CUR+503+Discussion+Board

Module 1 Discussion Board
As I read Ch 2 I found myself thinking about my teaching, my classroom, and my students. Chapter 2 was incredibly scientific but I was able to make connections and think about practices I use in my teaching. I think that as good educators we incorporate things naturally and don’t really think about the science behind them. Teaching social studies gives me daily opportunities to incorporate context (p. 40) into my lessons. By including context I not only make the information more fun, but also more meaningful to the students. My new curriculum encompasses the whole world. This is the first time that most children are hearing/reading about some of these countries, let alone being able to understand the cultures, geography, and climate of them. I use many Reading Apprenticeship activities in class to help the students make connections, understand their learning, and reinforce their learning. Reading Apprenticeship is a program that focuses on metacognition. I often include compare/contrast (to the United States or their own lives) prompts to build a better understanding. In class last week a student asked me what it meant in the reading when it stated that a specific religion dominated a particular region in Russia for many years when it was part of the Soviet Union. To help the students understand dominated, I put it in context using the Redskins playoff with the Seahawks explaining that the Redskins dominated the first quarter. The students understood immediately! Simply reading the content was not enough for the students. I made it meaningful. I also incorporate what students are learning in reading into my classroom. For example, when students share a story about learning something in other classes or in their own lives that are related to what we are learning in class, I make sure they understand that they have made a connection. Another activity I use is a chapter walk that requires students to skim a chapter and look at the nonfiction text features (a reading term) and make a connection, make a prediction, and make an observation about the chapter and what they will learn. I fully believe that “to make learning meaningful-and thereby build more extensive neural connections-teachers should incorporate context as much as possible” (p. 40).

** Module 2 discussion responses **
I can definitely notice effects of the primacy and recency effect in my social studies classes. I can see that these occur during class, on tests, and even when it comes to following directions in class. In my social studies classes I don’t typically have any lists that are verbal that students need to follow. To combat issues with students remembering anything (text pages, directions, lists for tests, etc.) I make a power point for every class that I teach. The power point works in many ways, but in this respect it is helpful so the students can just look at the screen to see where we are and where we are headed in class. One activity I use at the beginning of each new section is review of the key terms. Instead of just reading or listing the key terms I have the students look at the key terms, find them in the chapter, and we have a class discussion about what the words mean. We also discuss if we have studied the words in other chapters and how they relate to us or our town, school, etc. This gives the students a context for each of the words and it helps to keep the primacy and recency effects at bay.

I never really thought about instructional self efficacy, until I read the section in the text. It only makes sense that, “personal beliefs about one’s capabilities to help students learn” (Schunk, 2012, p. 153) would affect student’s learning. I have always believed that a teacher’s demeanor and how he/she presents information is very important so I can see that instructional self efficacy falls right into this frame of mind. It is extremely important for a teacher to feel comfortable with what he/she teaches and to be willing to take on challenging tasks for both the teacher and the student. I was in an interesting position for my first four years of teaching. Each year for my first four I changed grades from 3rd to 4th to 5th to 6th. Every one of those years I felt like a brand new teacher because I had new curriculum, new teaching teams, and new administrators. However, I have always been willing and interested to try new methods or activities with the students and to require them to be challenged. I always require (from students and myself) a positive classroom environment, I support and encourage students’ ideas, and constantly reflect on my teaching to address the student’s needs (Ashton and Webb) so I must have had a high instructional self efficacy although at times I felt like I swimming against the current. Typically students in my classes do well and try hard because I do what I can to help them have a high self efficacy. I am really enthralled by this section and I want to be sure to strive to continue with a positive attitude and I hope that if I ever become a coach, leader, or mentor of any form I help to foster a high instructional self efficacy.

Module 3 Discussion responses
Just last week in my social studies class I had students do a chapter review activity that most of the students really enjoyed and did an excellent job completing. The students were to write a poem (s) of their choice to explain West and Central Africa. They could choose between an acrostic, 3 haikus, or a cinquain. My class with gifted students was also given the choice of an I AM poem which is a bit more challenging. This activity addressed task loosely by having different activities with similar outcome. Students had the authority to choose which poem they wanted to complete so they had independence. I walk around the room as students complete activities and give them recognition by commenting, hanging some in the hall, and allowing students to hit the Easy Button after sharing with the class. The grouping was individual for this assignment. The monitoring and accessing with this is mostly formative and I have discussions with them as I walk around and read what they are doing. I am able to immediately assess if the students have understood and pulled out the main points from the chapter. Most students had sufficient time and if someone couldn’t finish during class he/she was able to complete it at another time. I believe this activity was multidimensional. There were choices for the students as far as which type of poem to create and which aspects about Central and Western Africa to include. This also allowed for differentiation. The students were working individually. The performance evaluations are in between unidimensional and multidimensional. They were graded on different assignments, but they shared the poems with the class if they wished. Overall, this activity was a great success and I will do something similar in the future. The students enjoyed it, it gave them the opportunity to review their material, there was student choice so they had ownership, and I was able to see which students understood the material.

“Constructivist environments should create rich experiences that encourage learning” (Schunck, 2012, pg. 261). I envision a constructivist teacher’s classroom looking and sounding something like this: As one walks in, he/she will see the teacher walking around the room stopping, discussing, and questioning students to assess whether they understand the material and to reflect on the activity. The students will probably sitting in small groups discussing information, explaining the how and why of their work, questioning each other, or sharing opinions and thoughts. Students would be actively engaged what they are doing and all members would be involved in the conversation in some way. Metacognition, or thinking about thinking, could be addressed by having students explain their thoughts and answers either during partner, group, or classroom discussions or in assessments. This type of classroom may not be as quiet as other classrooms, but the students are engaged in learning from discussions with others and thinking about the what, how, and why of what they are learning.

** Module #4 Discussion Responses **
====Students are participating in metacognitive types of activities almost daily in my classroom. These activities lend themselves well to self-regulation. I believe that rehearsal plays a big role in students learning about social studies. Before each new section the class reviews the vocabulary terms. The definition directly from the book is read and we discuss what it means, if we have seen it before, and examples of it. Summarizing is a practice I like students to use often, whether it a verbal or written summary. Stop and Draw and a Talking to the Text activity require elaboration and comprehension. In Talking to the Text students read a given part of the text and they respond to prompts about what they read. I give students graphic organizers to complete activities and take notes, which is organization. MVP/VIP (Most Valuable Point/Very Important Point) is an activity that encompasses comprehension, monitoring, and rehearsal. The students read a particular section and must determine 3 very important points and the most valuable point. They then paraphrase each of those points. After paraphrasing, the students must write a 25 word abstract (summary) of section they just read. Students share their mvp, vips, and abstracts with partners. After sharing they work with their partners to write a brand new abstract.==== ====All of the work previously mentioned is important, but I believe that using affective learning techniques is just as important, if not more so. Students who have a good self-efficacy, are in a positive environment, and have good attitudes will perform much better. My expectation is that these will be evident in my classroom every day. I consistently walk around the room and look at student’s work and give them feedback so they know what they are doing well and what can be improved. I am the most important model to my students when they are in my classroom for the 50 minutes and I make sure they are able to learn from me, not only in the way I explain or show work to them, but also how I treat them and what is important to me. We have many class discussions I call Sharing Shape in which the students summarize and reflect on what they have learned, and they are allowed to carry on the discussion with me as a facilitator only. They love this time.====

Revelations:
Reading the text by Schunk was really interesting for me. I constantly reflected on my teaching practices as I read through the chapters. Sometimes I was a little overwhelmed by some of the scientific terms, but overall it was very informative. I could put theory behind a lot of my practices. I believe that as a good educator, one does things knowing it is the right thing to do, but he/she doesn’t always know the why. One revelation was something that I mentioned in my learning log for chapter 9. I was interesting in the statement, “Establishing a classroom environment that builds self-efficacy is conducive to improving writing” (Schunk, 2012, pg. 439). I know that building self-efficacy is important in many respects, but I never thought about it improving writing. I will continue to have my classes share their writing and have discussions about it. I will also continue to put at least one comment that is positive on my students writing rubrics. My classroom environment is very positive to begin with so I hope that what I am doing is helpful to my students. Another kind of revelation I had was that I believe I follow mostly the constructivist view in my teaching. I had thought about it before in some of my other in which I studied different theories, but I now feel like that is what I subscribe to most. Lastly, this class has improved my self-efficacy. As previously mentioned, I reflected on my work as I read through every page of the text and I feel good being able to put theories behind my practice. I also enjoyed sharing and getting ideas on the discussion board and receiving comments from peers.