Differentiated Learning

1. How do I bring progressivist methodology into the classroom?

- connect curriculum/content to student lives

- engaging students by letting them state opinions about techniques used in class and make suggestions

2. In what ways does my coordinating teacher affect my thinking about teaching and my teaching?

Question 1:

The past two weeks were a mixed bag of successes and failures. The Four-Corner Definitions worked well, and the students wrote all the notes using the different colored pencils, but we did this whole section as a class, and I think it might have been more beneficial if the students had done them in groups. I was too concerned with the students getting the right information written down instead of using this great technique to help the the students learn. It was not a complete failure, but I think if I would have taken a different approach during the class period it could have been even more affective.

The self-evaluation was overall a success and a good way for me to see what areas my students still felt like they needed help. I had the students use the smiley/straight/frowny face system to tell me how they felt about each type of question they would find on the test. I compiled the results in the following table:

https://spreadsheets.google.com/ccc?key=0Ane03cQCuly5dG1fYzdCNy1qdVAtWjZYVjhXVW1iQ0E&hl=en&authkey=CJ2_0JkH

This showed me what areas the class felt they understood and what areas we needed to go over before the test. It was a great formative assessment that let me know how the students felt about their grasp on the content objectives and it also helped me plan my review.

Which leads me to the review. I had a great plan of “I do, you do, we do”. I downloaded a visual timer on my computer so students could see how much time they had to work on each section. I separated students into groups of three so they could work and discuss the problems while I floated to help during group work time. The one problem I had was the review packet I put together was enormous. I wanted to have lots of practice questions to insure the students would get lots of practice, right? Well, my packet merely ended up scaring them and causing much confusion as to what to work on, how long to work on it, and would all of this be on the test. I learned a great lesson about having one example question on the board to work out together and then have one or two examples for them to do on their own, and then check with a partner.

I learned many things from the results of the block test as well, but here are the two most important:

I. I differentiated instruction extremely well to incorporate my ELL students.

II. I did not differentiate my instruction enough to help all of the students in my classroom. I reached my middle and higher level students, but was not successful in helping my lower level students master the content objectives.

Tomlinson, in The Goals of Differentiation, discusses differentiation as not only making sure students learn essential content, but also increasingly take responsibility for their own learning (2008). She also points out four main elements of differentiated instruction that help students not only take more control over their learning, but also their lives: trust, fit, voice, and awareness (Tomlinson, 2008).

Building Trust - I think that I have done this successfully. I definitely think the students feel that I want to help them learn, that I have equal respect for each of them, and that I have the same expectations for all of my students.

Ensuring Fit - I am still working on this, but I do think I have improved over the past six weeks. As discussed above, I have found good “fits” with my average to above average students. I have yet to get a good fit with my needs improvement students. It is important to keep in mind that there most likely is not one fit that will work for the students that I have not connected with and I will need to continue to try several different techniques to figure out what fits best with my different students.

Strengthening Voice - I really feel the students feel that I hear what they have to say. I think one thing that helped strengthen that is the smiley/straight/frowny self-evaluation. I was asking them to tell me how they felt about their knowledge, and then I asked them if they felt I had helped them understand it better. If I continue to ask for the students’s feedback they will begin to understand that I do value what they think and I do want to know if they think I am teaching them effectively.

Developing Awareness - Now that I have established that I value the students’s voice, I need to help them develop their awareness as learners that it is their responsibility to know their strengths, weaknesses, and what techniques they can use to enhance their learning potential. This is so important because the skill of self awareness, if I can successfully teach it to the students, is a skill they can use for the rest of their lives.

Question 2:

I have decided to stop pursuing Question 2, as the simple answer is just start inserting more of myself into my lessons and not worrying about what hammer, if any, will fall. I am going to expand question 1 into both contents, as it seems I have been focusing Question 1 only in my math classes.

Next Steps:

1. Start concentrating on successful differentiation for all students, all levels, all factors. One way I can think to do this in the next two weeks is to introduce a self-evaluation chart the students can use throughout the whole unit. It is a bar chart that has each content goal listed. As the students feel they are learning or mastering a content goal, they can shade in where they are in the process. Starting at “I know nothing” moving to “I am confused, but starting to understand” and moving through two more levels and then ending on “I completely understand this”. I will have them glue these into their journals and every one or two class periods will have them re-evaluate where they are on their Progress Chart. Then I can review those in their journals for a quick reference on whether or not my lessons have been affective.
2. Continue to strengthen the student voice by having interactive, formative assessments that communicate that I want to know what my students think about their understanding and my teaching.

Tomlinson, Carol Ann. (2008). The Goals of Differentiation. Educational Leadership, 66, 26-30.

Multiple Intelligences

1. How do I bring progressivist methodology into the classroom?

- connect curriculum/content to student lives

- engaging students by letting them state opinions about techniques used in class and make suggestions

2. In what ways does my coordinating teacher affect my thinking about teaching and my teaching?

Question 1:

During my last observation, Rebecca and I talked about differentiated instruction and its importance for student learning, especially ELL students, so this became my main focus for my math class over the past week. In the article Orchestrating Multiple Intelligences, Moran, Kornhaber, and Gardner discuss "Project Spectrum", an idea of blending multiple intelligences in a classroom activity. "Project Spectrum environments do not segment tasks strictly into one intelligence or another. Instead, they set up situations in which a student can interact with rich materials - and teachers can observe these interactions - to see which intelligences come to the fore and which are relegated to the background" (Moran, Komhaber, & Gardner, p. 26).

With this in mind I set up an activity using Math TV (www.mathtv.com):

a. as a class, the students watch two different people teach the same math problem.

b. the students decide which person was the easiest to understand and the hardest to understand and then designate this by drawing a different colored square around that person's name.

c. The students then get in groups of four and discuss their choices.

d. As a class, each group states what their group found and why they found that person easy or difficult to learn from.

e. After each section there is a sample equation for the students to solve, first by themselves, then with a partner's help, then as a group of four.

We did this for four equations. This exercise included linguistic, logical-mathematical, bodily-kinesthetic, interpersonal, intrapersonal, and visual intelligences. Not only did it allow me to observe which students were strong and/or weak in each intelligence, it also gave me some insight on which style of teaching made it easier for the students to understand math. The students overwhelmingly liked the instructor named Betsy, stating that she "explained every part of the equation" and that she "explained it slowly and was easy to understand". She also used different colors in her math formulas making it easier for the students to see what part of the formula was the most important for that particular problem. At the end I asked the students to tell me, by a show of hands, if they thought Math TV was helpful. A few thought it was just boring, about half the class thought it was helpful, and one of my interpersonal students volunteered a "it was boring, but it was helpful, too" comment.

Another technique I tried in math class was self-evaluation. I had the students work on the warm-up and did not answer any questions, telling them they had to try to do their best and we would discuss it in a few minutes. Then, before discussion, I had them self-evaluate their understanding of how to do the problem. I had them write one of the following faces on their warm-up sheet:

smiley = I completely understand this and could answer this correctly on a test.

face with straight mouth = I sort of understand this, but I am not sure

frowning face = I have no idea how to do this.

Then we had, buy a show of hand, who had each face written down. After we discussed the warm-up, I had them write a second face on their page based on their understanding after we discussed the warm-up problem. I asked again who had written each face, and then I asked who had moved up to a different face, or who had moved down. This worked really well on a lot of different levels. The students like being able to communicate how they were feeling about the problem in a group setting. I had 100% involvement during this activity, and I would say at least 95% engagement, if not 100%. It also allowed me to know two things immediately:

1. how many students understood the problem and how many students still needed help.

2. how affective my explanation of the problem was. Did I help the students better understand that specific math concept?

This worked so well that I am going to make a student evaluation sheet for the students to fill out the class before we review for the block test so I can see what concepts the students fell they understand and what concepts we need to work on before the test. I am going to just put a problem down and have them rate them using the smiley face method (since it is established already). They won't need to solve the problems, just tell me their comfort level with each. This will also allow me to group students if needed to hit specific areas with different students.

Question 2:

An interesting thing happened during my science class one day this week. My cooperating teacher had a training day, so I had a substitute with me during my A2 class, and then later that day my cooperating teacher was back in class for A6. We were doing a relative dating activity during class that day, and I had pulled together some research about fossils so the students would have some background knowledge about what they were looking at in the pictures they would be using. My cooperating teacher was so preoccupied with other things, she basically left me no clear direction on how to teach the class...which is very nontypical. Because of this I was able to do the following:

1. Let the students read silently and take notes at their own pace (we usually read out loud as a class and stop to take the exact same notes).

2. Discuss fossils, how they are made, connect to individual background about fossils before the relative dating activity.

This may seem very small, but just being able to do these two things made me feel like the class was so much more MY class. I was even able to develop excitement and connection to background knowledge by talking about the movie Jurassic Park and how they used fossils in amber to create the dinosaurs. I asked the class if they knew how they had been able to reproduce the dinosaurs in Jurassic Park and immediately received excitement and buy-in. This would not have happened if I had not discussed the different kind of fossils before the relative dating activity.

The difference I felt from the class where my CT was gone to the class where my CT was present was obvious. I felt more in control when my CT was not there. I also think the students responded to me more as the authority figure, and not just someone else in the classroom. It would be nice to have that freedom every day in science, but I don't see that happening. For example, when I asked if I could have the students develop a 'cheat sheet' together as a class, I was informed that the classes would be summarizing the Cornell Notes they have been taking as their review, and that this would happen the first half of class the day of the quiz.

Next Steps:

Question 1: I am going to start incorporating color into the different formulas I use during class. I am also going to use the following techniques during the two weeks before Spring Break:

a. Four-Corner Definitions (adapted for ELL students)

b. Self-evaluation about math concepts that will be on the test.

c. Multiple Intelligence Test Review.

Question 2: Obviously my attitude about my teaching changes when my CT is not there - I feel more in control and able to try things that I want to use in the class. I need to get to a point where I am doing this regardless of whether my CT is there or not. Because of this I am going to try to start putting my own ideas into the lesson in small chunks, starting with how I connect the material to the students' background knowledge. I think this can be done in as little time as a five minute set, and I think I can sneak these in without any sort of permission because I won't be 'changing' any materials and my CT does give me freedom on how I present the materials/activities we use in class. So the goal for this question is to do more "teach first, ask permission later".

Moran, S., Kornhaber, M., & Gardner, H. (2006). Orchestrating Multiple Intelligences. Educational Leadership, 64, 22-27.