Chapter 10 - WTL

I thought that chapter 10 started out with a very interesting idea about introducing "fun" into essay writing on tests. The example about interpreting the graph as if they were announcing the swimming match was a very neat idea and it seems like it would be entertaining for students to participate in. Basically throughout chapter 10 it touched on many ways that teachers can redesign tests to help kids get more out of learning. If we stick to the "boring" and unoriginal tests, students will not get as much out of their learning as they could. We need to make sure they know the specifications we want, but give them deep questions to ponder so they can come up with deeper level answers rather than just scratching the surface of what we want to hear. Mixing things up in class is always a good thing and will keep students interested in what I will be talking about, which is always a plus!

Chapter 2 and Chapter 5

I thought Chapter 2 was very interesting and in my opinion very influential in the teaching realm today. The Internet is such an important tool in today's society as well as in the classroom. In this class even, we are using "new literacies" by blogging, sharing our ideas over the Internet, and reading other people's ideas. I think that Internet projects are such great ideas to get kids involved in technology. It is also great for student's to know how to evaluate websites and understand what websites are accurate or not.
Chapter 5 was a short chapter that talked about different types of public writing. There was substantial, planned, authoritative, conventional, composed, edited, and graded. I think the important thing about these kinds of writing was that they should be written to a certain type of audience and must be edited more than once. This chapter also addressed plagiarism, which is a very serious subject and should not be taken lightly. I think that it needs to be spelled out to students what is right and what is wrong so they know fully what will not be accepted.

10 words

1. negative/positive number
2. add/subtract
3.multiply/divide
4. fraction
5. parallel/perpendicular lines
6. variable
7. area
8. function
9. equation
10. inequality

Most of these words are concepts rather than vocabulary words, but the standards for math don't have a vocabulary section for the curriculum. I chose these words because I think they are the fundamentals and basics of math. As students keep going on in their math careers they will come across these all at some point and many of these words/concepts will be used together in harder math problems. If students do not understand these words right away, then when they continue onto harder math classes they will be lost  because they will be building different concepts on the foundation of these words. For example, if a student doesn't understand what a variable is then later on when they start to do word problems and need to come up with equations they will be even more confused. I feel that these words are very basic, but in order for students to be successful I think they must know these words to move on to more difficult math.

Diverse Classroom Resource

http://www.pbs.org/teachers/earlychildhood/articles/adapting.html

This article on the PBS teachers website talks all about how we can change the curriculum to meet the needs of all different kinds of learners. We must adjust our teaching and material to meet the needs of all students so they can succeed! The PBS teachers website also has different ideas and even some lesson plans on how to embrace diversity and make your classroom a better place for learning for everyone.

Chapter 3: Culturally Responsive Teaching

Coming from a small town with little to no diversity, I was not at all familiar with different cultural backgrounds or diverse settings. I did my first field experience in a diverse school setting and I am still learning today, but I am more familiar now than before I started college. In Chapter 3, it talks all about culturally responsive teaching and how to act with a diverse classroom. Being responsive to cultural differences is key and also making connections to each students individual background is also very helpful. I think that this could be quite an overwhelming task at first since you may have students of many different cultural backgrounds in your classroom, but it all comes with time and once you start to get to know students you will learn more and more about them. What I found most interesting and helpful from the chapter was the 7 characteristics that help students become invested and engaged with what you are teaching. I believe in all of those 7 characteristics already so incorporating them into my classroom will not be difficult at all. I want to be involved in my students learning and set high goals, but also give them the chance to explore on their own and figure things out in a way that works for them. I also found the idea about labeling things in their native language and the English language to be a great idea! With this simple gesture, students can feel more at ease because they are included. Being open and embracing to students of any cultural background is key for a healthy classroom environment, and I plan on creating that environment in my own classroom.

WTL Reflection

With every lesson I do, whether it is 5 minutes long or 20 minutes long, I always find myself to be incredibly nervous before I begin to teach the lesson. For this lesson, I was no different, but in a way I don't think that will ever go away. A good amount of nervousness is needed (at least for me) because then I know that I actually care about what I am doing, but once I get up in front of a class, all the nervousness goes away and it was the same with this lesson. I really enjoyed my topic and when I was preparing this lesson about carousel brainstorming, I tried coming up with a topic where students could generate many ideas. Also when preparing I ran it thought in my head a few times to make sure I was getting all of my information about the actual strategy that was needed. I felt like the lesson went very well overall; starting out with an example on the board was helpful because then they knew what I was looking for when they went on their own to do the activity. I hope that my classmates took away that this is an easy activity to get students thinking about a certain topic and also a good way for them to notice other student's ideas that they maybe would have not thought of on their own. I think they took away that it can be a fun activity and can also be community building at the right time. If I had to do the lesson differently, I probably would have came up with more in-depth questions in order to make them use higher level thinking, although time constraints are always a problem. I also could have facilitated the directions about where to move to the next poster before the activity started. Overall I think it was a very successful, short lesson!

Motivation and Self-efficacy

In all of the schooling I have had so far, the times I have been interested in the material and been motivated to do well have been the times when I have succeeded the most. It is not coincidence that this is the case; Chapter 6 focuses on elements of motivation and how to get students to be active in their learning. I feel that this is one of the most important things in student's learning process. The two main focuses of this chapter were self-efficacy and motivation. Self-efficacy is the level at which a student believes in their abilities; if a student has a low level of self-efficacy then they probably do not have a lot of confidence in their abilities to read well, or perform well in a specific subject area. When I was tutoring at an inner city school, I could tell that many of the students did not have the self-efficacy to succeed in many of their tasks. When they finally understood the material and solved a problem on their own I could tell that they developed more and more confidence and little by little they started to believe in themselves. Motivation, the other topic in the chapter, was mainly about being able to apply material to student's lives and make things applicable. It said that students learn better when they can apply the text to what they already know. I know in math that will sometimes be hard to do with certain topics; for instance, long division, they will probably rarely use that throughout their lifetime, but making a connection will help them better be motivated to learn it. Motivation also involves getting them to think: asking questions, making them curious, letting them come up with what they think happens next. All of these things are great ways for students to become more motivated to succeed and become more interested in the material.