Group Differences Forum

I think the group differences forum has been interesting and has sparked a lot of conversation. I enjoyed hearing people's opinions on different topics. One thing I learned from the discussion is boys tend to be given more attention than girls in school, which caused some good discussion. Also, I learned that there is talk about a program that requires your child to be in school and do well in order to receive welfare  There were great points on both sides of the argument and it is a really tricky situation. The gender and disabilities group was not as interesting because I believe many of us have already learned so much about building self-concept and self-efficacy in our students with special needs. There was no really great discussion over this topic, but rather everyone stating facts from our special education classes, and nothing that lead to debate. I would have like to see more on this topic. I would suggest taking this article out. Since I am unaware of the other articles, I would not necessarily say take out the topic.

I learned many things that could help me in my classroom such as to pay attention to boys and girls and be aware of any biases I may have. I also learned I need to understand where families in poverty are coming from and how I can best serve them and help their child succeed. I also need to be aware of my misconceptions of different groups because there are many parents who are trying but still fall within the poverty line. Like we discussed, most parents really do want their child to succeed. Last, I learned that it is important for teachers to be prepared to teach ELL students and to be equipped with the proper skills. These students are going to be in every classroom at all different levels, and since not all schools can hire ELL teachers, each general education teacher needs to be prepared.

Overall, this forum was enlightening and covered many different issues. Many topics I had discussed before, while other conversations brought a new perspective. 

Linguistic Characteristics & Abilities

I am going to be interning in 2nd grade next year, so my focus on this PLE will be K-2 grades in the Table 2.2 on p. 51 in Ormrod's book. At this age, they know about 14,000 words by age 6, still have difficulty understanding complex sentences, and have mastered most sounds. For the most part, they understand basic etiquette in conversations but are reluctant to initiate conversations for adults. 

Some strategies that you could use to help students would be to read age-appropriate books to enhance vocab. The teacher can talk about new words, show pictures, and explain them. They could even go on a word wall or in a word journal. Another way is to ask students to construct a narrative about what they did over the weekend, over the holidays, etc. 

Another way to expand this that I have seen in a kindergarten classroom is every weekend, Clifford, the stuffed animal, goes home with a special friend in the class who has been great all week. On Monday, the student brings Clifford back along with a summary in Clifford's journal of what Clifford did during the weekend. Even though the student is unable to write, the student tells the parents. Then, the student can verbally summarize it, or read it, aloud to the class.

Self-Efficacy & Self-Regulation

Self-efficacy and self-regulation can contribute to the case study with Lisa. Self-efficacy is "a person’s self-constructed judgment about his or her ability to execute certain behaviors or reach certain goals." I do not think that Lisa has a high self-efficacy because she is always disruptive and does not strive to learn and work together with her groupmates. As the teacher, it might be a good idea to help boost Lisa's self-efficacy by talking to her about her previous experiences with groups. Maybe she has had a bad experiences with groups because if a student has low self-efficacy then it is possible it is due to one's previous failures or previous failures within a group. It would also help to build Lisa's confidence in her group-working ability. Maybe she does not think she can be good at a different position within the group, and it is important to highlight her strengths to build her self-efficacy. Also, help her build skills that will help her work in a group better.

Self-regulation is watching and monitoring one's personal progress and being motivated to learn. Teaching Lisa how to self-regulate would help her become a better group member because she would understand that even though she is working in a group, she is responsible for her part, her attitude, and her motivation. She can monitor her progress and participation and cooperation within the group. She can also learn where her strengths and weaknesses are so she can be aware of what areas she needs to pay extra close attention or work extra hard at. In addition, each group member can self-reflect and see what he/she did great and what areas might need to be improved. In addition, it may be helpful for Lisa to set goals to work towards so she can see her progress. 

I found an article about goal-setting and self-efficacy during self-regulation that has many great suggestions and further explanations. You can check it out below by clicking on the title. 

Goal Setting and Self-Efficacy During Self-Regulated Learning

Behaviorist vs. Constructivist Case Study

My case study is about Lisa, who is a student in a small group who is causing problems. She gets angry if she does not get the job she wants and will not cooperate if she does not get her way. Here is a list of a few behaviorist views that may work in encouraging productive behaviors or discouraging undesirable behaviors. Later, I will list cognitive or constructivist view points that may work in this scenario. 

Behaviorist

• Positive reinforcement: any time Lisa does something good in a group, reward her
• Presentation punishment: Make Lisa do something, like silent lunch, no recess, to make her cooperate in her group work
• Removal Punishment: take away points from her grade to make her cooperate

Cognitive/Constructivist

• Meet the Lisa where she is: ask Lisa to reason why it is important to be a part of a group and to do her part, relate it to a real world situation.
• Ask deeper questions: Try to find out if there is something else going on that is causing Lisa to act out. Is there some thought, feeling, or emotion going on that is causing the misbehaving? 

The behaviorist tools are make Lisa more extrinsically motivated and reward or punish her for what she does. She may learn to behave but will not understand why it is important. This may lead to repeated behaviors later on in life in a different situation. Constructivist approaches require Lisa to think about her cooperation and help her to be intrinsically motivated to participate. If it works, it will help her set a good way for the rest of her life when she works in groups. 

Here is an article of by a teacher who explains how his school is trying to move from behaviorist behavior management to constructivist behavior plan. 
http://davidwees.com/content/restitution-guide-classroom-management

Barb Rentenbach Presentation

I went to Barb's presentation on Friday and it was very different from what I expected. I did not realize that she is mute and had a sever type of autism. It was interesting to see her type out what she wanted to say and to see her story behind her book. I was really amazed at how great of a writer she is, her high vocabulary, and witty humor. Even though she needs a little bit of extra help writing, she still does a phenomenal job.

The presentation by the psychologist, Barb's friend, was enlightening of what it is like to be an individual with autism and how it affects you. She also gave me a lot of insight of how I can help the students with autism in my class. A main point she said was learn from those you serve. This is true of all my future students; I should learn from them in all situations and all types of people. It is important to make connections to our students with autism because if we can find a connection to something they are interested in or like, then they will become more successful. Where is the student comfortable? Take them to that place, whatever it is, whatever they are good at, and it will help them to succeed.

Also, build on their strengths that they already have and develop them further. For Barb, her strength was writing, but it took awhile for anyone to notice because they looked at her disability and not her as a person. As a teacher, it is important to seek the motives of every student and to help build on what they are good at. Treat the person, not the autism. That is something that will not change, so it is crucial to focus on the person because they desire friends, companionship, and success just like anyone else. It is also important to remember that students with autism may be hyper-sensitive to things around them, whether it is knowing if you are honest or if it is a noise in the room.

The presentation made me feel a little bit uncomfortable at first because I have not really been around anyone with autism and the ones that I have been around have been young students. It was neat to see how much her friend cared about her and how many friends she had. It was so sad when she was asked what her childhood was like and her response was lonely. Unfortunately, this is probably true for a lot of students. As a teacher, I feel like it is part of my responsibility to make sure a student with autism, or any child for that matter, feel included and accepted into the classroom.

It was a great presentation and I am glad I had the opportunity to go. It was very insightful and very different from anything I would have ever gone to.

Metacognitive Skills

Reading lessons are a great place to use metacognitive skills to help students better understand what they are reading.  If I were teaching reading lesson, I would introduce the basic topic to students and then have them read a page or two (or read it out loud to them) and then use some metacognitive skills. I would have students ask themselves if they understood what they just read by asking them to talk about what they read.  Then I would ask them to make predictions about what will happen in the story and make connections within the book or to other subject areas. As they continued to read, I would ask them to make inferences and use context clues if they did not understand a word or the material they read.  As the students finished reading, I would have them think about what they have read and summarize it. It is important for readers to think about what they have read and to mentally check to see if they have understood. Then, to check for comprehension I would have students complete an activity such as a graphic organizer. If the story focused on cause and effect, I would have them write down causes and effects from the story and support it with evidence from  text.

Here is a great website that has sample lessons that incorporate metacognitive skills.

Constructivist Lesson

For my lesson I will do second grade vocabulary. Let’s say the students have ten vocabulary words in their unit that they need to know. One activity I would have them do is play charades with the words. They would break up into small groups, have one player choose a card with a vocab word on it, have the player act it out while others guess, and then take turns doing this game of charades. Before I broke them up into groups, I would first go over the vocabulary words, such as how to pronounce them and what the definition is to make sure they didn't come across any words they had no clue what they were. I think it is good for the teacher to give a brief introduction first. After they acted in groups, they would, as a group, write the word, draw a picture, and write a sentence using the vocab word. This may not be as much of a constructivist approach, but I feel it would be help to see that they mastered the content. Another option would be to have students explain why they chose to act a word out a certain way or what made the guesser guess the word in order to check for understanding.

These activities are social activities where students would work in a group. The student does have to work individually to think of a way to act out a word. If they cannot act it out, it might mean they do not know the word. I think charades allows for guessing and conversation about what the actor is doing which is a good way to structure activities. Conversation about the content and verbalizing it is a good way to help learn it. If they practice, they will learn these skills and do them automatically over time.

Check out the following website for additional ways to incorporate constructivist lessons in the classroom. It might also clarify or reinforce the ideas you have about it. There are several additional links on the website to learn more. Click here to go to Classroom Applications of Constructivism.

Memory Process

Knowing how your students’ memories work and the memory process can help a teacher plan her lessons and teaching. She can understand why students may not understand or remember something they learned.  With the information process model, a teacher can understand that students have multiple stimuli going into their brain throughout the day and some of it may get weeded out. In order remember it students must encode it or rehearse it. Teachers can help give meaning to what students are learning, rather than just lecturing and presenting information. If a student does an activity that relates to what they are talking about, it will give the subject meaning.

Also, teachers can help students remember certain things through repeating it, mnemonics, organization, elaboration or through visual imagery. Students will learn different and some strategies may work better for certain students than others. Anytime you can create an analogy or help organize information, this could possibly help students remember it. It is important to make sure to encourage kids to be creative with their memory devices because it is whatever works for them…there is not right or wrong answer.

This is a great website called Let Kids Lead where students have shared their favorite mnemonics devices. They are pretty clever!

Cognitive Learning

One important concept in cognitive learning is how information is processed. While the diagram showed in class may be advanced for students, I believe it applies to them and still have valuable information they should know. Students, and teachers, need to know why they remember certain things and why they forget others. It is important for teachers to recognize what information students might remember better and what information needs more work. One main thing about this process is that encoding or rehearsal must take place in order for the information to be readily retrieved. This means that whatever the teacher is teaching or whatever the students are learning must have meaning.  As a teacher, I want to know how to help my students remember important material that will be built upon, such as in math, and other important concepts in all areas that will help them as they continue. 

This may be using a certain learning strategy to help them remember “I before e except after c” or using an acronym. This could look like the teacher having students create projects that will help ingrain the information in their memory rather than having them memorize for a test and forget. Students may practice and rehearse a passage they have to memorize over and over until they have said it so many times and practiced it that they will never forget. Teachers can help students by telling students how the information is used in the real world or how it will benefit them. Many times math may seem pointless an useless, and after that class students will forget. A teacher could connect the importance of math to how it could be used in the real world and how it is built upon in 

additional classes.

In a different class, we learned about a great website that has a bunch of learning strategies for all subject areas. I believe this tool would be helpful to a teacher in helping give acronyms to difficult concepts or showing them the importance of a subject. The website is called The Learning Toolbox and it is a great resource to check out.

Assessment

One lesson third grade students learn is multiplication facts. Many students struggle to learn math facts. This is one area where it is easier to assess where students are at and really calculate the growth.  After studying these facts for a little while, I would give a standard test to all students with a certain number of math facts, say around 25 and give them five minutes to do it. This would be a formal assessment to see how much they know, what we need to work on specifically, and can track progress. I would also give this same test at the end to see how much they improved. These are two formal assessments I would use. I could also use a different math test to mix things up, but then I would not see how much they improved on the same test.

 As we work on the facts, I would use two informal assessments. I heard an idea from a teacher called “Number Talks.” In Number Talks, the teacher puts a math fact on the board, and students calculate it in their head mentally. They try to work the problems different ways until the teacher calls time. For each way they solve the problem, the hold up a finger next to their chest. Then, students share all answers out loud and then explain how they came to the answer.  This method helps students see how students come up with answers and see why they may get wrong answers. Teachers can see who knows their facts and who struggles. Many times when students are explaining their answers, they realize where they messed up and got the wrong answer.

Another informal assessment strategy is to play a math facts game. The teacher could have math facts or numbers on index cards or on the board. Students have to use a fly swatter to slap the correct answer to the question. This will help the teacher see what they students know. I could also see the assessment being stressful on some students because it is a race. Another informal assessment would be to give students an “exit slip” or “ticket out the door” problem or space to write questions to see where they are at and how they feel about the facts.

This is a link to a great blog by a third grade teacher in Colorado. She has many posts about assessments she has done to help her and her students. One great idea she had was to have a bookmark with different levels so students can monitor where they are at, and if they need extra help to learn something. 

Creating a Learning Environment

There are so many ways that a teacher can help create a learning environment that is conducive to learning, and to go along with that there are many ways where a teacher can, unknowingly at times, detract from a conducive learning environment. One of the ways we talked about creating a successful learning environment is having good classroom management. When I am a teacher, I believe one of the number one things to help towards this is organization. This is organization in many areas: teacher’s desk, papers, students seating, class materials, books, etc. If you are organized, then you know where things are and the day will go a lot smoother when you can find everything you need. Also, students will see this and it is a great way to teach them organization skills. At my placement in a third grade class, the teacher bought a binder with dividers for every student. She teaches them how to set up a binder and keep it organized. At the end of the year they have all the important materials needed to study for the TCAP as well as a great resource for the future. She said that she believes it is important to teach them these skills, especially before middle school, because no one else may teach them.

Another way to help create a great learning environment is to have limits and rules but not too many. If there are a bunch of strict rules that are heavily enforced, they will not be able to remember them and will be so worried about messing up that they won’t feel comfortable to take risks and make a mistake. This is one thing my placement teacher is really good at. Her class has simple rules such as respect one another. She can share stories with her class and be silly, but when it is time to focus, they listen to her. At one point during the day, the students were at centers working in groups. The room was noisy but the teacher said she didn’t care because they were working together and learning. They were doing what they were supposed to so why should she get onto them for not always whispering. I thought this was a great way to manage the class. I could go on and on about ways to create a learning environment that is conducive to learning, but these are my big top two ways.

This is a great website of classroom management ideas. If you explore on the site, you will find so many organization ideas, team management, and other classroom management ideas.

My CSEL case study is for elementary education where Lisa is causing a disturbance in her group. At this point, the behavior does not seem to go away and just ignoring it would not be a good thing to do. I believe that I would being with giving Lisa cues that I am watching what she is doing whether it is by staring at her to let her know I am aware or by going over to her group and standing by them. If the behavior continues, I would pull her aside and address the situation. I would ask her what is going on, is there a problem I am not aware of, and remind her of her role and duty as a group member. I would tell her that I need her to do this job and explain we have to rotate jobs. I would explain to Lisa why it is important to be a member of a group and how it is something you will always have to do, even when you are a grown-up. I might even include a mini lesson for the whole class about group work and participation and conflict resolution within a group.

 At this point, I might send her parent an e-mail just making them aware of the situation if behavior had not improved. If after this Lisa was still not cooperating, I would find a form of discipline that would work for her by telling her I need her to do this or you will/will not have….. (silent lunch, independent work, recess, behavior marks, etc.).  If a discipline was not effective enough and the behavior kept continuing, I would call a parent and see if her parent might be able to come in for a conference with the student and we would be able to talk about her behavior and the reasoning behind it. 

Mighty Motivation

In class, we discussed intrinsic and extrinsic motivation. Intrinsic motivation is when the student is self-motivated and is doing it in order to satisfy an internal goal. Extrinsic motivation is when a student is motivated by outside sources such as a reward.

For me, it depends on the subject and class on whether I am intrinsically motivated or extrinsically motivated. In a class I really enjoy and see the benefit of learning the material, I am intrinsically motivated. For example, in my education classes, I am very intrinsically motivated because I want to learn how to be a great teacher and am interested in doing well. I am motivated to learn because I know the material covered in these classes will be to my benefit in my future teaching career. The teacher doesn’t have to give me any kind of reward because I am motivated by internal means.

On the other hand, if I do not enjoy a class and do not see how the material covered will benefit me, then I am not motivated to learn at all or may be extrinsically motivated depending on the circumstance.  If I am rewarded for the effort and work I do, such as a good grade or an extra credit opportunity, then I am more likely to be motivated. This has occurred in many of my General Education classes and Spanish classes. In my Spanish classes, I did not see the point of learning old age poetry and did not see how it would benefit me.  I was not at all intrinsically motivated. The only reason I was motivated was to pass the class and receive at least the C that I needed to pass.

Having experienced both of these types of motivation helps me better understand my future students. There may be some subjects that students are really interested in and are motivated on their own, while other subjects or material may require some type of extrinsic reward.  As teachers, we need to learn how to make students intrinsically motivated by sparking their interest and keeping the curiosity alive. In addition, letting students have some control over their learning, as in choosing project topics or help create classroom rules will help students be intrinsically motivated. For the times when students are not, a reward may need to be given. As we discussed, the teacher needs to make sure these are unexpected and help keep the students motivated.

There are many ways to motivate children, whether it is intrinsically or extrinsically. As teachers, we need to find the balance and find out what works for each student. We need to know our students and figure out what motivates them and what makes them unmotivated. If children seem unmotivated, maybe the teacher needs to come up with a way to make the material more interesting. Students who are more motivated will learn better.

This article from Vanderbilt is a great resource for an overview of intrinsic and extrinsic motivation. It  details some of the advantages as well as disadvantages for each type of motivation. Also, you can check out this short video that helps you see the difference between intrinsic and extrinsic motivation and how to help children become intrinsically motivated.

Welcome to Ed Psych 401!

Today was the first day of Educational Psychology 401 and it was great! I was very nervous going into the class since we had homework before the first day of class, but once I went all my worries went away! Anne seems like she is going to be a great teacher and really has a passion for this class and teaching. I am so excited to learn more about all the topics.

My personal objectives for this class are to learn how to better help my students. I see that we will be talking about classroom management, classroom assessments, personal and social development as well as many other topics. These are the topics that interest me the most. I hope to gain more insight to how my students will grow, learn, and process and why they may have certain behaviors. In some previous psychology classes, I have found the topics difficult, but I have a feeling this class will be able to provide me with practical use in my classroom. 

As I mentioned above,  classroom management, classroom assessments, personal and social development are the topics that catch my interest at first glance of the syllabus. I want to have a comfortable, and safe classroom environment and will strive to learn all I can to help create it. At this point, I don't have too many concerns. It always takes a week or so to get into the swing of things and learn each teacher's routine. I think once I get a handle on how everything works, I will be just fine! I am very excited for this class and am happy to know now that it is nothing like Ed. Psych 210!

In class, we learned about quantitative and qualitative research. Quantitative can be easily converted into numbers where as qualitative cannot. We also touched on action research which includes finding out how you can work more effectively in your school.

If you want to find out more about what makes quantitative different from qualitative research, visit this website.