“Best Practices”

I found an article titled “Instructional Methods for Teaching Social Studies: A Survey of What Middle School Students Like and Dislike about Social Studies Instruction” written by William B. Russell III and Stewart Waters. This study interested me because it’s stated focus was “How do the students enjoy learning social studies?” (Russell & Waters, 7). Most students would not agree that their social studies class is fun and engaging. SO Russell and Waters tried to see what worked and didn’t work best for keeping middle schoolers engaged in their social studies instruction. What we are learning now as student teachers aligns with what Russell and Waters found: “research concludes that students have more interest in a topic when a variety of teaching methods are implemented” (Russell & Waters, 8). Instead of just lecturing students need to have the information presented to them in a variety of ways. Teachers are not focusing on critical thinking, but instead emphasize memorization (Russell & Waters). Three things that Russell and Waters emphasize as great ways to vary their instruction is to utilize film, simulations, and discussion methods.

I think all of these ideas are great ways to change and update the more common lecture style of instruction. I have not utilized a lot of simulations, but have tried to focus on combining lessons with films and discussions. The obvious issues with these is not just playing films, but finding a way for students to interact with the film (playing short clips, creating structured notes for the students, etc) and for discussion there is a need to get students engaged in the conversation. Discussions can be dominated by more outgoing students so there needs to be a built in way to have all students participate. Although finding ways to properly build these into your instruction, the results of Russell and Waters study show that “students want to be actively involved in learning social studies” (Russell & Waters, 11). Students dislike the passive learning and want to be actively engaged in what they are learning. It’s a difficult change for teachers to build into their lessons, especially if they have already established a certain teaching style for themselves. As new student teachers it’s important for us to not fall into a system that is easy, but not conducive to student learning. It might be best for teachers to conduct their own survey of their students in order to determine what processes might work the best for their individual classes.

 

Russell III, William B., and Stewart Waters. Journal for the Liberal Arts and Sciences 14.2 (2010): 7-14. Print.

Statewide Testing

As a history/social studies teacher we do not actually have to deal with statewide testing. However, as a teacher, you have to be aware of the statewide tests that are given out. Mainly this is due to the fact that when they are given during the school day it will affect your teaching schedule and you might be asked to administer the tests. Recently my freshman had a counselor come in to do a presentation called “High School and Beyond.” This talked about what is expected of students as they go through their high school career and then how best to prepare themselves for what is coming after high school. One thing that I learned is that there is a new test that will be required for the students called Smarter Balanced. It will be given to all juniors starting in the spring of 2015.

According to the OSPI website this test is given to students in grades 3-8 and 11 and is “aligned to the Washington State Learning Standards in English language arts (ELA) and math” (OSPI). They go on to explain that it is actually more than just a once-a-year test, but is actually a system made up of three components. The three components are a digital library, interim assessments, and summative assessments. The digital library contains “on-demand professional development materials designed to help teachers and an online collaboration platform to give them a place to share what’s working in their classrooms” (OSPI). It does not seem that all teachers currently have access to this library, but there are assessment coordinators working to get teachers access. The interim assessments are optional and are “flexible, non-secure periodic assessments to be offered at teachers’ and schools’ discretion throughout the school year” (OSPI). These are computer based tests that hopefully would provide feedback so teachers can help students succeed on this test. The summative assessments are required and will take place during the last 12 weeks of the school year (OSPI). These assessments are computer-based tests that will “help schools evaluate how well their students performed by comparing them with students from other schools across the nation” (OSPI). The OSPI website also states that the year-end assessments will “empower families by providing them with a clear indication of how well their children are progressing toward mastering the academic knowledge and skills necessary for college and career readiness” (OSPI).

Since there are no subscores yet, I will speak a bit to how this test and it being implemented. While it’s great that they are providing plenty of options to help teachers and students prepare for this exam I am concerned with the fact that there is so much they feel they need to have available to have students get ready for this test. Already this year at my school we have 29 school days that are affected due to testing. That means that there are 29 days out of 180 where classes are shortened or non-existent due to tests at various grade levels. Now teachers have to take more time to teach students about how to take this test and to offer practice exams to make sure they understand what is needed from them. So instead of learning new material teachers are having to take time just to teach how to properly take a test. I think that this is a poor use of class time and resources. There has to be a better way to make sure that students are making sure they are learning what they need to be learning. Also, the state and program claim that students will be compared with students around the country. I checked and there are only 17 states (and one province) implementing this test this year. Is this really a fair assessment of what is or isn’t working nationwide?

Should grades and tests be used as evaluating tools?

Prompt: Discuss the use of student grades as a factor in evaluating teachers, and use of state test results to evaluate a school district.

I have only spent about two and half months in a classroom but I don’t think that using students grades as a factor in evaluating teachers is not a good idea. Tying student grades to teacher evaluation causes a difficult situation where teachers might be tempted to boost student’s grades in order to maintain or boost their own evaluations. When it comes down to it, teachers are in charge of giving student’s grades so if the results of student grades can be tied in with a teacher’s evaluation it creates a messy situation. There doesn’t seem to be a ton of oversight with teacher’s when it comes to how they are grading students. A teacher could also be giving out extra credit whether it is deserved or not just in order to boost their class grades (and then their evaluation). This might also keep some teachers from choosing to work in low-income or troubled schools where they might have a harder time boosting student grades. This also relates to the use of state test results to evaluate a school district.

First off, I don’t know that state test results are always the best way to evaluate students, but then to use them to evaluate a whole school district. Although it might be trickier do, this could also lead to people trying to fudge the results in order to get better evaluations. Really what I think might be the worst part of using state test results to evaluate a school district is that people might start only teaching students based on how to take the test. Instead of focusing on knowledge for the sake of helping the student’s understand a concept or build for their future they would just be learning how best to take a test. This could be bad for student’s because student’s would not be benefiting from really learning, but just learning best practice of how to take a test. Overall, basing evaluations on grades or test results would be harmful to everyone involved.

Classroom observation: H3 Principle

H3 Principle: Honor the classroom/school community as a milieu for learning.

The other day I got the opportunity to observe another teacher’s classroom for a period. I had mentioned to him that I would be focusing on classroom management so he actually mentioned that I should join him for a particular class. This particular class is a 11th grade US History class in a school where 80% of the students opt to take AP US History. Not only that, but this class is about 75% male. I didn’t know what to expect when I went in to the class, but it happened that I was able to observe a day when the teacher was choosing to make a shift in his approach to this class.

I initially noted the changes in the classroom environment from the class I am normally in. He started before class talking with students and reminding a couple of them that they had had their seats changed. Once class started he announced that he had the results of surveys that he had given to the class and that he was going to make some adjustments. He posted the results on the board and reviewed them with the class. The teacher also began to state his expectations of the class, which may have been a resetting of the expectations that might have been established on the first day or week of school. The main focus of this change was the teacher handing out a schedule of work and assignments for the remainder of the month. He also then went on to show examples of what was expected for the assignments.

Instructions, Schedule, and Grading for Chapter 1 and remainder of November assignments.

It seems that the main reason for this change was that students were not able to engage with the material. This was due to the textbook not being a great resource and the level of the students. The teacher did not feel like the students were able to connect with the book and that it didn’t do a very good job of getting the necessary information across. Also, in order to get the students a head start on the work and an option to ask questions he has built in a work day for each new chapter. Afterwards I had a chance to talk to the teacher and he said that he wouldn’t have done the same style of instruction for his AP class in a different subject.

The teacher really took the time to figure out what worked for the students and adapted the whole style of the class. He even offered to turn off the lights in the class because he had noticed that last week during a lock down drill that the students really focused and worked hard with headphones in and the lights off. He did offer a vote to the students and it was times like this were I wondered about the control of the class. Earlier he had asked the students opinion of something and things got loud pretty quickly. There also didn’t seem to be a clear understanding of how to be excused to go to the bathroom as I saw one student just leave, another wait until they got to the door to ask for permission, and another go up to the teacher to ask. However, when there were students chit-chatting when they shouldn’t have been it only took some simple eye contact and a head nod from the teacher to keep them quiet. At one point the teacher even left to go make copies and the students continued to work without incident.

While there were a lot of things that this teacher did that would not fall under my style of teaching I really think that he has done a good job of adjusting his class and style in order to what has worked best for the students in this class, possibly unintentionally recalling the HOPE principle of H3. I would be very interested to check back in on this class in a few weeks or months to see if the teacher has continued with these new adjustments or whether he has had to make some more changes. I think the most important thing that I took out of this was the fact that the teacher realized that something wasn’t working for his students and he took the time to make an adjustment. I asked him how long it took just to get this new outline and first chapter questions put together and he told me it was about 8 hours worth of work outside of the classroom. He also mentioned that he still has to prepare some assignments that will be coming up later in the month. This is hard to hear as a student teacher because I value my personal time, but it’s important to make the connection now that this is my job and these student’s education and future. It’s important to be willing to put in the time to make sure that they are getting the most out of their education.

I have heard of some teachers putting out a student survey at the end of the year but obviously this teacher saw that there were some immediate issues that needed to be addressed. I think that that is also an important thing to pay attention to as I go into teaching independently. As a teacher you need to be aware of the what can be changed and maybe waiting until you have time over the summer is too late. It would also be good to make sure that when you are being observed while still a student teacher that you ask observers to look for things that you can change and you implement them now before become too set in a routine.

EDU 6160: KWL Procedure

Discuss the practicality of surveys and inventories for the KWL procedure in your teaching situation.

The KWL procedure is a three step process where the letters stand for “What We Know,” “What We Wonder,” and “What We Learned.” The “know” step deals with having students share or discuss what they already. This can involve students providing information about how and where they learned the information. The “wonder” step involves discussing what students wonder or want to learn. Ideally they should discuss what they want to learn and possibly writing down specific questions they are more interested in. The “learned” step has to do with having the students discuss or write down what they learned from the reading or presentation. They also should check over the questions they had generated in the second step.

For my particular subject and teaching situation the use of surveys and inventories for the KWL procedure would be a great addition. There are a few different benefits to integrating these into lesson plans. Having students discuss what they already know would help you be able to adjust parts of your lessons so that if students already know certain parts, you can take them out of the lesson in order to get to other parts. Observing what students wonder would allow you to make sure to focus on aspects of the lesson that really interest them and would help keep them engaged. I think the implementation of the “what we learned” part is one of the most essential parts because then you can determine if students are actually taking in the important parts of your teaching.

I think that these procedures can be fairly easily integrated but might take time and probably shouldn’t be done for every lesson. Students might tire of having to do the same thing for every lesson but checking in with them on occasion would be beneficial. It could useful to utilize these procedures over an entire unit instead of just one lesson. It might be hard to adjust lessons during the time right after the “know” session, but could be done over the course of an entire unit. I haven’t used these sorts of procedures in any of my classes so far, but I can see the benefits of trying them out in the future to see if they should be built in permanently.

EDU 6160: Essay Tests

Prompt: Discuss the relevance of essay tests to your grade level or subject.

There are a lot of positives and negatives to giving out essay tests but I think there is some importance to the use of essay tests for certain grades and subjects. Currently I am teaching 9th grade World History and 10th grade AP Human Geography and I think both of these classes and grades are both good fits for essay tests. There obviously are some downsides to doing these but I think that used in partnership with standard tests, they can be a good and useful assessment.

I think that using essay tests for assessment can be a great tool in order to check not only each student’s level of understanding but also their writing and organizational skills. For most standard tests it’s just about knowing a set of facts or terms but with an essay test there is a lot more involved than just listing off a number of memorized facts. Usually with essay tests students are not given the single thesis topic in advance, but are given a number of topics and themes that they need to study and develop before they show up on test day. Giving a test in this way forces students to get more in depth with the subject. Students are also given a time restraint on essay tests so it’s important for them to prepare before test day in order to organize their thoughts and ideas so that when they are writing out the essay they can make the most of their allotted time. Another benefit of essay tests is that students don’t just have to know a list of facts, but instead can focus on concepts and ideas and build their essay around.

There are some definite downsides to using essay tests. The first of which is on the teacher side: having to grade a large amount of essays in a short amount of time. One of the points of testing students is to give them feedback on where they are at. It’s assessing them on their knowledge and it should take an extended amount of time to give them feedback. For the students, it also can give them a lot more work/preparation. It might be easier to just remember basic facts and information instead of having to build out multiple essay possibilities. Another issue is that if a student is just a bad writer or doesn’t work well under pressure then a timed essay is going to be a big struggle for them. It should be said however, that if the whole school system is on point, by the time they get to high school they should be able to at least develop a decent five paragraph essay in a short amount of time.

All that being said, I think that it should probably not be done every time for high school students but I think sprinkled in throughout the year, essay tests could be a really useful assessment for students as long as they are properly prepared.