TPACK and SAMR are two more acronyms that we can add to our teacher vocabulary! TPACK stands for Technological Pedagogical Content Knowledge and this combines all three of the elements to make the information being taught more relevant to the students. Content knowledge covers the what part of the lesson; what is being taught. The pedagogical knowledge is the how; how can this information going to be more accessible to our students. The technological knowledge needs to incorporate technology to enhance the content. The three should intertwine to meet the students' needs. SAMR stands for substitution, augmentation, modification, and redefinition. Substitution means that the new technology piece replaces the old, but the task still remains the same. Augmentation is when the technology makes the task easier for the students. Modification and redefinition allow students to create new ideas, and things that you would not be able to do without the integration of technology. As you progress through the acronym for SAMR, the benefits from the use of technology should become more complex. It is important to try to push to the R level of the SAMR in your lessons. By working in the higher levels of SAMR you enable your students to enhance their 21st century skills!
For my research portion of this week's blog, I found an article that discussed different ways to increase students' attention spans. Research has proven that the more physical activity incorporated into the classroom, the better the students perform academically. The main emphasis of this article is increasing physical activity and decreasing instructional time. I know what you may be thinking, how will decreasing the amount of instruction time help improve testing and academic scores? However, this article also talks about if the students get breaks every so often, or are active while learning, their attention spans will increase and performance levels will also increase. This is because students are able to refresh and refocus when it comes time to actually concentrate. A mistake that teachers often make is trying to rely on recess or physical education class to make sure that students are active.
There are many NCPTS that fit in with this week's blog. The standards are 1, 3, and 4. It is important for teachers to take leadership and responsibility for the well-being of their students: physically, emotionally, mentally. Also, teachers have to know the content they are teaching, this is a huge factor and key component in the TPACK acronym. Lastly, standard 4, teachers should facilitate student learning by providing them with the correct resources and allowing them to build their 21st century skills, which is a key component in the SAMR acronym as well.
Monday, February 22, 2016
Tuesday, February 16, 2016
Do You Believe in Second Chances?
As I was reflecting on my past week, and continuing to look forward to what is expected this week, I wanted to research a topic that would give me some encouragement. It is almost mid semester, and I am starting to burn out from all the stressors and demands that hit right before Spring Break. With that being said, I came across a blog post that was post on the Education Week website. The quote at the beginning is what caught my eye, which states: "Learning requires multiple opportunities. So get rid of your justice mindset and remember, kids need practice."
This article takes the time to explain the reasoning and benefits behind giving students the opportunity to "re-do" their assigned task. Learning is a progress that requires collaboration, feedback, and finalizing a task. Students should have more than one chance to show their mastery of a skill or concept. Re-dos allow students to show their understanding from more than one perspective and increases their depth of knowledge when they can review the concept over again. Allowing students to have second chances on their work can be very beneficial for increasing their comprehension levels; however, a lot of teachers are against it because they either don't have the time to go over the concept again, or they don't have the patience. The justice mindset that most teachers have is to penalize the students who did not demonstrate mastery on their first attempt. Learning is a continuous process. To tie this in with our class, I greatly appreciate my professors that allow me to submit my assignments for feedback, and then provide me with the chance to strengthen my understanding and performance on that particular task.
The North Carolina Teaching Standard that best fits with allowing students to have multiple chances to demonstrate their understanding is standard 4: Teachers Facilitate Learning for their students. Teachers should be responsible for working collaboratively with their students and providing them with fair opportunities to achieve their goals.
Feel free to check out the blog post ---- http://blogs.edweek.org/teachers/work_in_progress/2016/02/students_need_multiple_opportu.html?cmp=eml-contshr-shr
This article takes the time to explain the reasoning and benefits behind giving students the opportunity to "re-do" their assigned task. Learning is a progress that requires collaboration, feedback, and finalizing a task. Students should have more than one chance to show their mastery of a skill or concept. Re-dos allow students to show their understanding from more than one perspective and increases their depth of knowledge when they can review the concept over again. Allowing students to have second chances on their work can be very beneficial for increasing their comprehension levels; however, a lot of teachers are against it because they either don't have the time to go over the concept again, or they don't have the patience. The justice mindset that most teachers have is to penalize the students who did not demonstrate mastery on their first attempt. Learning is a continuous process. To tie this in with our class, I greatly appreciate my professors that allow me to submit my assignments for feedback, and then provide me with the chance to strengthen my understanding and performance on that particular task.
The North Carolina Teaching Standard that best fits with allowing students to have multiple chances to demonstrate their understanding is standard 4: Teachers Facilitate Learning for their students. Teachers should be responsible for working collaboratively with their students and providing them with fair opportunities to achieve their goals.
Feel free to check out the blog post ---- http://blogs.edweek.org/teachers/work_in_progress/2016/02/students_need_multiple_opportu.html?cmp=eml-contshr-shr
Tuesday, February 9, 2016
Learning is a Lifelong Process
Wow, it is already week six in the semester and time just keeps flying by! I'm surprised at just how much knowledge I am gaining as I tackle on task after another. This semester, there are things that I should constantly be working on, and at first this was extremely stressful for me, but now I have established a routine and can manage everything in an orderly fashion. Time management has really been emphasized this semester, and is the skill that has needed the most work. I am sure one day, I will look back on this semester and be grateful that I learned this skill now and that it helped prepare me for the crazy schedule and work load I will have in the future.
The Keep Learning Alive conference was phenomenal this weekend!! I loved being surrounded by current teachers willing to take time out of their weekend to not only better themselves, but also look out for the best interest of their students. The collaboration and enthusiasm got me excited even more about one day working in the school system and having my own classroom. I gained so much insight on all different aspects of teaching, not just in the classroom, but all of the duties that come from outside of the classroom as well. To kick off the KLA conference, Mr. Steve Lassiter, the N.C. Principal of the Year spoke and it was so inspiring to hear his school's success story. In my opinion, he holds every attribute it takes to be an influential and encouraging principal. I would absolutely love to work for someone like him in the near future! I also attended 3 great breakout sessions before having lunch that day, but the one that really stuck out to me was "The Power of an Hour: Building Culture of Innovation through Genius Hour". I seriously love everything about this idea and think that it can really motivate and benefit students throughout their educational journey. The basics of this idea is to empower the students to create an appropriately challenging project, dealing with something that interest them, and allowing them time during the week to research, create, and construct their own project. I think this idea expands the educational horizons and allows students to learn from all kinds of different perspectives. This also keys in on the student's intrinsic motivation and gets them excited for learning about their particular project. Ms. Moore was an awesome speaker and brought great energy to the session. I even thought to myself, I want to be a student in her fourth grade class, she seems like a fun and knowledgeable teacher! This conference definitely had an impact on me, as a future teacher and I took away so many ideas that I want to implement in my classroom! I appreciated the opportunity to attend this conference and will look for more to attend in the near future!
This blog really connects to all of the N.C. Teaching Standards in my opinion, but to narrow it down, I would choose the first one and the fourth one. Teachers need to demonstrate leadership in their classroom, and teachers should facilitate the learning of their students. Teachers should show leadership by modeling "learning is a life long process" and then allowing the students to take responsibility for their learning as well.
The Keep Learning Alive conference was phenomenal this weekend!! I loved being surrounded by current teachers willing to take time out of their weekend to not only better themselves, but also look out for the best interest of their students. The collaboration and enthusiasm got me excited even more about one day working in the school system and having my own classroom. I gained so much insight on all different aspects of teaching, not just in the classroom, but all of the duties that come from outside of the classroom as well. To kick off the KLA conference, Mr. Steve Lassiter, the N.C. Principal of the Year spoke and it was so inspiring to hear his school's success story. In my opinion, he holds every attribute it takes to be an influential and encouraging principal. I would absolutely love to work for someone like him in the near future! I also attended 3 great breakout sessions before having lunch that day, but the one that really stuck out to me was "The Power of an Hour: Building Culture of Innovation through Genius Hour". I seriously love everything about this idea and think that it can really motivate and benefit students throughout their educational journey. The basics of this idea is to empower the students to create an appropriately challenging project, dealing with something that interest them, and allowing them time during the week to research, create, and construct their own project. I think this idea expands the educational horizons and allows students to learn from all kinds of different perspectives. This also keys in on the student's intrinsic motivation and gets them excited for learning about their particular project. Ms. Moore was an awesome speaker and brought great energy to the session. I even thought to myself, I want to be a student in her fourth grade class, she seems like a fun and knowledgeable teacher! This conference definitely had an impact on me, as a future teacher and I took away so many ideas that I want to implement in my classroom! I appreciated the opportunity to attend this conference and will look for more to attend in the near future!
This blog really connects to all of the N.C. Teaching Standards in my opinion, but to narrow it down, I would choose the first one and the fourth one. Teachers need to demonstrate leadership in their classroom, and teachers should facilitate the learning of their students. Teachers should show leadership by modeling "learning is a life long process" and then allowing the students to take responsibility for their learning as well.
Tuesday, February 2, 2016
DOK
DOK (Depth of Knowledge) was an acronym that sounded so foreign to me when I first heard of it during our discussion this week; however, the relationship between DOK and performance tasks intrigued me to research a little more about it. Dr. Parker had suggested to look up Alice Keekler and her explanation of DOK, so that is exactly what I did, and I found an awesome resource called her website that broke down the difference between the DOK levels and it also gave some tips as to how to differentiate the difference between a DOK task and one that is not.
While reading this article, I learned that most assignments or tasks that are assigned most often in the classroom are DOK level 2 tasks. Level 2 tasks are usually when students can provide the same answers and can have their answers checked against an answer key to see if they are correct. Assessments are usually the main focus when it comes to DOK level 2. Alice Keekler, being a math teacher admitted that she struggled with assigning DOK level 2 tasks most of the time. She referenced a cool resource called www.quia.com/web that she uses for assessment in her class. She explained the many advantages that it provides for the students, but then she quickly realized this website does not make her students think critically about the concepts being taught, which does not make it a higher DOK level task. There is a difference between DOK level 2 and DOK level 3. DOK level 3 tasks make the students go beyond the point of just providing an answer, it makes the student explain their reasoning for providing that answer. Strategic thinking and critiquing the reasoning of others, which would allow the students to participate in peer evaluation; these are just some ways to apply DOK level 3 tasks to any subject area. DOK level 4 tasks expands students' critical thinking skills even further! Level 4 requires students to be able to apply their knowledge of the particular concept and to invent or create something new. This evidence allows one to prove that they have mastered it and can model their understanding by transferring their knowledge from the thing being taught to this new idea. Alice emphasizes that DOK is more than just a verb chart, and teachers should be responsible for checking their assignments against these guidelines instead of the DOK verb chart to see more affective results. At the end of the article, Alice challenges upcoming and present teachers to keep a tally chart of what kind of assignments they are using in their classroom.
Furthermore, I am connecting this article with my progression of creating my unit by following these DOK guidelines when designing my performance tasks. My two concepts for my unit are Leadership and Society, and my grade level is second. I have an idea for my first performance task, which is to have the students pick a historical figure and create an infomercial/ election commercial about that particular figure. They will have to explain how the contributions of this person has affected society and how it still affects them today. Then, they will post their video to SchoolTube, and their videos will be broadcasted for the whole school to watch. The school will then vote on who they think was the most influential and who is their favorite historical figure. Judging the task on these DOK guidelines stated above, this would be a DOK level 4 assignment. However, this is just brainstorming about this activity, so if you have any ideas or suggestions feel free to share!!!
This concept of the DOK goes along with the fourth NCPTS, which is teachers facilitate learning for their students. Teachers are responsible for planning instruction that is appropriate for their students.
~P.s. This article was an awesome read and if you want to check it out for yourself, here it is:
http://www.alicekeeler.com/teachertech/2015/02/13/dok-levels-students-critically-thinking/
While reading this article, I learned that most assignments or tasks that are assigned most often in the classroom are DOK level 2 tasks. Level 2 tasks are usually when students can provide the same answers and can have their answers checked against an answer key to see if they are correct. Assessments are usually the main focus when it comes to DOK level 2. Alice Keekler, being a math teacher admitted that she struggled with assigning DOK level 2 tasks most of the time. She referenced a cool resource called www.quia.com/web that she uses for assessment in her class. She explained the many advantages that it provides for the students, but then she quickly realized this website does not make her students think critically about the concepts being taught, which does not make it a higher DOK level task. There is a difference between DOK level 2 and DOK level 3. DOK level 3 tasks make the students go beyond the point of just providing an answer, it makes the student explain their reasoning for providing that answer. Strategic thinking and critiquing the reasoning of others, which would allow the students to participate in peer evaluation; these are just some ways to apply DOK level 3 tasks to any subject area. DOK level 4 tasks expands students' critical thinking skills even further! Level 4 requires students to be able to apply their knowledge of the particular concept and to invent or create something new. This evidence allows one to prove that they have mastered it and can model their understanding by transferring their knowledge from the thing being taught to this new idea. Alice emphasizes that DOK is more than just a verb chart, and teachers should be responsible for checking their assignments against these guidelines instead of the DOK verb chart to see more affective results. At the end of the article, Alice challenges upcoming and present teachers to keep a tally chart of what kind of assignments they are using in their classroom.
Furthermore, I am connecting this article with my progression of creating my unit by following these DOK guidelines when designing my performance tasks. My two concepts for my unit are Leadership and Society, and my grade level is second. I have an idea for my first performance task, which is to have the students pick a historical figure and create an infomercial/ election commercial about that particular figure. They will have to explain how the contributions of this person has affected society and how it still affects them today. Then, they will post their video to SchoolTube, and their videos will be broadcasted for the whole school to watch. The school will then vote on who they think was the most influential and who is their favorite historical figure. Judging the task on these DOK guidelines stated above, this would be a DOK level 4 assignment. However, this is just brainstorming about this activity, so if you have any ideas or suggestions feel free to share!!!
This concept of the DOK goes along with the fourth NCPTS, which is teachers facilitate learning for their students. Teachers are responsible for planning instruction that is appropriate for their students.
~P.s. This article was an awesome read and if you want to check it out for yourself, here it is:
http://www.alicekeeler.com/teachertech/2015/02/13/dok-levels-students-critically-thinking/
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