Meta-Reflection Standard S January 2, 2010

Knowledge of subject matter and curriculum goals

Teacher candidates positively impact student learning that is:

1. Content driven. All students develop understanding and problem-solving expertise in the content area(s) using reading, written and oral communication, and technology.

My lessons should guide students towards a greater understanding of the subject material.  As the year progresses I need to be conscious of the lessons I am provided and be able to make the changes necessary to lead my students to greater understanding.  In respect to oral communication, we often have students to come to the front of the room in our math class to present a problem they have been working on.  Our science students get practice in written communications when they complete their lab write ups.

2. Aligned with curriculum standards and outcomes. All students know the learning targets and their progress toward meeting them.

Students need to not only be aware of what they are meant to learn day after day, but why they are learning it.  My students need clear objectives as to where the lessons are heading, where lessons fit in the big picture, and what they are meant to take away at the end of the lesson or unit.  This is a lesson plan I created and posted earlier in this blog for the Science methods class that includes the Marzano learning strategy of setting objectives.

3. Integrated across content areas. All students learn subject matter content that integrates mathematical, scientific, and aesthetic reasoning.

My science class is not only about learning science.  Mathematics is big part of science and life.  In a lesson about plotting the location of the epicenter of an earthquake students had to use their math skills to determine the time difference between arrival time of two types of earthquake waves.  Then apply this difference to a time difference graph to determine the distance the epicenter was from the seismic station.  Finding the distance from 3 stations allows for triangulation of the epicenter of the earthquake.  Aesthetic reasoning can be very important in learning.  Students who judge something worth learning, whether fun or useful, are more likely to put more effort into it.

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.

Meta Reflection Standard L January 1, 2010

Knowledge of learners and their development in social contexts

Evidence of teacher candidate practice reflects planning, instruction and communication that is:

1.   Learner centered. All students engage in a variety of culturally responsive, developmentally, and age appropriate strategies.

Over the course of this year I have been learning a great deal about teaching and students.  For the Students as Learners class I came up with a Philosophy of Learners based on my experiences and the readings and discussions in our classes.  In addition to the Philosophy of Learners paper I completed a number of reflections on various types of learners.  These reflections were student motivation, exceptional learners, cognitive development 1, and cognitive development 2.

It makes sense that students learn better when they have an interest in the lessons.  I try to create new lessons or modify existing lessons to gain the interest of the students.  In a lesson about how earthquake waves travel we got the kids up and acting out the movement of waves.  In our multicultural class we created a lesson plan that incorporated multicultural aspects.  In addition we completed several reflective assignments on multicultural aspects in the classroom.

During my intro lesson for the rock and mineral unit I asked the students to come up with as many different ways that we used rocks as they could.  I then showed a series of pictures of some of the ways we as humans have used rocks through history.  The lesson ended with ended with a talk and images from Easter Island where the building of stone statues is believed to have been part of the cause of the collapse of the civilization there.

As I develop my lessons it is important to keep the age of my students in mind.  One thing I have learned is to never underestimate the power of poster.  No matter how fascinating I may think a discussion topic may be I can still look out onto a room of blank stares and yawns with only a few of my students participating.  I tell them that they are going to be making poster models and most of the students engage and carry on discussions about the topic.  This was the case in our volcano unit as we were discussing the anatomy of a volcano.  Here is some examples of the posters created by students.

2.   Classroom/school centered. Student learning is connected to communities within the classroom and the school, including knowledge and skills for working with others.

Our science class is centered around group work.  Most students will find that life after school requires the ability to work in groups or teams and to cooperate with others.  We try to emphasize group work in each lab and during many assignments.  Each student has a role in the group, Captain, recorder, resource manager, and facilitator.  We switch groups and roles often throughout the year so every student has the opportunity to work with everyone else and each student has the chance to serve in each group role.  We had a lesson in which each group had to come up with an experiment of their own that would show the relationship between heat and the rate of evaporation.

3.  Family/neighborhood centered. Student learning is informed by collaboration with families and neighborhoods.

Family and neighborhood involvement is a tough concept for many teachers, myself included.  My hope is to be able to include families whenever possible.  This is a lesson plan I created for the Multicultural class I took this past fall.  The lesson is part of the earthquake unit.  In it I had the idea of giving out questionnaires for students to share with their families about their experiences with earthquakes.

In addition to opportunities to include families on the learning process I have attended several intervention meetings with students and families.  Two meetings concerned the students performance in the classroom and involved brainstorming strategies to help those students to be more successful.  Other meeting have been IEP reviews.  These meetings have focused on how the IEP is succeeding or not succeeding for the student and how it can be modified to better serve that student and teacher.

4.   Contextual community centered. All students are prepared to be responsible citizens for an environmentally sustainable, globally interconnected, and diverse society.

I will try to guide my students in the proper behavior in today’s world.  Starting in the classroom I can expect my students to display behavior appropriate, not only for the classroom, but also for society and the world in general.

The evolution unit began with the topic of extinction and how it is important to the concept of evolution.  On occasion I have the opportunity to comment and discuss with the students the effects humans have had on the planet and the organisms that live on it.

Meta Reflection of Standard P January 1, 2010

Understanding teaching as a profession

Teacher candidates positively impact student learning that is:

1. Informed by professional responsibilities and policies. All students benefit from a collegial and professional school setting.

My mentor teacher was moved to new a classroom this year so I got to go in before school and help her move and set up the new room.  Ms. Anex let me decorate and set up the room.  The appearance of the room isn’t the only thing that can contribute to a professional and collegial school setting.  Our students often work in groups much like they may have to in life after school.  I myself must remember that even though my students are 13 and 14 years old I can still expect professional and respectful behavior from them.

2. Enhanced by a reflective, collaborative, professional growth-centered practice. All students benefit from the professional growth of their teachers.

As a student teacher I am learning every day.  My classes at SPU are helping me in my development as a teacher as are the weekly staff meetings at Eckstein Middle School.  At the moment we are working in grade/subject teams to develop common assessments which will help us compare students throughout the grade level. Hopefully this blog itself will help to document my growth

3. Informed by legal and ethical responsibilities. All students benefit from a safe and respectful learning environment.

In order for students to learn they need to feel comfortable and included.  Eckstein has, as I assume most schools do, strict no bullying and harassment policies.  During class changes teachers are supposed to stand outside their classrooms to monitor the halls.  In class we encourage and enforce respectful behavior between students.  Our students often work in groups and the ability to work with others will prove very important in their futures.  As a teacher I am responsible for not only students intellectual well being but also their physical well being.  This is an interview I did as an assignment for our Professional Issues class.   I did it with one of our assistant principles regarding a report he filed with  Child Protective Services.

Issues and Advances in Technology Week 4 October 27, 2009

As we explore more in the topic of technology and it’s use in the schools, I have come to believe more and more in it’s potential.   The topic for the week was engagement and relevancy.  We were to review the WA Tech standard 1.1

EALR 1

— INTEGRATION

Students use technology within all content areas to collaborate, communicate, generate innovative ideas, investigate and solve problems.

Essentially the starting point for integrating technology in the classroom.  There are quite a few simple tools available to start the integration process.  http://www.bubbl.us/index is a free online brainstorming program.  Google Docs:docs.google.com/ provides simple and free word processing, spreadsheets, presentations, and forms that can be accessed from anywhere and anyone with the web address.  It would be interesting, with more time, to see if I could implement some of theses simple tools into a class or unit.  Perhaps next semester when I am bit less swamped by SPU work and more into the teaching side I will have time to try out a new tool.

Work cited:

Washington State Educational Technology Learning Standards K-12. (2008, December) retrieved October 26th 2009, from OSPI Washington website: http://www.k12.wa.us/edtech/pubdocs/K12EdTechStandards6-8_12-08.pdf

Issues and Advances in Education technology Week 2 October 13, 2009

The main reading for this week were the Washington technology standards put out by the OSPI.  These standards were put out in 2008 to address the need for technology skills among high school graduates headed for higher education, the career training or the job market. (OSPI 2008)

Students are growing up with more and more advanced technologies and tools.  Not only are these new tools for social interactions like Facebook, but they can be powerful tools for collecting, organizing, and spreading data.  When I first started using a computer I thought the word processor with the black screen and blinking green cursor and spell check was great.  Today there are calculators that have more power than those computers did.  We can do so much more today than just type up a paper and print it out.  Today’s tools can do anything from remind you what you need to buy at the grocery store to allowing multiple people in multiple locations have a real-time conference with voice, video, presentations.

As teachers in this modern age it becomes our responsibility to try to incorporate this technology into our lessons and help students learn how these tools might possibly be used in their academic and professional lives.

Work cited:

OSPI, Washington State K-12 Educational Technology Learning Standards (2008) from OSPI website: http://www.k12.wa.us/edtech/pubdocs/K12EdTechStandards_12-08_MostRecent.pdf