'tis the season

Happy New Year everyone! May 2014 bring you joy, peace, and adventure!

Over the past week, I have had the opportunity to spend time with my family and I am overwhelmed by the life God has given me.  For someone who does very little to deserve so much, I truly am blessed. 

     I started my Christmas break with a trip to pick up my younger sister in Dayton.  We stopped off to see our aunt and uncle, and then had a lovely trip up north, to our parents’ house.  The car ride was anything but relaxing… driving through a deluge and taking the wrong turn twice… but the conversation was just grand.  In a world of confusion and chaos, it’s easy to get lost in my own problems and forget about the important things.  Anyone who has met my sister can tell you, she has an inexhaustibly positive outlook on life, and she’s always reminding me of what’s important.   Our conversation was refreshing and a great way to start off my break from school.

     There have been so many wonderful moments throughout the last few weeks and it has been so good for my soul.  Whether I’ve been cuddled up on a chair, watching Love Actually, or sipping hot tea while reading by the glow of our Christmas tree lights, I’ve felt at peace for most of this break.  For some reason, this Christmas, more than those of the past, has reminded me of how close God is and that He is the reason for peace in my heart.  Everything seems to revolve around His name: Emmanuel.  He truly is with us.

~born to be our friend~

     Christmas Eve was one of those moments I could feel the peace and joy of the season.  We were standing in church, holding candles and singing Silent Night.  For just a few seconds, everything seemed suspended and I felt an overwhelming sense of joy.  Tim was gently holding my hand, and I could hear Gram, singing in a soft soprano voice.  My nephew was to my left, carefully watching his candle flicker, while my year-old niece was looking up at the lights onstage, her eyes wide with wonder.  There we were, four generations of family, sharing a precious moment of anticipation.  We were waiting for our King.

<<The world in solemn stillness lay>>

     When we were little, our Christmas morning always started the same.  Before we opened presents, we had a beautiful little tradition that started with our baby Jesus nativity figurine (which we never had out before Christmas day) and Mom and Dad’s ring pillow from their wedding day.  We would put the little baby Jesus on the white, satin pillow and then the five of us would walk to the nativity scene, singing Happy Birthday to Jesus.  Something so small could easily be lost in the hustle and bustle of the excitement of Christmas day, but even now, that small reminder of why we’re celebrating stays with me.  My parents had us thinking of Jesus first on Christmas, and I know that the tradition will continue with my kids one day. 

…born a child, and yet a King…

     A new tradition my parents have started is inviting us to a rented house/cabin and spending two nights after Christmas… just our immediate family.  This is quite a change from the boisterous Weibl-family gatherings we use to have.  At first, I resisted the change; our yearly Christmas-day party was something I loved about Christmas and I was reluctant to change the tradition.  Now, after the second year has come and gone, I have to say I’m grateful for the change.  There are so few moments when the five of us siblings can get together for an uninterrupted time and this has become a wonderful chance to be with my best friends.  For 23 years of my life, I was surrounded by the noise, humor and exuberance of my family… and when we are together, the world seems crazy, loud and wonderful once again.  Most people might cringe at the thought of three days with family and no hope of escape, but for me, it’s a fantastic time.  There are always little bumps and no one knows how to push your buttons like your own family, but those rough moments are totally worth it for the chance to be with my siblings, who have grown up to be people I genuinely like.

**LOVE and JOY come to you**

So with this remarkable year coming to a close, celebrate the past and look forward to the future.  And as you make those new-years resolutions, focus on Him and the wondrous life He has given you… because isn’t that what it’s all about? Bettering ourselves for His glory and praise.

And God bless you and send you a Happy New Year!

-Kate

Reflection

At the beginning of this course, I described my personal theory of learning as one of relaxed, differentiated qualities. Now, at the end of our 8-week journey, I find myself editing this initial idea of how best my students will learn.  I had a lot of great ideas, but most of it was generalized and unintentional.  I use many different instructional strategies in my classroom, but after researching the differences between those and learning strategies, I realize there is so much more I can be doing to differentiate in my classroom.  I have learned of so many different ways to incorporate technology and use it to enhance the learning process for my students.  Not only have I been given great ideas, but I’ve learned about the theories that back up each one of the strategies I should be using.

In the immediate future, I see myself inserting more technology into my lessons.  Even if my goal is to use a new technology once a month, it’ll be more than I was doing before.  The one instructional tool I really want to start using regularly is the concept of a ‘flipped classroom’.  The more I read about, the more I want to implement it in my Calculus class. So often, my students struggle with their homework and they end up coming in to school for study tables because they got stuck on number 2 and were unable to finish the homework.  I’ve already started creating lesson plans for the Calc II curriculum so I can try out this technique.  As for the day-to-day lessons, I plan on adjusting some of the little things I do in my classroom. I am going to focus on dual-coding and have my students use visual AND audio learning strategies to secure concepts in their memories.  For example, just by having students explain their answers to a fellow classmate, the material they are working with will just solidify in their minds as they explain how they worked to get the answers.

One of the technology tools we worked with in this class was concept maps.  I would really like to use this tool with my students to reinforce the dual-coding theories I already referred to.  I also would like to use Prezi or another form of presenting (such as PowerPoint) to get my students aware of how they can display the information they acquire.  There are so many options out there and I now feel like I have a solid base of tools and techniques I can pull from in order to enhance my lessons.

My first long-term goal for my instructional practice is the use of more ‘learning strategies/techniques’ rather than just instructional strategies.  I want my students to become more hands-on with their learning and definitely move in the direction of teaching their peers rather than always listening to me teach.  I want my students to use their knowledge to teach other students and maintain a very student-based atmosphere in my classroom.  The second goal I have is, as I said before, to integrate more technology into my lessons, little by little.  I have a long way to go, but I accept the challenge and look forward to putting my new knowledge to good use.

VoiceThread

          Just to get a few things out of the way… here’s a big apology for my voicethread.  I am definitely still pretty shaky on creating them, and I felt very limited on what I could do with the program.  Simple edits and cuts all need to be made before creating the voicethread and that became problematic.  After I created this one for our class, I spent more time creating a second (with calculus problems) and it seemed a little easier.  Perhaps over time I will grow use to the setup and find ways to incorporate threads into my lessons. Click for my voicethread: HERE!

Now… on to the blog topic!

            We research a few instructional strategies this week which correlated with our study of social learning theories.  Of these strategies, the first was social constructivism which Dr. Orey (2010) states is “based on specific assumptions about reality, knowledge, and learning” (p. 56). This strategy (if not already evident by it’s name) is very centered around social learning.  Constructivists think learning happens through social means when people work together to create their own knowledge.  Everything about it lines right up with the social learning theories. 

            Cooperative learning was another one of the strategies we read about this week.  This one is often used in my room and is definitely the key to helping students understand.  Students can work together to solve problems and lead each other through barriers.  This works best when groups are small and I like to keep my groups as low as two or three when they are working together on problems. 

            These strategies all correlate to social learning theories in the fact that students learn best when working with and presenting to their peers.  By teaching a lesson to someone else, a student can grasp so much more than they could just learning individually by way of lecture.

Laureate Education, Inc. (Producer). (2011). Program eight: Constructionist and constructivist learning theories [Video webcast]. Bridging learning theory, instruction and technology.

Orey, M. (2010). Emerging perspectives on learning, teaching, and technology.

Pitler, H., Hubbell, E. R., & Kuhn, M. (2012). Using technology with classroom instruction that works (2nd ed.). Alexandria, VA: ASCD.

working in the "Real-World"

            One of the toughest things about being a math teacher is finding activities (such as virtual field trips and webquests) to facilitate the curriculum we need to cover.  History and English both have so many avenues for discovery in the writing world and through field trips; it’s difficult to find a place for math classes to go.  On the flip side of that, math teachers are really lucky when it comes to problem-based and project-based instruction.  Nothing feels better than giving a students a problem with real-world applications… because so often they’ve already made up their minds about the usefulness of math! 

            After reading through our resources for class this week, I found several ideas through a few amazing websites.  The first was Webquest Design Patterns (courtesy of our professor: Kathryn Arnold) and another was the virtual filing cabinet of Sam Shaw, a teacher from New York.  These websites have great ideas for project/problem-based instruction and I’ve spent a lot of time sifting through hundreds of great ideas.  Using the constructionist views Dr. Orey (2011) talked about, it makes sense that students will understand and focus more when they are creating and building their own problems.  People learn more when they are involved in some kind of building process with a concept.  A real-world task not only gets our students building solutions, but they also find the information to be more important when it is attached to something concrete in our world.  Finding the volume of a rectangular prism is one thing, but creating a swimming pool with maximum volume while on a budget, is something students will connect meaning to.

            In Pitler, Hubbell, and Kuhn’s (2012) book, they talk about different techniques for testing hypotheses and technological tools to enhance these experiences. Spreadsheet software can help students gather and analyze data much quicker in real-world situations.  In the end, these spreadsheets help the students learn the content by letting them predict and analyze the outcomes of different problems. Technology can really boast our lessons by providing incentive for our students to collect and analyze data, hypothesize and prove trends through problem-based instruction. 

-Kate

"An expert problem solver must be endowed with two incompatible quantities: a restless imagination and a patient pertinacity."

~Howard W. Even 

Laureate Education, Inc. (Producer). (2011). Program seven: Constructionist and constructivist learning theories [Video webcast]. Bridging learning theory, instruction and technology.

Pitler, H., Hubbell, E. R., & Kuhn, M. (2012). Using technology with classroom instruction that works (2nd ed.). Alexandria, VA: ASCD.

cues and questions and summaries... oh my!

Well folks, here we are again! And of course, you can’t read my blog without submitting your opinion in my survey (over on the left side).  I kept the results to my last poll posted- so if you voted last week, check it out! 

      Just as a recap (in case you’re not one of my fellow 6711 classmates), we’re reading through a few chapters in Using Technology with Classroom Instruction that Works (here’s a PDF version) and discussing the relationships between these instructional strategies and cognitive learning theories. 

       In the first section, Pitler, Hubbell and Kuhn discuss cues, questions, and advanced organizers; these strategies focus on “enhancing students’ ability to retrieve, use, and organize information about a topic” (p. 73).   When seeing these strategies, it’s easy to come up with example for each strategy, but the trick is to create questions and cues that encourage higher-order thinking.  For example, if you were to use brainstorming software and ask students to create a concept map of different types of triangles, every kid will only have three or four pieces.  But if you ask those same students to create a concept map of everything they know about triangles, there will be many more connections and it would look something like this:

http://sheilamorr.weebly.com/triangle-unit.html

     Summarizing and note taking were the strategies from the second chapter our class reviewed. These strategies are significant because students have to understand that the content they are reviewing is important.   Dr. Orey talks about how every piece of information is linked to another and that is how students retain concepts in their brains.  Other senses can help enhance memory (dual-coding), such as smell or sight.  We should use different visual presentations to help students enhance their long-term memory. Students store information in their long-term memory when they deem it of some importance, and when they see the information presented in a multitude of ways, it helps create links from one application to another.  As Novak puts it, “in rote learning, there is little or no integration of new knowledge with existing knowledge” (p. 6); without these connections, students will easily forget the concepts they learn.   For a fun example of how it feels when your instructional technique is NOT working… CLICK HERE!

     By using multiple forms of note-taking, instructing with higher-level questioning and cues, and continually having students summarizing what they are learning, I can ensure that they are learning the information I present.  And on the other hand, by switching up our instructional strategies, we’re helping ourselves too!  Nothing is worse than falling so deep into a regimented pattern that you don’t realize you’ve become one of “those” teachers.

-Kate

"The one real goal of education is to leave a person asking questions."

-Max Beerhohm

Laureate Education, Inc. (Producer). (2011). Program five: Cognitive learning theory [Video webcast]. Bridging learning theory, instruction and technology.  

Novak, J. D., & Cañas, A. J. (2008). The theory underlying concept maps and how to construct and use them, Technical Report IHMC CmapTools 2006-01 Rev 01-2008

Pitler, H., Hubbell, E. R., & Kuhn, M. (2012). Using technology with classroom instruction that works (2nd ed.). Alexandria, VA: ASCD.

Behaviorism

     Alright folks… weigh in with your opinions over on the left side of my blog.  The question: Is homework necessary for our students? Quick! Vote before you read my post! I don’t want to sway your mind in any way!

       Okay. Are you done voting? Great. How do I feel about it? Well, as a math teacher, I would shout it from the rooftops, YES! I really believe that homework is the best way for students to practice concepts they learn and commit those concepts to their memories.  Experience is the best way for the brain to learn, so when students are doing problems on their own, without the help of a teacher, they are having little experiences with each question and are slowly binding things to memory.  It’s no secret that doing something multiple times helps someone master a task.  This notion goes hand-in-hand with those ideas of behavior theorists like Skinner, Pavlov, Watson and Thorndike.  For those of you who don’t know the basic concepts of behaviorism, operant conditioning, and positive/negative reinforcement, you might wish to take about two minutes and watch a fun example… click HERE!! 

       Now, while I agree that homework is a great tool to use for practice, I don’t believe it should be the main focus of every class.  Behaviorism (if your still a little fuzzy on what ‘Behaviorism’ is all about, check out this great article by George Graham of Stanford) is one of several learning theories in education; the main argument is that learning can happen best through repetition, practice, and conditioning.  When students are practicing concepts, they are creating a sort of ‘muscle memory’ for the brain.  Practice makes perfect because the more someone practices, the less likely that person is to make the same mistake twice.  In math, most students learn by making mistakes.  Once that mistake is corrected, the student is much less likely to make the same one again. 

       Using feedback and recognition was the second part of the resource we were to link to behaviorist theories.  This one, to me, is a no-brainer.  Not only do students perform better when they are given recognition, but they also learn better.  Going back to the short video at the beginning of my post, by recognizing good behavior, Sheldon was able to reinforce Penny’s efforts to be respectful.  Now, of course we’ve all seen negative reinforcements, but it’s obvious that students will respond better to positive reinforcement. Having students brag up their talents on a website will push them to give more effort.  Here’s a great example of high school students collaborating with teachers for a math video and then setting it up on their YouTube channel. CLICK ME!

      Recognition and reinforcements bring a lot of students a long way, and as for homework and practice, we have to remember that there are other alternatives to homework that also stay consistent with the behaviorist theory; group work is a great way to get students collaborating while using practice to reinforce the information they are learning.  Homework should be used to help the students, not punish them… so if we as teachers keep that in mind, then the practice will be beneficial.  If we abuse this power of conditioning and practice, the benefits go right out the window. 

-Kate

“The way positive reinforcement is carried out is more important than the amount.”

-B. F. Skinner

Pitler, H., Hubbell, E. R., & Kuhn, M. (2012). Using technology with classroom instruction that works (2nd ed.). Alexandria, Virginia: ASCD.

looking back to move *forward*

            A few short weeks ago, I started a class, which has totally changed my perspective of incorporating technology into my lessons.  I learned how to set up and use a wiki, blog (obviously), podcast and other resources.  A few of these things, I already knew how to use, but I had no idea how to incorporate the use of them into my lessons and classroom.   Now, I have so many new ideas for using these different technology skills with my students.  I have wanted to get my class headed towards a more student-centered, project-based learning atmosphere and these skills have really pushed me further in that direction.

            Most of the research I did for this class helped me understand the advantages to using these technological skills with my students.  Technology is a second language to most of my kids and it only makes sense that they would learn much better with the assistance of this language.  At my school, students have more access to technology at home than at school.  To me, this is a little disheartening but I want to rise to that challenge.  What good is a room full of students with smart phones if they only use those phones to text/tweet/post while they’re suppose to be paying attention to lectures?  Instead, I want to focus my classroom in on the benefits of educating WITH these devices, rather than fighting against them. 

            This past weekend, I attended a math conference (OCTM annual conference in Dayton) and was bombarded with the same ideas, over and over again.  The focus of our classrooms needs to move beyond the teacher and more to the learners.  An amazing statistic from one of the presenters gave me a glimpse into the reasoning behind learner-centered teaching; visual and audio help us retain somewhere between 15-30% of what we learn, but teaching helps us retain around 95% of the information.  This is HUGE!! I need to make my students the teachers so they can learn the material inside and out.

         

            So what do we do about it? Well… that’s the question I keep asking myself.  Over the next few years, I am hoping to change up the entire structure of my Algebra II class.  My first goal is to incorporate a “flipped classroom” at least once or twice a chapter.  The process of a flipped classroom starts with students reading/watching some kind of lesson on their own, as ‘homework’, then coming in to class to work in groups on the actual homework of the chapter.  I think this will significantly help infuse my class with student dialog and a higher conceptual process.  My second goal is to focus on at least one project per unit, with both my Algebra II classes AND my Calculus class. 

            In a small, rural district, it can be difficult to find the resources I would like to use in my classroom, but that’s no excuse to avoid the resources I CAN have… especially if it keeps my students more engaged and better prepared for life after high school. 

Isn’t that what it’s all about?

-Kate

“Don’t limit a child to your own learning, for he was born in another time.”

-Rabindranath Tagore