Standard V Project EDU 6613 March 15, 2010

Project Overview

This is the Standard V project for the Standards Based Assessment class at Seattle Pacific University.  For this assignment I was to take one assessment my students had completed and have a group of students reflect on it using some provided reflection prompts.  I was then to determined what strategies would help my students improve their performance on a 2^nd assessment of the same concept as the first assessment.  The students would then reflect on their performance on the second assessment using the same reflection prompts as the first reflections.

I conducted the assessments in one of my 8^th grade science classes. The subject of the unit was rocks and minerals.  The goals of the lessons were for the students to know the types of rock that comprise the Earth’s crust and how they are formed and how they can change from one type to another through the rock cycle.  In addition we looked at what minerals were and how to identify some of the common minerals.  This unit took about 2 weeks, however, my assessments dealt with only the rock portion of the unit which took just over a week.

Follow this link for a Google docs version of the Project.

Student Motivation March 2, 2010

Wouldn’t it be nice if all students came to class and really wanted to learn the concepts you were covering that day?  Students would hang on my every word as I led them through fascinating discussions and involved labs.   Unfortunately this isn’t always the case.  As hard as it is to believe not every student is interested in science.  Figuring out how to motivate  students in subjects they are not interested in is a real challenge.  For me as a student, motivation was a bit difficult.  I loved playing sports so I loved school for that reason.  As for classes, I liked science but not really much else.  I thought school was pretty easy and I found out I could get by pretty successfully with little effort.  This definitely set me up with some poor study habits later.

I am definitely at a loss at times how to motivate students in class.  It would be nice for students not to be motivated by grades alone but actual interest.  I try to make my lessons as interesting as possible, I know it is easier to pay attention to lessons that have punch, or as John Medina puts it, lessons that have hooks that will bring students attention back.  I understand that this is the first time I have taught the curriculum so I don’t have all the little additions and modifications that a teacher with a couple of years of experience with the lessons will have.

Cognitive Development 2 February 7, 2010

Much of this weeks reading dealt with the information processing part of cognitive development.  Long and short term memory is an important part of information processing.  It is important to ask ourselves as teachers, what is the best way to get our students to learn and remember the information we expose them to.  One way that was brought up by several people  in the blackboard discussion for our class was repetition.  Presenting or reminding students of topics over the course of a unit make it more likely that students will transfer that info from short-term memory to long-term memory.  I gavve the example of names of people I have met for the first time.  I often find myself forgetting their name when I hear it just once.  If I make myself repeat it or put it into some kind of context then I am much more likely to remember it.  That brings us to the other important strategy for helping students remember that isn’t always under our control.  Student interest.  We can’t always control students interest in lessons we present.  We can however work to vary our presentation and try our best to generate interest.  I know I remember things I am interested in much better than those I am not.  Interest seems to make it more likely for us to transfer information from short-term memory to long-term memory.

Blog post for weeks Jan 4th-15th January 24, 2010

Back to school after a nice winter break.  We are working on  the last half of the volcano unit.  We did a couple of labs looking at viscosity with the larger idea that the viscosity of magma plays a large part in the shape and activity of the volcano.  We used corn syrup to model our magma because it is an easily obtained fluid that can model different viscosities.  As you can imagine, having 8th graders working with something like corn syrup is inviting disaster.  We made it through pretty well.  Only one beaker of syrup dropped on the floor.  It was the unseen little drops scattered around that really started to show up in the days after the lab.  Our wonderful custodians made short work of it though and our floors were looking good as new before we knew it.  I am having to peel lots of sticky pages apart while grading all these lab reports.

I would like to share a proud moment in my brief teaching career.  Some desk grafitti stating that I rule.  “But a student wrote on a desk”, you might think.  True, but students write on the desks all the time.  I’ll take complements from students where I can get them.  “But they misspelled you name Mr. Sanders”, you may say.  Shhh, don’t ruin this for me.

I am taking a couple of classes at SPU this quarter.  Students as Learners and Standards Based Assessment.  Both classes seem like they will be vary useful and appropriate.  Doing my internship in a  middle school, I don’t know if it is possible to understand students as learners completely, but I welcome all the help I can get.  Standards based assessment is a hot topic, so getting some practice and further insight should prove helpful.

Digital Narrative December 14, 2009

Here is my Digital technology narrative I created in EDTC 6535.

I actually enjoyed working on this.  I learned that it isn’t all that hard and I could see the potential for use as an educational tool for posting special lectures or even reflection prompts to the web for students to use as homework.  This could be great for those students with lower english proficiency to be able to go over a lecture at their own pace and hopefully get everything out of it they couldn’t get in class.  I would count this a definite positive learning experience.