Reflection 12

Notes from 2nd half of reading:
A powerful part of learning is generating pictures to go along with information. Help do this for your students.
Direct instruction on words that are critical to new content produces the most powerful learning.
SKills are most useful when learned to the level of automatically.
A variety of activities produce non-linguistic representations.
Ability grouping students should be used sparingly.
Cues and questions are ways to help students use what they already know about a topic.
Helping students think about new knowledge before experiencing it can enhance achievement.
Use cues, questions, and organizers.
Plan for distributed practice and emphasize its importance.
Students need accurate feedback!
STudents should be provided opportunities to apply organizing ideas.

Reflection 11

From teaching my STL and from teaching the 6th graders I've noticed that I don't do a very good job at assessing if my students are learning. We defined assessment as the process of documenting knowledge, skills, attitudes, and beliefs. When I'm teaching guitar this is easy because I have them play the song they are learning with me, or I have them play it by themselves so I can see if how well they are learning it. I need to always be checking with the students to see if they are paying attention and if they are understanding what I'm teaching.
Definitions:
Student Achievement: Creating something or doing an action because of what they've learned.
Student Learning: Capturing, recognizing, or understanding a new concept or idea.
Evaluation: comparing and deciding the value of something. Systematic determination of merit, worth, and significance.

There were many interesting things I noticed when we went to teach the sixth graders. The first is that it really helped to go earlier to film the other groups because I could see how that age group reacted to things. They really liked activities, movement, and hands on involvement. I think it would have been more helpful to our group if we would have had some sort of participation tool while we were doing the direct instruction part of our lesson. I really liked what the music group did. they gave the students little paper signs that had different types of emotions that come from music and the students got to hold up the sign of the emotion they felt from the music. the students loved it. I think it will be easier for me to teach when I know my students well and know how they react to certain things. then I can shape my lessons around what will engage the class best.

Another really interesting thing was that the girls of the sixth grade class were much more engaged than the boys. This was especially interesting to me because the activities we were doing were engineering activities which stereotypically are more appealing to boys. it was definitely apparent though that the girls were the fearless leaders. My group discussed this and reflected back on our early education. each of us agreed that this was contrary to what we remembered. We wondered if females being more interested and engaged in learning and creating is common in all age groups. It may have just been our teaching, or it could have just been this particular group of boys, but what if it is some sort of societal trend that boys feel like they are "cooler" or something if they aren't engaged. It would be interesting to study....

Reflection 9

The book "Classroom Instruction" talked about Note taking and how teachers should encourage students to revise their notes later when the students' understanding deepens. One thing I want to do when I start teaching is have my students take notes and then be required to read through them twice a week for ten minutes (or something like that) and add to them. In high school I always took notes but I rarely looked at them until it was time for a test. If students are periodically looking over thier notes, their recall will be a lot greater and they will remember more details about what they took notes on. then, (in an ideal world), they won't be cramming for test because they will already have most of the basics down. This will teach them good study habits as well because they will see the benefits of actually learning as the class progresses instead of trying to learn everything at the last second when their knowledge is tested.

I think these reflections that we are doing help serve this purpose for this type of class, (a class where we are not really taking notes) because we are required to reflect on what we have learned.

Reflection 8

Although most of the information in "Classroom Instruction that Works" is valuable, I think one of the most important things is the section on reinforcing effort and providing recognition. I believe that Motivation is one of the keys to student learning. The more motivated students are to learn, the more they will learn. I remember one teacher I had who would get mad whenever students complained that our assignments were boring or unimportant. He would say something like, "I'm your teacher not your entertainer. It's your responsibility to learn this so suck it up and learn it." I personally don't think that is a very effective way to teach. although the teacher shouldn't exactly be an entertainer, the teacher needs to be an engager. An engager is a motivator. Reinforcing effort and providing recognition is a very good way to motivate people. If students are acknowledged for their work they will have more confidence and they will be more likely to remember what they learned or accomplished because they will have associated it with something good. I believe that it is the teacher's responsibility to come up with a creative way to recognize and award student effort. For example, hanging students art work up in the hall for an art class, or having a mini Emmy awards ceremony in a film class where each student gets an award.

Reflection 7

Notes from 1st half of "Classroom Instruction that Works":

• Three Elements of Effective Pedegogy: 1. Instructional Strategies, 2. Managegement Techniques, 3. Cirriculum Design.
• Have students Identify Similarities and Differences of what you're teaching to something they already know.
• Students should summarize and note take.
• Teacher should encourage students to revise notes later when understanding deepens.
• Reinforce effort and provide recognition. A students attitude can have a huge effect on how hard he or she will work.
• Pause, Prompt, and Praise.
• Establish and communicate a homework Policy.
• Can be negative to have parents help students with homework. Students need to be learning it and sometimes parents will do it for them.

Reflection 6

Some notes that I took while listening to the teachers of the STL's:

• Use Proximity: this helps the visual and auditory learners see and hear you. plus it's more engaging.
• Give Reasons: People want to know why they should know what you're trying to teach them.
• Lay out exactly what the students are going to learn so that they know how to connect the information you're giving them.
• Board writing skills. Do you have what it takes?
• Building blocks of learning. Make sure you're not just bombing them with information. build upon each little part to reach the final goal.
• WHY????? Tell them why they should know it. Exaggerate if necessary.
• Make it a game. Be ENGAGING.
• Formitively evaluate. Don't ask, "any questions?" at the end. Find out if they're following you the whole time you're trying to teach them.

Reflection 5

This week I went and observed at my former high school, Springville High School. We were supposed visit Mr. Boss but he didn't have a class first period so we went over to Mr. Bell's class. Mr. Bell was actually my Multimedia teacher in high school and was not a very good teacher. He got along with most of the kids, particularly the ones he could make fun of, but he didn't really teach. He just gave assignments and let us go to work. He was never organized and frequently lost the assignments that we would turn in. it was interesting to revisit his class and see that he still did everything the same even if it hadn't been effective years before. This made Mr. Boss seem very professional and very on top of things. Mr. Boss had brand new equipment and had a vision of where he wanted to be. What he's teaching is actually exactly what I want to teach when I graduate. He teaches video production, Tv, and photography. He told us of how he planned to get the students involved in student film festivals and other activities, as well as broadcast the various sporting events and activities happening in the school. I think those are some really good ways to get students involved in what they're learning because they would actually be doing projects that mattered to them, their peers, and to their entire community. I personally feel like that is what learning is about. We need to learn things in order to give back to and thus better the source that are learning comes from whether that's the community, family, friends, the world, or anything else. High School students should be learning to improve their personal future, while using their knowledge to give back to their community and school.

Reflection 4

Because of what we learned in class this week (theorists and taxonomies of teaching) I've been thinking a lot about my high school psychology teacher Mrs. Leek. She was my favorite teacher and I never really could figure out why when I was in High School. Normally my favorite teacher would have been one that was super fun and really laid back. Mrs. Leek definitely wasn't that way and yet I still enjoyed learning everything that she taught us. Now that I know a little bit more about teaching I can see why she was so effective. As students, we always knew exactly what she expected from us. she had very high expectations and followed through with us to make sure we reached her expectations. any work that may have been busy work for other classes didn't feel like busy work for her class because we knew that she would build upon that basic information. Because we knew that the information was important to her we knew it should be important to us. The best thing I think she did though was constantly tell us how much she loved her job. Because she made that clear, it was easy to ask her questions in class and out of class. Teachers who didn't show that they liked their job or who simply didn't like their job were hard to talk to because I always felt like I was getting in thier way or that they didn't really care to help me. Because I knew Mrs. Leek cared, I had more motivation to do better.

That's the kind of teacher I want to be.

The teacher that I went and observed this week at the Provo Junior high was really soft spoken. I think that it's really important to make sure all your students can hear you because even if they look like they're paying attention they're not getting anything out of it. The students were engaged in the activity they were doing but it seemed that if they began to get out of control he wouldn't be able to stop them.

Reflection 3

"You touch a rock, you touch the past. you touch a flower, you touch the present. you touch a child, you touch the future."

Cool quote.

One thing I'd really like to learn to do better is teaching for multiple learning styles. I feel like I teach the way that I learn which is very visual, but I don't think I do a very good job teaching to the other types of learners. I especially feel my weakest area is in teaching the auditory group. I am not an auditory learner and so I may not teach in a way that helps those types of learners. I need to understand the way that they learn so that I can teach in a way that they will benefit from. I need to make sure that my learners participate in discussions, can always hear me, get one on one explanations whether from me or their peers, get asked questions during a lecture, and participate in activities such as role plays. This will help them stay attentive.

Reflection 2

"All 0ur dreams can come true --- if we have the courage to persue them." --Walt Disney

One thing that Wong talked about that I think I really need to implement in my teaching is how important it is to give the student an objective. He says that "the basis for every test is the objective of the assignments." When the student or even the teacher has an objective then you have measurement, and when you have measurement you have performance. This is like Shum's lab assignment system with "Shum's challenge". we go through the worksheet and we really have to learn what we're doing because we know at the end we'll have to do "Shum's Challange" and have the teacher sign off on it. We have measurement and so we have to perform. I could easily implement this in my guitar teaching. Instead of just giving my students a treat for practicing five days I could give them a treat for reaching a certain point in a song or being able to play with the metronome at a certain pace. Then they would have a specific goal to practice for rather than just practicing to mark off that they did. That would hopefully boost their performance.

Reflection 1

One thing I didn't realize until I took this class and started reading "the First Day of School" was that it is okay for teachers to think of themselves as people whose profession's purpose is to change lives. There's no doubt that I remember my teachers as people who greatly influenced and directed my life, but I never really related that to the nature of their profession. Instead I related it more to them as people, even though changing lives is one of the main reasons I want to become a teacher. I guess I just thought that changing lives through teaching was a secret only I knew, not the common goal of all teachers. Now that I know that wanting to change lives is an okay goal to have, I will hopefully become a more effective teacher so that I can actually do it.