"They invent scenes and stories, solve problems, and negotiate their way through social roadblocks. They know what they want to do and work diligently to do it. Because their motivation comes from within, they learn the powerful lesson of pursuing their own ideas to a successful conclusion. "


"Research comparing 50 play-based classes with 50 early-learning centers found that by age ten the children who had played in kindergarten excelled over the others in a host of ways. They were more advanced in reading and mathematics and they were better adjusted socially and emotionally in school. They excelled in creativity and intelligence, oral expression, and "industry."


"The creation of a healthy balance described above has been blocked by current policies and government-imposed practices and programs, including No Child Left Behind and Reading First. These well-intentioned but fundamentally flawed mandates rely on testing and on didactic and scripted approaches—especially for teaching children from low-income backgrounds—in spite of the fact that these practices are not well supported by research evidence. Indeed, many of the current approaches to kindergarten education are based on unfounded assumptions and preconceptions about what is best for children and schools."

I picked these because I strongly agree with them. Play is important not only as a child but as an adult too for many of the same reasons. Children have become so programmed to believing that their is one right answer and one way to do things, that they are lost when you let them be creative. One of the girls in my third grade class, is so smart but when we color or paint she is lost. She sho usually is done and helping other students has to have some help her or they finish painting for her because she wants to quit. I think that the NCLB limits teachers and prinicals. I see it all the time especially now because WESTest is coming up. Teachers change their lessons to more reading and english because this is what they "need" to learn so that they keep their jobs. It's there to prevent teacher from not doing their job but it keeps teacher from excelling at their job and reaching out to the student that really need help. There is so much drill and kill going on and the student that haven't been doing well still aren't and they won't test well but enough of the students that have been doing fine or better will keep them from being in trouble.

PLAY=LEARNING

BENEFITS OF PLAY

Journal 8

Some challenges with inquiry based approach is that students can't design meaningful or "driving questions and so it doesn''t need much investigation. Also teacher have trouble understanding and carrying out the method. Therefore they don't scaffold or assess properly. Students have trouble developing logical arguments and finding evidence to support their claim. Students have trouble with working together and time mangement. Inquiry approach is tough on teacher because of all the role the have to play.

Simulations and games

Like project based learning, simulations and games add variety of ways for the students to learn. the more students use multiple systems of representing knowledge, the better they are able to think about and recall what they have learned (Marzano, Pickering, & Pollock, 2001). Simulations often provide students with a real world experience. They get the chance to visualize and model what they are learning. Games and modeling activities can elicit curiosity, create a demand for knowledge, and enable students to discover knowledge through exploration (Edelson, 1998). Games becoming more geared to a goal rather than pure excitement. I have alsways believe games help the student want to learn so they can be better players of the game and at being a teammate.

Cooperative Grouping

Cooperative learning is similiar to project based learning because the student have to do more than just know the information they have to share it with their students. Effective cooperative learning occurs when students work together to accomplish shared goals and when positive structures are in place to support that process (Johnson & Johnson, 1999). The teacher must put the student in a group that they will succeed in order to do the teacher must examine different aspect of the childs learning style, gender, friendships, and possible things that could go wrong. Students need to be in groups with a variety of learning levels and each student has been assigned a task. If one student fails they all fail or don't do as well. This drives student to break barriers and help without one person ending up with all the work which often happens in group work.

Cues, questions and Advance organizers

This is a much different approach to learning. This is one that is already in place and with a little bit of fine tuning can be very effective. Cues and questions are a way of prompting students responses. The article for advanced organizers give k-w-l charts. I disagree with that example but there are several other graphic organizers that help students. Such a alphabet vocabulary, making a book or magazine, making 3-d trinagles and cube and then writing about them on the shape. Asking questions and prompting students' replies with cues are strategies that come naturally to most teachers. In fact, some 80 percent of student-teacher interactions involve cues and questions (Marzano, Pickering, & Pollock, 2001). This should definitely not be the only strategy in your classroom.

It takes a lot of stragegies to make a successful classroom. These are just a few to look through but you have to find ones that work for you and your students.

What does the research say about the impact of negative teacher attitudes about students ethnicity and language variations on student learning?

The teacher attitude toward students difference with culture and language are deeply connected to students performance. When a student feels disconnect do to the othering effect placed on them by the teacher they do not participate. Participation is part of learning that some are okay with missing it's not their personality so they can still achieve by listening to the conversations in class but when someone is learning a new language or dialect their input and active engage in the classroom are needed. Teacher with negative attitudes put these student in the back of the class. It's hard to be engage when you are in the back.
These student are not only struggling to find their identity in the classroom but at home too. They need their teacher to be a driving force in their learning and fitting in. Students being grouped into this other category begin to give up and become a self -fulfilling prophesy in which they believe they are outcast and can't succeed.

What are some assessment pitfalls?


Assessment are very one sided and do not take the child's background into consideration. Also a teachers pre-judgements about students hinder how they feel a student will do. Teachers even the best have a way they feel about students that make it hard for them to see passed that. two strategies I learned was hiding the name and grading papers or using a very specific rubric and grading what they have not what you think they meant.

What three approaches can be used to transform students’ dialectal diversity into an asset (funds of knowledge) rather than a liability (cultural deficit).

Take a course in lingustic diversity or cultural awareness the reading compares learning to deal with diversities like taking math and science course you take these course to learn to deal with the problems that will arise and learn to teach one thing many ways so your students understand them. Bialectal instruction in another approach that leads to less mistakes caused by non stadard dialect student can see the difference and correct mistakes on their own without the inference of their dialect confusing the situation. This approach leads to the last approach I liked which was to take a second language course it changes your attitude when you can put yourself into the situation of your student. I think back to high school taking foreign languages and I took another one in college. Trying to learn the words and then how put them in a sentence it was such a struggle. Then I try to imagine if the whole class was speaking the language and I was trying learn science, my hardest subject, instead of just the language and my head is ready to explode. These are children dealing the same situation. It changes my attitude just to think about it.

How prepared do you feel to teach in a culturally diverse classroom?



I feel completely unprepared to teach in a culturally diverse classroom although I have strategies and and reading, i learn beast by doing and we just don't have very diverse classes. I think that is one thing I learned through the Where I am project. We are all different but we have many similarities. I want to be more prepared but I think it a learning by doing type experience such as with the teacher under assessment who found her self even though she believed she was ready, stereotype and black student.

The PowerPoint activity was very frustrating it did not take into account what people had access to or allow for creative difference. I had non linguistic representation to reflect on. "Learners store knowledge in two primary ways: linguistic and non linguistic. They need both.(Marzano, Pickering and Pollock 2001)." This did do some non linguist representation by add pictures instead of just words to the PowerPoint and colorful text and background. It would have been more helpful if the directions were the same way. The directions were also confusing and so needed to be read twice maybe more. It was ironic that what we were creating was a great learning tool but the way we were learning to make it was very one dimensional. Another suggestion would be to have us work in groups. We were not allowed to ask our partners questions. In the reading it says to "have students work in small group when creating visual representations... discussion will help them communicate and refine their thinking." And last section is the assignment could have been modeled showing us how to use the tools would keep everyone on the same page. "Models, graphs, imagery, and other tools enable students to engage in actively constructing representations of their understanding."

Blog 4

Dominant paradigm is when something becomes widely accepted in a culture and become the model for furute generations.


-(Shepherd (1998) The students got to find a solution to a real problem. It made ideas more concrete and so the students research was apparently better and the class felt better about what they learned because it was real-life. More than a few children need real experience to make their learning stick stay.
-Student can support themselve clearly. It's important not only to know what you know but be able to share it with other and others be able to understand.
(Stepien, Gallagher, & Workman, 1993),
-In one of previous blog post, I spoke of boy who couldn't do classwork but was good with his hands. Students that don't do well tradionally excel in PBL.
(Boaler, 1997; Meyer, Turner, & Spencer, 1997; Rosenfeld & Rosenfeld, 1998).



-(Vernon & Blake, 1993; Albanese & Mitchell, 1993) Students faced with list of given facts use research and their own knowledge to come up with a solution. This model a real situation they may face in their careers. Student test higher on qualifying clinical exams'
-Studies have demonstrated that students who participated in problem-based experiences are better able to generate accurate hypotheses and coherent explanations (Hmelo,1998b; Schmidt et al., 1996)

-Kolodner (2000) Students get the information and understand it better by modeling real life things. Student not only know they also are be to use higher order thinking skills that can be assessed in a variety of ways.
-Hmelo and colleagues (2000) When students provide feedback and collaborate, they can go back and try other things which reinforce their learning.
-Fortus and colleagues (2004) Learning by design bridges a gap between higher and lower achieving student with success and progress for both groups.

Project based learning the student are actively engaged. They do many small things that help to come up with possible solution to a real life problem.
Problem-based learning is way for student to use problem solving skills and research to actively come up with an answer to the problem.
Learning by design is when the teacher has to set up ordinary learning experience and make them more engaging and hands on.

I think the most important benefit to all these approaches is that all student succeed. Students who normally feel defeated by classroom activities excel with these approaches. These approaches also don't stunt the growth of the students who are already excel; if anything they are finally challenged.

Where I'm from..

Poem

I am from the white house on the hill next to the middle school from backyard football games, high school rivalry and backyard brawls.
I am from the home of pepperoni rolls, the first father’s day and Dunbar High Alumni.
I am from the church every Sunday, the love of family by blood and by heart.
I am from celebrating every birthday with family and helping anyone in need, from Meades and Bonners and Turners.
I am from the occasional absent mindedness and never giving in. From “it’s more important to be proud of yourself” and lullabies and bedtime stories
I am from Methodist, Baptist and Christianity.
I'm from Akron Toledo, Ohio and Fairmont W.Va., Great Grandma’s pudding cake and Mom’s baked Mac and Cheese.
From the Uncle Bill graduating high school at 114 pounds underweight for the Navy and waiting a year, gaining four pounds and joining the Army, the Aunt Charlotte Graduating college not being able to get a job because of the color of her skin moving to Toledo and coming back to receive the Milken award.