Chapter 10: Going Beyond the Classroom

Find ways for students to learn when they are at home or on summer break. Students are only at school 8 hours a day; continual learning must take place outside of school for continual growth to happen. By finding ways for students to learn outside of the classroom, the material also becomes more important.

Going beyond the classroom is one thing that daunts me a little. I worry that I will not be able to achieve this very well. Even just think about it now I feel like it will be a lot of work and don’t want to do it. I hope that as a teacher, I will find actually going beyond the classroom easier. I try to think of what Erin Grunwell did in Freedom Writers Diary. How can I do things like that or my students? I am sure I will eventually think up ways. Perhaps I can ask students to find a catchy phrase around town and write it down, then I will relate it to our unit on figures of speech. I still have no clue on what I could do in the summer months to keeps students thinking outside of the school year, and yet, I feel that is the most important thing of all. Student won’t truly learn until they try to learn for themselves under their own motivation. Hmmmmm, quite a challenge.

Chapter 9: When Things Go Wrong

First year teacher can find the balance between caring and authority hard to determine. Authority needs to come first.

I am amazed at how soft some beginning teachers can be, just to gain popularity with students! For a teacher to say: “Ok class, no homework today” is just wrong. Our job is to educate not become popular. I agree with the chapter that authority comes first. I know for certain that I will not be a softie. I want my students to learn, and giving them a free pass on homework when they may need the practice, just so they will like me better is not the way to do it. I think that along with authority, by being fair, listening to my students, and sticking to and following through with the rules and agendas that I set will gain me so much more popularity then being soft and friendly with my students.

Chapter 8: Teaching Teenagers Who are Still Learning English

Teach the language learning students more than just correcting their spelling mistakes. Teach the students by connecting to their own experiences; ask them “why?” and “how?”

Punishing language learners for many spelling and grammar mistakes is not fair to students who can’t fully grasp the English language yet. I think that it is better to have a rubric set up so that the students can only lose so many points from their grade. The biggest part of their grade will depend on if they answered the question or content. If they got 20 grammar errors, or 53 errors, they still would just lose 5 points, or how ever many assigned to that rubric, and no more. This way, a language learner can still get a good grade if they really messed up on the spelling. I feel that it is my responsibility to then work with those language errors to help improve the students, since I am the English teacher. If I taught science, then I wouldn’t worry about the errors at all, especially if the students were showing me they understood the concept and material being learned.

Chapter 7: Teaching Difficult Academic Material

To help students “get going” with new and hard material, find out what they already know and link the new material to something they already know well.

I loved this quote since I actually did this in my mentor’s classroom. I asked students to raise their hand if they knew and could use the 3 new terms that I was going to present to them. This allowed me to see what the students did, or didn’t know before I began teaching. If they had all, already known and felt confident with the 3 terms, then I could use more sophisticated terms and teach differently then if the students were clueless. I then tied the new terms to an old concept/ game they knew, rock paper scissors, when they were practicing how to use the new terms. I feel that this is a great way to teach difficult material and help make a smooth transition between content materials, by relating the old to the new. I also think this will help motivate students to try and learn the material faster if they have something to relate it to.

Chapter 6: Motivation and Boredom

Curriculum can engage students and help motivate them to learn when it is combined with how a teacher conducts the class and responds to students. Making sure students understand the material and allowing them to learn socially is important to motivating them.

Personally, I feel the number 1 reason students don’t try hard on a project is because they are not motivated. I think that is the hardest part of a teacher’s job. It is easy to sipt out information that the teacher learned themselves way back. But to truly teach students is to discover the ways to motivate and engage them. I don’t feel like many teachers can successfully do this. I will take into consideration and think about a couple ways this chapter suggested to help. Socializing with classmates on a project can really helps students learn as a group. Understanding the material is very important too, if a student has no idea what they are learning about, a light switch shuts off, even if the student doesn’t want it too. They feel so lost that they can’t keep up with the teacher and give up. I know this feel from my own experience.

Chapter 5: Teaching to the Individual, Working With the Group

Some schools track students all the way through high school by race. Certain groups of students stay in the same track no matter what, all the way through high school.

I still find myself amazed at what some adults do, as well as school administrators. It just baffles me to know that actually instances of “racism” still go on, and in schools none the less. School should be a place where students are getting the opportunity to learn to their fullest potential. Tracking, under no terms, allows for that and therefore I feel that it is wrong and not giving every child the right to learn as much as they can. What happened to the idea of No Child being Left Behind? Segregating does not solve this problem.

Chapter 4: Creating a Culture of Success

“Encourage our efforts even if we are having trouble.” If a presentation goes wrong, a teacher can ask some questions and help the individual understand where they went wrong before they sit back down and feel horrible about all the work they had done for this assignment.

I totally agree with the way the teacher handled the writer’s presentation in the passage on page 64. I believe that it is more important to see the learning in a person then to just tell them their whole project was wrong, go do it again. Not only are they not going to want to do it again, they have now embarrassed themselves in front of all their peers, and as the teacher I could be setting up a potential “bullying scene” if they other classmates decide to tease this individual. By asking the right questions in the right way as the writer described her teacher doing, I think students can proved to me whether they have or can figure out the correct information and still feel ok with their presentation when they are done.

Chapter 3: Classroom Behavior

When teacher’s are not willing to keep up their part of the teaching job and show any signs of unwillingness to teach, then students pick up on this fact and react against it. “The struggle that results is what many people consider an ‘out of control classroom’.”

When reading this statement I just wanted to say “well duhhhh!” Of course students won’t be willing to cooperate if the teacher is not interested or will to do their part of the job. Yet I think that an over enthusiastic teacher is not the best either, they can potentially scare students away. I think it is important to find the right mix, by showing students that the teacher is dedicated and will to do their part on time and well, then I believe this will help students see the professionalism of school and understand that it is their job to try to do the same.

Copyright and Fair Use LR

Longer Response:
Question 11: I disagree with this statement and I don’t seem to see how it is true. If I made a show and broadcasted it on TV I would be appalled to see some high school students taking it and editing it. Putting themselves into it and making fun of certain aspects of the show. I can see how this could be educational and I guess it would depend on what points were being said. I would think this would only be allowed to be edited and kept offline, but if it was posted online then that would be plagiarizing wouldn’t it. I guess if kept off line this would be a really fun way to learn more about the time period while learning how to edit movies. I guess I would need to know more about the parameters to figure this one out.

Copyright and Fair Use SR

1) Question 5: It is nice to know that it is only ok to use copies the school owns, not ones I have copied. I don’t think I would do this and it makes sense why I can only use what the school owns, even if my copies say or have the same information.

2) Question 3: This is good to know. I think I may be using updates for many years to come. I wonder if it is ok to download updates from the official website if they were available?

3) Question 14: I don’t think this law is fair. If the Disney movie has already been bought and paid for that you should technically “own” the right to watch it. I kinda understand showing it to a large group, how the movie industry doesn’t get money if we showed the movie to everyone we knew. I am curious of where the cut off is, as a limit for how many people can legally watch 1 movie. Is a large family of 20, or a kids sleepover aloud to watch a movie and be protected?

4) Question 15: So I am confused, we can use videos, but not movie clips? I just using 1 movie clip ok?

5) Question 16: BUT WAIT! I thought we couldn’t use movie clips as Question 15 states? What is the difference if we are making our from peoples DVD’s or getting some from the internet??

6) Question 19: This rule still confuses me. Once again, I feel that if I have bought and paid for a music DVD or CD then I can play it where I want. I can play a CD at my house to loads of friends, why can’t I still in a school setting, especially if it relates to what we are learning about.

7) Question 13: I was really glad that I answered this one right. I feel that this is part of teaching and learning. Since there was permission given by the survivor, this videotape can be used in any school classroom for learning.

8) Question 20: I agree with this statement. It is one thing to use multimedia videos and software for projects, but it is NOT ok to sell them to the public or anyone. That is the producer’s job and right, they put the time in to make the product, they should get the money.

How to help someone use a computer

Thing to tell self: I think that I should remind and tell myself from time to time that apprenticeship can be the best way to learn. As the article said: “the best way to learn is through apprenticeship -- that is, by doing some real task together with someone who has a different set of skills”. By doing a hard task with a student who is struggling with computers, or other things, I am not only showing them that I care and will stick with them through the problem, but also I show them that computers aren’t “bad”. Even when something is difficult, it can be worked through and hopefully my students won’t develop a negativity to any types of computers.
Important rule: I am the type that likes to take over and show someone how to do something if they are getting flustered. If I am teaching my siblings to do something, I sometimes end up doing it for them. I think that the point made in the article about always making sure the person learning is doing the work is important. Even if it means pointing to every letter on the key board or screen, I let them do it because that is the best way for them to learn.
~A second important rule the article points out is to not blame yourself when things go wrong, always blame the computer.


When creating our technology presentation, my teammate made sure to blame the computer and only the computer, the Mac, when we began to encounter many problems getting our presentation to assemble together!

"Phil Agre's Home Page." UCLA Department of Information Studies. N.p., n.d. Web. 5 Feb. 2010.

Web 2.0 Educator

test test

Learning Style Inventory Results

Here is the graph that shows my results:




My Style Scores:

Visual -18
Social - 14
Physical- 12
Aural- 13
Verbal -17
Solitary-12
Logical-11

These results fit my personal beliefs on my learning style well. I am very visual in how I learn, yet I still have high scores in my other styles. There are little things about each style that apply to me. For instance, my lowest score was logical, yet I use logic a lot when solving puzzles, putting things together, and thinking deeply about a story I have read. All styles are pretty high and I hope this helps me relate to all my students, not just the students that are visual learners like me.

My MEL experiences

• Student /Teacher relationships:
  Last semester in college I had geology class. My professor fit this category so well. He was firm and made sure we knew what we needed to accomplish, yet everyday was filled with loads of humor and funny remarks injected into his lecture. He said them as they popped into his head and they were just so funny. His humor really helped me focus on the difficult content we were learning and made me want to go to class everyday.

• Hands on: activities:
  One of my favorite high school teachers was my French/ English teacher. She is older and therefore has a very traditional way of teaching: by speaking to us, talking and reading about a certain topic, then filling out worksheets she provides to learn more about the topic. Yet Mrs. Litchfield also had plenty of years of experience behind her and knew that you had to throw in some hands on activities to help the class pass by. One of my most favorite activities she did with us was when we created a Jeopardy board on the back of a pull down map. We wrote down the vocabulary we had been learning, English on one side, French on the other. Then we played! We had to ask for the amount of money in French, we had to say the phrase “what is…and the answer” in French, besides just thinking of the word we needed to say. There were some words I couldn’t think of and I wanted to remember and say them so badly that I wanted to go home right then and study all my vocabulary words and know them by heart. That activity was very successful in getting me motivated, and I plan on using it in my classroom.

• Learning styles:
  My high school was very good about testing each student and making sure they knew what learning style they were. I knew from early on that I was visual. One day in my Biology class my teacher Ms. Herbert asked us all to write down our learning style and place it on a piece of paper so she could see it, like a name tag. Ms. Herbert was a visual learner just like me. She then told all her visual learners to imagine in their minds that we were in a large field with tall grass. If we walked through the grass once and looked behind us we would see that the grass was a little bent, but had popped right back up. But if we kept walking on that same path over and over again and again, each time the grass would lay down more and more, and the path we were making would be more and more visible. Then she told us that this path in the field was the way we learn things. The first time we hear something it doesn’t stay in our minds long. We must go over the new information time and time again, until it was pact down in our brains. I loved this visual analogy, and the lesson has still stuck with my today!

• Helping students succeed:
  In the third grade class I tutor in there is a young girl who moved here late this past fall. She was far behind all the other students in her reading and writing skills. I tried to work hard with her on her spelling words each week. She could hardly get one word spelt correctly. I was so hard because I wanted her to succeed so badly. I never once doubted that Kayla could get her spelling words correct. Even when she constantly mixed up and spelt the words When and went wrong time and time again, I made sure to stay positive and make sure she knew that we could get them down. I was confident that she could get them down if she kept trying. I can’t remember if she got those specific words correct on her test that week, but I do know that since then she has still been trying hard at home and she has started to learn more words. It is hard, but it makes me happy to see that she is not getting discouraged.

• Connections:
  Another example from the third grade classroom was the activities the students do when reflecting on the chapters they just read in their reading. One activity is they try to find connections between the events in the chapter and events from their own life, or other books. This activity really gets them thinking outside the box and helps them relate the story to their personal lives. It helps practice logical thinks and figuring out how to find small bits of information that connects to other places, events, or themselves.
  

Type I and Type II Technology

Type I technology uses forms of technology to aid traditional teaching methods.
* taking notes on a Smart Board and saving them
* a cassette recording of journal entries
* typing tutor programs in elementary school- it spits letters at you and you type them.

Type II technology uses new and more efficient types of computer technology; allowing students to interact with each other and the technology while learning.
* online (blogging) debate
* typing contests
* recording on itunes of class performing Romeo and Juliet


Citation: Internet Applications of Type II uses of Technology in Education (2005) by Cleborne D. Maddux and D. Lamont Johnson, editors. NY: Haworth Press.

What is a WebQuest

~ January 21,2010 at 8:12.

My Guess: I believe WebQuest is a place online where we can go and look at "reliable" resources for projects.

~January 21, 2010 at 8:52.

Partial understanding: After going to the WebQuest site and receiving instructions for the "quest" that I have been sent on, I understand more of what it is about. WebQuest is where I will learn about the MEL model. will create a presentation in either one of three programs and I will use one of the learning styles to present it. So if I am visual, then I ill make my presentation visually.

~ January 25, 2010 at 12:56.

Better comprehension: I know understand more of what MEL is all about. MEL is ways in which teachers can fully engage their students into their class work, while using type I and type II ways of learning. MEL is broken up into four categories which highlight big topics or areas that teachers should focus on improving. By making improvements to the teachers’ way of teaching, way of presenting the content, and the teachers’ attitude about learning, the students can feel more relaxed and eager to learn.

~January 28 at 9:05

Final evaluation: After creating and judging MEL presentations, I now have a clear understanding for what WebQuest is. WebQuest is a model of teaching that bring 9 important elements into consideration for effecitve classroom learning. By foucusing on and perfecting these 9 compontents, a classroom can become more efficient and produce greater learning results. Classrooms not following this model may experience unengage students, a lack or teacher/ student relationships, and lack a variety of teahcing styles, learning models, and creatvity. MEL helps teachers develop and use a variety of learn resoucres and materials, create positive and fun relationships, and encourage studnets to do the best they can. The MEL learning model demonstrates and explains these goals.

Chapter 2: Respect, Liking, Trust, and Fairness

Some teachers can be very easy going and many students like them. Other teachers can be very strict and authoritative and are “hated” by most students, but respected.

This part of the chapter jumped out at me the most because I already think ahead to what my personality will be like. I know that I will not tolerate any cell phone texting in class or any gossiping/ whispering in the classroom corners during class. I will be stricter than some teachers I have had, yet I always want to have a smile on my face. I want and hope to find that balance that this chapter speaks of. I try to think about how I can say the right commands and responses the right way each day, so that I will not be viewed as a mean teacher, but a fair one that uses class time wisely and engages all the students in the room.

Chapter 1: Knowing Students Well

Questionnaires are great resources for teachers in the beginning of the year to help them get to know their students. Questionnaires give lots of information about the new students to the teacher and can help the teacher determine what info that class already knows or doesn’t know yet.

This part of the chapter reminded me of my own high school experiences and the effective way that my teachers got to know me in many ways. Surveys were one of those ways. I remember taking a few questionnaires and I found them quite fun. I hope to not only use questionnaires at the beginning of the school year to get to know my new students, but I also intend to have the students take “pop quizzes” over some core materials I plan to cover that year. By doing this quiz, which wouldn’t be graded, I can see if my students are above or behind my expectations and adjust my course work accordingly.