard way in Methods for Adolescence (ED5251) how to properly write standards in a unit plan. I did not know that you had to write national and state standards, and also include performance indicators, and I lost major points because of it. This was one of my first classes at the Mount, and I did a lot of learning as I went. Ooops. But, I was glad that we went over it now for the students who were in m shoes that day in class and also for the review. Our class also reviewed the MSMC lesson plan format, which is long but thorough. I always appreciate the recaps of what goes where, mainly because I still have my special ed lesson plan hat on. Switching gears keeps me on my toes! Our final class activity for the evening was determining how much of any given information someone remembers the next day. As a class we guessed percentages for discussing, reading, seeing, hearing, doing, and teaching information and we were surprised at how low the actual numbers were! The best way for someone to remember information is to have them teach or do it
, which is incredibly important to remember for the classroom.
In our February 14th class the class discussed assessment and evaluation, and we also reviewed the different between the two. Assessment involves collecting information, and evaluation involves interpreting it. In order to tailor our instruction to the students’ needs, we need to do both of these. Our microteacher, Kristina, also mentioned the three types of assessment (diagnostic, formative, and summative), and when and how to do each. This was great information to know before our direct instruction lesson plans are due! Her anticipatory set included an extremely difficult test and a student who was upset that it was so unfair. This does happen in classrooms, and it was a great example of what not to do. The skit was funny and it actually relaxed the class as well. There are also two types of assessment, traditional and authentic, I think both are valid in their own way, and we should offer both to our students
. There are so many learning styles in any one classroom that we absolutely must offer more than one means of testing to see what kids know. I like that we also discussed rubrics, because I think I can definitely use some practice on how to do them., In class we also discussed resources that have pre-made rubrics online, which is excellent to know. I have learned from experience with other classes that it can be very time consuming to make a rubric! I also had a lot of trouble deciding what number scale to use, what aspects to evaluate, how many aspects, etc. The list goes on. Being able to get a pre-made rubric (or even just using one to give you a basic frame to construct your own) is extremely helpful. By giving us these resources, it is also more likely that we will use them as teachers. I absolutely love the idea of rubrics- this way, the student knows what it expected of them before the project begins, and they also know how they can go above and beyond. Teachers can easily award points for areas where the student performed well and also make comments on areas that need improvement. I prefer this opposed to assigning one flat grade on an overall job. Rubrics give kids more feedback, and also a chance to improve (or supplement) areas of weakness. Another activity we did in class was watch videos on direct instruction. Our first video was on a second grade math teacher. Her lesson was a fabulous example of direct instruction
, but the lesson itself was incredibly long. Our class also discussed transitioning during a lesson and what could have been done differently to make the lesson more “student friendly”. It was good to see some examples of DI before we prepared our rough draft of our lesson plans. The second video we watched was a definite non-example. This teacher cramped her kindergarten students in one corner of the room and was not engaging to say the least. I was happy that Dr. Hall gave us a good example of DI and also a bad example because it set the bar on both ends. It kind of created a high and low point in my head where I should fall between. That in itself was a good lesson for teachers- the power of providing non-examples as well as examples. Kids need to know both in order to do well.
These past two weeks in class have gone by incredibly fast, and have been saturated with information on writing goals and objectives and assessing students. I think it is great that we are learning these two skills at the beginning of the semester because I think they will have a tremendous impact on how we construct our lesson plans and also our webquests. So much of teaching depends on what we expect from our students, and we also need to make sure that our assessments are designed to measure our objectives accurately. We have actually covered almost every single component of our MSMC lesson plan in just these two weeks! All in all, I think our class is going well and I feel like I am definitely getting the tools I need to effectively and creatively teach my students.
Our February 7th class began with microteaching on performance objectives. Marcia had made a “Jingle” that gave an example objective. I think the clapping rhythm definitely helped everyone remember the objective because we were repeating the phrase while we were clapping. I also absolutely loved the witch and frog example!
The microteaching team definitely did a good job engaging the whole class, and I also thought that students would love how she made it “more fun” with speeding up the rhythm. That is another excellent teaching tool! Their anticipatory set definitely did get the class started. Their presentation explained Bloom’s, which I believe goes hand in hand with objectives, and also gave us a great working model to work on improving an objective. Our class also worked on an objectives worksheet that contained several objectives that needed tweaking. Many of these objectives were written in the special education format, which I think I am prone to writing because I just took Teaching Students w/Disabilities I last semester and I am in II now. I have written lesson plans for other classes before, and I do feel somewhat comfortable writing goals and objectives, but I think I can always use more practice. I need to get into the habit of writing objectives differently based on the needs and abilities of my students so I know this activity definitely helped me start to distinguish between a special ed and a general ed objective. In class we also did some exercises identifying standards- which are directly related to goals and objectives. I think the key to a good lesson is incorporating content from other areas in an interesting way because it helps kids make connections. As I quoted above, learning is when a student can take information and make it their own, Only when they can relate information from one source to another do they really understand it. Using multiple content areas in a lesson definitely sets up the ground work for doing that. Also, another reason I was happy to discuss standards in class is that I had to find out the hard way in Methods for Adolescence (ED5251) how to properly write standards in a unit plan. I did not know that you had to write national and state standards, and also include performance indicators, and I lost major points because of it. This was one of my first classes at the Mount, and I did a lot of learning as I went. Ooops. But, I was glad that we went over it now for the students who were in m shoes that day in class and also for the review. Our class also reviewed the MSMC lesson plan format, which is long but thorough. I always appreciate the recaps of what goes where, mainly because I still have my special ed lesson plan hat on. Switching gears keeps me on my toes! Our final class activity for the evening was determining how much of any given information someone remembers the next day. As a class we guessed percentages for discussing, reading, seeing, hearing, doing, and teaching information and we were surprised at how low the actual numbers were! The best way for someone to remember information is to have them teach or do it
, which is incredibly important to remember for the classroom.In our February 14th class the class discussed assessment and evaluation, and we also reviewed the different between the two. Assessment involves collecting information, and evaluation involves interpreting it. In order to tailor our instruction to the students’ needs, we need to do both of these. Our microteacher, Kristina, also mentioned the three types of assessment (diagnostic, formative, and summative), and when and how to do each. This was great information to know before our direct instruction lesson plans are due! Her anticipatory set included an extremely difficult test and a student who was upset that it was so unfair. This does happen in classrooms, and it was a great example of what not to do. The skit was funny and it actually relaxed the class as well. There are also two types of assessment, traditional and authentic, I think both are valid in their own way, and we should offer both to our students
. There are so many learning styles in any one classroom that we absolutely must offer more than one means of testing to see what kids know. I like that we also discussed rubrics, because I think I can definitely use some practice on how to do them., In class we also discussed resources that have pre-made rubrics online, which is excellent to know. I have learned from experience with other classes that it can be very time consuming to make a rubric! I also had a lot of trouble deciding what number scale to use, what aspects to evaluate, how many aspects, etc. The list goes on. Being able to get a pre-made rubric (or even just using one to give you a basic frame to construct your own) is extremely helpful. By giving us these resources, it is also more likely that we will use them as teachers. I absolutely love the idea of rubrics- this way, the student knows what it expected of them before the project begins, and they also know how they can go above and beyond. Teachers can easily award points for areas where the student performed well and also make comments on areas that need improvement. I prefer this opposed to assigning one flat grade on an overall job. Rubrics give kids more feedback, and also a chance to improve (or supplement) areas of weakness. Another activity we did in class was watch videos on direct instruction. Our first video was on a second grade math teacher. Her lesson was a fabulous example of direct instruction
, but the lesson itself was incredibly long. Our class also discussed transitioning during a lesson and what could have been done differently to make the lesson more “student friendly”. It was good to see some examples of DI before we prepared our rough draft of our lesson plans. The second video we watched was a definite non-example. This teacher cramped her kindergarten students in one corner of the room and was not engaging to say the least. I was happy that Dr. Hall gave us a good example of DI and also a bad example because it set the bar on both ends. It kind of created a high and low point in my head where I should fall between. That in itself was a good lesson for teachers- the power of providing non-examples as well as examples. Kids need to know both in order to do well.These past two weeks in class have gone by incredibly fast, and have been saturated with information on writing goals and objectives and assessing students. I think it is great that we are learning these two skills at the beginning of the semester because I think they will have a tremendous impact on how we construct our lesson plans and also our webquests. So much of teaching depends on what we expect from our students, and we also need to make sure that our assessments are designed to measure our objectives accurately. We have actually covered almost every single component of our MSMC lesson plan in just these two weeks! All in all, I think our class is going well and I feel like I am definitely getting the tools I need to effectively and creatively teach my students.
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