1. Week 3: Establishing a Positive Learning tool
1.1. Get to know your students
1.1.1. A key factor of a positive and safe environment in the classroom is getting to know your students. Its important to learn the background of students because it builds positive relationships and cements the teacher as a mentor and leader. Getting to know students also identifies weaknesses and strengths along with different learning styles. using a simple activity such as the one linked gets students engaged and getting to know one another. It is also catered to the 21st century student and can connect better to their interests.
1.2. Differentiated Instruction
1.2.1. Fairness and Equity
1.2.2. Explosive Child
1.3. Tribes Gibbs, Jeanne (2006).
1.3.1. Mutual Respect (yourself, others, things) No Put Downs Appreciations Attentive Listening Participation/Right to Pass
1.4. Classroom Management
1.4.1. Poster
1.4.2. Meaningful Post
1.4.2.1. here were two other themes that stood out for me. In the video “Teachers are like Gardeners”, Sir Ken Robinson provides the analogy of teachers being gardeners and plants being their students. We as teachers can’t do the work for the students, if we read all the books to the students, they will never learn how to read for instance. However, if we create a comfortable, innovative, risk-taking environment with support everywhere for our students to read on their own, they will “grow” like a plant does, they will read. It’s our job to provide the right conditions and I think this directly relates to the classroom environments. I’ve had teachers where we made class contracts, a type of code of conduct that we agreed on and it was great because it held our class accountable for our behaviour. I’ve had some classes where it was chaos because there wasn’t enough discipline or emphasis on student’s interests being taught. It’s all about providing the best environment we can for our students so that they have the absolute best conditions for learning. Finally, I loved Wagner’s idea about the importance of giving back. This is where purpose and drive is born for students and as opposed to working to get an A, they are working to solve a problem or make a discovery. I hope as a teacher to adopt this approach and teach my students the value of learning to help people and for intellectual and personal growth of character.
1.5. 21st Century Learning
1.5.1. INNOVATIVE LEARNING ENVIRONMENT PRINCIPLES Make learning and learner engagement central Ensure that learning is social and often collaborative Be highly attuned to learners’ motivations and emotions Be acutely sensitive to individual differences including in prior knowledge Be demanding for each learner but without excessive overload Assessment is critical, but must underpin learning aims and strong emphasis on formative feedback Promote “horizontal connectedness” across activities and subjects, in and out of school
1.5.2. “Look at your learning space with 21st century eyes: Does it work for what we know about learning today,or just for what we know about learning in the past?” (Sir Ken Robinson, The Third Teacher, 2010)
2. Week 4: Making instructional Descisions
2.1. Planet Zergo
2.1.1. According to 21st Century Schools, educators need to think of schools not as buildings but as “‘nerve centers, with walls that are porous and transparent, connecting teachers, students and the community to the wealth of knowledge that exists in the world” (2008, “School, Teacher, Learner,” para. 5). The role of teacher needs to shift from primarily an information dispenser to a facilitator of learning. Rather than being textbook-driven or one-size-fits-all, curriculum should be interdisciplinary, collaborative, project-based, and research-driven. The “3 Rs” of the past are being replaced by the “4 Cs”: critical thinking and problem solving, creativity and innovation, communication, and collaboration. For 21st-century students, often referred to as digital natives (Palfrey & Gasser, 2008), digital literacy (e.g., information, media) must coexist with more traditional views of literacy. Finally the concept of learners needs to extend beyond the “average” or “typical” learner; there is great variability among learners, especially in today’s increasingly diverse classroom
2.2. Inquiry-based Learning
2.2.1. s
2.2.2. Inquiry-based learning is an approach to teaching and learning that places students’ questions, ideas and observations at the centre of the learning experience. Educators play an active role throughout the process by establishing a culture where ideas are respectfully challenged, tested, redefined and viewed as improvable, moving children from a position of wondering to a position of enacted understanding and further questioning (Scardamalia, 2002).
2.2.3. “If we are only teaching what we know, our children can only do as bad as we are doing, and this is the challenge we are facing – we have to go beyond it.” (Pauli, 2009, TEDx
2.3. Student Engagement
2.3.1. From the moment a student enters a classroom, the teacher is communicating, both overtly and covertly, the value he/she places on learning and the degree of acceptance of students as individuals. The walls and artifacts chosen by the teacher can communicate a warm welcome or dull acceptance of responsibility. According to Carol Ann Tomlinson, “Environment will support or deter the student’s quest for affirmation, contribution, power, purpose, and challenge in the classroom” (2003, p. 37).
2.4. Different types of learning
2.5. Meaningful post
2.5.1. After watching Zoe Branigan-Pipe’s video, I was pleased to see the different learning tactics she used within her classroom. First of all, I just wanted to touch on the number of technological resources she had and used on a daily basis. I think the microphone system was wonderful, as children would be able to hear very clearly when the teacher was talking. Also, the use of the Smartboard was a very interactive way for children to learn and become engaged in a lesson. The webcam was a great way to communicate with teachers and children world wide, and become familiar with their learning environment. Second of all, Zoe was bringing forth the constructivist-teaching approach, where all “students develop their own cognitive structures and actively construct their knowledge and skills” (Edmunds, & Edmunds, 2015). She incorporates differentiated learning into her lessons, where children can work collaboratively to extend their creativity and knowledge, while choosing lessons they want to participate in. For example, she showed us that some students were working on making inuksuk’s while others were choosing newspaper articles to broadcast news or events that were happening throughout the world. She also utilized inquiry-based learning, where student’s ideas, questions and observations were at the center of their learning experience (2013).
3. Week 2: considering developmental differences
3.1. Adora Svitak
3.2. Growth Mindset
3.2.1. Carol Dweck researches “growth mindset”
3.2.2. Growing Success Ontario
3.3. Growth Mindset Poster
3.4. "The task of the excellent teacher is to stimulate "apparently ordinary" people to unusual effort. The tough problem is not in identifying winners: it is in making winners out of ordinary people." • K. Patricia Cross
3.5. Piaget: Basic Learning Instinct
3.5.1. • Schemes/Schemas: organizing behaviours and thoughts into coherent systems • Adaptation: adjusting to one’s surrounding environment
3.6. Vygotsky
3.6.1. • Zone of proximal development • Social interaction • Scaffolding
3.6.2. Collaborative learning enhances school as a learning community - The National
3.7. Meaningful post
3.7.1. I think the most important thing that a teacher can do is to never stop having high expectations of their students and never stop seeing their students' potential. Whenever I had a “problem class” or “disruptive students”, I always told them: “You are better than this. Let's try again. You will get it. You are smarter than you think you are.” Even when it took all of my patience, I always did my best to praise effort over ability; something that my Korean partner-teacher taught me, that resonates with Carol Dweck’s “growth mindset” of “not yet”, but you can grow, and you can learn. I hope that those students left my class knowing that I believed in their abilities. Those challenging students certainly taught me more about teaching and inspired me to learn more about teaching than many other students I had.
4. Week One: plannig for the upcoming school year
4.1. Reflective practice
4.1.1. Teaching tool for reflection
4.1.2. “Teachers, throughout history, have been trouble-makers. They accepted that role. Let us accept our role calmly too. By struggling everywhere and every day against all forms of fatalism. By inventing together the means to help students stand on their own two feet and decide on their destiny. And without forgetting, after all, to propose alternatives to a scholastic organization which has not yet truly learned how to make the student the subject of his own learning,” (Meirieu, 1997).
4.1.3. Learning goals
4.2. Stop Stealing Dreams
4.2.1. video
4.3. Steps in the research process / Linking research findings to instruction and learning
4.3.1. “Evidence-based practice: the art of solving problems of practice through the integration of the best available research combined with the practitioner’s clinical expertise and values” (Gall, Gall, & Borg, 2010, p.61).
4.4. Curricular planning / Instructional planning
4.5. Four commonplaces of education
4.5.1. Teacher Topic Setting Student
4.5.2. Meaningful Post
4.5.2.1. In this reflection, I want to focus on the commonplace that I think is most often neglected: the setting, the classroom, both the physical space and the atmosphere created therein. Students aren’t afraid to ask questions, try new things, or “fail” in a positive classroom atmosphere that praises effort and inquiry, rather than simply praising ability and the “right answers”. The physical space of the classroom itself can be decorated to be more stimulating to young learners (for instance the addition of colorful word-walls or vocabulary posters, tactile stations that allow students to experiment and build, etc.) and can promote learning simply through osmosis, self-inquiry, and observation. In classrooms with older students, displaying student work can help engage students with the physical space of their classroom. So to can collaboratively coming up with rules and expectations for the classroom atmosphere, give students of all ages a feeling of agency and a stake in what happens in their classrooms.
5. Week 6: individual Differences
5.1. Intelligence
5.1.1. Gardner
5.1.2. Sternberg
5.2. Universal design
5.2.1. "Universal Design of Learning" - an approach to learning, teaching, curriculum development, and assessment that uses new technologies to respond to a variety of individual differences
5.2.2. UDL's Principals: 1. To provide multiple means of "REPRESENTATION" -the what of learning 2. To provide multiple means of "ACTION" and "EXPRESSION" - the how of learning 3. To provide multiple means of "ENGAGEMENT" - the why of learning
5.3. chamging teaching practices (ADHD)
5.3.1. Students with ADHD benefit from an inclusive educational model where teachers use the latest teaching strategies for students with a LD. Indeed, these same instructional practices could be considered best practices for all students in mainstream classrooms.
5.4. Individual Education Plan
5.4.1. Break down
5.4.2. 5 Phases
5.5. Exceptionality
5.5.1. What are considered “exceptionalities”? In Ontario, students with exceptionalities are classified within five categories: • Behaviour • Communication includes autism, deaf or hard of hearing, language impairment, speech impairment, learning disability • Intellectual includes giftedness, mild intellectual disability, developmental disability • Physical disability includes blindness, low vision • Multiple combination of above
5.5.2. Ontario’s Bill 82 On December 12, 1980, the Education Amendment Act, commonly known as Bill 82, was signed into law in the province of Ontario. This bill requires boards of education to provide special education services to all students who are in need.
5.5.3. Meaningful post
5.5.3.1. Special Education is an extremely important part to a school community. It is the support network for students with exceptionalities. A common theme and need for it is “inclusiveness” and catering the learning environment to the needs of the student. My understanding is that students undergo assessments to determine how their learning plan can be adjusted to meet their needs. My cousin has a hearing impairment, she’s deaf in one ear, and she explained to me how her teachers and professors worked with her to accommodate the classroom so she could participate. She told me how she would sometimes have special arrangements for auditory examinations or how they would check in with her to verify that she was alright and able to hear. I think special Education is vital in Education overall because it’s our responsibility to serve everybody and include everyone in the community. There are a lot of strategies and tools we can do to adjust the learning environments for these students and we absolutely must, as this ensures that everyone has the best learning opportunity.
6. Week 7: Socio-cultural Considerations
6.1. Diverse Learning
6.1.1. Demonstrating Expectations 1.Students are taught challenging, rigorous curriculum in ways that capitalize on the strengths of their learning style. 2. Students receive praise for their effort to foster motivation to and responsibility for their own learning. 3. Talk in the school reflects the belief that “all children can learn to high levels.” Children are believed to be “at-promise,” not at-risk. 4. Teachers demonstrate persistence in their efforts to help students meet standards by changing instructional approaches to meet the needs of each student. 5. Teachers provide equitable opportunities for students to respond and participate. 6. Provide ample wait time for thinking and responding. 7. Teachers provide specific and timely feedback to students about their work. 8. Students are asked high-level, open-ended questions that require them to interpret, analyze, synthesize, and evaluate
6.1.1.1. Individuals
6.1.2. cultural instruction using the language and understandings that students have acquired in their families and communities to bridge the gap between what students know and are able to do and what they need to learn in school. • incorporating the everyday issues and concerns of families and the community into curriculum and instruction. • actively engaging students in the learning process. • using equitable grouping practices.
6.1.2.1. Culturally responsive learning
6.2. Aboriginal education
6.2.1. https://owl.uwo.ca/access/lessonbuilder/item/65732556/group/76853f24-6714-4958-86af-06f669536194/Week%207:%20Socio-Cultural%20Considerations/firstNationsresouceskitweb.pdf
6.2.2. Effective literacy strategies vary for each student and are dependent upon his or her location, self-identification, culture, language, community, experiences and levels in standard English and/or French. Their likely impact also depends upon the overall quality of the literacy program, as reflected in student supports and resources, the school and classroom environment and FNMI partnerships. However, research suggests that for First Nations, Métis and Inuit learners, success in literacy is supported by a variety of “best practices,”
6.3. SES and education
6.3.1. Influence on parenting style & approach to education Authoritarian (low) - threat to academic growth Authoritative (middle-high) - fosters academic growth
6.3.1.1. Meaningful post
6.3.1.1.1. Looking back, I can greatly appreciate where I came from and the experiences I learned. My parents used authoritative parenting, creating a balanced picture in my head of respecting their rules but also openly communicating when I disagreed. Many of the children that came from low SES backgrounds had parents using the permissive parenting style, where rules were not laid out and behavioural actions were neither accepted nor unaccepted. Having children from different SES backgrounds is important for teaching: “Teachers must be aware of these differences and do what they can to moderate them” (Edmunds & Edmunds, 2016, p. 254). All students can be taught, but it is in the hands of the educators to present material that will bring success to that child’s academics (Edmunds & Edmunds, 2016, p. 249).
6.3.2. Stereotype threat is a situational predicament in which people are or feel themselves to be at risk of conforming to stereotypes about their social group. Since its introduction into the academic literature, stereotype threat has become one of the most widely studied topics in the field of social psychology.
6.4. Something to think about
7. Week 8: Standardized Achievement Tests
7.1. Ontario test
7.2. What is the Value
7.2.1. Arguments against standardized testing include: • There is a tendency to “teach to the test”, which results in narrowing of the curriculum. • The tests do not allow for linguistic or other cultural differences among students. • There is the potential for subgroups of students to become lost within the overall numbers. • Standardized testing leads to student disengagement. • The tests do not adequately assess 21st Century skills such as creativity, technological ability, problem solving, or critical thinking skills.
7.2.2. Arguments in favour of standardized testing include: • The opportunity for comparison of educational outcomes across schools, provinces, or countries. • Results of standardized tests provide an opportunity to assess the strengths and weaknesses of the system. • Offering a means to assess accountability. • Provincial assessments provide a way to evaluate curricula and determine which schools/districts/regions are meeting goals
7.3. 21st century skills
7.3.1. 21st century
7.4. "Specifications and bureaucracies live forever."
7.4.1. The Space Shuttle and the Horse's Rear End
7.5. Meaningful post
7.5.1. The following is how I would prepare my students for standardized tests: Let the students know that they will be participating in the test well in advance (maybe at the beginning of the year) As you teach the curriculum, relate to how those topics or questions may be similar to that on the standardized test Use old tests to help them practice and get a feel for how the testing is laid out and so that they have an idea of the type of questions that will be on the test Reassure them that there is no reason to be anxious about the test. Let them know that their ‘mark’ from the test will not affect their final grades Create a very positive environment for the testing Allow for breaks, fun activities, and nutritious snacks throughout the period of the testing. Encourage them as they are writing it Have a debriefing time afterwards to hear their thoughts, concerns, what they would have liked to help them prepare better Celebrate
8. Week 5: Assessing Student Progress
8.1. Lesson Planning
8.1.1. TACK: Thinking Assesment Communication Knowledge
8.1.2. Bloom's Taxonomy Knowledge Comprehension Application Analysis Synthesis Evaluation
8.1.3. Stiggin's Achievement Chart
8.2. Integrated Learning in the Classroom
8.2.1. “Research has consistently shown that students in integrated programs demonstrate academic performance equal to, or better than, students in discipline-based programs. In addition, students are more engaged in school, and less prone to attendance and behaviour problems.” (Drake & Reid, 2010)
8.2.2. Feedback Logs These provide a means of recording feedback about achievement of a learning goal and monitoring the student’s follow-up on that feedback. Research indicates that it is the quality of the feedback, rather than its presence or absence, that improves student learning. Feedback should: • Identify what was done well and what needs improvement • Provide specific next steps for students to improve their learning • Focus on two or three priorities at one time, at most
8.3. riskiness of progress
8.4. The Understanding by Design® framework (UbD™ framework) offers a planning process and structure to guide curriculum, assessment, and instruction. Its two key ideas are contained in the title: 1) focus on teaching and assessing for understanding and learning transfer, and 2) design curriculum “backward” from those ends.
8.4.1. Backwards Design
8.5. Meaningful post
8.5.1. I would have a variety of assessment tools, not just the same old test or quiz that is often overused in many classes. I want to assess student’s process rather than just the outcome. How they actively involve themselves, the questions they pose, their reflective answers, and problem solving should all contribute to their final marks – not simply a test. I want to be able to use many different learning techniques and styles to reach out to my students and help them learn better. Not everyone is great at writing a test. Some excel at projects, multiples choice and matching questions, writing essays, etc. These should all be recognized and suited to fit the student’s learning abilities and approaches.