Teaching Strategies

1. Integration of subject areas combines information and standards from multiple subject areas into lessons and units.  This helps students to make more connections when taking in information between and across subject areas.  It allows for a deeper understanding of lessons and information.
2. Physical activity incorporates any type of physical movement from getting up and walking across the room to turn in work to performing a dance or other type of activity.  Students in the 4th and 5th grades need some type of movement to allow for their physical needs.  We don’t want to keep them in their seats too long as it is not developmentally appropriate practice.
3. Small group discussion allows students to get into small groups to work on an activity or discuss information.  This helps provide for physical needs of getting up and moving around.  It also allows students to discuss information with their peers to helps make peer-to-peer connections and build on their own understandings.  Students are able to look at things from multiple points of view to help scaffold their understanding and come to a compromise.
4. Large group discussion allows students to discuss things with the teacher and the whole classroom.  This allows the teacher to introduce an idea or a topic to the classroom.  It also allows for students to discuss things through teacher guidance by asking questions that will hopefully take students where the teacher wants them to go in their discussion.
5. Journaling helps students get their thoughts down without worrying about what others are thinking.  This can be used to help students to prepare their thoughts before entering into a discussion.  It also can be used to help discover students’ understanding before going over a topic.  Journaling also helps find out where students’ understanding is after going over a topic so that  a teacher can find out if there is anything left to teach or reflect on how his or her instruction went.
6. Multiple intelligences is different ways that students are able to learn.  We need to understand that students learn better in different ways.  Therefore we need to provide different opportunities for learning including physical, musical, interpersonal, intrapersonal, visual, verbal, logical, and naturalistic.  We need to help our students learn through their strong abilities as well as help strengthen those areas that need improvement.
7. Debates is a discussion between and among two groups of students, each arguing their point of view on a topic. This type of activity allows for students to work in groups to scaffold their understanding.  It also may allow for students look at things from a different viewpoint as they may need to show support for an idea that they are against.  It allows students to look at things from new perspectives and see that there is not always one right answer!
8. Artwork can incorporate many different projects to model or display an idea.  Students can demonstrate their understanding of a topic through artwork.  There are endless ways to do so when incorporating lots of different materials.  Artwork can be done individually or in a group to help make better sense of something through the enriched discussion between peers.
9. Dramatizations are where students act out something that they have read or learned.  This can also vary depending on the understandings and the viewpoints of the students involved.  It’s a great small group activity allowing for discussion of information.
10. Hands-on experiences are experiences which directly involve students’ dealing with that information which is being taught.  Children are able to experience things by doing them.  This gives them the opportunity to learn by doing!  Students are more likely to learn something that relates to them.  They will remember their own experiences and what happened in those experiences to make their own connections for something that they may not know.
11. Technology might include smartboards, webquests, computers, movies, webcams, news, or any other form of technology.  Technology is a must in teaching in today’s society.  Technology is becoming more and more advanced, and there is widespread use.  Students love it, and it is necessary to learn and use in much of today’s workforce and everyday life.
12. Media can include books, magazines, newspapers, TV, computers, video games, and telephones.  Knowing that media use consumes a great deal of a student’s day, we need to consider incorporating these things into our own instructional activities. These things are what interest our students and will help make things more meaningful for them when learning.
13. Social justices are activities that incorporate an idea from today’s society, voicing an opnion, and trying to make your own voice heard by helping to change things.  In order to make what is learned more meaningful to our students, we need to use information that has to do with a subject that they care about.  We should incorporate rich discussion where each student’s voice is important.  Students should also see that they can make a difference.  They should be encouraged to help find ways to change things when there is opportunity to do so with an idea that they care about.  Students need this empowerment to see that they can make a difference in today’s society.
14. Music can include instruments, songs, and dances or movement to music.  Music helps define cultures and also serves as one of the multiple intelligences.  It is important for students to experience music in their education to understand cultural differences and similarities.  It also can help students to express themselves in a new way.
15. Manipulatives are any object that can be used by students to move around and help form their own visual to understand a problem.  Manipulatives are more useful when there are opportunities for students to select the type and amount to be used.  This allows for the varied thoughts and learning paths of students and groups of students in the classroom.
16. Modeling is when a teacher shows examples through his or her own actions or examples of work from students or something made up.  Modeling gives students an idea of what the teacher is or is not looking for in an assignment.  It is a great springboard for students in helping to create their own rubrics for assignments by creating guidelines for what would be ideal.  Modeling can also be used to give examples of inquisitiveness and how to act or react in situations.
17. Differentiated instruction includes involving different avenues for learning, understanding, and showing what a student has learned.  In providing for differentiated learning, we need to be aware of each student’s rate of learning as well as their interests and learning styles.  We need to understand that each student learns differently and at different rates.  We also need to understand that each child will value information differently.  Therefore, we may need to provide multiple experiences and activities as well as multiple strategies for our students to follow.
18. Differentiated assessment , or multiple ways to show one’s understanding, should also be incorporated.  We need to allow students to use their strengths to demonstrate their learning in the best way possible.  For example, some students may struggle in writing.  Therefore, these students should not be required to write an essay for every assessment that they are responsible for in the classroom.
19. Learning at different rates also needs to be provided for.  Students do not complete activities at the same rate, and they do not learn everything at the same time as their peers either.  We need to be able to adjust for the pace that our students learn and be allow for such differences.  We cannot expect a classroom of students to all be at the same level of understanding for all information all of the time.
20. Formative feedback, or providing feedback to help improve the students’ understanding at the point where it is realized is very important.  We need to include assignments or activities to help students show their understanding so that we can adjust instruction or activities to better provide for the needs of our students.  In this way, we can take care of misinterpretations as soon as possible.

Critique

     The first Annenberg video that I chose to watch was a mathematics lesson called “Valentine Exchange.”  This was a fourth grade  bilingual classroom in Tuscon, Arizona taught by Lilia Olivas.  Lilia used valentines to help teach a lesson about patterns and functions.  Miss Olivas introduced the problem using a smaller number of students exchanging valentines.  She used visual help by having some students come to the front of the classroom and make exchanges.  This way, the students could check their own understanding of the situation.  She then asked the students how many exchanges there would be in their class of 24 students.  The students broke up into groups and were given a variety of manipulatives to help them solve the problem.  They were able to discuss their strategies within their groups as Miss Olivas went around the room to help guide her students’ understanding.  In the end of the lesson, the students had a large group discussion to talk about their strategies and conclsions.  This helped make connections between students.  This very much follows Cognitively Guided Instruction.   I believe that this strategy is excellent for this age group of students.  It helps provide the social discussion and physical movement for the students.  It also helps students try things out and come up with their own conclusions based on the connections that they make.  I was in an assignment last year preparing 6th grade students for the achievement tests in mathematics and reading.  I tried to use this strategy much of the time.  I was on the assignment for about three months.  Unfortunately, the students were not used to this type of activity and it did not work well at first.  Toward the end of my assignment, the students began to understand what I was doing and actually excited about learning this way.  Still, this type of functional pattern idea was difficult for most of my 6th grade students to understand.  I believe that this type of strategy is much needed in a regular classroom experience to help students grasp a better understanding of mathematical concepts and ideas.

     The second video that I chose was a Social Studies lesson called “Understanding Stereotypes.”  This was from a fourth and fifth grade classroom in Seattle, Washington taught by Libby Sinclair.  Ms. Sinclair does a wonderful job introducing stereotypes by allowing the students to think and write about what they think about stereotypes before discussing this subject.  This is a difficult idea to understand.  I see many adults confusing stereotype and prejudice as well as confusing actions with the actual stereotypes as Ms. Sinclair describes in the video.  The students were able to discuss their own experiences with stereotypes.  Later, the students worked in groups to come up with stereotypes they found in literature that they read in the classroom as well as describing the actions that came with these stereotypes.  This helped the students to differentiate between the stereotypes and the actions involved.  Afterwards, the students came together as a group to discuss these experiences.  Ms. Sinclair asked her students why they think they need to talk about this issue.  The students realized that they want to consider stereotypes when making decisions in life.  She uses this discussion to bring up that materials did not mention the Negro Leagues for their research.  This propelled the assigment for a pursuasive letter to the publishers of the searches to include this information in their materials.  The students were able to discuss what should be included in the letter to help come up with a guideline.  The students were able to share some of their rough draftswith the class to discuss good points and some points that students might wish to change.  Ms. Sinclair also showed that the high school students did a similar assignment and actually were able to get the post office to include a stamp with a player from the Negro Leagues.  The students told how excited they would be if the publishers would make changes in their materials due to their letters.  Again, group work is great for this level of students.  I loved how the teacher brought students together at the end of an activity to make further connections.  I think that it was great to include the experience that the high school students had to help show the students that they can have a voice in the community and help make changes happen.  This even motivated the students further!

Module_5_Final_Project

SS/ELA Module 5 – Dramatize a Story

After watching the Annenberg video about engaging literature, we were to dramatize a story.  Unfortunately, my preschool teaching position has ended for this year so I have just been substitute teaching.  I did get a chance, while subbing, to see one experience where a dramatization would be very useful  I actually was going to incorporate this after students were finished with what the teacher wanted them to do.  However, I was only in the classroom for half a day so I had little time to play with.  We read Lon Po Po together and the teacher had about six or seven critical thinking questions for the students.  One question asked the students to retell the story in their own words.  If I had the chance to do this over again, I would have gone ahead and had the students work on a dramatization before completing the questions.  Most students seemed to have problems understanding how to retell the story.  I explained to them that they do not need to include every detail from the story and they should not copy word for word as that is plaigerism.  I told them that they need to think of one of the absent students walking in right after we completed the story.  They had to answer all the questions as well.  How would you tell them what happened (including the end) so that they could be successful in answering the questions themselves?  I also let some of the students retell the story directly to me so that they could get something flowing.  They did great, but I was not able to get to everyone in the class.  I believe that a dramatization activity before completing the questions would have saved time and energy.  By dividing the class into smaller groups, the students could discuss the story themselves to help make connections among the group (along with my own guidance). In this way, the students would have a better understanding of what happened in the story whether or not they understood all the vocabulary in the story.  The students would also be able to watch the various groups perform for the class which would make deeper connections and might bring out something that might not have come up within their group.  If I had this activity to do over again, I believe I would take the risk and include a dramatization just to help the students to  be successful.

SS/ELA Module 4b

The first poem to read “Grandmother” by Paula Gunn Allen. I thought that the photography project sounded interesting. I believe that I would read the poem together as a class. I would invite the students to discuss what they think the words in the poem is describing and what they see when they hear the poem. I would also ask the students if they could think of someone (grandmother, etc.) who might fit the words in this poem. They would need to interview this person with questions that we would come up in class (and maybe some more). They could create a story of this person’s life based on these questions. They would also take pictures of this person from multiple viewpoints to help show their story. (We would need to practice taking pictures of things from multiple viewpoints and discussing how these pictures in multiple perspectives adjusts the meaning of the picture. The children would need to explain why they chose the particular perspective for their picture that went with the story.

The second poem is “In Response to Executive Order 9066:  All Americans of Japanese Descent Must Report to Relocation Centers” by Dwight Okita.  To help support this poem, I felt that Identity Stories would be great.  I think that it would be a good idea to discuss what we feel to be the identities of each girl in the story.  Of course, we would need to have prior history about relocation camps in World War II.  I think that this would be an excellent springboard for creating their own identity stories.  We could brainstorm things that we might include in our stories.  We might even be able to talk about any special family recipes or activities that children could share with the class (they could share recipes, videos, powerpoints, or family members could come in).  I think that this would be an excellent project for building community within the classroom!

SS/ELA Module 4a

1.     What do you notice that this student did well?

         First of all, I feel that the student addressed the person that he was sending the letter to well.  He made sure to state the reason for sending the letter and gave good supportive details.  He also made sure that the supportive details showed meaning to himself as well as his family.

2.     What questions might you ask about his/her work?

         I believe that I would ask this student to discuss more about his own details.  For example, he should give reasoning for why immigrants might not feel safe if they can’t speak their first language.  This is a good point to give, but there needs to be more support here.  I would also ask why immigrants might not get paid well for their job if they do not learn in school?  What support could the student give for this?  I might suggest that the student add more support for this in his letter.  I might also ask how the inability to read, write, or do math supports the detail that immigrants may not feel safe.  I would suggest that the student add this detail to his letter as well.  I might also ask in what other ways not going to school might be harmful to the life of immigrants.  I would ask why the immigrant will not have a good life when ht/she is older if he/she does not learn.  This is also a good deatil, but it might reach the audience better if there is more support and reasoning shown.  I would also need to be sure that this student edits (or that I help to edit) his letter.

Designing Instruction

Through this video, I have learned that it takes alot of planning to create an educational environment were all children in grades 4 and 5 can be successful.  You need to provide activities, experiences, and literature that is meaningful to what types of thoughts and changes children are going through at this age.  We also need to provide for rich discussion where children feel free to talk about how they feel without having other values and ideas forced on them.  Children need to learn to voice their opinion as well as listen to the opinions of others in order to help form their own values and beliefs.  I liked how the video included small group work and discussion to help students discuss things further and produce their own presentations for the class to show their understanding of what they have learned.

I do currently like to include classroom discussion, but I would like to incorporate more meaningful activities and experiences in my own teaching.  I would love to have students create their own way to present their materials.  I think this would be easier when I am able to have my own full time classroom.  Things are much more meaningful for the students when they are able to help create the plan and the process.  I would love to include situations where my students help me to create a rubric so that they can take part in creating their own criteria for activities.

I think that I would definitely need full support from my school and the staff to show that what I am teaching is meaningful.  I think that when coming up with things that are meaningful to our students we might come across materials that some families  might not value as educational resources.  However, some of these materials should be accessible to the students so that they can create wholesome values.  They may need some guidance to see different viewpoints, but our students do need to be able to hear opinions from many different viewpoints.  If we only present one viewpoint we are letting our students down.

Friendship

For my individual activity two, I chose selection A. I chose to interview a kindergartener and a fifth grader about their ideas about friendships. 

The kindergartener that I interviewed was a five year old student in my own preschool class at a Head Start for children of migrant workers. He went half a day to kindergarten in the morning. When I asked this first boy who his friends were, he automatically started looking around my own classroom.  He named mostly boys from my classroom.  I was surprised to find that he named one boy who had hurt him earlier in the year.  However, this kindergartener and that boy were both living in around the same area so they might find it easier to do things together when they found the time to do so.  He also included one girl from the classroom, but this was very hesitantly.  I did not hear him name anyone that I would not know that would be in his kindergarten class.  When I asked him what they like to do together, he just said, “play.”  He also told me that he likes to play outside and that he likes to play inside.  I then asked this boy what he likes about his friends. He told me that he likes toys and that he likes to play. 

The other boy that I interviewed was a fifth grade student in a suburban setting.  This boy started rattling off names as soon as I asked who his friends were – first and last! He also listed boys as well as girls.  He did tell me that he had different friends at school than at church and at boy scouts.  When I asked him what he liked to do with his friends, he told me that he likes to, “hang out.”  I asked what that meant.  His reply was that they played video games and watched television.  Still, he told me that they mostly played outside whether it was some type of organized sport or just fooling around.  Finally, I asked this boy what he liked about his friends.  He shared that they were fun.  That was about it for reasons that he liked them.

I think that the reasoning for some of my responses from my kindergartener was that he is still in the stage where he’s seeing only his point of view and isn’t  able to consider other positions.  I would believe that he may have had a different answer for who his friends were if he were asked this question in his actual kindergarten classroom.  He just started naming whoever he saw.  He did show that he was able to name some of the students in my classroom who were absent that day!  This boy’s responses to what he likes to do with his friends also deal with what he experiences during the day. These children were in some type of school setting from about seven in the morning to about four thirty in the afternoon.  Much of their experiences with their friends at school are playing in the classroom and playing outside.  Although we did have writing and art activities, the setup of the classroom included many toys in the centers.  This is probably the reason that he stated that he likes to play with toys with his friends – that is one thing that he does do with them!  When I asked this boy what he liked about his friends, I thought I would have gotten more characteristics about his friends.  However, he just said that he liked to play with them.  I thought it might have been the language barrier, so I asked him in Spanish as well.  Still, he said the same thing.  I think that he is still finding words to use for emotions and characteristics about himself, so he also has trouble doing so with his friends.  I feel that what he likes about his friends at this age is what he does with them.

My fifth grader was more willing to name girls as well as boys.  He’s more comfortable admitting that he has friends of both sexes.  The kindergartener might still be afraid to admit that he associates with girls.  I also thought that it was interesting that there were different groups of friends according to where he associates with them.  He was able to tell me some different things that he does with his friends.  This probably is due in part to his different lifestyle as well as his social maturity.  Still, the only thing that he could tell me that he liked about his friends was that they were fun.  This tells me that he has not developed much yet in describing characteristics and emotions in his own maturation.

This interview was overall very interesting!  I think that it might have been a good idea to also incorporate answers from females and compare these findings.  I think that there might be the same type of change over time, given the years of maturation.  However, I wonder if there would be much difference between the responses of a boy to that of a girl.  I also wonder if it made much of a difference to have the different lifestyles and areas where these boys lived as well as school settings.

I think that this information can help a great deal in developing an educational setting that can aid in the social development of their students.  I believe that students need to be more and more involved in groupwork as they get older.  They need to be able to work with different personalities and characteristics.  They also need to learn that they can play many different roles in working in groups.  No one needs to play the same role in groupwork all the time.  They would just get good at that role and not show development in working together toward a common goal.  They would only show one goal:  to get their one job done.

I also believe that children need as many opportunities as possible to find activities that they like to do with their peers.  This requires careful planning in preparing lessons with fun and exciting activities that may have the possibility of being carried out to their regular play.  Of course, children will experience a wide variety of opportunities for activities on their own.

I believe that from the beginning we need to promote our students’ ability to find words to use for their emotions and descriptions of personalities of their peers.  Much of my own students’ difficulty in communicating is their difficulty in finding words to describe how they feel about a situation or finding words to ask for what they would like.  Children should be able to describe these things more and more as they mature.  Students should also learn to find words to help describe what they like about other children.  Not only does this make the other children feel better about themselves, but it promotes a friendly environment with friends who respect each other.  Children may need some type of modeling to help find words for such things.  If a student does not know what another student likes about them, they could have the misconception that that other child does not like them. 

 Children should have the opportunity to discuss what characteristics they look for in choosing their friends during class time.  They need to realize that there are others in their own classroom in the same position as themselves.  They need to learn appropriate vocabulary to help voice their opinions about friendships.  In addition, children may need aid and support in finding conclusions to social conflicts.  We should not push or force our own beliefs on our students.  We should not put our students down for their own values and beliefs, either.  That would be one way of forcing our own opinion.  We have many social and cultural differences in school settings today and we need to consider that these things have relevance in the values of our students.  They need to find what types of things they value through their own experience in school, at home, and in other environmental situations.  We need to be able to provide the opportunity to discuss relevent situations with our students to help guide them in making their own decisions.  In this way, students would be able to also hear other points of view from other students.  I believe that children would feel more comfortable making their connections by having discussion with others in their classroom instead of just being told how to best solve their problem.  As children grow and mature, they want to have more and more opportunities to do things on their own.  We need to feel comfortable in allowing our students to try to figure things out for themselves so that they can become active thinkers.  One opportunity to start getting students interested in talking about characteristics is going around the room and naming one thing that they like about their neighbor.  However, in the fourth and fifth grades we should be able to provide discussions about relevent situations knowing the community that we are dealing with in our school and classroom.  If the discussion is meaningful to the students, its outcomes will be meaningful to them as well.

SS/ELA Module 3

1.  What did you learn from assessing the letters?

      I think that this activity helps show students what to look for in a good letter. The comparison of the three letters helps students differentiate between the diferent criterion that they would be graded on.  There will be less questioning of why someone gets a three or a two.  They are able to see what type of wording and reasoning makes a letter pursuasive and what type of language is appropriateto be professional.  Students can actually give their own reasoning using the flags, which helps with peer to peer conversation.  This type of discussion helps put it in the words of the children they interact with and not just the words of the teacher.  This will help the students to make better connections.

2.  What advice would you give students for next steps?

      I would probably engage my students in a discussion of how they might go about creating their own letter in order to take the criterion into consideration.  We could create a list of things to do and an order to do them in.  I think it would be goood to create a checklist, as well, to help students be sure to take all the necessary steps to create their best letter.

TV Representations

I watched a Halloween version of ICarly to compare this TV show with the reality of life for 4th and 5th graders. First of all, it seems that the children in this show live with a big brother, which is very possible.  (Although he may have trouble finding as big a pumpkin as was found.) In addition, the rumors about a haunted room seems in tune with what students might hear – there are always rumors about something being haunted.  Most children, however, do not have a web show to view this type of thing on. Still, with our increasing use of technology this could be in the near future. Also, children at this age might wish to face their fears and test the rumors. It was also sensible that none of the things that scared the children in the house were real.

Memories of Adolescence

I feel that fourth and fifth grades were very difficult for me. I always had girls who would try to make friends with me, but the “popular” girls would somehow deter them and tell them that they should not be my friends. I always got good grades and was labeled as such. My parents had high expectations for my grades, so I pushed myself to do the best I could and complete all my homework to a t. I was also a lover of many sports, although I lacked coordination. I loved horses and would discuss this subject with whoever would listen – mostly teachers. I also loved running and playing soccer. I tried softball and other sports, but my lack of coordination led to my lack of interest in these areas. I was always very shy, and the other students made fun of this. They also labeled me as ugly. I would overhear the boys in my class making fun of my looks. I don’t know if this is what you’re looking for for this class as the video did not show up, but I hope it’s alright.