EDU 6139 Teaching ELL April 7, 2010

The first three chapters of the Curtin book dealt with the history of ELL and stages of english language acquisition and initial teacher considerations when dealing with ELL students.  There are lots of topics included in these chapters.  The hot topic in chapter one is No Child Let Behind.  We’ve all have our own opinions and have heard the opinions of others about NCLB.  From what I have heard, I have few good thoughts about NCLB.  One of the few good things I have heard of is the disaggregation of student data making schools accountable for all students not just certain groups.  There seem to be more downsides than up.  The expectation of 100% success, while naively noble, is impossible, and to hold a teacher up to that standard is ridiculous.   Standards are left up to states and can vary from state to state.  My understanding of the Washington standards is that they are ceiling instead of minimum requirements.  Instead of expecting students to reach a minimum level of proficiency we are expecting students to reach nearly honors level in their grade to be deemed successful.  The last thing of NCLB is the tenets.  The consequences listed in Tenet one seem to have some problems.  Holding teachers accountable is good.  It doesn’t seem to hold the students or the parents accountable.  It seems that a great teacher at a poor performing school is at a distinct disadvantage.  The tenet states that teachers “contributing” to student failure are to be replaced.  (Curtin 2009)  What incentive do teachers have to take jobs at poor performing schools when they can be fired for not bringing students thatthey, or perhaps no one, could bring up to standard.

I have been experiencing ELL first hand.  The eighth grade math class I am teaching is an ELL inclusion class.  We have 6 ELL students (which I know isn’t a lot in some schools).  I have seen the challenge of trying to teach these students.  The greatest challenge to me seems to be the expectation that they be taught at grade level.  The students are placed based on their age but only one is within one year grade performance wise.  I know two of the students read at a 1st grade level.  On page 41 the Curtin text states that the reading level of classroom texts may need to be adjusted, but content must be similar.  (Curtin 2009)  Perhaps this is referring to language arts classes because I am curious where I am going to find an 8th grade level math book written for 1st, 4th, or even 6th grade readers.  I am lucky, in that the class is designated as an inclusion class so it is co taught with an ELL specialist teacher.  I think the curriculum we use is tougher for ELL students.  we are teaching the Connected Math curriculum which focuses a lot on student led activities, group work, and reflections.  A math teacher I know of has experienced success with her ELL students by going back to older text books and learning with numbers, formulas, equations, and repetition.  It may not be the “new way” of doing things but often ELL students can do 2x=10 but may not understand “Mark has 10 Widgets and wants to give them as presents to 2 buddies, how many widgets does Mark need to put in each gift box?”

I am grateful for the ELL teacher in the class.  I have a hard time seeing how we could get anything done with the ELL students without her.  We do a lot of group work and the groups are expected to help each other.  Many of the students do a good job with this but there is only so much they can be expected to do.  There are deadlines for assignments that they have to meet also and we can’t expect them to miss a deadline and a possible learning opportunity while trying to help another student.   One of us can spend the entire class helping a few of the ELL students while the other splits time with ELL and other groups questions.  A great concern is pacing of the class.  I know we are going too fast for the ELL students.  The ELL teacher even takes extra time with them during other periods of the day to work on their math, but they are often behind and missing work is a big problem.  I feel we have to be fair to the other students also.  We are already a couple of weeks behind other 8th grade classes.  Slowing the pace down to accommodate the ELL students penalizes the non-ELL students.  We make accommodations on exams and give them as much help as we can during class.  It is a topic that I feel I definitely struggle with.

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.

Meta-Reflection Standard T January 1, 2010

Knowledge of teaching

Teacher candidates positively impact student learning that is:

1. Informed by standards-based assessment. All students benefit from learning that is systematically analyzed using multiple formative, summative, and self-assessment strategies.

I’ve heard a heard a lot of debate about assessment.  Some feel testing is biased towards certain students.  It is true some students are better at testing than others.  I was a good tester when I was in school.  For this reason we as teachers can use many different forms of assessment.  Our students are not just filling out answers to tests.  We have class discussions, we have various small assignments throughout the year, and we are constantly observing our students for signs of understanding or confusion.  I argue that there should be constant assessment happening in our classrooms.  This is a formative assessment I made up for the students that they did the day after we had an important lecture on the layers of the Earth.  This assessment let me see how well I did with the lesson and how well a lecture without teacher written notes would work with middle school students.  I was pretty sure that they had never  had to take notes from a lecture simply by listening.  I think it went well for most of them but also I know that note taking is a skill that they need to work on and that expecting middle schoolers to take notes straight from lecture is probably too much at this point.

2. Intentionally planned. All students benefit from standards-based planning that is personalized.

While the idea of personalized lessons for each student is a great idea the reality is that there just isn’t enough time for us to assign, monitor, or grade so many lessons.  The compromise is the development of lessons that are flexible enough to challenge students that need it but are also able to be understood by students who are slower to understand.  My      multi-cultural journal includes pieces on differentiation and diversity in the classroom.

3. Influenced by multiple instructional strategies. All students benefit from personalized instruction that addresses their ability levels and cultural and linguistic backgrounds.

Not all students learn the same way.  I myself am an example of this.  Some students learn best by reading, some by listening and watching, and others by doing.  I want to strive to include as many different instructional strategies as possible over the course of the year.  As a science teacher I am lucky in that my students often get to see results of lessons by doing labs.  I also mix in lectures and visual tools to create lessons that cover a broad base of learning styles.  These are three different lessons (Lesson 1, Lesson 2, Lesson 3) I created and entered into this blog for our content methods  class using the various Marzano strategies for creating a better classroom.

4. Informed by technology. All students benefit from instruction that utilizes effective technologies and is designed to create technologically proficient learners.

Technology is evolving at an amazing rate.  Some of this innovation has found its uses in education.  As the world becomes a more technology dependent students will only benefit from lessons that include and make use of technology.  I took a technology elective this past quarter.  In this class we learned about new technologies and how they might be used in the classroom.  Throughout the class we wrote weekly blog posts and created an educational technology  webpage and a digital narrative.

Marzano Teaching Strategies: Setting objectives, note taking, cues and questions, and formative assessment. December 12, 2009

Identifying the Layers of the Earth.

This has been one of my favorite lessons so far this year.  Not only did it use several great instructional strategies, it produced one thing every teacher loves to hear in their classroom, several ah-has.  The lesson began with students think-pair-sharing their ideas of how we can look into things (people, objects, etc) without cutting into them, breaking them open, or being invasive in any way.  Students came up with quite a few good answers such as X rays, ultrasound, MRI, and some others.  At this point I give the students the objectives of the lesson: what are the layers of the Earth and how do scientists know this?  I then asked them what all of the methods they came up with at the beginning of class have in common, the answer being they are all waves.  Which them led to the question: what kind of waves have we been working with throughout this unit; the answer being earthquake waves.  The goal of the questions leading the students to the realization that scientists can use earthquake waves to identify the layers of the Earth.  After watching and commenting on an online animation showing earthquake waves traveling through the Earth I had some students come to the front of the room and model waves with their bodies.  During this activity students saw that there was one point at which waves stopped the same as on the online animation.  We talked about that point and the students came up with the notion that there must be a liquid layer in the Earth because the earthquake waves stop at some point.  That is what elicited several ah-has from the class and made me smile.  The lesson concluded with a lecture and showing of animations from a CD while students took notes.  This Lesson implemented three Marzano strategies: Setting objectives, note taking, and cues, questions, and advance organizers.

Setting objectives

This came after the initial think-pair-share activity.  The objective of the lesson was to identify the layers of the Earth and learn how scientists find this out.  Setting objectives is an important part of a lesson in that it can focus the thoughts of students towards the goals.  Once students find out they are learning about the layers of the Earth they will begin to think about what they know about the interior of the Earth.  Hopefully they will begin to think about what they came up with during the opening discussion and how it may apply towards finding out the layers of the Earth.

Standard S

After the initial warm up activity, I write on the board and explain to them the objectives of the lesson.  By the end of class students will be able to identify the layers of the Earth and see how scientists know about these layers.  The setting of objectives focuses students thoughts on how scientists might go about finding out the layers of the earth.

Standard T

Setting objectives in this lesson allows students to take the ideas about waves they discussed in the think-pair-share and turn it towards the day’s lesson of identifying the layers of the Earth.  Formal assessments occur throughout the lesson in the form of class discussions and probing questions by me.

Summarizing and Note Taking

Notes are an important part of this lesson.  There is quite a bit of information being given throughout.  Although we will be observing parts of the lesson in a couple of different forms, the main objective is the same: what are the layers of the earth, some of their characteristics, and how do we know this.  The class is encouraged to use the Cornell notes method which they have been practicing throughout the year in their language arts class.  Ideally, practice in note taking will pay off at the end of unit final as students are better able to study for unit finals. Whatever the format they use I try to emphasis heavily the main points of the lesson to ensure they get them.

Standard S

Note taking allows students to take what they have heard or seen and to put it into their own words.  Students are encouraged to personalize their notes using drawings or colors or anything that might help them better understand the content and make it easier to study when the unit final comes around.  Aesthetic reasoning  comes into play as students are able to use drawing at many points during the lesson.

Standard T

Students are encouraged to personalize their notes in whatever way they think is best.  They are informed that they are the ones studying from them and they know best what method of note taking is best for them.  This lesson incorporates several learning styles from watching animations, to listening to lecture, to acting out wave properties.  These different styles allow different individuals chances to get information in a way they are most comfortable with.

Questions, Cues, and Advance Organizers.

Cues and questions are a key part of this lesson.  I use them in the beginning of the lesson to get students thinking about methods of seeing inside of something without actually going inside of it.  I also used them to guide students to the realization that there was a similarity between the what we were seeing in the online animation and what they were seeing as the students acted out the waves.

Standard S

My opening question “How can we look into thing without going in cutting open or destroying them?”, students answer during their think-pair-share are meant to get students to think about things they have used or seen in everyday life X rays, ultrasound, MRI, etc.  My follow up question is “What do all these things have in common and what have we studied in previous lessons that have the same properties?”  These questions are meant to get students thinking about how scientists know what is thousands of miles beneath the Earth’s crust.  The use of online animations was a key aspect of this lesson.  These allowed me to give students a visual reference to what is happening inside the Earth.

Standard T

This lesson incorporated several different strategies to try and accommodate different student learning styles.  The class started with a class discussion.  This was followed by some online animations shown on the board about how waves travel through the Earth.  Students then used their bodies to model waves travelling through the Earth.  The class finished with some class discussion and note taking on what the layers of the Earth are and their characteristics.  Using these different teaching methods hopefully allowed the lesson appeal to the different type of learners in the class.

Formative assessment

A short formative assessment is given the next morning after the layers of the Earth lesson.  This is for me to see how well the students got the lesson from the day before.  Students should be able to name the layers of the Earth and talk about how scientists can know what is going on hundreds and thousands of miles under the crust.

Standard T

Formative assessments satisfy standard T of the SPU standards.  Students benefit from the use of formative assessment strategies.  Formative assessments allow me to see how well students are doing in a less stressful and more useful manner.  Given either at the beginning of a lesson or unit, or after, I can quickly see what I may need to cover again or emphasis more in my next lesson.

Lesson Plan: Identifying the layer of the Earth

Marzano Teaching Strategies:Cooperative learning, generating hypothesis, and reinforcing effort December 12, 2009

Lesson: Investigating the Rate of Evaporation in Relation to Heat.

In this lesson groups were to create their own lab to investigate the relationship between the rate of evaporation of water and heat.  Students worked in groups of 3-4.  The goal of this lesson was for students to think about all the things they did, learned, noticed, or used in previous labs and to apply it to this objective.  This lesson incorporated the Marzano strategies of: cooperative learning, generating hypothesis, and reinforcing effort.

Cooperative Learning

Cooperative learning is a big part of our classroom.  I would say at least 75% of all class work is done in some way collaboratively.  We do quite a few labs over the course of the year all of which are done collaboratively.  We also try to have the table groups think share ideas when we are conducting class discussions.  For this lesson groups had to come to a consensus about how to investigate the question.  They first had to come up with a hypothesis  to guide their investigation.  They then had to come up with detailed procedures for the experiment.  We reminded them at this point that a good scientific experiment was one that could be reproduced by others and get the same results.   They needed to write their procedures in a way that anyone reading them could follow.  The kicker of the lesson was that all members of the group were responsible for the other group members reports being completed.  Each member had to complete a write up however only one paper from the table was graded in terms of the experiment.  The assessed paper was chosen randomly and it was funny to see the reactions of groups members when the name of the graded paper was revealed.  At that point we would ask them why they were so concerned when every member of the group should have had the same information.  Individual papers were assessed for completion.

Standard S

Much of scientific work is done in a collaborative manner.  Scientists must work with peers to ensure accuracy of their work.  In this lesson students must work with their table mates  to come up with procedures for their experiment.  Creating an experiment requires students to use prior experience with labs to decide what variable need to be controlled and manipulated.  The inquiry emphasis in this lesson aligns with WA Science standards EALR 2: Inquiry,  GLE 6-8 INQB Investigate.  Students work collaboratively to come up with hypothesis,  procedures, and conclusions and overall problem solving skills.

Standard T

Students assessment for this lesson their lab write up.  Each student must complete a lab write up that includes a hypothesis, procedures, drawings, results in words and graphical form, and a conclusion.  The lab group as a whole is assessed by choosing one write up and giving everyone the same grade.  This gives the students incentive to make sure everyone is caught up and participating in the lab.  Each individual write up is graded for completeness.  This lesson appeals to multiple learning styles.  Creative or inventive learners have the opportunity to be creative in their procedures.  Physical learners will benefit from the hands on aspect of using any apparatus they may be using.

Generating Hypothesis

The need to generate hypothesis is very important when creating an experiment.  For this lab groups had to come up with a hypothesis for  their experiment answering the question: Does heat increase or decrease evaporation?  As expected, and hoped for, each group came up with the hypothesis stating, more or less,  that as heat increases the rate of evaporation will increase.  With this in mind groups began to think up procedures on how to show this in an experimental fashion.  The primary goal of this lesson is the make students reflect back on the labs they have been working on through the year and identify what they needed to include in their own lab.  What we were looking for assessment wise were: detailed and comprehensive procedures that would allow anyone to repeat the experiment the same way as the group and get the same results, the manipulation of only one variable at a time to ensure the integrity of the data, written and graphic display of the data collected, and a conclusion wrapping it all together.

Standard S

Generating hypothesis also fits under EALR 2, GLE 6-8 INQB.  Groups must come up  with a hypothesis stating what they think will happen in the lab and why.  Generating hypothesis gets students to think about the questions in greater detail.  Instead of just following procedures given to them they must think deeper and ask themselves how they are going to answer the labs question: How is Rate on Evaporation related to Heat?

Standard T

Assessment of hypothesis can be a quick way to formatively assess the rest of the write up.  If a student or group has a hypothesis that is completely off base with the question than there is a good chance they did not understand the question being asked and may need some clarification or guidance to get back on track.

Reinforcing effort

Over the course of the year we have used an effort/achievement rubric after group labs and projects to all students to self assess their own level of effort.  This rubric is taken straight from Marzano’s Classroom Instruction that Works book except we have added at the top the question: What was the learning objective of this lesson?  Then at the bottom we ask: What could you do next time to improve my achievement?  Identifying the objective simply guides the students reflections as they assess their effort.  In this case, how well did the student work towards the goal of creating an experiment to either prove or disprove their hypothesis?  The last question is one meant to get students to reflect on their effort and hopefully relate it back to the grade they got on the lab.  Over the course of the year we hope that students will be able to see the correlation between the amount of effort they put in and how well they do on their assignments.

Standard S

At the end of the evaporation/heat lab students are asked to complete the effort/achievement rubric.  This rubric is given at the end of all labs and significant assignments.  This rubric gives the students the chance to evaluate their own level of effort and achievement in relation to the lesson’s objectives.  After I have graded assignments they can then compare their grades to the effort they put in.  I ideally students will make the connection and see for themselves that achievement is proportional to effort.

Standard T

By having students fill out effort/achievement rubrics they are able to self-assess their learning in relation to the lesson goals.  I believe students are more honest than most people believe they will be.  By self assessing I believe students will get a more tangible feel for how their effort is directly connected to their grades.

Lesson Plan: Creating your own lab

Marzano Teaching Strategies: Similarities and diffferences, non-linguistic representation, and homework and pracitce. December 12, 2009

Instructional Strategy Referenced reflection

We, Ms. Anex and I, taught a similar lesson a few weeks ago.  The school year started with the basics of looking at molecular motion in relation to heat.  We then progressed to differential heating of the surface of the earth.  This was followed by air movement above different temperature surfaces.  We then moved on to air movement when different temperature air masses meet.  We then learned about the affects of different air masses meeting.  This all led up to this lesson in which the students watched a video on tornados and hurricanes.  At the end of the period we went over a national weather map as a class so the students would know how to read them.  They were then given a number of weather maps and assigned to look at them at home and indentify what types of weather was occurring in the country as indicated by the symbols on the map.  This lesson included the strategies of: Identifying Similarities and Differences, Non-linguistic Representations, and Homework and practice.  Similarities and differences, and non-linguistic representations go well together using Venn diagrams or bubble maps, or any other visual divider/organizer.  The students were able to come up with most if not all of the examples that were presented in the video.  The Venn diagram allowed them to organize the similarities and differences in an easy to read format.  The students’ diagrams were posted on a class project board for all the students to see and compare.    The national weather map homework worked well in that the students were able to see the cold and warm fronts and the weather associated with them.  For the more recent maps they were able to see the evidence of the front that passed on the map and the weather that occurred that day.

Identifying similarities and differences

After the video, students got into their groups to work on the Venn diagram.  The Venn diagram was a two circle diagram.  On one side was hurricane, on the other side tornado.  The groups were to come up with as many similarities and differences as they could and write them in to the appropriate spaces in the diagram.  The students were able to come up with most if not all of the examples that were presented in the video, so not only was this an opportunity for The Venn diagram allowed them to organize the similarities and differences in an easy to read format.  The students’ diagrams were posted on a class project board for all the students to see and compare.

Standard S – Understanding the similarities and differences of hurricanes and tornados required the students to understand the forces behind each phenomenon.  Purpose statements are written on the board for each class period to help students understand the goal of the lesson that day.  The similarities and differences were represented in a Venn diagram giving students a different aesthetic to consider when displaying their information.

Standard T – The similarities and differences strategy allowed students to self asses each other as they came together in groups to brainstorm.  The students could view each other’s list and come to a consensus as to what truly was a similarity and a difference between tornados and hurricanes.

Non-linguistic Representations

The Venn diagram also fills the non-linguistic representation strategy.  Instead of having students write out similarities and differences in paragraph form they are able to use a simpler and more visual representation of the similarities and differences.  Differences are clearly on the sides under the appropriate heading, while similarities are clearly in the middle where the two circles overlap.  This activity wasn’t necessarily a step towards a higher goal.  We had them do the diagrams simply as a creative means of note taking and as a easy means of studying for the unit final later in the quarter.

Standard S – This is much the same as standard S for similarities and differences.  The Venn diagram served as a graphical tool for the similarities and differences.  This appealed to the aesthetic nature of those students who are more adept at graphical representations than written explanations.

Standard T – As with similarities and differences, the Venn diagram allowed students to self asses each other as they came together in groups to brainstorm.  The students could view each other’s list and come to a consensus as to what truly was a similarity and a difference between tornados and hurricanes before they put it in the groups Venn diagram.

Homework and practice

At the end of the period we went over a national weather map as a class so the students would know how to read them.  They were then given a number of weather maps and assigned to look at them at home and indentify what types of weather was occurring in the country as indicated by the symbols on the map.  The national weather map homework worked well in that the students were able to see the cold and warm fronts and the weather associated with them.  For the more recent maps they were able to see the evidence of the front that passed on the map and the weather that occurred that day.  The following day several students were volunteered to show their maps and interpret them for the class.  We conducted brief class discussions after each presenter.  We would discuss any points the presenter missed and also interpret what the weather was that day in various cities around the U.S.  This is also a skill we can revisit at any time.  Particularly if there is an obvious change in the weather I can bring up a weather map and we can read it as a class to see what may have caused the change.

Standard S – The homework portion of the lesson helped students develop problem solving skills by allowing them to see visual representations of concepts: air masses, warm and cold fronts, and weather changes and allowed them to connect the pictures with real world events.  Aesthetic learning was incorporated with the reading of the weather maps and the subsequent connections to real life weather.

Standard T – Students will be self assessed and formatively assessed for this strategy during the review discussion that will be held at the beginning of the next class period.  During that time students will show a weather map on the document camera and discuss what can be seen where and what that means weather wise for those locations.

Hurricanes and Tornadoes lesson plan