406 - Observation #1

Observation #1

           This observation took place at Central Falls High School in Central Falls, RI.  This is the only high school in the City of Central Falls and the school’s population is just over 800 students from the 9^th grade to the 12^th grade.  The student population is diverse, but the majority of the students are of a Hispanic ethnicity.

            I have been in Central falls for a few weeks now as I am taking SED 407 also, but the first time I saw the building I never realized the age of the school.  It looks like it was built around the 1950’s in order to take a nuclear attack.  I think I saw an old fallout shelter sign on one side of the building.  When you walk in you can tell the building is old, it just has that style.  The paint is old and chipped and there are needs of repairs.  However, I think it has a welcoming feeling.  The halls are decorated with upcoming events, Warrior (the school symbol/mascot) art and saying, a calendar in colored chalk that is changed and redrawn with the new month, student art, student successes and various art and information is posted throughout.  On the outside it looks harsh and drab but the inside, at least in the halls, is more welcoming.

            I went into an 11^th grade social studies class to observe for a period.  This was a self-contained class that had students with learning and behavioral disabilities.  The class was a small class of five students, but today there was only four as one of the students was not there but had to return after school to what the teacher told me was PM school.  I learned later from the teacher that was when a student has discipline issues and has to come back after normal school hours to take his or her classes.  There is also a teacher assistant in the room to help the students and the teacher.  The class is not arranged in a typical way.  The teacher’s and the assistant’s desk are in the back, while the students desks are arranged in a semi-circle facing the “black board” with the computer, projector and the ELMO in the center of the semi-circle.  The teacher generally teaches from the center of the semi-circle so she can help the individual students when needed.  It makes it easier for her to keep an eye on the students and it lets the students always see her.  I asked her about the arrangement and she stated that the students like it this way so they can focus on her as she teachers from the center and it is easier for them to watch her when she goes to the board.  It is also easier for her and the assistant to keep an on the students also.  For the rest of the room it looks like a typical class room, there are rules posted, examples of student work on the board, posters that deal with different time periods of history, plus you can really see that age of the building in this classroom.  Floor tiles are broken, the heater was making a noise throughout the whole class, but it seems the students and the teachers were able to block it out and the ceiling tiles really need some work.  It did however feel welcome.  I like how the seating was arranged for I think it promotes help between the students just has a closer feeling.

            In the class today, as I stated above, there were only four students.  Three were Hispanic, all male, and one African-American female.  The teacher did inform me that all are on an IEP and come from a challenged economic background.  The class I saw was about how to write an essay using the SEE (statement, evidence, explanation) method.  The students were using a graphic organizer and were basically copying from the board the work the class did the day before.  The teacher did try to get all of them to participate.  One student just did not, no matter how much the teacher and the assistant tried, want to cooperate.  He played on his cell unit it died and he asked the teacher why it died.  She tried to get him on track but he did get frustrated and just left the room.  He eventually came back but was still disruptive and he left after the assistant called for a discipline specialist to come into the room to take the student out of class.  One other student did not participate in the answering questions or talking but she was very locked in on the assignment.  The teacher and the assistant did check on her just like the other students to make sure she was on track, and she was.  When they asked her a question if she was “ok” or if she understood what she was supposed to do she gave a thumbs up but did not respond verbally.  They all had the chance to participate in the exercise as the teacher would try to get to each other, but not all would respond, some did, and some did the work but kept quite.  From what I saw all the students had the ability to do the work, some more than others, and the teacher would spend more time with the ones that need the help with the assignment.  The teacher, in this setting, is the one with the power.  Given what I saw I think it has to be that way.  She really tries to keep them focused on task which is hard given the dynamics of the class. 

            I think for me in would be difficult to be in this kind of class as student. There are many distractions, mainly from other students and maybe a little from the heater, which must bother them more and distract them more. I’m saying that from the point of view as a student without an IEP or never experienced a class setting like this before. These students, for the most part, seemed to have really been engaged, in varying levels, even with the distractions. They have a routine that they are set in and follow. If that routine is disrupted that is one that is more of an issues for the students not the interruptions. I think it is hard work to be a student in this school. They have a lot of challenges in and out of the school. The students know of the recent issues with the test scores and the teacher firings. They understand they need to get better and it put a lot of pressure on the students. However, I also see that many of the students are trying and trying hard. The school spirit that I have seen so far has been great, the students really care about their school and their school community.

 

 

Promising Practices Letter

                                                                                                        Albert Picozzi
                                                                                                        Rhode Island College
                                                                                                        November 5^th,2014

 

Dear Dr. Blankenship,

 

            Thank you for your presentation on using technology, specifically GIS mapping on Goggle Maps, in a history/social studies class setting.  It was great to see that this type of technology can be used in a subject, history, which many students see as boring.  You showed us how to create a virtual walking historic tour of downtown Providence.  The process also showed us how to add points to the tour of historical significance and how to include pictures, audio and/or video clips, and also text.  It was great to see how you can create a tour at home and then actually use that tour on the sites.  You can make it so that it is available of smartphones and tablets that can be used while actually walking on the tour.  After the tour demonstration you explained how you can use this technology in the classroom.  The example you used was great.  Using present day maps you created a small lesson on the D-Day invasion of Normandy in 1944.  It showed the challenges faced by the allies just from the geography, but when you added the points you included pictures of what the area looked liked with the German defenses.  It gave a great representation and realistic view of what the allies faced.  It was more than just pictures in a book.  The way you added questions to each point was a great way to assess while the lesson was taking place.  To show us how you can use technology in a classroom really can make any lesson come to life.
            In my opinion this breakout session connected to the ideas stated by Dr. Christopher Emdin and Promising Practices of how we need to know our students in order to really teach them and how we need to change the way they are taught.  Dr. Emdin basically states at one point that we need to know our students and our classes in order to teach.  Each student and each classroom learns differently.  In today’s world technology is everywhere.  Your smartphone can do more work than the computers that helped land the Apollo rocket on the moon in 1969.  Students are all about the new technology, just stating that you are going to use some of that new technology will get them interested.  Everybody is using Google Maps and Google Earth for many reasons.  Why not bring it into the classroom and use it for whatever you might think.  Show the class a real time map of the area of Gettysburg and have the students map out the specific points of one of the most important battles in our history.  Let them use the technology to get interested.  Use this type of technology to explore local areas of interest whether it is in history, English or even in math.  Really know your students and change the teaching based on this knowledge.  With technology so much a part of a student’s life these days let’s bring it into the classroom and use it so we can get and keep the students interest.
            Both the breakout session and the address by Dr. Emdin were insightful and full of information that I plan on using once I get into my own classroom.  The profession has to move away from traditional methods in a sense.  As teachers we can still lecture but change it in a way that interests the students, by getting to know them, knowing their interests and bringing them to the class room.  Technology is one of those ways and it is one I plan on using.  Thank you again as I learned a lot from this conference that will help me as a future educator.

 

Sincerely,

Al Picozzi

                                                                                                              

Book Clubs and inquiry Units

Book Clubs and Inquiry Units

            When I was in school I do not ever remember have a book club.  After reading the chapter and actually seeing it in practice in a Central Falls High School English class I would have to say that the idea and the practice makes sense.  This technique lets the students get more involved in the process of learning.  They can choose the books that are going to be read, it allows the students to give their opinions, to take notes without having to worry about grades,.  The teacher will walk around and look at what the students are doing, listening to the talking within each groups and guiding them in the discussion.  The students are the real teachers in these groups.  Daniels and Zemelman basically state that the process of taking notes and writing down of questions and ideas is to get a grade, it is to spur discussion (p.211) to let the students really tie what they are reading to the content of their subject.  There will be an assessment, but it really is based on participation and whether the note taking is done, not what is actually in the notes as that is what the student feels is important.  I also like the idea of roles in the book club.  Each student in the group takes a role that will change when there are new book clubs that way they won’t just be use to one job, they can become experienced in the other roles and they will be able to think in different ways while they are reading.  (p. 209).  I saw the roles used in a book club in a class at Central Falls.  The students were in groups discussing Frankenstein.   There was one student with a dictionary that would look up words the group didn’t know, there was one who was asking questions to the other members of the groups while the others were using the story to answer the questions posed.  They were prepared before the class started with the questions, so I assume there was some pre-work or homework done before the class to prepare for this lesson.  It seemed to work out well, there was great discussion in the groups, the students were taking notes and the teacher was walking around checking in on the groups and guiding them when they needed it.  It really was a great lesson.

            In chapter 10 we see that we need to connect learning with what the authors refer to as the “bigger issues of life.”  (p. 217)    Using inquiry units that encompass what is going on in the real world will just gain a student’s interest more.  Or even relating a lesson to something that might be going on in pop culture can spark the same interest.  Game of Thrones, an extremely successful book series, and HBO series, by George R. R. Martin, can be used as an example.  Having the students examine that fantasy world in an English class and see the shifting alliances, the confusion of war and intrigue, can prepare a student in a history class leaning about the alliance system in World War I that was so confusing that it actually was a cause of the war.  This could also be connected to issues in today’s world.  The alliance system in the Middle-East with ISIS and so on is also very confusing.  Now you are relating a reading from an English class, to discussing World War I in a History class, to going over current events in a Social Studies or Current Events class.   Having the two or three teachers create a project using this pop-culture element can help a student in studying something from one-hundred years ago.  This brings something that is fun and exciting to read into one class and use it in another to make what many students fell is boring, into something exciting.  (If you have not read any of the books yet, do they are an incredible read.)

            One more aspect I found interesting in this chapter is the idea of “backmapping.”  (p.218)  When creating a project the teacher just makes one that he or she knows will work, is interesting  and contains a lot of the their content matter.  Only then does the teacher go back and see what standards are met by the project.  In a sense it is similar to UbD.  The teacher starts with the outcome, to present a lot of content, and then looks back to see what goals and standards are met.  (pp. 218-219).  At the same time though, it is unlike UbD.  In UbD you start with the goal and the standards and then design the activities.  Here though you are setting a goal are getting content through an interesting activity and then seeing what standard it fits, in UbD you start with the standard.  It is an interesting dilemma.  So the question in these inquiry activities is how do you start?  With the goal in mind first, or with the interesting activity first?



Take read of the book.  It really is amazing to see the shifting of alliancesand politicla intrigue.  Imagine how that can be related to World War I, the alliances we see shfit in the Middle East over the years.  http://www.amazon.com/Game-Thrones-Song-Fire-Book/dp/0553593714 that is for the 1st book right now it is a series of five.  It is a long read, over 800 pages, but something that I think can be used in a class to explain many events in history.
 



Reading Strategies and Communities

Reading Strategies and Communities

            These two chapters, to me at least, really hit the point home when it comes to reading and learning.  In chapter 5 the authors go into how to make the students into the readers and writers we want them to be.  The book has told us that we need to get them engaged and get material that is relevant in the real-world.  After we do that the question is how to get them to become those readers.  In chapter 7 the authors go into making the classroom a community so that we can actually teach and the students can actually learn.

            In chapter 5 Daniels and Zemelman propose many different strategies that should be used when teaching students reading and writing.  As I was reading them I realized I did many of these activities without even knowing what they were.  One that I found that I do a lot of was the “Sketching My Way Through the Text.” (p.120).  When I read whether it was a history, English, or even a math assignment I would draw what I was reading, to the best of my stick figure ability, what was happening.  It might have been a castle from a story to understand the setting, or a map of a battle in history class it just helped me visualize what was going on.  I see in my kid’s homework.  They both draw out their math word problems.  Since it is Halloween season many of the word math problems focus on candy and monsters and to see her drawing the monsters and the candy out to figure multiplication really shows me how it does work.  The other one I found the most interesting was brainstorming.  (p.104). I have used this in my professional career when coming up with ideas from others to try to solve an issue, or how to increase one metric or the next.  You will get information from the group and like the authors state it will “help students realize what they already know about a topic…” (p.104)  I think this just helps the individual and the group as a whole.  The students will realize that they know more than they think and the will also see other ideas that they might not have considered.  I can see myself using this in a World War I lesson on nationalism and letting the students brainstorm how is nationalism showing up again in today’s world, like in Ukraine for example.

            In the next chapter we something that must be in every classroom a sense of community and a place that is conductive to learning.  A teacher can have all the strategies in the world and all the great intentions but if there isn’t that feel of a safe place to learn or of a place where there isn’t support, nothing is going to happen.  The authors go into many different ways to make the classroom a community, “a place where students feel to take the risks involved in learning…” (p.168). In my opinion one of the most important is getting to know your students and then relating their interests and their real life to the subject that you are trying to teach.  I’ve seen it in CF high and I’ve seen it in Gilbert Stuart Middle School that when a teacher really knows their students, it goes a long way in helping that student become a learner.  For example, when a teacher knows that s student has a game and they actually take the few seconds to ask them how they played and how the game went you can see in the student reactions and body language that the teacher actually knows something about me outside a grade book, they actually care.  It only takes a few seconds and it really is the small stuff.  I saw a teacher ask a student how her little sister was feeling as he knew she was sick.  Just asking that one question let them connect on a level beyond the classroom, which in turn makes the classroom easier to foster a community.  The authors state to know just ten things about each student and their lives and then connect it to what you are teaching. That connection will go a long way to making your classroom a community.



Microteaching I

Please post comments on how my microteaching went.  Thanks in advance for the feedback.

Textbooks and Assignments

Textbooks and Assignments

 

            The first chapter for this week was chapter 3.  It reminded me of a day a professor told me about his class.  He stated it was like a lake that was 10 miles long but only an inch deep.  The textbooks according to the reading just have too much in them and they do not go into enough.  It states that “…the really key concepts, the big ideas of the field, don’t stand out clearly, aren’t giving enough time and depth for students to grasp them.  Two pages on slavery, a paragraph on Hiroshima, or a sidebar on Einstein’s theory of relativity, just doesn’t get the job done.”  (Daniels and Zemelman, p.59).  The textbooks just don’t get into the important details, the reasons, the implications or the what if’s.  I remember a high school history class when I was a junior I think.  We covered all of World War I in half a period and the book only had at the most three pages, probably closer to two.  We have all seen it the whole of world history in one thousand pages.  Image that one thousand pages when you have The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire by Edward Gibbon in six volumes and about 4100 pages.  I’m not saying that school have to go out and get it, though it is a great history, but the schools and teachers have to realize that the textbooks are not the be all and end all that there are proper uses for the textbook, which leads us to the next reading.  It follows the reading from Understanding by Design by stating we need to ask just what are the “:..big ideas.” (p. 146) of the textbook and have to do those have to “…slow down, dig in, and ‘uncover’ ideas, not just cover them[.]” (p. 146).  The chapter then goes into different ways to use the textbook differently and more effectively.  They are all very good suggestions, especially to supplement the textbook with other and different sources. (p. 148).  I also found that using other resources besides the textbook was a great help.  As I said in an earlier post the book Red Badge of Courage just made that part of history come alive, and then to compare it to an actual battle really made me think and got be interested.  So the point I really think from both of these readings is that the textbook shouldn’t be relied on as the sole source of info, but it should be used in conjunction with other sources and used in different ways.

            I found the designing assignments reading a fun read.  The sarcasm at the start with Darth Vader, since I grew up on Star Wars, yes the originals, was great and just plain fun to read.  Using Vader the authors were showing that assignments that were just given to fill time, to do them just to make it look good, to have tests that do not really challenge the students, to not work together so they don’t share their interests and so on will not help them learn and think, they will just turn out “…lackluster prose.”  (Strong, Assignments by Design, pp. 94-96).  He sets forth ten design principles to make sure that we as teachers are making assignments, and assessments, which actually have meaning and which actually test what the students know.  All of them make sense; they all go beyond just the restatement of facts.  The one about being a Lawyer arguing in front of the U.S. Supreme Court on the “Separate but equal” case in 1892 (p. 100) is just an amazing idea.  The assignments are interesting, pointed, specific and even fun.  In these ways the students actually know what the teacher is looking for, the assignment servers a purpose, it is meaningful, it provokes thought and again it is fun.   All of the readings have something in common, using the old ways just will not work anymore, but they can be a starting point to make something, whether it be a textbook or an assignment, better.



English Language Learners

English Language Learners

 

            When I started to read this brief I tried to put myself in the seat mind of a student whose first language is not English.  I realized how hard it must be on students, who speak little to no English, to try and understand academic language that not is in their first language.  Not only are these students trying to learning English but they are expected to learn academic language.  It is not just the words, but it is the grammar, the structure of the sentences, it is even colloquialisms that we use in out text and instructions.  These are just a few of the parts of reading that must be extremely difficult.  The question then turns to how do we as teachers teach students that are English language learners? 

            The brief goes into many different techniques and ways to help these students in learning the content while learning the academic language.  The techniques I think are all very good not just for English language learners.  They can be used for all students to get them interested in the subject matter.  Using, as the brief states, “…non-verbal means such as pictures, demonstrations, charts, and graphs,” (p.3) will be beneficial to all the students.  It keeps the material fresh and not just a lecture.  People, I believe, in general learn more when there are visuals attached to the subject they are learning, more so for those students in which English is not their first language. It’s the old saying, “a picture is worth a thousand words.”  Many of the techniques for teaching differently, or differentiation will work in any classroom and if implemented, will help not just the English language learners, but all of the students.  For me I will have to figure out how do to this in my classrooms that will make the lesson, the teaching, work for all the students.  It has to be in a way in which the content will be taught to both the English language learners and the students that have English as their first language.

            One aspect of this brief that I found interesting is that the English language learners need English language instruction at the same time.  That is they need instruction in grammar, sentence structure and so on.    As the brief states, “the challenge for teachers is to make language comprehensible so that the academic content can be conveyed and understood.” (p.2). The students need the basic instruction on how the language works, in how it is read, pronounced, and structured.  This seems to go against what we discussed earlier that we need to teach our young children not just the grammar or the phonics but teach them the love reading, read for more than the words.  They, like the English language learners, still need the basics; they need to be able to pronounce the words, structure sentences and so on in order to read.  I just think that if we are teaching the English language learners the basics of reading a new language shouldn’t we be teaching our young children, who are also in the process of reading a new language, the basics??