Great leaders focus on developing people's capacities rather than their limitations
Great reminder for us as teachers. We have the power to build up those around us professionally (find qualities and traits that are useful) and to our students in our classroom. Positive mindsets.
A body of research indicates that mentoring programs can increase teacher retention, satisfaction, and student achievement (Ingersoll and Strong, 2011), as well as reduce feelings of isolation, particularly for early-career teachers
Seeking out the wisdom from older/experienced teachers has truly helped shape my profession. While I have my school-provided mentor (in my same grade level), I have also built connections around the building so I have a number of people in my PLN to go to for advice and just to talk. This is so huge! A school that has a collaborative staff makes all the difference!
Successful Collaboration Focus on Student Learning Continuous Teacher Learning Teacher authority to make decisions regarding curriculum, the processes of their own learning, and aspects of school governance.
I had a great experience with PLC's when I taught kindergarten. Three times a year all K teachers would meet for PD that related to our blended learning program. I did not have the same opportunity in 4th grade. We only had one day before school to meet together. I think a lot is lost when you don't have time to collaborate and share across a district level.
When teachers receive well-designed professional development, an average of 49 hours spread over six to 12 months, they can increase student achievement by as much as 21 percentile points
We only have 30 hours of district provided PD. As a new teacher, I need an additionally 90 hours. I wonder how much that effects my students growth compared to older teachers?
most of the examples we've provided require educators to repurpose existing tools for peda-gogical.purposes.
=REMIXING!
Through video games, simulations, puzzles, and interactive software, students can engage and play with ideas, propose solutions, and test them.
=Virtual Reality experiences!
to write mathematical poetry and share it on the Web.
? I wonder how I could take this idea and apply it to different content areas? ! This seems like a cool possibility.
Th is led to thei r assertion that creative scien-tists and artists generally use a key set of cognitive skills that cut across disciplinary boundaries.
=Maker's movement blends the arts and sciences. Creativity is not relegated to one subject matter.
These authors argue that schooling needs to be fundamentally reconfigured to emphasize higher-order cognitive processes, such as critical thinking, creative problem solving, curiosity, and adaptability.
= Need for complex thinking!
echnology is funda-mentally changing how we interact with information and with each other.
= This reminds me of the Edge readings that we learned about in team teaching. Many of our topics stressed that Internet is changing the way we interact.
Teachers can be helped to view different cultural backgrounds as strengths to be built on, rather than as signs of “deficits.”
This is something that I learned through MSU's student teaching in Hazel Park, MI. I was forced to reevaluate my understanding as the students had such different backgrounds than I did. It was an important lesson for me to learn that these students were not incapable of learning- instead they had unique experiences that contributed to our lessons in ways I could never have imagined.
To counteract these problems, teachers must strive to make students’ thinking visible and find ways to help them reconceptualize faulty conceptions.
Visible thinking is a hot topic right now in many districts. I love that this method has students explain their understanding so that we can see what they're thinking. Rather than lecturing and hoping they were paying attention well enough to solve problems. I think this is huge and I would love to use more visible thinking strategies in my classroom.
First, students may have knowledge that is relevant to a learning situation that is not activated. By helping activate this knowledge, teachers can build on students’ strengths. Second, students may misinterpret new information because of previous knowledge they use to construct new understandings. Third, students may have difficulty with particular school teaching practices that conflict with practices in their community.
Just another reminder of how important it is to get to know students and their background knowledge prior to lessons and instructions. So much of their ability to transfer new knowledge depends on their beliefs coming into the class.
Thus, the program involves modeling, scaffolding, and taking turns which are designed to help students externalize mental events in a collaborative context.
Just like the "I do, we do, you do" mentality of gradually releasing the responsibility to the students during lessons.
Providing students with time to learn also includes providing enough time for them to process information.
Wait time! I've heard it time and time again. It can be so difficult when half of your class "gets it" right away. I definitely need to work on my wait time for students.
The ability to recognize the limits of one’s current knowledge, then take steps to remedy the situation, is extremely important for learners at all ages.
This is such great point, and something, that I think many students never achieve. They want to get in, get their work done, receive a good grade, and move on. Very few go above and beyond to take the time to deepen their understanding. Would love more info on how to effectively teach students this in the classroom.
Pedagogical content knowledge is an extremely important part of what teachers need to learn to be more effective.
I think this is a huge thing for teachers to remember. We know our class best, and sometimes that means we can add to or tweak the set curriculum we are given. This is especially prevalent if you need to provide additional background information before delving into the content.
They asked themselves whether to add, subtract, multiply, or divide, rather than whether the problem made sense.
I see this exact problem with my students. Often times they are rushing through problems and don't bother to stop and think about the problem logically. With everything so automatic for these kids nowadays, many don't have the patience to stop and think. They seem to work toward a solution instead of going back to see if their answers make sense. So frustrating! This was definitely something that I would like to combat more in the next school year.
FIGURE 1.2 Students spend only 14 percent of their time in school.
Wow! I like this graphic. There are so many outside factors that are influencing our students before they're sitting in front of us. Good reminder for me as a teacher.
Each of these techniques shares a strategy of teaching and modeling the process of generating alternative approaches (to developing an idea in writing or a strategy for problem solving in mathematics), evaluating their merits in helping to attain a goal, and monitoring progress toward that goal. Class discussions are used to support skill development, with a goal of independence and self-regulation.
Teacher goals right here!
Students can become more expert if the geographical information they are taught is placed in the appropriate conceptual framework.
Geography is one of my passions in teaching. I love having conversations with my students about this exact topic. They bring up the ideas later in the year. Conceptual understanding is key in this case.
A logical extension of the view that new knowledge must be constructed from existing knowledge is that teachers need to pay attention to the incomplete understandings, the false beliefs, and the naive renditions of concepts that learners bring with them to a given subject. Teachers then need to build on these ideas in ways that help each student achieve a more mature understanding. If students’ initial ideas and beliefs are ignored, the understandings that they develop can be very different from what the teacher intends.
One of my favorite things in class is when a student courageously raises their hand and asks me about a topic and makes a connection to a false belief. I love having that opportunity to clarify misconceptions. We need to be able to have conversations that allow students to ask questions, because I know not all students will have the personality to bring their questions up in front of a class. With all the push of curriculum, I think some of these conversations are lost... but they are so important to the child's "complete understanding"
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. Textbooks are filled with facts that students are expected to memorize, and most tests assess students’ abilities to remember the facts.
I've seen a shift in this mindset with the new tests coming out (especially ELA) for students to make connections from different texts instead of rote memorizations. It will be interesting to see how this progresses in coming years.
Emerging technologies are leading to the development of many new opportunities to guide and enhance learning that were unimagined even a few years ago.
This topic is something that has intrigued me this past year. I have gone to several PD's about different technology opportunities available to students. There is so much great stuff out there.... it's just a pain to have limits on availability on devices in my classroom. Time to think outside the box and incorporate more small group/ center/stations in the classroom.
create innovative curricula that introduce important concepts for advanced reasoning at early ages.
I think this is so huge! I feel like we often put limits on ourselves and our students based on demographics (SES, Free and reduced lunch, etc) instead of looking for ways to connect our curriculum to our students. All children have the capacity to learn and grow no matter where they were raised. I like that this is putting an emphasis on reasoning and problem solving too.