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.