observation # 1

SED 406: Observation #1

            The classroom was bright and friendly.  The large smart board/projector assembly dominated the front of the class and there was projected on it a cute app that measured noise levels.  The classroom rules were posted on the wall alongside the school rules.  A version of Bloom’s Taxonomy was also posted on the wall over a bookcase containing the classrooms library.  The students’ desks faced the smart board, and the teacher’s desk was positioned next to the board and flanking the other side of the smart board was a computer table.

The students were already seated when we entered the classroom; it was a small class of LEP freshmen, they were taking their first world history course.  The students were all sitting quietly waiting for class to begin.  Their teacher introduced us and then had the students introduce themselves to us and tell us how long each had been in this country.  They ranged from a few years to a few months.  The nine students were spread out around the room, a few clustered together and a few in the back, but they all showed their teacher respect and seemed to enjoy the class.

            The class began with the students working on their DO NOW assignment that was posted on the board and their teacher walked around the room checking for the previous night’s homework.  Although this class contains limited English proficient students, they are required to speak English in class.  Sometimes they forget and speak in Spanish, all the students and the teacher were Spanish speakers, but the teacher will correct them and ask them to speak in English.  The lesson begins with a discussion on Marco Polo, the students will be writing their first essay on the explorer and so they will begin to gather information towards that end.

            They begin with the class reading the section on Marco Polo, followed by a discussion on this material.  The teacher used an app that randomly selected the student who would be called on to read from the book.  One of the students has only been in this country for a few months but read in English very well.  The teacher later told us that on his first day the other students applauded him for his reading skills.  After this group reading was done, the students received two handouts to read.  They were asked to read the material and then graphically organize the information into five categories; who, what, where, when, why and how.  The students worked quietly on this assignment individually for about twenty minutes.  Then they were told to work in small groups to share the information that they found.  Once they had discussed the information for about fifteen minutes, they were given another handout to help them organize the information into working sentences to help contrast their essays later in the week.

            Throughout the whole, lesson the teacher offered help and advice.  There was a very friendly atmosphere in the classroom and you could tell that the students and the teacher respected each other.  The students seemed to enjoy the class a lot and did not attempt to waste time.  There were no incidents of bad behavior during the whole class.  Overall, it seemed a very enjoyable class room in which a lot of material covered and very little time wasting occurring.  The teacher was capable, and she able to keep students on task as well as projecting a friendly and safe environment for learning to take place.

Promising Practices

Promising Practices

I attend the 16th annual promising practices conference held at RIC on November 2, 2012.  This event covered a wide range of topics within the centralized topic of civic engagement.  The conference had four different sessions with a wide variety of selections for the attendee to go to.  The first session I choose to go to was all about civic engagement "Undergraduate Engagement Initiatives: A Workshop for Students."  In this session students from the civic engagement class described different projects that they had participated in last year.  The project that I found most interesting was the democracy wall project.  The idea was that they placed a large paper wall up in a public place and asked a political question.  Students then could write their opinions upon this wall and discuss the topic.  I felt that this could be translated into a social studies classroom.  It could allow students to express their opinions about issues they are interested in anonymously. 

            The second session was the RIC/Central Falls Collaborative I.  I went to this one because as a Secondary Education student, I will be attending the SED 407 class held in Central Falls High School and I felt that I should like to know more about the program.  I came away from this session with a positive view on attending this class in the spring semester.  I look forward to being a student in a residential teaching program.

            The third session was the one I found the most interesting.  It was called “Immigration Oral History and Advocacy Writing for Social Change.”  This session gave the most useful information for me, an aspiring social studies teacher.  The presenters talked about a lesson that they had each carried out in their classes.  The first one was a project where the students had to interview a recent immigrant, as most of the students in the class were either recent immigrants or 2^nd generation Americans; this project was relevant to them.  The project looked interesting and informative and led to a better understanding by the students on immigrant history.  I would most defiantly try to incorporate this into my future classroom.  The second presentation was about teaching students to write a persuasive letter to a leader of some kind about a topic the students cared about.  I found this interesting and thought it was a good way to teach students how to become engaged citizens.

            The final session I attended I felt was the least relevant for me.  It was called “The Building Blocks for Successful Community Engaged Learning.”  This event was more geared towards University level engagements.  The focus was on how to get the college or universities and professors to focus more on community engagement projects. 

            Overall, the Promising Practices conference was interesting and gave me ideas that I may be able to incorporate into a future classroom.  I gained knowledge about my SED 407 class next semester as well.  I would defiantly attend such a conference again and I felt that I came away with a new understanding about the role of colleges and community engagement.

                                          

                                                Elizabeth Bitgood

 

Microteaching 1

Please comment to this post on my microteaching.

sed assingment

How can a taxpaying public evaluate schools and teachers?  That is the 50 million dollar question.  There is no easy answer to this, if there was we would be doing it already.  With the pressure of failing schools and the questions being raised over school choice, it is more important than ever that we find a way to answer this question.  Speaking with teachers that are friends of mine, I hear that the current evaluation system is not even implemented by people who know the subject being taught.  How can someone evaluate a teacher’s effectiveness in teaching a topic if the evaluator is ignorant of the topic being taught?

Standardized tests used to test the student’s progress are currently in vogue as a way to test teachers, however, not all students are good test takers, and this will adversely affect the evaluation of the teacher.  The standardize test in some instances are not even written by educators and again this isn’t a thing that seem to be productive.  How can someone outside a field with no knowledge of the exact workings of the field being evaluated create a test that will correctly evaluate the teacher? 

Our society today is filled with interest groups pushing their agendas politically, socially and in education.  How can we successfully evaluate a teacher’s effectiveness when the people who are creating the evaluations have ulterior motives?  All these forces are pulling our schools in different directions and standardizing the content isn’t necessarily doing the students any good.  Again speaking with a teacher I know, I am told that under common core she must complete a certain section within a specific time frame whether or not the students have understood the material.  She tells me she cannot spend any extra time on the topic even if the majority of the class isn’t grasping it.  How does this rigid standardization help the students learn?  How does teaching for a test ensure competency?

So what is the answer?  I don’t know, but perhaps a start would be to ensure that the tests used are written by educators and professionals in the fields being taught.  Perhaps the people who evaluate the teachers should have teaching experience within the subject being taught.  Maybe we should not expect the students to act like cogs in a machine with rigid standardization that offers no time for students to understand the material being taught to them, and perhaps we should not concentrate on teaching for a test but teaching for a life after school.  Perhaps the best way to evaluate the schools is to see how the graduating student adapts to society outside of the class room.  Can the ex-student actually begin college without having to be retaught how to write a paper?  Isn’t that what they should have learned in high school?  Can the ex-student get a job with only a high school diploma?  If not maybe, we need to rethink what we are teaching them in high school.

First blog for SED 406 class