Archive for the ‘ General Teaching Methods ’ Category

General Teaching Methods Meta-Reflection

At this point in time, it is simplistic to say that I should be doing one thing over another when I become a professional. There are countless variables a teacher will face in a classroom, and one really has no clue what those variables are or will mean until they walk into the classroom. Even then, they change from day to day. So, for now, I suppose I will use both my experience in the academic vacuum of education and my time at the Seattle Urban Academy to chart out my professional growth – especially since my dearest hope is to be a part of SUA permanently someday.

Based on our general teaching methods course, I believe my first plan of action is to familiarize myself with the state standards and the jargon that goes with the territory. I struggled a great deal these last few months to create fluid lesson plans that were in synch with student understanding as well as up to par with the SPU lesson plan template. While I realize I will not always need to use this particular format for my lesson planning, I learned that understanding terminology and what was being asked of me on the SPU lesson template mirrored the bigger picture. So I need to make sure that I am fluent in educational language in order to make my lesson plans both effective for my students and legible to thee people who need to read it.

History is a tricky subject. We have learned a great deal about the progressive teaching methods that many educators hold dear – anything but direct instruction. But in order for students to learn a chunk of any historical material (without watching a handful of movies to cover each topic), direct instruction is inevitable, and direct instruction can still be fun despite the stigma that it receives from many in education. Regardless, variety and activity are very important to bring lessons home. During my lessons for General Teaching Methods, I found myself incorporating direct instruction to every lesson except for my last. I learned the importance right away of creating activities and interactive discussions for my students to remain captivated and engaged in the lesson. I plan to spend more time planning activities and group work to engage in student learning for my student teaching and for my future career. I know for a fact that it will help students bring home the direct instruction that we do in class. One of the positive comments I continually received throughout my lessons was that I was engaging as an instructor. My “students” who are typically not inclined to be interested in history were interested in some of the topics we were talking about during my lessons. This is encouraging to me to know that I can balance direct instruction with activities and know that in both instances kids can gain insight.

Right now, I am tutoring and substitute teaching at the Seattle Urban Academy in Seattle, Washington. It is one of the best experiences I have ever had, and my hope is that someday I can teach in an environment like SUA functions and impacts students. Through teaching them, I have learned that every day is different for the students. Some days are full of productivity and excitement on behalf of the students, and other days are tougher to get through. As a teacher, I need to be able to adjust my curriculum and spin on the day’s learning to the students’ needs. We can still learn the same things, but the way I respond and teach should be compatible with the feel of the classroom.

In sum, the way I educate should be full of balance. While I must learn the technicalities of the professional side of teaching, I need to make sure that the terminology and technicalities translate into a highly applicable and relatable lesson that can adjust to the classroom environment from day to day. I think this is why teaching is one of the most difficult professions. But it is also the most fulfilling, and I know that through practice in the lesson plan template wording and formatting I will be able to create versatile plans to help create the best learning experience for my students.

2010
12/05
CATEGORY
General Teaching Methods
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General Teaching Methods: Lesson Plan Presentation I

This week I had the interesting opportunity to plan and teach my first mini lesson. This has, by far, been the most important and integral project related to my teaching career. We have spent the last year theorizing and preparing for our futures in education by learning of the philosophies of educational practices and other things. Now, the time has come to put those theories and philosophies into practice.

With that said, it has also been the most difficult task I’ve had to do, and I still feel slightly lost in the forest with technicalities. I am learning, though, and must give myself credit for doing so. One of the benefits of learning at this stage is that I feel like we will all be stronger for hitting the ground running, persay. While I think that we were supposed to have some more in-depth knowledge of EALR’s and GLE’s prior to this course, we will have to be pro’s by the end of General Teaching Methods, and we will have done a lot of the nitty gritty work on our own. Regardless of the ultimate outcome, it’s still a scary bridge to cross, especially when grades are involved!

My presentation was aimed for a ninth grade world history course, and my first of four lessons dealt with the Protestant Reformation and Martin Luther’s 95 theses.  In hindsight, it was too ambitious for a ninth grade class, but I also was very excited about  making something more difficult become a manageable learning target for the students – I think that too often we assume the worst of our students and dumb down curriculum from the get-go. I wanted to show that you can teach anything as long as you make it relatable and talk about it in relevant and age appropriate ways. But, I think I succeeded in my plan, because one of my critics was excited about how I presented my direct instruction. He, not being a history person, was captivated by the story because I told it in story form instead of lecture or name/date/place form. Getting the important points across in a story format interested him and kept him listening, which was my goal.

My main mistake was that I was too hypothetical about the twenty minute span, pretending like I was really planning for a fifty minute lesson and that there would be other aspects I could explain. Next time around I will be planning for a twenty minute lesson, no strings attached. That will allow for less direct instruction and more activity and interaction. Besides that, I think my lesson was awfully strong.

Another critic was concerned with the fact that my lesson was dealing with Christianity and should be planned around a World Religions course. My actual aim was to focus on reformations and revolutions to see how cultures change in the wake of major uprisings. Just because Martin Luther’s reformation happened to be Christian doesn’t make me a biased teacher, though I know I will have to be careful when presenting the information. In light of other, subsequent revolutions (the humanist movement and the Enlightenment had nothing to do with God and everything to do with human reason, and will be our next chunk), it is clear that the Christian God is not the only focus here. But it would not be fair to delete all Christian talk simply because people think that it would create bias. Anyway, I digress…

For my next lesson, I have already figured out some activities for my “students” that will make things really fun, and am looking into a video clip of the Renaissance to provide a visual for the kids. The only challenge I truly think I face is making sure that I understand fully the way I should be formatting and filling out my lesson plan template. It is taught well in class and I am thankful for that. But applying it is easier said than done! So hopefully I can be broad enough in some places and detailed enough in others.

In all, I think I am slowly, but surely getting the hang of this thing called lesson planning. And by the end of the quarter will understand the technicalities, not just the philosophies, inside and out. 🙂

2010
10/22
CATEGORY
General Teaching Methods
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General Teaching Methods: Reflection I

This week, in General Teaching Methods we learned about “effective teaching”. According to many of the experts in the field “the quality of schooling a student gets only accounts for about 10% of the variance in student achievement.” So many other factors play into a student’s education and it is interesting to see where we place that emphasis. We also learned the importance of a good teacher – that even if a school system is bad or ineffective, an exceptional teacher can make a difference.

Both of these revelations tend to make plenty of sense to me. Public schooling (in particular) receives far more credit for providing the full social, moral, and academic education to children than it actually contributes. In all reality, parents and communities are also greatly influential in our youths’ educational experience. Additionally, if we think about it, school systems are made up of faculty, and the employees doing the nitty-gritty work are the teachers. Therefore, it makes perfect sense that a good teacher can and will influence a student beyond the effectiveness or ineffectiveness of a school system. The only difference is how difficult a school system can make the educational process become for a teacher who is doing their planning.

The one thing I am hoping to gather from our course content is how exactly I can utilize all of the expert studies and statistics and apply them to my curriculum planning. The chart provided in class, asking the questions that teachers might impose, and the types of implementations Marzano implies was very informative and I am excited to utilize it when looking to plan my curriculum. Marzano’s organization goes like this:

1. “What knowledge will students be learning” can be answered by Marzano’s “setting objectives”.
2. “What will be done to help students acquire and integrate this knowledge?” can be answered by Marzano’s “Cues, Questions, and Advance Organizers”, “Summarizing and Note Taking”, and “Non-Linguistic Representations”.
3. “What will be done to help students practice, review and acquire this knowledge?” can be summed up by Marzano’s “Similarities & Differences”, “Practice”  and “Generating/Testing Hypotheses”.
4. “How will you know if students have learned this knowledge?” can be applied through Marzano’s “Providing Feedback”, “Reinforcing Effort/Providing Recognition”, “Cooperative Learning” and “Homework”.

The phrasing of these questions and their grouping with each Marzano chapter was extremely helpful for me to plan my classroom curriculum with definitive guiding parameters to refer to. I love it, and know it will be fully utilized in my class.

The one aspect of curriculum planning I am still quite lost on is understanding the EALR’s and using a Lesson Plan Template to utilize the EALR’s to their fullest extent. We’ve talked about them in class as if it is assumed that we’ve had an overview on them, but they are still somewhat of a foreign language and need a laymen’s term explanation. In all honesty I assumed our class content would be going over this, but it seems that no course in the MAT program fully explains how they work or how they were/are formed. Maybe this is one instance during the program where I will hit the ground running and figure it out on my own too. Either way, it will be leaning toward the more intricate and confusing aspects I have had to learn all on my own.

2010
10/07
CATEGORY
General Teaching Methods
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