Tuesday, October 28, 2008
Map Lesson Plan
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This is a satelite view of the school I work at in Comstock. The class I work in is a second grade classroom, so any map lesson has to be kept simple. I would connect my computer to the tv and turn it to the channel that shows this map in the satelite view with the street names. Kids can have a paper copy of the map at their seats to help further guide them along in the teaching process.
Earlier this year, the student intern did a lesson on streets and getting from one place to another. Therefore it seemed to make the most sense to have the lesson focus on getting to a student's house to Green Meadow Elementary, thus the point is on the map. A student will tell me what street he or she lives on and find their street (or at least the closet one shown)and have students figure out which directions to go (north, south, east, west) to get from their home to school. This seems the most relevant to students since they live at home and go to to school here most days of the years. The satelite view hits more home since they are seeing what the area that they live in. I believe this will increase the relevance of the lesson itself. Students can then help put symbols on the maps to stand for things (school, store, etc.) and create a key for the maps and draw it on their copies.
After reading chapter 21, there are two trends and issues that hit home to me. The first is about systemic change, particulary districtwide systemic change. This are "any changes or programs instiuted throughout a school district." The most recent example I can think of is the a professional development training I went to this summer. It was for CHAMPS training. The CHAMPs acronym stands for Conversation, Help, Activity, Movement, and Participation. CHAMPs principles include: 1. Classroom organization reflects student behavior, 2. It is the instructor’s responsibility to teach responsible in class behavior, 3. Praise positive behavior instead negative behavior, 4. Response to negative behavior should be brief, calm, and consistent in manner.) This is the format teachers must now follow in planning procedures, rules, and behavior plans. This is new to my district this year and everyone had to attend. Behavior plans would be an example of systematic change because it adopted a new system this year and this immediately came to my mind when I read that part.
The second trend or issue that stuck home to me was the Step up to Excellence. This is to teach school leaders to improve their schools (behavior, test score, etc.) As we all know, all school leaders are looking to improve on those two things as well as enrollment, technology, etc. SUTE involves the following steps: Redesign school sysmem, align cluster performance, align school-site performance, align team and indivdiual performance, and evaluate teh whole-system performance. This what my district kind of did in putting in the CHAMPS in place. Also my building got a new principal and he is implementing new strategies to improve behavior and academic performance.
Tuesday, October 21, 2008
Chapter 18 Reflection: Instructional Design in Business and Industry
"This growth reflects an emphasis not simply on producing a more knowledgeable workforce, but increasingly on improving employee on-the-job performance and on solving organizational problems." It seems that business classes in general compose tasks for students to complete that reflect real-life situations such as employment. Examples include using Word to type business letters or using Excel to keep records. Math classes do the same at time with tax percentages and so forth. Not only actual skills can be taught, but concepts such as cooperation, problem solving, and team work can be taught as well. Social skills are just as important in the workforce as the hands-on skills. These skills can be taught with group assignments or problem-solving activities or both. Either way, these skills need to be taught because they are used in the "real world". Has anyone ever seen "Good Morning Miss Toliver"? It is about an inner city math teacher who does just this. She has many problem-solving activities that are hands-on such as building the tallest standing structure with straws and tape and counting the number of raisins in a box to learn estimation. She also took students outside to see math in the "real world" and made a book about it. Cool stuff. If you haven't seen it, see it! I have seen it at least 3-4 times.
The chapter also discusses the role of the designer. In this case, the designer is us the teachers. We are leaders, facilitators as well as the sole teacher in various types of lessons, depending on student need. Sometimes we have to teach and reteach over and over again and gradually let students be more independent, but the training must be there. The chapter said that "70% of the training takes place via classroom while 20% takes place with computers." This tells us further that technology is a wonderful supplement for teaching, but not a replacement. Therefore, we teachers needs to use technological devices if they will benefit the students.
I have learned a lot this semester. I liked the hands on learning that we did with Podcasts and all of that. I learned about social bookmarking, Podcasts, and even Blogs. I would not have learned about these cool things if it wasn't for this class. I also got many good ideas from classmates in how to use such tools.
The chapter also discusses the role of the designer. In this case, the designer is us the teachers. We are leaders, facilitators as well as the sole teacher in various types of lessons, depending on student need. Sometimes we have to teach and reteach over and over again and gradually let students be more independent, but the training must be there. The chapter said that "70% of the training takes place via classroom while 20% takes place with computers." This tells us further that technology is a wonderful supplement for teaching, but not a replacement. Therefore, we teachers needs to use technological devices if they will benefit the students.
I have learned a lot this semester. I liked the hands on learning that we did with Podcasts and all of that. I learned about social bookmarking, Podcasts, and even Blogs. I would not have learned about these cool things if it wasn't for this class. I also got many good ideas from classmates in how to use such tools.
Monday, October 13, 2008
Chapter 14 and Podcasting
The concepts from chapter 14 is something I think we do all of the time as educators. We often test student performance and behavior through assessments and if they do not get the desired results, we look at the causes and intervene. We do this with behavior as well as academics. For Curriculum Based Mesurements, there is a rule of three. If student falls below the goal line 3 times in a row, then the intervention must be changed. But if the student is above the goal line 3 times in a row, then a new goal must be set. For interventions, we try to see what "makes the kids tick" and try to teach to their abilities and interests and intelligences. We also try to find motivation for undesired behaviors (i.e. attention, power, etc.) in order to do an appropriate interventions which has to include a replacement behavior. As educators, it is important to look at why sometimes things do not go as well as they should in order to find a proper solution.
I decided to focus on podcasts that focus one learning a foreign language. Since there is a good portion of Spanish-speaking students, I decided to share ones that teach Spanish. Not only students can use podcasts to help them learn Spanish, but I found a couple of podcasts on iTunes that deal with dealing with misbehaviors of students whose language is Spanish. I thought this would be very useful for teachers not familiar with the langauge or a refresher for those who do know some who have had exposure to the language, like myself.
But for some reason this address won't work, but you can look at it iTunes. But learning Spanish can be done with Podcasts. A good I found is "Coffee Break Spanish". The address is
http://www.coffeebreakspanish.com
The reason I chose this topic is that there is a girl in the second grade classroom I work in (I shadow a boy who has EI) who came to school this year not knowing a work in English. The teacher and intern knew no Spanish. There is a bilingual assistant that comes and helps and teachers for partial days of the week, but I have been helping her give directions and work with her as needed in Spanish since I took three years in high school. Notes can be found on www.myspanishconnection.com. But I could not access the website for some reason, but if you go to iTunes and search for learn Spanish in podcasts, then behavior management in Spanish should show up. But podcasts can have all sorts of educational uses like showing social studies videos or foreign language sounds.
I decided to focus on podcasts that focus one learning a foreign language. Since there is a good portion of Spanish-speaking students, I decided to share ones that teach Spanish. Not only students can use podcasts to help them learn Spanish, but I found a couple of podcasts on iTunes that deal with dealing with misbehaviors of students whose language is Spanish. I thought this would be very useful for teachers not familiar with the langauge or a refresher for those who do know some who have had exposure to the language, like myself.
But for some reason this address won't work, but you can look at it iTunes. But learning Spanish can be done with Podcasts. A good I found is "Coffee Break Spanish". The address is
http://www.coffeebreakspanish.com
The reason I chose this topic is that there is a girl in the second grade classroom I work in (I shadow a boy who has EI) who came to school this year not knowing a work in English. The teacher and intern knew no Spanish. There is a bilingual assistant that comes and helps and teachers for partial days of the week, but I have been helping her give directions and work with her as needed in Spanish since I took three years in high school. Notes can be found on www.myspanishconnection.com. But I could not access the website for some reason, but if you go to iTunes and search for learn Spanish in podcasts, then behavior management in Spanish should show up. But podcasts can have all sorts of educational uses like showing social studies videos or foreign language sounds.
Wednesday, October 8, 2008
Chapter 3
There is no doubt in my mind that internet usage will have a bigger role in academics in the near future. Other types of media, such as film strips and videos have increased their role in usage as supplements to teachers and to the content they teach. Computers began to come to play really in the 40s, with the Super computer and look what we have today! At one point, they thought computers cannot be under a ton...now you can get a computer as small as your hand. Internet is used in research as well as video and photo sharing in academics. Teachers even find lesson plans on the net these days. Based on what I read in chapter 3 as well as what I see today, there is no reason why internet will not become more relevant in education.
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