Assessments

This weeks readings were on classroom assessments.  Two major types of assessments exist: formative and summative.  A formative assessment is ongoing. Formative assessments measure where a student is in relation to the standard during the learning process.  Summative assessments measure what a child has learned at the end of the learning process.  While formative assessments may not always be graded, summative assessments almost always are.

In creating assessments, the first thing a teacher needs to do is to determine what needs to be learned and under what circumstances (Slavin, 2018).  Once the learning objectives are clear, an assessment can be created that measures those objectives.  In general formative assessments are more meaningful than summative assessments because they provide valuable information to students and the teacher on what a student still needs to learn or if a student’s learning should be accelerated.  However, formative assessments are only valuable if the data gleaned from the assessment is used to help a student through immediate and thorough feedback (Slavin, 2019, p. 350). 

Through my teaching career I have found myself either not effectively using the data from assessments or putting so much time and energy into the data that I have little time for anything else.  One thing I have started doing recently is using Kahoot or Quizlet to show me the most commonly missed items by students so that I can correct their understanding immediately.  I find that knowing why the wrong answer is wrong is sometimes more helpful than knowing why the right answer is right.  

I am embarrassed to admit that I have never used a table of specifications before in order to create an assessment.  I certainly have based my assessments on the standard but I have never actually laid out the information so specifically.  My goal for the next school year is to create new summative assessments that are not all multiple choice.  I plant to create a table of specifications based on my standards and to implement fill in the blank and short answer assessment questions based specifically on the verbs used in my standards.

Slavin, R. E. (2018). Educational psychology: Theory and practice (12th ed.). Boston, MA: Pearson Education.

Classroom Management

    This week's readings are about classroom management. Classroom management is setting policies and procedures, being consistent with them, stopping misbehavior before it begins and responding to it appropriately when it does, and keeping students engaged.

"The most effective classroom management is effective instruction" (Slavin, 2018). Keeping students actively engaged in lessons that interest them and with which they can interact will lead to more students on task and fewer disruptions.

 

Starting class on time can reduce disruptions.  When students know that a teacher is serious about teaching and  is ready to get started, they are more likely to get serious about learning.  A slow start to  class may send a message to the students that the teacher is not ready to teach, is unprepared, or doesn't find the work in his/her own classroom important.  It is important to remember that time is valuable, and off-task time at the beginning of time reduces that time that active learning is occurring in a classroom.

Teachers should vary methods of instruction to keep students interest.  Methods of instruction should reduce the amount of time a student is working independently and unsupervised and increase the amount to time a student is collaborating with others.  Allowing students wait time or think-before-you-speak time is another way to keep students engaged.  Posing a question and allowing students to think before calling on a student to answer ensures that they all will attempt to answer the prompt in their head because they do not know if they will be the one called on.

In order to reduce disruptions, transition time should be modeled.  Transitions should include a signal that students understand, a verbal announcement of what the expectation is, and a large group move rather than individual students moving.

When students misbehave, teachers should try to minimize the impact on classroom learning.  A visual acknowledgement (the stink-eye) or simply moving closer to the offending student may help mitigate the problem.  A simple pat on the back may work if visual cues do not.  If a student is still misbehaving, a choice should be presented to him/her.  The choice should include a) working on the lesson or b) suffering the consequences which may be time out, detention, or a phone call home.  It should be handled quickly and quietly.

Teachers should be aware of WHY students are acting out.  It could be from boredom, wanting to gain the teacher's attention, wanting to gain peer attention, and/or wanting to escape work.

My major struggles with classroom management are with transitions and students who act out to get my attention.  I have not actively worked on modeling transitions and have often called individual students to get Chromebooks when I could call groups of students to reduce time and inattentiveness.  This coming school year, I plan to do a much better job of modeling expectations for transitions in hopes that it will reduce time off task.  I also will work on trying to praise students for good behavior rather than allowing the "bad" students to take up so much of my time.  I recognize that I have been negatively reinforcing poor behavior by allowing off-task and disruptive students so much of my time.  This is not fair to me or to the other students in my classroom.

Slavin, R. E. (2018). Educational psychology: Theory and practice (12th ed.). Boston, MA: Pearson Education.

Student Centered Learning

This week’s readings discuss ways to increase student-centered instruction in the classroom.  Students learn better when they are engaged and when they can analyze and apply the information they are learning (Slavin, 2018, p. 188).  

Teachers should be designing meaningful lessons for students who should need to work with the content in order to gain a deeper understanding.  Allowing students partners or groups to work with provides them with the opportunity to discuss with and learn from peer interaction.  Many professions provide a mentor and allow new employees to learn while on-the-job, cooperative learning is the same concept (Slavin, 2018, p. 189).  This allows for timely corrective feedback where a student can learn from his/her small mistakes and immediately correct them before making a large error.  Education has traditionally consisted of a teacher telling a student information and providing the student with a book to read that also tells the student the information, yet real learning is much more likely to occur if the teacher acts as more of a guide or mentor who corrects the student along a path of discovery (Slavin, 2018, p. 190).  

I use several methods of student-centered learning in my classroom, but I have work to do in order to use it with fidelity.  I particularly love the Jigsaw method of learning, yet I have moved away from it in the last few years most likely because it was easier for me to use in US History than in Economics. I plan to find ways to incorporate at least one jigsaw into each of my economics units for next year.

I have never used the Learning Together strategy as a summative assessment.  I am interested in learning more about how to hold each student accountable for his/her role in the group in order to provide group feedback.  I like the idea of each person in the group assessing each other, for a start.

Another method that I particlulary like for accountability is the Random Reporter.  This could be used not only as a method of assessment, but also an information delivery tool.  The teacher could call a random reporter from each group and ask them to relay information regarding the assignment/lesson back to the group.  This prevents the teacher from having to go to every group to say the same thing.

Slavin, R. E. (2018). Educational psychology: Theory and practice (12th ed.). Boston, MA: Pearson Education.

Instructional Methods

The focus of our weekly module has been on instructional strategies.  While the purpose of education has remained consistent in the last century that we need to education children to be productive working members of our society, our society has changed significantly.  Education and schools must adapt learning strategies to meet the needs of the learners, but also to meet the changing societal demands for human capital.

The factory-like educational system of the early and mid 20th centuries may have done well to prepare individuals to work on an assembly line in the U.S.’s growing manufacturing industry, but that industry is now declining and our educational system needs to prepare individuals for the 21st century.  We have attempted to move from standardized processes to standardized content, but have not yet completely closed the door on the ways of the past.  Many schools still incorporate scripted lessons from which teachers may not deviate to meet the needs of his/her learners.  And while some schools are incorporating technology, they are using it in the ways of the past rather than ways of the future. (ex. just using it for a multiple choice quiz/test, rather than for interactive and cooperative research).

I have a difficult time differentiating to meet the specific needs of every one of my learners.  I try to utilize multiple instructional strategies based on the the content and what I know about my students.  What works one year or even in one class may not work the next year or even an hour later with a different group of students.  I have a few tried and true activities that I love using every year, but I have some that I have thrown out in order to add new ones.  I am working on utilizing technology in a more cooperative and engaging fashion to prohibit “sharing answers” and encourage real growth in learning.

Wiburg, K. An Historical Perspective on Instructional Design: Is it Time to Exchange Skinner's Teaching Machine for Dewey's Toolbox?. Retrieved 3 June 2020, from http://michel.delord.free.fr/bibli1998/instructional_design.html

Learned Behaviors

The focus of our reading and discussion this week is on learned behaviors. People learn in many ways: they can learn by observing, by positive reinforcement, by negative reinforcement, and by punishment.  People are always learning, but educators can utilize learning behavior theories in order to ensure that students are learning desired behaviors and skills.

We read about three behavior theorists this week.  

Bandura’s Social Learning Theory explains how people learn from observing and replicating the behaviors of others.  In his experiment, he had one group of students observe adults being physical abusive to a doll.  A second group did not observe such behavior.  The group that observed the violent behavior exhibited more violent behavior than the group who did not observe violent behavior including the inventing even more violent behaviors than they had observed and even the use of guns.  

Pavlov’s Classical Conditioning is an experiment in how to achieve desired behaviors.  Pavlov was able to condition responses in behavior by using a neutral stimulus alongside unconditioned natural behaviors.  His famous example is making a dog salivate by ringing a bell, because he had conditioned the dog to do so by ringing a bell every time the dog was presented with food and naturally salivated.

Skinner’s Operant Conditioning also is an experiment in how to achieve desired behaviors.  Sknner showed that positive rewards reinforce behaviors and will create a higher frequency of the behavior.  He used what is called Skinner’s Box in order to train a rat to get food by pushing a lever.  The positive reward of the food increased the amount the times the rat would press the lever.

As educators we utilize operant conditioning more often than we realize.  As such, we should ensure that we are reinforcing the behaviors we want to see students exhibit.

I have often confused negative reinforcement with punishment in my classroom.  Negative reinforcement is allowing a student to escape something they do not want to do whereas punishment is providing a negative consequence.  Our class discussion revolved around sending students to the office and I believe it is important to remember that for some students that consequence is not a punisher, it is a negative reinforcement. If a child does not want to participate in the classroom setting, sending him/her to the office is a reward not a punishment.  

I found the example in the book regarding physical education students rather amusing.  The example showed that making students sit out of activities and make them watch instead was extremely effective at reducing undesirable behaviors.  When I was a child, I hated P.E. class.  I believe the sit and watch consequence would have been a negative reinforcement for me.  I would have done anything to get out of playing dodgeball or running.  The group of elementary school students in the example must have all really enjoyed P.E. 

After this week’s readings I realize that I may have not given enough time and energy to positive reinforcers before resorting to punishments and that I have often reinforced negative behaviors without realizing it.  I am guilty of giving the squeaky wheel the grease. The child constantly disrupts often gets my attention and I need to work on ignoring those behaviors.  Our school is beginning PBIS this year and I look forward to finding new behavior strategies for use in my classroom.

Bandura and Social Learning Theory. (2013). Retrieved 27 May 2020, from https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NjTxQy_U3ac&feature=youtu.be

Peppermint Patty In School YouTube. (2015). Retrieved 27 May 2020, from https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xTKJ4crsNlY&feature=youtu.be

Slavin, R. E. (2018). Educational psychology: Theory and practice (12th ed.). Boston, MA: Pearson Education.

Acquisition of Knowledge

Description

 The focus of our reading this week is on the acquisition of knowledge.  Teachers should be aware of various psychological and sociological theories that describe how and when children acquire knowledge.  Educators can use information from multiple sources to determine what is acceptable for their students to learn at a certain age and how to increase learning if they seem to be behind.  

Analysis

When a teacher is planning a science lesson for a child in the second grade, it is important to remember that the child is not a small adult.  The student thinks about the world differently and does not have the same cultural toolbox as an older student or an adult (Slavin, 2018)  A child in the second grade would be in either Piaget’s Pre-operational stage or in the Concrete Operational stage.  

The 2nd grade student would be in the process of learning measurements and that a liter of water is the same amount of water no matter what size container it is in.  This student would also be ready to learn how to see and evaluate events or ideas from more than one perspective and to evaluate the relationships between objects (Slavin, 2018, p 27-29).

An 8th grade student would be in Piaget’s Formal Operational stage (Slavin, 2018, p 29).  This child is ready to form hypotheses outside of their own experiences.  This child may rely on cues from other students and working with peers to discover new information. 

Both the younger and the older student will need modeling and explanations from adults and peers in order to process new information well. (Slavin, 2018, p 34).

Reflection

In reading the multiple theories on acquisition of knowledge I realize that although (at least according to Piaget) that individuals should be beginning to form adult ideas by the age of  11, it is true that stages in learning acquisition occurs at different ages and sometimes at drastically different ages.  According to Piaget reversibility should be acquired by around age 11 (Slavin, 2018, p 27), yet I have economics students that are 17 to 19 years old who still do not understand that division is the reverse of multiplication.  Somewhere, somehow there has been a delay in knowledge acquisition of these students.

Language acquisition is especially important in a persons very young years.  Parents who read to their children and talk to their children provide vocabulary to them that can lead to future success in school.  Gaps in the vocabulary of my students is very wide.  By the time I get them as seniors in high school, they have moved from parent influence to peer influence on their language and it is easy to see their values based on what words are in their vocabulary.  Slang and personal speech that they think adults do not understand is also very important to them at the high school age.

High school students should be able to predict, summarize, create alternate endings, and understand place, setting, view point, and tone.  Yet depending on vocabulary acquisition, students vary greatly on their abilities in literacy.  Our school has pushed a focus on writing, but many teachers are finding it difficult to incorporate writing into a math class that has an EOC (it seems like just one more thing teachers are asked to do without providing more planning or grading time).  

In my classroom, I often have the expectation that students should know things based on their age or what their level of development should be.  Yet, I often forget that many of our student who live in poverty, or who have had traumatic experiences are not always developmentally on-level.  Learning more about the stages of development can remind me that my students may not acquired the skills of a high school senior and I may need to restructure my lessons in order to provide scaffolding to help them reach where they should be.

Slavin, R. E. (2018). Educational psychology: Theory and practice (12th ed.). Boston, MA: Pearson Education.

Introduction

Welcome to my Blog Journal for EDAT 6115.  This blog will be a reflection on information gleaned from my summer semester 2020 as a graduate student at Georgia Southern University in Dr. Lomax's class entitled Knowledge of Students and Their Learning.