Week 7 and Week 8

These weeks went by in a blur. Covering integers, absolute value, and variables--I was sure quick would be the last way in which I could describe Unit 2. But it was quick. The kids absorbed like pros, these topics that others swore would need intense time commitment and later on--regardless of what I tried--intense remediation.

Maybe it was my honing of the art of "guided notes" or simply my now using of only one font when making them--either way, my seemingly un-jittery jittery self communicated understanding to my kids. Other teachers say that this class of 7th graders is much "smarter" than the last class--thats got to be it. There is still very in consistent levels of performance--my 1st period class has already broken the big goal mark of an 80% class average, while my 2nd remains slightly below 70%. There are most likely many factors that play into this--size of class, time of class, energy in them, energy in me. My 2nd period class has my special needs students and my highest performing, is my largest class, and seems always to be lacking in energy--I've got to find a solution

In terms of class room management--things are pretty much the same. I realized that my students are getting to comfortable with me in some terms and like to call out or just call on me. I've started making a more conscious effort to curb this via ignoring them until they realize their fault or resorting to negative consequences.

I did have a small issue with one student. I made all my students that did not score above a 70% on the Unit 2 assessment (many of them being from 2nd period) come in during lunch to take a re-test that would add more points onto their original grade. This involved me having to call 30 students' homes to get their parent/guardians to remind them and give them a little stress over the matter. One student, who's parents I was unable to call, was offended at the thought that she would have to give up more time for the sake of 7th math and at best reluctantly stayed. Her taking the re-test seriously was another matter altogether. She, after 10 minutes, handed me the green test sheet with half of the questions answered--insisting that she didn't know the rest. I retorted with the thought that everyone was taught the same material and that she had shown understanding of the material in other work and insisted that she could not leave with having any question blank. Cursing under her breath slightly she returned to her seat to hand me the paper 10 more minutes later, this time with all the questions with at least some form of answer. I haven't graded it yet, but a concern that I believe is legitimate is whether or not she put effort into it the second time around. Investment has got to become my strong suit again.

Good: It seems like I've started to overcome my issue with clarity in my teaching which has been a concern of mine. This success is measured in my student's performance, and I mark it up mainly to my effort to over compensate in making sure they understand as well as my use of more developed guided notes. Then again my kids are also just friggin smart.

Bad: My students are too "comfortable" with my classroom culture, and while this has positives--it also make focused discipline harder to attain from everyone at times. I have to work also on getting my kids invested in learning math--not working because of the pressure of having high expectations.

Using Standards and Assessments

Schmoker, Mike, et. Marzano, Robert. “Using Standards and Assessments: Realizing the Promise of Standards-Based Education.” Education Leadership. Volume 56 Number 8 March 1999.

This article take a good look at some of the positive and negative consequences realized at the introduction standards based education. Schmocker and Marzano remark at the almost obvious fact that organizations are successful when they have “clear, commonly defined goals.” This is due to its ability foster a “common focus” that “clarifies understanding, accelerates communication, and promotes persistence and collective purpose.

Demonstrating the truth behind this idea, the article continues by calling on examples of schools attaining increased student “success” via various forms of implementing or establishing education based in content standards. These, most likely because of when it was written, are introduced as the signs of an increasing wave of standards based education.

The writers sets this new wave apart from already set standards in education by marking the status quo of “a common, coherent program of teaching and learning” as a delusion. This is attributed to teachings making “independent and idiosyncratic decisions” about how and what to teach. This they connected to a lack of clear or practical standards; they either written in unclear “absurd” language or demand a teaching of material that would take “a 10-hour day of teaching” to cover. (This supported by a comparison between German, Japanese, and American textbooks showing American textbooks as attempting to cover much more content—while German and Japanese students out performing American students)

With this the largest problems associated with standards based teaching are realized—that of inconsistency in how things are taught and too much to teach. The solution that the authors draw as a potential cure all would be standards driven schools—with standards assumedly connected to state standards (as an example of state standards being a solution is presented).

This allows for a small enough environments to assure consistency while allowing for customization of curricula around practices that have proven successful for teachers at that school. This would, as the writers say, create a pool of resources that are particular to the schools’ environment, students, and content goals—as directed by standards.

From my experience this article successfully addresses the pitfalls that could come up from the wide implementation of standards based learning, and successfully pulls out a solution that I have seen to work. My school implements a similar model discussed by Scmocker and Marzano, which has allowed a customization of curricula and a collection of best practices within departments. This model along with a strong emphasis on communication between teachers, both releases the burden from teachers to come up with new ways of teaching but also enlightens teachers to best practices and warns of the lest than best.

Standards-Based Reforms: Problems and Possibilities

Falk, Beverly. “Standards-Based Reforms: Problems and Possibilities.” The Phi Delta Kappan, Vol. 83, No. 8 (Apr., 2002), pp. 612-620

Falk does a good job in her pretty comprehensive review of some of the dangers and effects of standards-based teaching and assessment lead education. The article begins with the observation that far too often “standards-based reform [has been] defined largely as making sure children do better on…standardized paper tests.” After marking some of the potential positives that could come from properly enacted standards-based education—setting clear and consistent macro/micro-goals for teachers and students—Falk delves in to a critique of the negative results of assessment led education.

While Falk addresses other major issues that she sees rising from assessment led education—“assessing new standards with old tests,” “high stakes testing causes harm,” “investing in testing instead of teaching and learning,” “cheating on the rise” (that of school administrators for higher scores), and the issue of “relying on a single test for high stakes decisions”—the most influential and drastic shift that is seen since assessment led education became the norm and policies such No Child Left Behind imparted high stakes costs for not following such has been the greater issue of “teaching to the test.”

A result of policy and higher administration hand-down mandates, assessment led education, which seems to be a reaction to low national test scores, spurring “teaching to the test” has played the greatest role in shifting the classroom into a prep environment as opposed to a learning environment. Teaching to the test is the result of an imposition of high demand on students and educator to meet bars test measured student success.

In this, teachers are pushed to model their curriculum on the standards in preparation for tests. There are two part of that statement—the thought of modeling curriculum to standards, and in preparation for tests. While standards based education is not wholly inhibiting, and in fact allows for some consistency in curriculum, current testing is rigid and is designed, as Falk calls it, to produce a “bell curve” where at least 50% of students fall below the mean. In terms of the students it enforces a game of winners and losers, insisting that there can’t be losers, as is the mission of No Child Left Behind. Furthermore, educators are then hung up on how to best prepare for a one-hour assessment of a student as opposed to preparing that individual for a lifetime of learning.

In this the failures of schools has only brought forth a system unfit and contradictory in its inability to address the dynamics of education and students, and indeed giving up on some in its rigidity and form. This becomes cyclical as schools no longer invest in education, but rather testing—a point that Falk addresses.

Falk’s assessment of assessment led education does well in pulling apart the problems that result from imposing a single form solution on a multi-formed and much more complex issue—that being how to improve education and student performance.

Week 6

This week we dove deeper into integers while introducing the concept of variables, evaluating variable expressions, and solving variable equations. The way I chose to approach this was by careful scaffolding of the topics to be introduced with guided notes reinforced by examples. The guided notes were discovery based, demanding students to define the concepts, describe the steps of performing the operations, and to finally perform the operations.

The INM was kicked off with the students reading a paragraph on their Guided Notes that described the day's goal, and followed by my drawing/writing an example of the concept on the board. Students, in discovery fashion, were then made to define and describe the concept in their own words. I allowed them to work in their groups for this. Afterwards the class was re-centered to discuss the definitions/descriptions we came up with with refinement directed by Socratic style leading questions from me. After coming to a consensus, the students wrote down our refined definitions/descriptions.

As a "WE DO" students followed along in their Guided Notes examples being worked out either on the board on in powerpoint. Students then were made to perform the operation on their own, with the answers being worked out after a significant portion of the class had finished. This allowed a great opportunity for positive reinforcement, and a direct reinforcement of students' understanding the need to pay attention and take notes.

As a "YOU DO" students were given time to perform the operations on their own (usually 8-10 problems). Class review of these problems also followed.

As a general assessment students were given a problem which they had to perform on a personal white-wipe-board, holding it up to show me their work and wether they were able to perform the operation. Student were told when they got the correct and incorrect answers, and those that got the problem wrong multiple times were asked to come back during lunch to review the material again.

Homework provided additional practice.

GOOD:

I think the guided notes were a great idea, as well as the discovery based learning and structure of the class. This take a lot of pressure off from me to lead the class constantly. This also make it easy to work through Blooms Hierarchy.

BAD:

I think I'm giving too much homework and not reviewing it enough. I think I'm going to work book work into the "Do Now" as well as homework review.