3351 Double Entry Journal #11

1.      What is formative assessment? Formative assessment FOR learning, not assessment OF learning.

2.     What is the CENTRAL purpose of formative assessment? The central purpose of formative assessment is student learning.

3.     Connect a best practice in formative assessment to one research-based strategy. Providing feedback is a best practice in formative assessment. It is also a research-based strategy. Feedback needs to be specific, instructive, and timely. Best practices in formative assessment suggest that timing is an important consideration when providing feedback.

4.     Give an example of how a specific assessment can be used formatively and summatively. A rubric is an example of a specific assessment that can be used formatively and summatively. Students can use the rubric while they are working so they know what is expected. Then the teacher can use the rubric summatively to give the students their grade.

5.     Give an example from your field placement related to formative assessment and timing. My host teacher would have her first grade students write sentences about a given topic. She would collect the papers and make corrections without taking a grade. The students would get their papers back the next class period and were to rewrite the sentences before adding anymore. Once they had ten edited and revised sentences she would then give a grade.

6.     What are some strategies to help formative assessment be more effective when providing students with feedback? Some strategies for making formative assessment more effective are to use smaller, more manageable chunks, perform the assessment and then move on to the next task. Provide detailed feedback that helps the students understand what they are doing right.

7.     Name two advantages to high quality formative assessment. Formative assessment helps identify students who are struggling with particular tasks or operating under misconceptions. This can lead to improved instruction that addresses student learning. For students it offers increased feelings of confidence and control. Students who experience this are more likely to transfer learning from one class to another.

8.    What are some challenges to implementing high quality formative assessment? Some challenges are high quality formative assessment is time consuming, requires a lot of effort, and many teachers don’t know how to use it.

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3351 Action Research by FSU Student

1. What is the problem? Students have trouble recognizing rhyme and word families in text.

2. What is the rationale for the project?  Recognizing rhyme and word families in the text helps readers decode new words more efficiently than decoding the words one letter at a time.

3. What strategy will be used to address the problem? A variety of rhyming games will be introduced to the class.

4. What is the question? How can I use a variety of rhyming games to help my students recognize rhyme and word families in text?

5. What evidence is presented that the strategy will work? Research shows that implementing a range of rhyming games can help students improve their recognition of rhyme and word families.

6. How will data be collected? Data will be collected sing checklists, observations, and work samples.

3351 Action Research Projects by Teachers

1. What is the title of the project? TNLI: Action Research: Curriculum Implementation:
Using Readers Theater to Show Off Good Reading
 

2. What is the Question? How can I effectively utilize Readers Theater to improve the fluency and reading comprehension skills of my students?

4. What strategy is being used to address? The strategy used is Simulations and Games.

5. What evidence is presented that the strategy will work? The National Reading Panel in 2000 identified fluency as a key ingredient to successful reading instruction because of its effect on students’ reading efficiency and comprehension.

6. How will data be collected to determine if the strategy will work? The methods  used to collect data included surveys, observations, and student fluency assessments.

7. How was the data analyzed? Student performances of Reader’s Theater scripts were taped and analyzed weekly to monitor improvements in fluency. A rubric was utilized for the students to self-assess their own progress during the study.

8. What were the results? The results of the project affirmed that utilizing reader’s theater does lead to improved levels of fluency and reading comprehension. However, while all the students benefited, the results did not show equal gains for all students.

9. How do the results inform teacher practice? Readers Theater improved the students’ reading rate, word recognition accuracy and use of expression while reading as well as their attitudes toward reading.

2201 Ipad Apps Review #2

Stack the States Lite is a United States geography app. You are given a clue and four states to choose the answer from. For instance, Which state has the abbreviation RI? You would then tap on Rhode Island and drag it to the pedestal at the bottom of the screen. A new question appears. When you answer that one correctly, you can then drag that state on top of the previously place state. The goal is to answer enough questions correctly to stack the states taller than the checkered line. This app helps with state capitals, abbreviations, landmarks, and recognizing state shapes. I would use this app in my future classroom to help students learn their geographic locations.

2201 Ipad App Reviews #1

I used an iPhone to look up free educational apps. The first one that I found was SkyView Free. I found it very interesting. I have my daughter playing on it too. Once you follow the instructions on how to calibrate your phone so your location is known, you hold the phone up and it will display constellations, planets, satellites, and even the sun and moon. I would use this in my future classroom to bring the Universe to my students fingertips. This app gives information about the different things they encounter in space. For instance, when you touch on the information for the moon it tells you a person who weighs 160lbs on Earth would weigh 26lbs. on the moon. This could easily be turned into a math lesson.

2201 Political Cartoon Analysis





1. What is the event or issue that inspired the cartoon? Election 2012

2. Are there any real people or places in the cartoon? If not, what images are portrayed in the cartoon? Barack Obama, Mitt Romney, and the Statue of Liberty

3. Identify the specific artistic techniques used in the cartoon (i.e., symbolism, analogy, exaggeration, labeling, and irony). What is the artist trying to show the reader by using these techniques? The techniques used are symbolism, exaggeration, and labeling. The artist is trying to show the reader both Presidential candidates are trying to get women’s votes.

4. What is the cartoonist's point of view about the topic portrayed in the cartoon? Give examples to support your interpretation. I think the artist is trying to convey the message that both candidates want women to vote for them and they are willing to do anything in order to earn their vote. To start, the title of the cartoon is Prom 2012 and both candidates are dressed in tuxedos. The heads on the men are enlarged and draw the viewer’s attention away from the grip they have on her arms. The men are pulling her in opposite directions. The woman looks shocked and seems to be struggling to stay on her feet.

5. Is this cartoon persuasive? Explain why or why not. I think this cartoon is persuasive. The symbolism of the Statue of Liberty makes me think about my rights as a woman and what the candidates are planning to do with them. Obviously they have different opinions because they are going in different directions.

6. What other techniques could the artist have used to make this cartoon more persuasive?

I don’t think the artist needs any more techniques to make this cartoon more persuasive.

2201 About Me Scratch

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2201 WebQuest Worksheet

Efficiency Expert

WebQuest	Strengths	Weaknesses
Grow School Greens	Love it! This is a great idea.	I’m not sure if this would work in our area because of the time restraints due to the winter season being a large part of the school year.
Where is My Hero?	I think this WebQuest has a lot of good examples of heroes.	Not a good use of time. There is a lot of work involved for just a small amount of learning.
Underground Railroad	I feel students would enjoy this WebQuest. Great use of time. Students get to reenact history.	I didn’t find any weaknesses.
Ice Cream	Easy to follow. Short activity.	I’m not sure what the students are learning.
Ancient Egypt	Easy to follow.  Different layout.	Not too sure about the conclusion. What are they learning about Ancient Egypt?

Scratch Tutorial

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2201 Scratch

2201 No Class Activity #2 Gardens of Time

The Garden of Time game is so addictive! It definitely reflects five things schools could learn from video games.

1.       Production.- The student gets to design their own garden. They can purchase items of their own choice making it more personal than a textbook.

2.       Ordered Problems.-The game starts by having you find hidden objects then progresses to making you find the differences between two pictures. This is building difficulty.

3.       The Cycle of Expertise.- I feel this is a big bonus to the video game. The next scene doesn’t unlock until you earn all four stars of the scene you are on. This is great because the students get the right amount of individual practice before continuing. They can simply enjoy playing and not feel rushed on to a level they are not ready for.

4.       Context.- This game has characters that pop up and tell you the directions when they change (kind of like a story).  There are also characters that prompt you to do things that help you succeed and progress.

5.       Taking Relationships into consideration.- You are encouraged to invite friends from your circle to be your neighbor. There are also times when you can help out a friend or give them hidden gifts. These gifts enable your friends to solve problems (like helping them with energy).

3351 Double Entry Journal #10

Reading and writing are ongoing processes. The more practice students get the better they become. Therefore, all teachers should include reading and writing in their instruction because each subject is different which increases the students’ exposure to different types of material.

Some research-based strategies that support writing instruction for students are:

·         Low-stakes writing assignments-explaining key concepts, summarizing, or outlining.

·         Provide multiple forms of feedback-peer editing, whole class discussion, student reflections, and brief one-on-one conferences.

·         Employ variety in texts and their presentation-use a variety of text (not just a textbook).

·         Employ a variety of levels of reading difficulty-scaffold learning and offer text with various degrees of difficulty.

2201 No Class Assignment

How a Ragtag band created Wikipedia

Three things I learned:

·         Two million total articles only 600,000+ are in English. Only around 1/3 of the traffic are English visitors.

·         Only one employee, lead software developer, the rest are volunteers.

·         Only about 18% of the edits are done anonymously.

Two things I agreed with:

·         Wikipedia should be neutral in controversial issues.

·         Freely licensed textbooks are the next big thing in education.

One thing I disagreed with:

·         I don’t know of anything I disagreed with.

Wikipedia Pretty Accurate But Hard to Read

I found this article surprising because I often find the information on Wikipedia to be much easier to understand. It is for this reason I go there when I need a good starting point when writing a paper.

How often do I use Wikipedia to write papers, in the ways described in 4 Ways to Use Wikipedia Never Cite IT

I fall in a category somewhere between always and sometimes when using Wikipedia in the ways described. However, I have never cited Wikipedia as a source of reference.

Wikipedia Reliability Worksheet

1.       There aren’t any cleanup banners to indicate problems.

2.      I read through the article and it seems to meet the requirements.

3.      There are many references and for the most part they seem reliable.

4.      The only rating I found is the article could be improved to at least a B rating by following eleven easy steps. The issues being discussed are terminology and citations.

5.      I rate this article partially reliable because there were no cleanup banners and there were many references, but there was still room for improvements after looking at the discussion topics.

2201 Double Journal Entry #8

a.What is Wikipedia? Wikipedia is a multilingual, Web-based encyclopedia project.

b. How would you answer the question posed in this piece “How reliable can a source be when anyone can edit it?”? With many people watching any errors or vandalism should be caught quickly.

c. Who do the creators of Wikipedia place their trust in when it comes to weeding out misinformation? They put their trust in the “wisdom of crowds.”

d. Why did founder Larry Sanger leave Wikipedia? He believed it should give more authority to experts. He created a new site and it does that.

e. What would abuse or vandalism look like on a Wikipedia page? Vandalism would look like false information.

f. What do the statistics quoted in the third paragraph of this piece reveal? They reveal the encyclopedia is among the top 10 most-visited sites on the internet around the world and it is found in many types of language.

g. Why do you think Wikipedia is so successful? I think it is successful because of the many people who help edit the articles.

h. Why might Wikipedia’s creators not want to accept advertising? I believe they may not want to accept advertisers because it may take away from the credibility of the site.

i. How does Wikiscanner help increase the reliability of Wikipedia entries? Wikiscanner allows them to check the IP addresses of anonymous editors.

2201 Think Aloud

Think 1

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3351 WebQuest

Cait and I decided to use a WebQuest that she made in her Instructional Tech class. Students will be using Google Earth to complete assigned jobs. We will be working on the assessments and rewording some of the site. We have also decided to change it up by using a different location.

We are considering the following CSO’s:
SS.O.4.4.2 Analyze and assess the effects of and explain how people adapted to geographic factors (e.g., climate, mountains, bodies of water) on the following:

• Transportation routes
• Settlement patterns and population density
• Culture (e.g., jobs, food, clothing, shelter, religion, government)
• Interactions with others (local, national, global)

SS.S.4.4 interpret, and choose maps, globes and other geographic tools to categorize and organize information about personal directions, people, places and environments (The World in Spatial Terms).

3351 Focused Struggling Student Observation

I have been observing a struggling student from day one. This young boy has trouble focusing during math class. I have offered my assistance to help keep him on task many times. When he is monitored closely he knows the content of the lesson better than most of the students in the class. He has poor grades but knows what he’s doing. I discussed this with my host teacher and she agreed but told me he has to show her what he knows on paper so he can be assessed. I think if she would use other ways to keep him engaged during the lesson he would do better because he often plays with things inside his desk.  He has come to like me being there and often asks me to stand by his desk. Just the other day he was having trouble because he was tired. He repeatedly told me how tired he was. That was a hard day for him but he made it through. Another issue in the class is classroom management. I feel this also has a big influence on his situation.

2201 Media Awareness

Who

• Has someone taken responsibility for the content of this Web site? Advocates for Youth  Written by Brigid McKeon
• Can you contact the company or author through a real world postal address or phone number? Yes, both of these are available in the about us section.
• Can you verify the authority of any of the site's content that is attributed to other sources? Yes, there is a long list of references

What

• Does the site offer more than one viewpoint? No, this seems to be a one-sided article.
• Does the site clearly state the topics that it intends to address? Yes, the article is clear on their viewpoints.
• Does the information seem complete and consistent? Yes, the information supports its view and is consistent.

When

• 
  Is it important that the information you're looking for be absolutely current? The information is fairly current (2006). I don’t think it’s necessary to be absolutely current.
• Is a reference date provided to show when the material was put online, or when it was last updated? Yes, the copyright is 2008.
• Do the links work? Yes, the links work with no problems.

Why

• Can I get the information faster offline? Yes, this information is much faster to find on the internet.
• Does the online material I'm finding suit my needs? I would have preferred the article to have represented both views on this topic. However, the information it did give was interesting.
• Am I able to verify this information? Yes, there are additional websites offered to compare the information.

How

• How can you tell what’s what? This website is .org which anyone can apply for, and use, these letters in their domain names.
• I picked this topic after listening to the radio on my way to class. Parents in a certain county in West Virginia are going to be given a preview of the sex education class their children will be presented. Teen pregnancy is extensive in this county. I am a parent of a teenage daughter and would approve of her attending a class on sex education. We have a great relationship and talk often but it would be nice to be backed up by educators.

Click here for my website.

2201 Double Journal Entry #7

Technology can support students with learning differences. I found several ways to incorporate technology into instruction like handheld organizers, audio books, and computer programs that converts spoken language into written text. Another device I found was noise reducing headsets. I think these would be great for students who are distracted by noise. A tool that many of us use that could help students with learning differences is spell check. By using this students could do more independent work and it would help them reach their potential.

I found this great website to help struggling students. There's a whole range of ideas from graphic organizers to online manipulatives. This looks to be a great resource for teachers.

Reference

NA. (2012). Primary education oasis. Retrieved from http://www.primary-education-oasis.com/tools-for-struggling-students.html

3351 Double Journal Entry #8

Some challenges to inquiry approaches to learning are:

·         One of the most significant challenges is the skills and knowledge of the teachers. When teachers don’t fully understand the complexities of inquiry-based learning, they may simply think of this approach “unstructured,” and may, as a result, fail to provide proper scaffolding, assessment, and redirection.

·         Students may lack the background knowledge needed to make sense of the inquiry.

·         Students may have difficulty developing logical arguments and evidence to support their claims.

·         Students often find it hard to determine how to work together, manage their time and the complexity of the work, and sustain motivation in the face of setbacks or confusion.

·         Teachers must learn how to juggle a host of new responsibilities and implementation issues—from carving out the time needed for extended inquiry to developing new classroom-management techniques.

Make connections between project-based learning and three research based strategies.

·         Project-based learning involves completing complex tasks that usually result in a real-life creation. One way of helping students is Simulations and Games. Providing students the opportunity to visualize and model improves their chances for understanding. Students are able to work through situations in a variety of different ways without fear of failing with severe consequences. I think of Dr. Smith when I hear the word simulation. We did several in her class. One of them helped us understand production.

·         Homework and Practice is a strategy that should increase understanding. The activity should match the learning goal. This is a subject close to my heart. The principal at my daughter’s school asks that parents spot check their child’s homework nightly. He doesn’t want you to check it all because the teachers have to be able to tell what the student needs more practice with.

·         Cooperative learning is a good way to help students figure out how to work together. This is another topic that takes me back to Dr. Smith’s class. It’s not just group work. She would place us in a group and each person was assigned a job within the group. This way everyone was contributing.

References

Research-based strategies. (n.d.). Retrieved from http://www.netc.org/focus/strategies/

2201 Magazine Cover

2201 Double Journal Entry #6

Media literacy skills involve using search engines, creating Web sites and online profiles, participating in social networking and more. Traditional literacy skills consist of comprehension and writing. Students need the traditional skills to check credibility of the Internet sources they use. These skills seem to supplement each other quite nicely.

Quote

“Choosing appropriate search engines, following relevant links, and judging the validity of information are difficult challenges, not only for students of all ages, but also for most adults, including many teachers.”

Image

I am one of the adults this quote refers to. As I have stated many times before, I am not a tech savvy person. I have concerns about how to teach children about appropriate Internet sources. The image I chose is a collection of some of the many domains out there. How do you know which ones are credible? My daughter was told to compare the information on three websites and if they all match then it’s probably trustworthy. Is that true?

References

David, Jane. "Educational Leadership." ASCD. N.p., March 2009. Web. 22 Feb 2012. <http://www.ascd.org/publications/educational-leadership/mar09/vol66/num06/Teaching-Media-Literacy.asp&xgt;.

Green, D. (Photographer). (2010). Domains & websites. [Print Photo]. Retrieved from http://davidgreen.com/tag/search-engines/

3351 Double Journal Entry #7

1. Read the Introduction. What "dominant paradigm" is showing signs of wear? The instructional model of the teacher and the textbook as the primary sources of knowledge is the “dominant paradigm” that is showing wear.

2. According to the research, how does Project-Based Learning support student learning better than traditional approaches? Describe three benefits and cite the studies. Project-Based Learning enables students to transfer their learning to new kinds of situations and problems and to use knowledge more proficiently in performance situations.

·         The students engaged in project-based learning demonstrated a significant increase in scores on a critical-thinking test, as well as increased confidence in their learning.  Shepherd (1998)

·         Those who had participated in the project-based curriculum did better on conceptual problems presented in the National Exam. Boaler (1997, 1998)

·         The students in the multimedia program earned higher scores than the comparison group on content mastery, sensitivity to audience, and coherent design. They performed equally well on standardized test scores of basic skills. (Penuel, Means, & Simkins, 2000).

3. According to the research, how does Problem-Based Learning support student learning better than traditional approaches? Describe three benefits and cite the studies.

·         Meta-analyses of studies have found that medical students who are enrolled in problem-based curricula score higher on clinical problem-solving measures and on actual ratings of clinical performance (Vernon & Blake, 1993; Albanese & Mitchell, 1993

·         Additional studies have demonstrated that students who participated in problem-based experiences are better able to generate accurate hypotheses and coherent explanations (Hmelo, 1998b; Schmidt et al., 1996)

·         They also experience larger gains in conceptual understanding in science (Williams, Hemstreet, Liu, & Smith, 1998).

4. According to the research, how does Learning by Design support student learning better than traditional approaches? Describe three benefits and cite the studies.

·         Design activities are better for developing technical and subject matter knowledge (Newstetter, 2000)

·         Design activities are better for helping students develop understanding of complex systems (Perkins, 1986).

·         Design projects require students to set constraints, generate ideas, create prototypes, and develop plans through storyboarding or other representational practices. These are all critical twenty-first century skills.  (Newstetter, 2000).

5. What are the differences between the three approaches? Project-based learning explores real-world problems and situations. Problem-based learning students learn through the process of problem solving. Designed-based approach students create, assess, and redesign products through stages of revisions.

6. In your opinion, what is the most important benefit to learning that is common across the three types of inquiry-based learning approaches? “Students engaged in inquiry-based learning develop content knowledge and learn increasingly important twenty-first century skills, such as the ability to work in teams, solve complex problems, and to apply knowledge gained through one lesson or task to other circumstances.”  I feel it is important for the students to be able to apply what they are learning in school to real life situations.

References:

Baron, , B., & Darling-Hammond, L. (1991). Teaching for meaningful learners. Retrieved from http://www.edutopia.org/pdfs/edutopia-teaching-for-meaningful-learning.pdf