RE: http://mr-stadel.blogspot.ca
After looking through Andrew Stadel's blog for a good 30 minutes I couldn't find a single topic that, content wise, was sufficient for me to write a blog on. It was difficult as the topics weren't really philosophical as I like them but rather seemingly superficial everyday stories from his classroom. I'm not saying they are useless, rather, I just can't write reflections or further thoughts or critiques on them. Surely, if I had a choice I'd chose another blogger to write on. Anyways, I had to think a while before I could come up with something to write on and to my surprise some profound cliche ideas came to mind. Two weeks ago in my "Designs for Science" class we had a guest lecturer who's primary focus was on visual teaching. That is, using visuals all the time, every lesson to help students be engaged in the lesson and to help them understand better. He argued, rightfully so, that as teachers we have to compete with the world of visual stimulation. Therefore, we must make our lessons more visually stimulating so that it engages the student. What I noticed on Andrew Stadel's blog is that many of his blog posts are about his classroom activities many of those have videos. That gave me the idea of presenting classroom activities and the exercises whether in science or in math in video format. That is, se it up like a movie trailer and ask the students to solve it. The cool thing is that the students if they wish, may respond in whatever format they wish whether that be on a piece of paper, in an email, in a series of pictures, or a video. Watching a video and responding to it is much more "21st Century" than opening the book to page 84 and completing exercises 3-9 don't you think?
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I came across a blog (http://function-of-time.blogspot.ca/2009/05/final-exam-review-blog-is-live.html) that was very interesting and sparked some ideas in my head. The teacher has set up a blog for students and they are to pair up, take a topic and write a post on the blog about that topic so that all students can review it. This is very interesting especially if you've read my previous blogs about review. This review is such a great idea because it is what I find review to be: something that the students take ownership of and do constantly. It is a great idea to have a forum for them to post while having the responsibility to do so as well. I would make sure that it happens constantly and not only before big tests. In a sense this becomes more than just a review, rather a place where the students can interact and help each other with concepts (hence the title above). The teacher's job in all this is to moderate it all and help any misunderstandings that he sees on the forum.
It also sparked another idea in my head. During my university career I had a professor who gave us his phone number and said he is going to be available 3 hours the night before the exam and called the number "the microbiology hotline." Now aside from the fact that he was encouraging last minute studying, I liked the idea him being very accessable when I was doing the actual studying at home though. So I thought it would be a very good idea to have an online forum once a week perhaps at the end of the week when I would be available on a given time to answer any questions that students had from home. RE: http://mrvaudrey.com/category/teacher-improvement/
I searched for a few days before I found something to write on from this blogger. When I came across the above post it reminded me of a course I took on Classroom Assessment. One of the last topics we learned in that class was about teacher assessment. How do teachers get meaningful feedback from the students so that they can improve their teaching with every passing year? During my practicum as a student teacher, I used exit slips to get a grasp on my students' learning and attitude towards the class. However, I was always reminded of my Classroom Assessment class, which said that you are not really going to get meaningful, truthful assessment of yourself or your classroom unless your assessment is as anonymous as the students like it. It's true. Students don't like the teacher to know what they really think of the teacher, his/her teaching methods and his classroom especially if they have negative things to say. So when I read this post - that is - using online forms that students can fill without the teacher being able to recognize their hand writing or the colour pen they use or how neat they circle letters from a multiple answer question - all of a sudden it became so much easier for me to think about it and try and apply it to my future students so that I can use those assessments to Re: http://ispeakmath.wordpress.com/2012/10/23/study-guide-kit-for-math-tests/
As a student I have almost never found review packages prepared by teachers to be of any help, especially ones that are checklists of things I had to know. However, I have a huge bias in that I have always been a "good" student who did his work all the time and asked questions during the lesson and not right before a test. I have yet to experience how students who have trouble with the material find review packages, especially now that I am a teacher. However, I have a few thoughts to share. Firstly, when it comes to review packages, rather, when it comes to any review, it is almost always in the context of a test. Why does that have to be the case? Why can we not review all the time, whenever it is appropriate and necessary. For example, I was teaching a student I tutor about solutions to graphs. The lesson was focused solely on the graphical solutions to systems of equation and that's what was going to be testes for his online course. However at the beginning of the course we had learned how to solve systems of equations using substitution and elimination. So when we were covering graphical solutions to systems of equation, we also reviewed substitution and elimination and we related all of them together to get a fuller understanding of what a "solution" is and how we can find it, even though that was not going to be tested. I believe it gave a more well rounded understanding to my student. I mentioned how review packages made by teachers aren't helpful. In the education world we hear more and more that instruction should be differentiated and students must take ownership of their education. A checklist is a good thing to have for each student at the beginning of the year to help them know what's coming up next in the course. When it comes to review I think each student should list and prioritize what they know about the least or what they cant remember. A checklist might be helpful for this. According to their priorities, they can come up with specific question about the topic that they don't understand/remember. They can either try and find answers individually or as groups or they can also submit it to the teacher. That way the teacher can help the students with those specific questions and potentially give them practice questions. But I find packages with all sorts of questions for students to complete are inefficient and sometimes not even relevant to questions that students have. Review must also be differentiated. To this date (July 1, 2013) this is the most interesting topic I have found to write on. I was reading a blog by Geoff Krall (http://emergentmath.com/2013/03/06/how-does-one-provide-the-complex-data-of-global-warming-to-students/) that talks about teaching global warming to students through raw data. I found this interesting because, like he talks about, science is often watered down, just like math, to series of facts you learn followed by a set of questions you answer about those facts followed by a test where you spit out whatever the facts were.
Science is the subject of investigation from a set of observations. Therefore it is a good idea to teach it in that manner. How are we developing the students' power of investigation if we are doing it for them? To develop this power of investigation, students should practice observing, taking down data, looking for patterns, hypothesizing, and coming to a conclusion that either describes the data or one that leads to more questions for investigation. Many know this as "Problem Based Learning." So how do we teach that practically? Sometimes it's hard with so much curriculum to "cover." However, we can use elements from the above bolded terms in the classroom. One example is what Geoff Krall talks about, which is finding raw data and using it to find patterns. Of course these thoughts are just starting to form in my head and will take a while for me to come up with practical solutions that can be used in everyday lessons as I try to gain more experience as a new science teacher. But the least I know is that a science class is not a visit to wikipedia. This week I read a blog on Sam Shah's page (http://samjshah.com/tag/general-ideas-for-the-classroom/) regarding his so called Algebra Bootcamp. The idea is that Calculus is not hard, Algebra is, so it's a good idea to review algebra before teaching concepts in Calculus. As I have not taught Calculus in a classroom before, I have no experience and no comments about the specifics of what should be reviewed and what shouldn't be in Calculus. However, I know that in any course, especially Math, it's best to review the foundational concepts before moving onto new material.
Now, what is not so obvious is that review shouldn't be the, too commonly used, review packages. What I really like about Shah's post is the self assessment of the students and its specificity. Activities such as a "boot camp" are great ways to bring excitement into reviewing concepts that might be boring to some and very much new to others. This, meanwhile having a clear objective. That is, students know exactly what it is they are reviewing and why. They should take on the responsibility and understand the importance of the review activity with respect to their future in that subject. A review is not to just remember, it's rather to prepare. A response to “Monya and Kishi” (http://fawnnguyen.com/2013/05/02/20130502.aspx)
Moein Ferdosian This blog post is interesting to me because, being from a foreign county I can connect with the cultural controversy that is being presented. It is obvious that the letter that this student has written mostly reflects the attitude of the teacher towards the names in the textbook. Several times the student mentions how “this is what Mrs.Win thinks.” If the teacher was one that appreciated and celebrated all the different names, then the attitude of the students would also reflect that. What is a “regular” name? Why does it matter what name is used in a math problem? I understand that sometimes students can lose focus due to the wording of math problems, however, after all, math students should be able to zero-in on the math aspect and not be confused by the names being used. I think using a diversity of names promotes multiculturalism even if the students don’t live in a multicultural environment. If they embrace it, they will get used to the names and perhaps use multicultural names for their kids once they have families. I think people who change their names to culturally common names are taking away from the diversity of society. I think, however, that more relevant examples can be used to help students connect with the content. I think examples that involve ethics are much more interesting to solve. That is, examples that engage students’ opinions. For example, a question involving the profit of a company when it is kept local and when it is outsourced. |