1. What were the key ideas you noted from the C-Content speakers. Any synthesis thoughts on them as a whole?
John Seeley Brown The main idea that I noted was we need to play with content. We can’t be afraid to fail multiple times before finally getting it right. As teachers we have to teach children how to deal with these feelings of not always having an answer or that there is only one right answer. Brown talks about a blended epistemology. Being all three, knowing of content, making or the context and playing. Riddles are a good way to frame be ideas to get students to think out side of the box and collaborate. Howard Gardner The key ideas are Gardner’s 5 minds; discipline, synthesizing, creating, respect and ethics. I find it interesting that the years to mastery within a discipline has been cut in half due to technology. When looking at respect and ethics, children have a tendency to be respectful with peers and those within their community. They struggle with respect and ethics when it doesn’t personally relate to them on a global level. Our society does not reinforce these traits and the job of teaching these life skills now becomes the teacher responsibility. Sir Ken Robinson Robinson talked a lot about how as educators our focus is on reading, writing, and math. The arts are being lost and this is where student are able to be creative. Creativity is not something that is learned, it is something that you grow out of, as you get older. Preparing students to be wrong is important for the 21st century. We also need to allow students to move. This movement allows them to think better. Daniel Pink The key idea is intrinsic motivation. Daniel states that motivators create a limited focus while ‘if than’ rewards destroy creativity. He suggests that students need to have an intrinsic drive to do better. The key ideas that I noticed is that we as educators need to help students learn how to collaborate, build intrinsic motivation, honesty and kindness that will carry them through life, not just while in school. All of these speakers were talking about communication skills and character traits, not academic content. 2. Then consider the list you created from the context of your classroom and your teaching practice. I have learned that students need to be taught how to work collaboratively, how to deal with failure, learn self-discipline and intrinsic motivation. These are just a few things that students need to be doing on a daily basis. By allowing students to work together they are ale to teach others and further explain their own understanding of the content. Creating projects or posters to display their knowledge allows the creativity that is sometimes suppressed in traditional teaching. 3. As an instructional leader, how might you apply Mobley's 6 insights to help your students (or your colleagues) to think creatively? I try to create a safe environment that allows students to take a risk. They have to feel safe in order to try something new or challenging themselves even if they might be wrong. Allowing students to be creative without explicate directions is hard. Some students do well, where other struggle where to start if they can’t see the final outcome. I am still working on how to get students to explain or elaborate their answers. Everything is not a yes, no or short answer. This type of explanation and thinking takes a lot of practice. I know that it is important and with time students will become successful.
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University of Virginia psychologist Daniel Willingham and author of Raising Kids Who Read: What Parents and Teachers Can Do says, “There is no real difference between listening to a book and reading it.” He also states that there is a “high correlations of reading comprehension and listening comprehension.” This information supports my action research that technology can help with reading comprehension. Every year I have students who are not reading at grade level. These students struggle, but with today’s technology they don’t have to be so far behind. If students are able to listen to books or text and the directions or questions, then we have leveled the playing field a little. We have allowed them access to grade level text that they wouldn’t have been successful without the support of technology. This support is also embedded in the CAASPP testing that 3rd graders take. I can't wait to see what my result reveal. It may alter how I teach and support struggling students.
Darling-Hammond has suggestions that would dramatically change education in the United States. After reading her book it has really opened my eyes to what is happening in our country, and what’s going on in other countries. Of the five key elements number fours starts the change. If we have teachers that are trained in 21st century techniques with similar mindset, then together we can push forward and make a difference. Continuing education for teachers is a must. Just looking at myself, my teaching will be forever changed. Had I not chosen this path, who knows how long this information would have taken to reach me. It’s only now that I am financially ready to take on more loans for furthering my education. With our county everything is always about money and for years our schools have been the ones who suffer. If we focus on equitable and adequate resources as well as strong support for teachers, then everything else would fall into place. Education in the US could potentially change in the near future.
John Dewey’s quote, “What the best and wisest parent wants for his own child, that must we want for all children in the community. Any other ideal for our schools is narrow and unlovely; acted upon, it destroys our democracy” still holds true 100 years later. I agree with John 100%. Every student deserves the best education no madder what their background is. As teachers we are the stepping-stones to a bright future that lies ahead. Reading is the foundation to all life skills. Without knowing how to read, life in the 21st century would be difficult. The goal for third grade students is to master the basics of decoding and reading comprehension of third grade text. Once they are reading at grade level their education shifts from learning to read to reading to learn. This is a huge push from my district as statistics show that “A student who can't read on grade level by 3rd grade is four times less likely to graduate by age 19 than a child who does read proficiently by that time.” As I have attended workshops for the district this is something that I have heard over and over.
At my site we offer daily reading intervention to students who are not reading at grade level. Students are grouped across the grade level based on their reading level. Some groups focus on phonic where other groups work on reading comprehension through structured programs. This is a great intervention, but is doesn’t seem to be working for all students. We are seeing the same kids from year to year in these intervention groups. Over the past few years I have noticed a growing number of students who lack the basic skills to read and comprehend text when entering 3rd grade. I wonder why these interventions are not working. Why aren’t they making more than a year’s growth to catch up? What else can we do to help these students? I would like to see if technology could perk their interest in reading. This is obviously an area of difficulty and often students don’t want to put the effort forward if they know that they are going to struggle or even fail. The idea behind my action research is to see if technology has a positive impact in their reading comprehension. How does technology impact children’s ability to recall and comprehend text? Hopefully research will help me identify how we can help students succeed in reading, therefore succeed in life. After watching all the video and reading the articles, I feel a little more at ease. Integrating technology into my classroom is very overwhelming considering that I don’t view myself as a ‘tech’ person. I realized that I have a lot of the tools already needed to be a 21st century teacher. I am using Goggle classroom mainly as a way to assign writing assignments where students can learn how to copy documents and create their own. I know that it may seem like a ‘stage 3 Adaptation’ assignment but it’s really more than that. My 8-year-old students are just learning how to type and navigate through Google Drive. They need to know the basics so that they can use these skills when they are older. Now I need to venture out and try to use more technology within my Google classroom. I would love to see how an elementary teacher uses this virtual classroom as a way to teach or provide structure for collaboration or group work.
One thing that I heard or read multiple times was virtual field trips. For me this is something new that I could see integrating it into my Google classroom for each unit of study. What a great way to use technology, allow student experiences outside of the classroom, all while starting to become an innovative learner. I guess my question is, how does it work? Where do I go? How do I start? My personal goal is to try and master this one technology piece this year to help bring life back into teaching. I want my students to be excited to learn and technology along with new experienced is my tickets to get there, so I think. Only time will tell. Mishra and Koehler say you must have lots of ideas to find the one that works. That describes my journey this year, try, try, and try more. After completing the IRB course I realize why it has been created. I am glad that subject rights are being protected, but I now feel that I have even more questions about the process. First, I need to clarify what my driving question is so that I can start laying out my plan. As I have previously stated on my 790 page, I would really like to look at different ways to improve reading comprehension for students who are below grade level. Engagement for struggling readers is important and might be the key factor in why other interventions have not worked in the past. In order to measure their growth, I will look at beginning of the year and end of the trimester assessments. The goal being 0.3+ growth in order to make more than a year’s growth. I would also like to compare their view of reading both before and after the study. Hopefully with the end result being that their reading level improves as their engagement and motivation improves. I am passionate about helping children. For as long as I can remember I have always wanted to be a teacher. As my cousin reminded me this summer, I always played the ‘teacher role’ while playing school when we were children. I also remember career day back in middle school. My teacher had asked us to select 3 jobs that we were interested in. I picked teaching because I wanted to help children, a pediatrician because I wanted to help sick children and a secretary because I wanted to help others stay organized. Little did I know that I would become a teacher and my job would include all of those things that I wanted in a job. Everyday I get an opportunity to help children. Sometimes it’s with an area that they struggle with, sometimes it’s providing a safe environment, or teaching them something new. No matter what, I know that at the end of the school year my students are moving on with a little more self-confidence and a brighter future. In some small way I have helped each and every student of mine.
This week has really opened my eyes to the reality of the importance of technology in the classroom. I have always known that we need to integrate more technology, but I've never known how or what to teach. Since I started teaching 10 years ago there has always been a push for fidelity to the curriculum. Now we have moved away from that and we have more freedom to use the resources that we feel as educators are needed to teach the standards in our grade level. This is great except where do you start? When is there time to plan and create projects that are hands on all the time? Have they already been created? It is so mush easier to just teach with the materials that you have and not branch out to something new. The problem with that is our students are the ones who suffer.
As I watched several videos about the 21st century classrooms I started wondering, what could that look like in my small classroom of 28 third grade students? Can I remodel my library area to make it more inviting? Should I remove all student materials and only have what is needed at each station? There are so many small ways I could change my room and change the way students perceive learning. If they don't have assigned seats, but assigned groups and projects to work on each day, will their engagement change? All of these ideas are great but will they really work at my school? In my classroom? Just trying to get an independent assignment complete if I'm not walking around and pushing them is a challenge. I would love to try this model but it is very intimidating. My students struggle to follow step by step directions both on paper and on computers. I would like to know more about the planning that it takes to run a 21st century classroom. When and how do teachers teach the curriculum needed to problem solve when half of their class is not at grade level in reading, math or both subject areas? I feel that this model is great for students who are at grade level, have good behavior and have the abilities to problem solve, but its just not reality for all. Some of my students struggle to stay focused in the morning because they are hungry. They didn't get to school early enough for breakfast and now they have to wait until recess to have their first meal of the day. I wonder if this style of teaching would help with some of the behavior issues or would still be there? I guess I will have to just try it out and see what happens. |
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July 2018
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