What is intelligence?

I think that intelligence goes beyond mere memorization and passing a test. I feel that intelligence is is the ability to problem solve. Intelligence is also the ability to take in new information, be able to connect it into what you already know, and use that information to solve new problems. Intellect is the ability to problem solve. Wether that be abstract or concrete though, comprehending situations, evaluating situations, and using learned ability. I think that intelligence goes beyond mere memorization and passing a test. I feel there is a difference between knowledge and intellect. For example, being able to answer questions on trivia is knowledge not intellect. One might be able to answer questions, but not be able to comprehend or connect that information into the world. I hope to have students that strive to be intellectual and I know my learning environment will support this idea.

Field trip

Dear utk, autism is my prism not my prison. This is what she wrote at the beginning and that is a strong statement. I feel like people consider her disability as a problem, but she sees it differently. She said that Special needs are all around the world. The world doesn't need autism, but autism needs the world, because autism is a nasty disability but the world can help those with autism. As teachers, we need to help students find out who they are and cater to them. Find their strong suits and focus on them.

"To connect I had to be where he was. Non verbal, be non verbal." As teachers, we do not lose our expertise status from learning from those we teach. Be open to meeting individuals where they are. 

Receptive language based on what the individual loves to do. 

Making me think about my moms charter school. Find what student loves and run with it.

Think inside, laugh outside

Ch. 2 QTC

One of the most cited theories of human development is that of Swiss biologist Jean Piaget.  After reading about Piaget’s basic assumptions (p. 27-32) look with particular attention at the stage of child development you would like to teach.  How might you accommodate those students who have not yet developed to this stage?

The child level I would to teach is around ages 7-9 so that would be the Concrete Operational Stage. Children at this level are more aware of external events, they begin to realize their own thoughts and feelings, and operational thinking. At this age, I believe that lesson activities need to be engaging, but need a follow up in discussion or written accounts. The discussion is important for students to start and visualize their own thinking. Now not all students will be at the same developmental level. Differentiating my lesson to accommodate the students who are behind or head developmentally is important to help keep them engaged in thinking and learning. If a student was behind developmentally, I could accommodate the lesson with simpler instructions and tasks, and maybe harder tasks if they are ahead developmentally. I don't agree that all students hit these stages at these age ranges, but it is important to note the developmental process when educating the students.

Ch. 10 QTC

Which of the learning activities/skills can you think of that lend themselves to learning through modeling?

I think Teacher Projects is one of the activities we do in this classroom that is an extension of learning through modeling, especially when we discuss how they went after the project. The audience watches the presenters and can distinguish what is good and what is bad to do during a Teacher Project. Brian also models the correct way to present lessons to the class. So, through the modeling of students and Brian, we are able to see how Teacher Projects should be presented. Another activity that has learning through modeling is watching our teachers in our school placements. I have the pleasure of observing a teacher at Farragut while she teaches the classroom. I learn, through her modeling, the correct way to interact with students, the right questions to stimulate thinking, and even how to provide engaging activities. Modeling is important because people do it daily so they can behave better. What I mean by behaving better is contributing to society with behaviors that are deemed appropriate. 

How might self-efficacy and self-regulation contribute to the intervention plans you use in your case study?

Self-efficacy and self-regulation are needed in my case study for my students to be productive in the classroom and to exhibit appropriate behaviors. It is imperative for students to excel at both of these concepts, because the students that can self regulate are the students who are more engaged in the learning. We had a discussion in class today about the difference between the two of these concepts, and I agreed that I was a little behind on the difference of these concepts. Self-efficacy is a person’s judgement about being able to perform a certain activity and self-regulation is a person’s ability to regulate their behaviors in certain circumstances. So, the main difference is that self-efficacy is about people thinking if they can accomplish a task and self-regulation is the tools they will use to accomplish the task. Both of these concepts are going to be important with intervention plans for my students. 

Ch. 9 QTC

How would you define successful mastery of your lesson objectives from a behavioral view of learning? 

When thinking like a behavioralist, one must be constantly observing behaviors exhibited by the subject. I will make clear, for each lesson, the lesson objectives. The student needs to understand what is expected of him/her, so that the student can produce the results that correspond to the objective. As a behaviorist, I am purely concerned with the behaviors that my students produce. So, if I give an activity that involves using fractional wooden pieces to show equivalent fractions, I want to see how my student interacts with the objective, if the student can show the equivalent fractions, and how the student interacts with the environment during the lesson activity. One could argue that formative assessment is the main key in Behaviorism  because a behaviorist is constantly observing behaviors to assess the subject (which in this case is the student). To determine if the student has mastery of a concept, I would observe their behaviors and actions when they try to solve a problem. 

Consider your CSEL intervention case study.  Are there tools from a behaviorist view for either encouraging productive behaviors or discouraging undesirable behaviors that you could apply to the case?  What are they?

I feel like there are a good number of tools from a behaviorist view that can encourage or discourage behaviors. Influence of the environment is important, because the teacher must create a classroom that fosters desirable behaviors. If my student is in an environment that promotes constant thinking, my students will exhibit behaviors of constant thinking, which in return, will produce a great sense of learning. Another tool would be having my students focus on observable events. This is imperative for my student to learn, because the student needs to have the tools to identify specific stimuli that may be influencing their behavior. Learning as a behavior change is also important, because I will be able to conclude that learning has occurred when my students exhibit a change in classroom performance. The common theme in these tools is that behavior effects the student's learning, so I must use my knowledge of behaviorism to create the best learning environment to encourage behaviors that will foster thinking and learning. In a case study, one could also argue that conditioning is important for returning appropriate behaviors, but I think we, as teachers, shouldn't rely heavily on conditioning. 

Ch 8 QTC

Consider a lesson plan you might use.  Which metacognitive skills/abilities are involved as students gain facility/knowledge in this domain? Think of an activity or lesson component that explicitly teaches one or more metacognitive and one or more problem solving skills.

My favorite lessons are Math, so I would consider a math lesson plan. One metacognitive skill involved in students gaining math knowledge would be reflecting on the general nature of thinking and learning. When a student participates in reflecting on the information they have just been presented, the process of learning becomes easier because they are already consumed in thinking about that knowledge. Math is usually paired with time limits, for some odd reason, so a student knowing what learning tasks can be realistically accomplished within a certain time period is crucial. The student uses metacognitive skills when he/she thinks about which tasks can be accomplished in a certain time period, because the student is actively engaged in thinking about how they will act on a certain test. Another important metacognitive skill is knowing and applying effective strategies to complete the task. This is important because math can be challenging and thought-provoking, so for the student to be successful, he/she needs to apply different strategies to find the one that is effective. Students must also monitor their own knowledge and comprehension. This metacognitive ability is needed for the student to know when he/she doesn't understand a certain topic or concept. If a student just goes through a task without thinking about if they understand it or not, that student will fall behind the curve (especially in math, because the concepts build on each other!!). A lesson component crucial in teaching metacognitive and problem solving skills would be teaching time management. Especially when it comes to testing, time management is a persistant issue in schools daily. Time management teaches metacognitive skills such as knowing what learning tasks can be accomplished within a time frame and planning an appropriate and effective approach to a learning task. With time management skills, a student can recognize the time required for each step to solve a problem and also find the best, fastest, most accurate strategy to solve that problem.

Ch 7 QTC

Make a list of the sequence of skills necessary for ultimate mastery of the content of your lesson through a constructivist approach

I believe that a sequence of skills necessary for ultimate mastery of content depends on the teacher. Curriculum planning and teacher planning are imperative for students to master content. If the teacher spends time planning and creating great lessons based off the curriculum, the students will have an easier time mastering the content being taught. An evaluation system needs to be in place so the teacher can track how well each student is progressing on his or her learning continuum. This can be used in formative or summative assessments. These assessments are important because the teacher will be able to visualize what students need to further their engagement in the learning and master the content. A support system, like Professional Learning Communities, are imperative for teachers to help students master content. For example, if Mr. Miller has great achievement in math, but low science scores, a learning community with the best science teacher would help Mr. Miller find out ways to help better teach science. There needs to be an environment which is conducive for the teaching and learning of higher-order thinking skills and which could facilitate mindful learning by students. 

Which of these learning activities/skills lend themselves to student’s individual or group construction?  How might you structure learning activities that lead students to discover these skills/these principles?

Evaluation system based on students is a good skill needed to help student construction. A learning activity may include a small group activity working on math manipulatives would be a great activity for a teacher to evaluate his or her students. Another skill needed would be strong planning for teachers for their learning activities. A teacher needs to spend time working on their lesson plan so the students can succeed in mastering content being taught. A strong lesson activity would help students master but also the teacher will be able to plan for assessing student skills. Students need to be constantly discovering so that they can master content. 

CH. 6 QTCs

What are the essential skills and/or learning outcomes you want your students to know and be able to do that relate to cognitive learning? 

There are many basic assumptions when it comes to the Cognitive Process and learning. I would like to encourage my students to think about class material in ways that will help them remember it. For example, when introducing a topic like weather, I would ask the students to identify numerous examples of types weather. I want my students to be able to use selectivity about what they learn. I will help students identify the most important things for them to learn. Also help them understand why these things are important. I want my students to be able to build a strong construction of meaning by providing experiences that will help students make sense of the topics they are studying. I also want my students to understand the important role of prior knowledge and beliefs. For example, I will have my students relate new ideas to things they already know and believe about the world. Finally, I want my classroom to engage my students in active involvement in learning. I will plan classroom activities that get students actively thinking about and using classroom subject matter. By teaching and modeling these essential skills, my students will know and be able to use cognitive tools to help learning.

How might your knowledge of the memory processes guide your instructional decisions?

I don’t know everything about the memory process but I do know a good amount. I also know from my own personal experiences how my memory process is when it comes to learning in the classroom. I know as a teacher, I will be sending a lot of input to my students’ sensory register, and sometimes the input won’t even touch their sensory register. I hope that I can grab my student’ attention through engaging learning activities so that they can connect with the input information with hands-on activities. I know that once learning material reaches the short-term memory, that I, as the educator, must act appropriately to help move that learning material into long term. The way that I can do this by constantly engaging my students in multiple activities to help connect the new information to long term. Another way is by connecting my students existing schema to the new material being learned. When my students can connect new learning material to previous schema, there will be an in-depth process that moves memory into long term. It will be a challenge to help my students move their input into their long-term, but I feel like this is an achievable goal for my main points and learning materials. 

Missed Class February 7th

TOTD:
"I would like to see how different teaching/learning methods work, but it scares me a little because this is not an experiment we can re-do…with kids we don’t have a do-over…Don’t get me wrong, I would like the…system to change for the better, but how can we make sure we are making the right choices?—I don’t know that we can.  We can act in accordance with our principles and integrity, and that will mean teaching in a way that you love to teach"

I agree that it is a little scary to think that we only have one year to make sure all of our students gain one year of knowledge. But, I think we will have plenty of time and energy to make sure our students reach this goal. I know it will be rough to not stress over the standards that we need to have taught, but getting too caught up in the stress may cause problems with our teachings. If we can just keep it cool and move at a decent pace, everything will be accomplished. One way to make sure we stay paced is to communicate with teachers in a PLC (Professional Learning Community). We must collaborate with other professionals in our field, especially the experienced ones because they are experienced and they have overcome many challenges that we will face as new teachers. Also, I feel that if we are constantly engaging ourselves in multiple research strategies and new educational articles, we can gain knowledge that we may not have gotten in class or the PLCs. A doctor is constantly engaging him or herself in bettering their knowledge on their craft. We as teachers need to constantly be bettering ourselves in our knowledge of our craft to help better our students. We have a challenging path, but that's what makes it so awesome! I don't think that we will ever truly know how well each student responds to our type of teaching. I do know that if we are constantly engaged in assessing our students, not only summative but formative, we will know where each student is on his or her learning continuum. When we constantly use assessing skills, we will know if we are making the right choices. I am confident that through constant assessment, we will be able to visualize where our students thinking is and be able to help supply the tools necessary to help push them forward on their learning continuum. 

Ch 15 QTC

Now, imagine that you are meeting with Ingrid’s grandmother today to explain her scores on the recent standardized achievement test. What will you tell her about Ingrid’s performance? her strengths? her weaknesses? 

Ingrid’s performance is nothing to worry about, she scored pretty well. I am thoroughly impressed and unconcerned about her reading comprehension, science, and social studies skills. And that is quite impressive, reading comprehension is something most students struggle with and she was in the 92nd percentile. Her strengths, then, are her reading comprehension, science, and social studies skills. Her weaknesses, only shown from this test, are spelling and mathematics. She scored between below average and average on those two areas of education concepts. I would, especially if Ingrid’s grandmother is concerned, be constantly telling the grandmother that standardized tests only provide a rough idea of what the student knows and can do. I would reassure her that test results will not be the only things affecting instructional decision making. Maybe Ingrid becomes nervous during test taking. I would use more assessment tools than just standardized tests for my students. 

If grandmother asks you what she could be doing at home to help strengthen Ingrid’s skills, what will you suggest?

I would suggest that Ingrid continues to read because she is performing really well in reading comprehension. I would have the grandmother work on vocabulary and spelling words that are commonly used, so that Ingrid will be more knowledgable on spelling words familiar to her. Also, the grandmother would need to help Ingrid with different strategies to solving math problems and to recognize what procedures to use with what math problem. If the grandmother spent some time out of school to help Ingrid on these concepts, Ingrid would more than likely improve in spelling and mathematics. 

Chapter 14 QTC

(14.1) 

I know that informal assessments have to do with more of a performance type of assessment. One informal assessment would be to check if my students have unifix cube trains that are 5 cubes in length. Another informal assessment would be to make sure no trains are matching and another would be to see that they fit the 5+0, 4+1, 3+2 model. A final informal assessment would be to make sure they match the number combinations with the correct number mat. I know that formal assessments are a more standardized type of assessment. I could start my lesson and test my students if they know how many 2 number combinations make the number 5. Another formal assessment would be to count which students succeeded at the task and which students did not. Another formal assessment would to grade the students on a test of 5+0, 4+1, 3+2 number equations. Formal assessments would be much more of a challenge for this type of lesson plan in regards to informal assessments. 

These types of assessments would be very helpful in this lesson plan, but as the teacher, I would lean more to informal assessments. I would use informal assessments more because I would want to see my students performance on the task. Although I know formal assessments are important, and they could be used in the before and after portion of my lesson plan, informal assessments would be more applicable to a task that requires students to create.

(14.2) 

“Norm-referenced tests (or NRTs) compare an examinee’s performance to that of other examinees.”  The advantages of these tests would be tests like the SAT and ACT. These college entrance tests are designed to classify students into what category what they fit in with regards to achievement. The goal of these tests is to rank the test takers and define their success. The disadvantage would be that not all schools can produce “high achievement” scores, because not all schools are the same. I would rather see an increase in achievement, rather than grading everyone equally.

“Criterion-referenced tests (or CRTs) differ in that each examinee’s performance is compared to a pre-defined set of criteria or a standard.” The advantages of these tests would be to determine wether or not the student has demonstrated mastery of a skill or skills. In regard to the NRTs, the CRTs are pass fail, rather than a graded achievement score. The disadvantage would be that the test doesn’t take into work the levels of achievement. A student who excels beyond the requirement to pass is the same as a student who barely passed. 

Chapter 13 QTC

Throughout my elementary and middle school career, I was always more attentive and willing to learn in a classroom that was cool, interesting, and a fun place to learn. Now that I am getting closer to becoming a teacher myself, I have been questioning myself how am I going to make my classroom a classroom that brought out the “good student” in me when I was younger. I know one thing is for sure, I will have a reading carpet. There will be no exceptions, I will have a reading carpet. I know how important read-alouds and independent reading is for literacy development. I loved my second grade classroom because of the reading carpet. I associated reading with that place, so when I arrived to the carpet, I knew I was going to listen to a story or read a story myself. I want to also have a colorful room full of information on the walls. Depending on my grade level, I am going to post appropriate material in a theme-designed room. The themes will most likely change monthly, to keep the students engaged. Although room design is very important, after reading chapter 13, I was aware of a few other important things to have when creating a learning environment conducive to learning.

This chapter was full of classroom management strategies that I found helpful for me to remember and utilize when I am a teacher. To create a strong learning environment, I will have to arrange the furniture in ways to encourage student interaction, while also trying to minimize possible distractions. Although having neat information on the wall, sometimes too much may be counter-productive for students to engage in thinking. I will constantly be communicating care and respect to my students. I want them to know I am a person they count on to be there for them everyday and to also love them unconditionally. I also want them to know when they step in Mr. Miller’s room, thinking will occur, and through that thinking, learning will take place. To make my classroom environment more conducive to learning, I will also be constantly assessing my students so I know exactly where each student is on their learning continuum. I want to have engaging discussions and assignments that will be specific for each student so my low learners and strong learners can learn at the same time. I will have a set of rules for my classroom and my students will be aware of the repercussions of not following the rules. I will use golden talk instead of garbage talk with my students, but I also want to follow through on my word. My students will respect me more as their teacher if I don’t fluctuate on the rules. I will be constantly watching my students to make sure they are always engaged in thinking and stay on topic. With using these strategies in my classroom, I am sure my classroom will be a great learning environment and a place full of students who constantly think. 

I hate to have to deal with misbehaving students. Not because I hate misbehaving students, but I am just disappointed with how they act when I know they can act better. This chapter was a great tool for showing me effective classroom management tools. For example, I will be using two-way journals to communicate regularly with my students about academic, social, and emotional issues. This will be another tool to help me communicate my love for the students and also serve as a way to show more teacher approval. In my actions and my words, I will regularly show students that I am concerned about their academic progress and emotional well-being. I also want to make an extra effort to establish close, supportive relationships with students who seem to be unmotivated and socially disengaged. I know if I can show un-motivated students a good relationship, I know only positive things will come about. I will also use cueing techniques to help with students who have off-task behaviors. And finally, I want to show my students ways to have self-regulation and also hold them accountable for that. This will help my students to be able to use these strategies on their own so they can overcome an obstacle dealing with behavior. 

This chapter was very informative and I am excited to use these strategies I learned in my classroom! 

QTC CH 11

QTC: Chapter 11

How might you enhance motivation and affect in your students using the theories of motivation?

For my classroom, I would like to set the tone early in the semester. I am the teacher and we are going to think constantly in the classroom to learn. I will also vary my teaching methods, utilize challenging work, and give my students options so my students will stay motivated throughout class time. I, personally, will show enthusiasm, provide constructive feedback, and model appropriate motivation. Hopefully through my behavior, the classroom environment, and my teaching style, I can stimulate my students to stay motivated for learning.

Which theories of motivation are most helpful and instructive for you?

The temporal motivation theory is the most helpful to me as a teacher. The theories that fall underneath this theory include incentive theory, drive theory, need theory, self-efficacy, and goal-setting. I am not a strong believer of using incentive to get children to learn, but I do believe it is necessary in some settings. Through modeling and teaching motivational skills, I hope to instill a drive (or thirst) for knowledge in my students. I want my students to be eager to think and learn everyday. I want my students to have self-efficacy, especially when it comes to independent work. I will use goal-setting in my classroom constantly, because I know that motivation is used to complete a goal.