Reflection #7 - Motivating Students to Learn

Describe 

This week our assignments focused on the ways to motivate students to learn as well as engage them in the learning process.   The reading for this week started with motivational theories and their importance to helping us understand the students we teach.  Next, the reading discussed how achievement in school can motivate students by looking and even changing the goals we set for our students.  The most interesting part of the reading this week for me was about learned helplessness and what it means and how to interpret and deal with this concept in students.  The questions for this week focused on motivation and how teachers can create and kill it in our classrooms.  I enjoyed sharing how I try to motivate my students in the classroom.

Analyze

I believe that student motivation is extremely important in order to get them to accomplish any learning objective or activity in class.  This starts with a rapport with students.  Having knowledge of the motivational theories helps this by developing the "toolbox" of tricks and effective rapport it takes to help students.  That is why the topic this week in the reading of learned helplessness was important to me.  I wanted to have a better understanding of why students feel this and how to manage it.  As a history teacher a lot of students always start by stating how they hate history because they are not good at it.  This fear is important to get over as early as possible before the content becomes cumbersome.  Having knowledge of intrinsic and extrinsic motivation for students can also help.  Students that are intrinsically motivated by school and grades are not the students you have to focus your time on.  The students that suffer and need extrinsic motivation are the students schools find with struggling circumstances.

Reflect

To this point this summer, the topic of motivation has been extremely important to me.  I want to have a relationship with the students I teach to be one of mutual respect and shared learning.  I want my students to believe in the educational process that I am putting in front of them and I want them to develop into a life long learner.  In order for me to do this I must be able to motivate students to complete tasks that they may not always be "all in" to do.  I also believe that school should be about creating experiences for students that last a life time.  That belief is a major reason why I became an educator in the first place.  Having a better understanding about motivation can help me to better connect with the students that I teach.  Sometimes as hard as you try the content that I present and facilitate is just that hard and unfulfilled.

Reflection #6 - Accommodating Instruction to Meet Individual Needs

Describe 

This week we completed a reading about differentiated learning as well as grouping.  The reading began with grouping and tracking students, a process that as gone away in high schools in recent years but is making a comeback lately with AP courses etc.  Differentiated instruction was an important part of the reading, it described and than gave ways to differentiate instruction.  One way that caught my interests was using peer tutoring.  The last part of the chapter was about intervention programs as well as after-school or summer school.  The questions to answer for this week focused on ability grouping and the technology we would offer students in our classroom to facilitate differentiated instruction.

Analyze

When looking at ability grouping it is a difficult topic for me.  I believe that all students can learn and can learn at high levels.  The first idea of tracking is especially hard for me.  Tracking was once a tool to allow students at high school to determine their future.  Whether you were tech prep or college prep especially here in Georgia.  However, after attending college and seeing the data about schools and the graduation rates.  Tracking was setting students up very early in their high school careers for failure.  Students not on a college prep track and having a change of heart half way through high school suffered tremendously.  I do not believe in setting students up for failure or restricting their educational options.  Ability grouping is also a tough subject for me.  I understand that we want to separate some students from others in order to help them go further.  I however struggle with this concept when teaching AP courses.  I want to have any student experience a tougher curriculum if they are interested in pushing their academic abilities or learn new skills.  Differentiation is a way to have the best of both or all these worlds.  It allows schools and students to become part of a shared learning community.  I have had many students learn unexpectedly from others no matter what their ability level was or what kind of test scores students have had in the past.

Reflect

Early this summer I was given a promotion at school!  I am moving on to become the Director of Academic Success at Metter High School.  My new job will be to use an online learning platform to help students recovery lost credits as well as to accelerate students that want to take courses not currently offered in the traditional classroom.  I am really excited about this opportunity.  This will allow us to differentiate school curriculum and tailor it more and more to an individual students needs.  Its not the greatest of learning opportunities just yet being that this an online program provided from a corporation.  It does however, allow me to help students in my small rural county to experience courses in video game design, entrepreneurship, AP Human Geography etc.  It is the start of the future of education I believe!

I will also be responsible for the after-school as well as summer school programs we offer.  This is something very new to me and I have been working very hard to develop the protocols and the timeline and activities for this after-school program.  The part of the textbook that talked about after-school programs helped me tremendously to develop my concept of what this needs to accomplish.  The program has time for homework, acceleration/remediation (using the online course platform), and also time for extra-curricular activities through the sports offered at Metter High School.  The best part of it all is that it includes time for dinner for all students!!!

Reflection #5 - Effective Lessons

Describe 

For this weeks reading it covered effective lessons and the various types of instruction.  The reading began with direct instruction and how to create an effective lesson using this strategy.  Although everyone may teach a wide variety of students the parts of an effective lesson are the same for all learners.  These key parts are objectives, build on prior knowledge, and figure out the best way to reach these goals while assessing understanding and providing feedback.

Analyze

Developing effective lessons must be a systematic process.  It must start with a clear set of learning objectives.  Once those are complete, an effective lesson than gets a list of all prerequisite skills or concepts needed to complete the learning process.  This phase is extremely important to know them as well as assess your students for them.  This process allows an educator to then create organizers and activities to help students better understand the concept.  After an understanding of prerequisite skills and concepts is developed the learning of new material can begin.  This is the only part of lesson development that does not give me anxiety!  Being about to develop examples, gather images, charts/diagrams, videos, activities to help students understand concepts is exciting.  I love finding new ways to share with students as well as other staff members at my school.

Reflect

When writing lesson plans the part of the whole process that I forget about and struggle with during implementation is allowing for ample student response time and also providing the right amount of independent practice.  When reviewing material in class and asking students questions I struggle with giving response time.  As a history teacher, these ideas/concepts/dates have come easy to me and I have been working with this material a long time.  Sometimes I tend to get a little impatient.  I must continue to work on this!  The other area of struggle for me is when I develop differentiation for students and they are working in their ability groups I struggle with giving them appropriate time to complete practice and than share with their group.  The struggle is ensuring that all students have time to work and than have time to share.  Technology does allow me to balance this a little better but it is an area of weakness for me.  The last area of weakness for me is providing students with ample feedback in the appropriate time between completing activities.  When grading performance tasks for over 100 students it is hard to give feedback to everyone that can help them to improve.  My problem is dealing with time to get it all back and allow them to get better.  This is especially hard with essays and feedback with my AP students for preparation for the exam in May.

Reflection #4 - Behavioral Theories of Learning

Describe 

Readings this week focused on behavioral learning theories.  From the beginning, the reading started with Pavlov and Skinner both which have been a part of every course I have taken in school.  The reading also discussed primary/secondary reinforcers and positive/negative reinforcers.  These concepts are important for teachers to understand because we need to know what we want students to do/know and use reinforcers to ensure those things happen in our classroom.  Lastly, the book discussed punishment/consequences.  As an educator it is important to remember that our consequences for actions need to happen quickly in order to be effective.

Analyze

The reason we need to understand behavioral learning is to have a better understanding of how students learn.  These ideas about behavior are important for educators to understand when developing classroom rules and routines.  Using the concept of classical conditioning, teachers can develop ways for students to respond when hearing hands clap together or hearing a bell ring.  When looking at developing a positive classroom environment teachers need to be sure to understand the concept of reinforcers.  To understand what people remember it is important to recognize that people remember in two ways with short-term or long-term memory.  Short-term memory is concepts or knowledge that is about to be remembered.  This is information that is currently active and will be discarded by the brain if not needed or seen as valuable.  One way to ensure that this memory is stored is to practice rehearsal, the more a concept is rehearsed the likelihood of it being stored increases.  Long-term memory is concepts/ideas that have transferred from our short-term memory to be kept for longer periods of time.  This type of memory deals with how we know when to complete a task, also called procedural memory.  Ways that teachers can teach procedures is by rehearsing them numerous times and create routines in a student’s day.

Reflect

This week one topic was extremely interesting to me.  I want to have a better understanding of metacognition!  Metacognition is how we learn.  This topic is important to me because it helps with the development of learning activities and projects that I give students.  If I have a better understanding of how we learn the better chance I help students learn new material.  When classes are over for the summer I want to do more research on this topic and hopefully find some new ways to develop lessons to help my students learn!