"In our work with teachers, we have found that they do not always agree with one another - or with us - on how tasks should be organized." (pg. 345, Smith & Stein)
This is a great insight to the notion that all students are different, therefore they learn differently. All tasks might not work for all students. This is something that I have been thinking a lot about because of the fact that in my classroom, a textbook is used. Although that might limit some teachers to only using the text giving, my teacher has so many resources that she pulls from to allow high level math students to perform tasks at their level specifically. It's only the 3rd week or so, and she has already sent home alternate homework that she thinks would better suit the students, explaining that the homework given in the teacher book is far too easy for these students to get anything out of it.
I am a little skeptical to see how she makes this work throughout the school year when the students levels will really begin to differentiate and they will be learning something that might be a little different than other students at the same time, being tested at the same time, and still be at a third grade level. I didn't realize that my teacher would send home alternate work so early in the school year, but these student so far have really proved themselves to be at that level, finishing the homework faster than I ever expected.
Wednesday, September 29, 2010
Monday, September 27, 2010
Blog # 2 "Groupwork"
“Clearly the choice of task depends on what you want the students to learn…When objectives are conceptual rather than routine, you will want to find or create a rich multiple ability task: a task with a wider range of intellectual abilities than conventional school tasks (Cohen, Ch 5, pg. 67-68).”
This quote from the readings reminded me of how important it is for students to know why they are working on something. Especially in math, it is the one subject where you can constantly hear students asking or whispering about why they need to learn this or what the point of the activity is. During my time of really observing and getting to know the students and the classroom, I noticed how often he would say “the point of this lesson is…” or “I want you to be able to …after the completion of this lesson”. That was something that even my field instructor commented on, that the students always know what the objective is during his lessons.
The students work a lot in groups in math, and science. The groups change, but they were initially created based on the assessment given the 1st week of class. They really work well and I believe this is mostly because of the way classroom expectations were set up at the beginning of the semester. They were consistently talked about for a week and situations and expectations for working in groups were talked about in depth.
This week our topic in math was place value, each pair of students were given a sheet of paper and dice. They would take turns rolling and recording numbers and then putting them in respected places on the worksheet ultimately making a number in the millions. Each group would create different numbers, there was more than one correct answer, and it involved taking turns so that one member was not dominating and doing all the work. The children really understood their role and work well in pairs and small groups, and I think a major reason is because they know why they are doing it and what is expected from the teachers.
This quote from the readings reminded me of how important it is for students to know why they are working on something. Especially in math, it is the one subject where you can constantly hear students asking or whispering about why they need to learn this or what the point of the activity is. During my time of really observing and getting to know the students and the classroom, I noticed how often he would say “the point of this lesson is…” or “I want you to be able to …after the completion of this lesson”. That was something that even my field instructor commented on, that the students always know what the objective is during his lessons.
The students work a lot in groups in math, and science. The groups change, but they were initially created based on the assessment given the 1st week of class. They really work well and I believe this is mostly because of the way classroom expectations were set up at the beginning of the semester. They were consistently talked about for a week and situations and expectations for working in groups were talked about in depth.
This week our topic in math was place value, each pair of students were given a sheet of paper and dice. They would take turns rolling and recording numbers and then putting them in respected places on the worksheet ultimately making a number in the millions. Each group would create different numbers, there was more than one correct answer, and it involved taking turns so that one member was not dominating and doing all the work. The children really understood their role and work well in pairs and small groups, and I think a major reason is because they know why they are doing it and what is expected from the teachers.
Sunday, September 26, 2010
Blog 2- Cohen, Ch. 5
“You want to pose questions for students that will stimulate them to discuss, to experiment, and to discover. Don’t be afraid to use big, interesting words; as long as someone in the group can read them and as long as someone knows what they mean (or can look them up), the group can function very well.” (Cohen, Ch 5. p. 72)
This quote reminded me of the fact that sometimes the best learning students can have is when they learn from each other. In the chapter, this quote refers to the task directions given to students. Cohen says that teachers shouldn’t be afraid to give complex directions. As long as each group has a student or students with enough prior knowledge to understand the directions they can communicate to the rest of the group. (Cohen, p. 72). Beyond just the task directions, I think this quote can apply to the task as a whole. I also feel that this quote could apply very well to potential group work situations in my class. There are several students in my 3rd grade class who are higher performing. These students have a great deal of prior knowledge across subject areas and are also very resourceful about finding new information when they need it. For group work tasks I would make sure that these students are divided up among the different groups. Groups can be given more challenging tasks and group members who understand the task better than others have the responsibility to explain their understanding to the rest of the group. This allows students who struggle sometimes to still have access to the task while challenging the higher performing students through having them help their classmates. In theory this sounds like a good idea, however there is always the potential for more competent students to simply take over and exclude others from any involvement. Prior instruction on how to help others without giving away the answer and creating assignments designed to require the involvement of all group members could help prevent some of these problems. These are possibilities that I will need to look into before planning group work tasks in my class. So far I have not seen any group activities done in my class, but I am interested to see how my CT plans to handle these issues in group work lessons later on.
This quote reminded me of the fact that sometimes the best learning students can have is when they learn from each other. In the chapter, this quote refers to the task directions given to students. Cohen says that teachers shouldn’t be afraid to give complex directions. As long as each group has a student or students with enough prior knowledge to understand the directions they can communicate to the rest of the group. (Cohen, p. 72). Beyond just the task directions, I think this quote can apply to the task as a whole. I also feel that this quote could apply very well to potential group work situations in my class. There are several students in my 3rd grade class who are higher performing. These students have a great deal of prior knowledge across subject areas and are also very resourceful about finding new information when they need it. For group work tasks I would make sure that these students are divided up among the different groups. Groups can be given more challenging tasks and group members who understand the task better than others have the responsibility to explain their understanding to the rest of the group. This allows students who struggle sometimes to still have access to the task while challenging the higher performing students through having them help their classmates. In theory this sounds like a good idea, however there is always the potential for more competent students to simply take over and exclude others from any involvement. Prior instruction on how to help others without giving away the answer and creating assignments designed to require the involvement of all group members could help prevent some of these problems. These are possibilities that I will need to look into before planning group work tasks in my class. So far I have not seen any group activities done in my class, but I am interested to see how my CT plans to handle these issues in group work lessons later on.
Cohen, CH. 5
"If each group displays its work in some way, students can be taught what criteria are legitimate and how to give constructive criticism. This strategy enables the group to obtain feedback at the same time that it teaches a valuable intellectual and social lesson to the class." p. 10, chapter 5
I found this section on peer review to be very interesting to me because it can be so beneficial to the students if done correctly and appropriately. Peer review can be very hard for some students because they don't want to hurt anyone's feelings or like the article said, some students can be "merciless". When working in a group setting, I think that peer review is a necessary process. I have actually had some experience with this in my internship. Twice now, our home base of 50 students has paired up with the home base next door of 50 students to work on team building activities in which they are assigned a group and are given a task with little verbal instruction. They have to work together and read the directions carefully in order to successfully build the final product. At the end of the task, each student writes in their writer's notebook 3 things they did well as a group, 3 things they did not do so well as a group, 1 thing they themselves contributed, and 1 thing they could work on. After completing this, they shared with their group members. When the groups got back together for the second team building activity, they brought out their writer's notebooks and pointed out what they need to work on this time around. I found this to be a very valuable way of peer evaluation for the student's.
I found this section on peer review to be very interesting to me because it can be so beneficial to the students if done correctly and appropriately. Peer review can be very hard for some students because they don't want to hurt anyone's feelings or like the article said, some students can be "merciless". When working in a group setting, I think that peer review is a necessary process. I have actually had some experience with this in my internship. Twice now, our home base of 50 students has paired up with the home base next door of 50 students to work on team building activities in which they are assigned a group and are given a task with little verbal instruction. They have to work together and read the directions carefully in order to successfully build the final product. At the end of the task, each student writes in their writer's notebook 3 things they did well as a group, 3 things they did not do so well as a group, 1 thing they themselves contributed, and 1 thing they could work on. After completing this, they shared with their group members. When the groups got back together for the second team building activity, they brought out their writer's notebooks and pointed out what they need to work on this time around. I found this to be a very valuable way of peer evaluation for the student's.
Wednesday, September 22, 2010
Blog 1
o Looking at your case study, how did student talk deepen the teacher’s understanding of his/her students’ thinking?
I think that this case study was a really great example of something we are learning in my classroom right now... how to talk together and read together as partners/groups. When this teacher began talking to her students, she assumed that they were going to know to lead a meaningful discussion in groups. This is not the case- the students were so hung up on details that they couldn't understand the actual point of the lesson. The teacher was not looking for the answer to whether they should take their shoes off or not, rather using that to facilitate a discussion.
Now the teacher's lesson went haywire right in the beginning of the lesson, which is something that she might not have anticipated but she could have had lesson prior to this math lesson which worked on group talking and partner discussions. In my classroom, we are doing "Making Meaning" which is very clearly mapping out how the students can read with each other as well as something as simple as talking in a voice that isn't too loud but can still have inflection and able for their partner to hear them. The teacher then realized after the students were so confused she might need to start in a different place other than math to facilitate the math learning in her classroom.
Tuesday, September 21, 2010
Blog # 1 "Talk Moves"
The book “Classroom Discussions” begins by sharing the five different talk moves that promote students learning. These are revoicing, repeating, reasoning, adding on, and wait time. The “talk move” that stood out the most to me was the last one, wait time. Wait time is the period of silence after a teacher asks a question and students give their responses. In a typical classroom room, teachers will only usually wait 1.5 seconds. It is shown however, that even when teachers wait 3 seconds, many positive things happen. The number of “I don’t know” decreased and the length and intelligence behind the responses increased.
The talk move that I chose is challenging because it is so hard not to jump in or interrupt students while they are sitting thinking. Having a discussion with my CT he said that it takes a long time to get used to waiting and when he first started teaching he would only allow a second or so for students to answer because he did not want to embarrass them for not knowing the answer, but then he said that really might not have been the case at all. That the student just might need a second or two to really think about what the answer may be. While observing at the beginning of the school year I noticed a few times how my CT would kind look like he was going to start talking and then not say anything, catching himself from speaking too soon. I also like how if you ask the whole class a question and provide sufficient wait time that more and more students can figure it out on their own and raise their hands before one of their classmates tells them the answer.
The talk move that I chose is challenging because it is so hard not to jump in or interrupt students while they are sitting thinking. Having a discussion with my CT he said that it takes a long time to get used to waiting and when he first started teaching he would only allow a second or so for students to answer because he did not want to embarrass them for not knowing the answer, but then he said that really might not have been the case at all. That the student just might need a second or two to really think about what the answer may be. While observing at the beginning of the school year I noticed a few times how my CT would kind look like he was going to start talking and then not say anything, catching himself from speaking too soon. I also like how if you ask the whole class a question and provide sufficient wait time that more and more students can figure it out on their own and raise their hands before one of their classmates tells them the answer.
Monday, September 20, 2010
Blog 1- Chapters 1 and 2
In my 3rd grade class there are a few students who are very vocal and always raise their hands to answer questions, tending to dominate classroom discussions. This is the case across all subjects. Some of these students frequently have the correct answers whenever they raise their hands, while others simply like to jump up and contribute to the discussion regardless of whether their responses are fully formed or not. There are many other students in the class who are well capable of contributing good ideas about math but they tend to hold back and not share their thoughts with the whole class. I want to use talk moves that allow as many students as possible to feel comfortable contributing ideas, especially the quieter ones. To achieve this goal, the talk move that stood out to me the most is Move 5: Wait Time.
I have heard about this method and its proven effectiveness many times, but this reading made me think very carefully about it and try to imagine using in my own class, especially in math. I especially liked the description of the teacher using wait time in her class and the way in which more and more students raised their hands to respond the longer she waited. This is a method I would definitely like to try in my student teaching class. I know that when questions are posed in math the most confident and vocal students will raise their hands immediately, but providing wait time will hopefully allow students who are quieter to collect their thoughts and be willing to share. The article states that, “[F]ew students can speedily put together a complicated answer about their own reasoning.” (page 17). Especially in a discussion where many students are sharing their ideas, wait time allows all students the opportunity to process each other’s ideas and formulate their own thoughts. Wait time is necessary to allow students to put together well thought out responses and help them to realize what they do and do not understand about different math concepts.
I have heard about this method and its proven effectiveness many times, but this reading made me think very carefully about it and try to imagine using in my own class, especially in math. I especially liked the description of the teacher using wait time in her class and the way in which more and more students raised their hands to respond the longer she waited. This is a method I would definitely like to try in my student teaching class. I know that when questions are posed in math the most confident and vocal students will raise their hands immediately, but providing wait time will hopefully allow students who are quieter to collect their thoughts and be willing to share. The article states that, “[F]ew students can speedily put together a complicated answer about their own reasoning.” (page 17). Especially in a discussion where many students are sharing their ideas, wait time allows all students the opportunity to process each other’s ideas and formulate their own thoughts. Wait time is necessary to allow students to put together well thought out responses and help them to realize what they do and do not understand about different math concepts.
Blog #1
After reading through the different talk moves, I think that the third talk move reasoning: asking your students to apply their own reasoning to someone else's reasoning would be the most natural for me to use in my classroom. The example that the book gave is asking students to respond to classmates by stating whether or not they agree or disagree with one another. This would be the easiest for me to start using on a regular basis because my students already try to use this talk move. When my CT calls on students to respond to peers, they usually start by saying whether or not they agree or disagree and then explain why. The author states that it is important for the teacher to not shed their opinion when calling on students. This allows the students to determine their own opinions. Another necessary aspect of this talk move is to have the students explain their reasoning. Simply agreeing or disagreeing is not enough. In mathematics, as in any subject, it is critical for students to be able to explain their reasoning behind an answer. Applying this talk move would be the most natural for me because it is one that my students are already familiar with.
Wait time is the fifth type of talk move that is discussed. I find wait time to be extremely important in any subject. However, it is one talk move that I struggle with using. I often find myself wanting to fill the silence when in fact allowing wait time can actually be more beneficial for everyone. Some students need more time to ponder the question and their thoughts on it. Waiting a few seconds to allow students to think before calling on students is helpful. My CT does a good job using wait time. This is a talk move that my students may not notice but one that is used daily in our classroom. I will definitely have to practice using wait time in my lessons.
Wait time is the fifth type of talk move that is discussed. I find wait time to be extremely important in any subject. However, it is one talk move that I struggle with using. I often find myself wanting to fill the silence when in fact allowing wait time can actually be more beneficial for everyone. Some students need more time to ponder the question and their thoughts on it. Waiting a few seconds to allow students to think before calling on students is helpful. My CT does a good job using wait time. This is a talk move that my students may not notice but one that is used daily in our classroom. I will definitely have to practice using wait time in my lessons.
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