25 Matching Annotations
  1. Jul 2016
    1. increase teacher retention, satisfaction, and student achievement

      I know for me, having a mentor teacher who I could sit down with, bounce ideas off of, vent to, help me find resources, etc. really helped me feel successful my first year teaching in a new district. I know this made made me a more comfortable teacher in my classroom and helped me become more personable with my kids.

    2. apply new knowledge and receive feedback, with ongoing data to reflect how teaching practices influence student learning over time.

      I think this is a key piece that many teachers and schools miss. If the school/district is teaching us something new, then we should be expected to implement it as best we can in our classroom. This needs to include FEEDBACK on how we are doing with the implementation.

    3. vision

      Our school has a "vision statement" that is posted in every classroom and in the halls, to remind each student as well as the staff what the goal of being at MHS is. I think this helps keep both students and staff focused on success.

    1. From cell phones to Websites, from YouTube videos to multi-player games like World of War craft, technology is funda-mentally changing how we interact with information and with each other

      = I connect this to the Edge readings were the question being addressed was, "how is the internet changing the way we think?" The more students are exposed to new high tech devices at an early age, the more they are going to be proficient in using them.

      ! we as teachers should be using our students proficiency to our advantage and engage our students in learning in a mode in which they know best.

    1. I then argue that the nature of making is wellaligned with research recommendations on fruitful learningenvironments. I conclude by arguing that the full potentialof making for education can only be realized when all threecritical elements are in focus.

      more research to show that making is good. However, it requires a certain mindset of the community (could be classroom) to make it successful.

    2. The playful quality of many projects provides a counter-point to the perception that school curricula are too rigidand formulaic. The potential value ofmakingfor K-12education is perhaps most directly seen in relation to thenewFramework for K-12 Science Education(NationalResearch Council, 2011). Quinn and Bell (2013) argue thatmaking is well aligned with the new standards, which bringengineering into the K-12 curriculum at a national level forthe first time (see Carr, Bennett, & Strobel, 2012)

      This is the research that backs up that making is good! It enhances learning aligned with the curriculum.

    3. basic activity ofmakinggrows out of longstanding hobbies and crafts such as woodworking,sewing, and electronics.

      so not just electronic robot stuff...

  2. Jun 2016
    1. process information

      To me, not only does this mean giving them "wait time" to process during the lesson, but it means giving them times to reflect on their learning afterwards. Recalling the information that they learned that day and then having them connect it to what we did before or maybe make a prediction about what we are learning about the next day has been a powerful tool for my students to start to think for themselves.

    2. Transfer is best viewed as an active, dynamic process rather than a passive end-product of a particular set of learning experiences.

      The "end-product" would be the coveted answer that all of my kids are constantly asking for. I know that fostering critical thinking to be transferred from one setting and one subject to the next is important, but that is something that I personally have struggled with. Getting better this year, but always a struggle. Especially on the particularly difficult days.

    3. “educate”

      educate vs train. Meaningful because educating involves thinking critically, problem solving, and learning to take in the whole picture. Training requires memorization and procedures.

    4. flexible and adaptive to new situations

      I think being flexible is what being a teacher is all about! Nothing ever seems to go quite as planned.

    5. experts are more likely than novices to first try to understand problems

      I feel like this is not just math...?

    6. the importance of providing students with learning experiences that specifically enhance their abilities to recognize meaningful patterns of information

      In my class we do lots of labs, reading charts and tables, looking at pictures to compare and classify things. To me, this is part of teaching them how to "look at the big picture"

    7. students might help one another solve problems by building on each other’s knowledge, asking questions to clarify explanations, and suggesting avenues that would move the group toward its goal

      It's a beautiful thing when I see this in my room! Made me smile so big this last year when it finally happened.

    8. Superficial coverage of all topics in a subject area must be replaced with in-depth coverage of fewer topics that allows key concepts in that discipline to be understood.

      mastery vs memory

    9. themselves

      Formative assessment has been a big push this year at my school. It has been a big discussion on whether we use the data as teachers to just change what and how we teach something or do we share the data with our students to know how their learning is coming along.

    10. internal conversation

      Does it have to be? What about Visible Thinking routines?

    11. In Teacher A’s classroom, the students are learning something of media production, but the media production may very well be getting in the way of learning anything else. In Teacher B’s classroom, the teacher is working to ensure that the original educational purposes of the activity are met, that it does not deteriorate into a mere media production exercise. In Teacher C’s classroom, the media production is continuous with and a direct outgrowth of the learning that is embodied in the media production.

      In order to differentiate for the various learners in my class I can typically be found doing all of these at once on a project. This year a student was REALLY struggling with the technology piece and it was clearly getting in the way of him actually learning the material so instead of a slides presentation, he constructed an old-school poster board. It had the same information requirements, just in a more "user friendly" format for him.

    12. What strategies might they use to assess whether they understand someone else’s meaning? What kinds of evidence do they need in order to believe particular claims? How can they build their own theories of phenomena and test them effectively?

      Sounds like the "Claims-Evidence-Reasoning" writing that has been a push in the younger grades in my district. The NHA school I was teaching at last year did this as well.

    13. They come to formal education with a range of prior knowledge, skills, beliefs, and concepts that significantly influence what they notice about the environment and how they organize and interpret it.

      unlocking this knowledge is the key. Silly high school students saying "I don't know" to every question I ask.

    14. At the same time, students often have limited opportunities to understand or make sense of topics because many curricula have emphasized memory rather than under- Page 9 Share Cite Suggested Citation: "1 Learning: From Speculation to Science." National Research Council. How People Learn: Brain, Mind, Experience, and School: Expanded Edition. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press, 2000. doi:10.17226/9853. × Save Cancel standing.

      In science, there is deinfinely a chunk of stuff that has to be memorized, but the processes that we learn about have to be understood, not just memorized for students to show mastery. I have the luxury of being able to conduct labs, give demonstrations, find comupter simulations, and lecture all on the same process.

    15. the meaning of “knowing” has shifted from being able to remember and repeat information to being able to find and use it

      Love this! This has been a big push for me this year to shift the control of learning from myself to the students. Having my students be responsible for their own learning is a powerful tool that helps them feel confident and competent.

    16. Emerging technologies are leading to the development of many new opportunities to guide and enhance learning that were unimagined even a few years ago.

      Using new technology has been a hot topic in my district this year. We had many PDs focused on introducing all the teachers to new things that they can use in the classroom. It was always fun!

    17. Research on learning and transfer has uncovered important principles for structuring learning experiences that enable people to use what they have learned in new settings.

      As a high school special ed teacher my students are constantly fighting with me about how they will never use this information "in the real world." It is always nice when I can prove them wrong. Through teaching science, I bring in real life examples of science happening all around us and within us to help my kids connect. It is always a proud moment when they come into class and say that they saw something that we learned about outside of class!

    18. extraordinary outpouring of scientific work on the mind and brain, on the processes of thinking and learning,

      for me, in special education, we are constantly thinking about how our kids think and process the world differently. It is amazing to me that we are constantly learning more and evolving how we think about things.