Journal #12

I really liked the articles about performance-based assessment.  Each really helped weigh the pros and cons of using that type of assessment.  In the end I feel it would be beneficial to my future students to use performance-based assessments along with standardized assessments to give the students a sense of change.  No student wants to always be sitting at their desk doing work sheets and bubbling in letters.  Through performance-based assessment we can give our student more exciting activities to do.  The students will be able to perform plays or create projects together.  One of the websites linked had GREAT assessment tools that could be manipulated to fit any classroom and any subject.  I really liked the rubric creator at rubistar.  This is a website I have used before to make my rubrics for assessments and will continue to visit when I am an educator.  I also really liked the flashcard creator website.  I tested it out to see how it worked.  This would and will be a great tool to introduce to my students one day in my classroom.  All of these tools merge nicely with performance-based assessment.  Teachers can visit these sites to build their assessment tools, as well as study aids to help increase their student’s success.  

Journal #11

This week we talked about the six different thinking hats.  I really enjoyed looking at thinking this way because it makes us all think about how we approach situations.  It also made me think about how others around me approach situations/ what hat they wear.  I personally would say that I wear the blue hat most of the time.  I am always thinking about what is needed and how we can best go about it.  I also want to keep the group as organized as possible.  I guess this is seen as the leader in the group.  I do not necessarily want to be the leader but I want to be that backbone that can support a group through anything.  With that said I think another hat that I may wear is the yellow one.  When doing a group project I always want to keep everyone’s feelings in consideration.  By being positive about others ideas I can hope to keep the morale of the group up beat.  Another great aspect about the yellow hat is that by making everyone’s ideas appear useful, we may be able to expand and create even better ideas.  Whatever the group situation I am happy to switch between my two hats to help us achieve our goal. 

Reflective Summary of Talents Lesson

Reflective Summary of Talents Lesson

SPE 382

Kirsten Fredlund

Productive Thinking: Physical Education

Academic Content:

I described the Academic Context as “Physical Education: Engaging in physical activities that will increase heart rate and heavy breathing.”  As I reflect on my lesson I realize that I can narrow this topic to just being “physical activities”.  I think my “Teacher Talk” and extension are both concise and to the point.  For this Teacher Self-Rating, I would rate myself with a 5 out of 6 points in this area.

Thinking Process Warm-Up:

For this lesson I assumed that my children had already been briefed before on the Talents and their steps/skills.  This put me in the position for my first step to be reviewing the four Productive Thinking skills. I had the poster Mrs. Coleman printed out for me handy so I held it up for my students to follow along with me as I read them aloud with them.  I think this helped refresh their memory of what skills they were expected to draw on for Productive Thinking.  For the Teacher Self-Rating, I would rate myself with a 6 out of 6 points in this area.

Teacher Talk:

Above in the Academic Content section I mention that I was very concise in my “Teacher Talk.”  I gave each student a piece of paper.  On this piece of paper they were to come up with many different, varied, and unusual physical activities that they could do that would increase their heart rate and produce heavy breathing.  I think I communicated in a very straight forward way so that they knew what they were to be doing.

A mistake I think I made was that I did not follow all the way through with my extension.  In my mind it was to be another lesson all together.  So when the students finished I told them, “Tomorrow we will discuss which of these activities are appropriate and inappropriate to increase heart rate or breathing”.  I should have just addressed misunderstanding then and there.

For the Teacher Self-Rating, I would rate myself with a 4 out of 6 points in this area.

Student Response:

My students and I were all sitting at the same table.  As they wrote responses down I observed some of the things they were writing.  The majority of them had great responses.  When they were all finished I went around the table and had them all share the list they wrote down.  This went very well because they all had a varied list of ideas (just like I had asked them to come up with).  For the Teacher Self-Rating, I would rate myself with a 6 out of 6 points in this area.

Reinforcement:

As each student shared their list of varied and unusual ideas I gave praise for the ideas that were appropriate and tried to stay silent or gave minimal praise for the ones we would discuss later. Once each student was completely finished with their list I would praise them for their great list and tell them that tomorrow we were going to discuss the different between the appropriate and inappropriate ways to increase heart rate and breathing. 

For the Teacher Self-Rating, I would rate myself with a 5 out of 6 points in this area.

Journal #10

This week in class we discussed Charter schools.  This is something that I’ve always been interested in. Being from Georgia I grew up surrounded by Charter schools.  Each school was uniquely different and interesting.  I myself went to a magnet school so I got somewhat of an idea of what a charter school education is like.  I think that it would be such a benefit for the state of Alabama if we were to instate Charter schools here.  In Charter schools teachers are able to better differentiate their instruction for the students they have in their classroom.  To me it seems like the focus at these schools is on a whole other level.  One challenge I see with Charter schools is the fundraising.  I know how hard it is to raise money at a public school so when we think about having to raise money to keep a Charter school it seems like a big challenge.  The amount of money is also a lot more than demanding at a Charter school.  The other challenge I see is parents are almost required at every Charter school to put in volunteer hours.  Getting parents involved is already a huge challenge, but requiring them to be involved and to volunteer is another thing.  On the Brightside if a parent has taken the time to get their child into a Charter school then I believe they want to be involved in their child’s education.  Overall I am very interested in the idea of Charter schools and I hope one day the state of Alabama adopts them.

Discussion 5

Discussion #5

            Talents lessons have been put into place to enhance the cognitive ability of all of our students (Schlichter, p. 21).  The teacher’s goals in creating the Talents Unlimited project were just this.  They wanted to use the five different talents to teach different skills that would benefit the students.  The lessons are design in a way that so while a teacher is teaching one talents lesson, it would further strengthen the other 4 talents (Schlichter, p. 25).  In Jane Newman’s, Talents are Unlimited: It’s Time to Teach Thinking Skills Again!, teachers can find a breakdown of what each talent consists of and what they are designed to target (Newman, p. 36-42).  I personally found this article helpfully so I believe teachers who do not know much about talents at all will as well.

            I believe using the talents to deliver lessons to students with special needs can be a success.  There will have to be some accommodations made to the talents lessons, but in the long run these lessons can become very beneficial to these students.  Take a student with autism for example.  This student would greatly benefit from lessons in the communication talent because a symptom that usually accompanies autism is a lack in communication and social skills.  Helping this student explore these fields may help them increase their communication and social interaction.  Another great talent for a student with autism would be the planning talent.  These students do not like change, but if we help them work through planning events and change maybe their aversion to change with decrease.  So as you can see implementing the talents lessons with students with special needs can be very beneficial.

References

Newman, J. (2008). Talents are unlimited: It's time to teach thinking skills again!. Gifted Child Today, 31(3), 34-42. Retrieved from https://elearning.ua.edu/webct/urw/tp0.lc5116011/cobaltMainFrame.dowebct?appforward=urw/tp1830419916121.lc1591466997011/startFrameSet.dowebct?forward=studentCourseView.dowebct&lcid=1591466997011

Schlitcher, C. Talents unlimited:implementing the multiple talents approach in mainstream and gifted programs. (pp. 21-25). Retrieved from https://elearning.ua.edu/webct/urw/tp0.lc5116011/cobaltMainFrame.dowebct?appforward=urw/tp1830419916121.lc1591466997011/startFrameSet.dowebct?forward=studentCourseView.dowebct&lcid=1591466997011

Journal #9

This week we spent a good amount of time brainstorming about our talent theme boards.  I really liked getting to do this because we all got to bounce ideas off each other and help others with their projects.  I think it crazy how creative and excited all of us can get over a simple school project.  I guess education majors are funny in that way.  I have decided to do my Talents theme board on sand castles.  I think my title will be something along the lines of “Building up Talents” or “Digging in Talents”.  I want to get a huge sand castle for my background. I am going to talk to my dad about possible tools I can use that can make the background actually look like sand.  For each talent I want to get a different kind of children’s bucket.  I am also playing with the idea of making these look like they are filled with sand.  Academics will be represented on my board by a shovel.  The shovel will be the mobile item instead of the buckets.  I want it to look like it is digging inside the buckets “Talents” and making the sand castle behind it. I am very excited about making my theme board this weekend and cannot wait!

Journal #8

This week I composed my first five talents lessons.  I really enjoyed doing this because it helped me further grasp what it is that each talent was meant to teach my students.  Once I went through the tegrity recordings and examples in our notebook I think it made it a lot easier to come up with ideas for my lesson plans.  Once I had an idea I went to the ALEX website and looked for core objectives in different grade levels that met the ideas that I was thinking about.  For some ideas this took a little longer because the subjects I was thinking of were so narrow and the core objectives were listed broadly over subjects.  One thing I really liked about making the talents lesson plans was the easy template Mrs. Coleman gave us to fill out.  This made it quick and easy to figure out what all was needed for the lesson plan.  This would also make it easy for someone else to read our lesson plans and apply them in their classrooms.  Another aspect about the lesson plans that I really liked was that they all had one skill for students to focus on.  This is really great in the elementary/ secondary setting because it helps kids master these skills the more we focus and practice them.  I think the talents lessons are definitely something I will use in my future classrooms.

Journal #7

This week in class we talked about talents.  I think that this will be an exciting subject to cover in my classrooms once I can get a grasp on what each talent is about.  Right now this is my interpretation of each talent and a possible good lesson to go along with it.  The productive thinking talent means someone can generate a variety of ideas and add details to something simple.  This is like the activity we did yesterday with the zigzag line.  We each had a variety of ideas as to what the line could be made into.  The decision making talent is being able to weigh and easily make final judgments.  A good project for this could be doing the pros and cons for deciding on one research project over another.  The planning talent is designing and implementing an idea effectively through outlining.  A good project for this could be having students design a survey for the entire school about what types of lunch room foods they prefer. The next step would be having them pitch it to the administration to implement it.  The forecasting talent is about making predictions about causes/ effects certain events may have.  A good project may be to have students contemplate weather patterns and have them decide how it would affect the rest of the day.  The communication talent is using and interpreting communication written and verbal.  A good project for this would be having students analyze poetry to determine the authors underlying meaning.  Together all these lessons can help our students better learn and understand how best to problem solve.  I believe as we further explore talents I will be able to get a firmer grasp on each concept so that I can convey them to my future students.

Discussion 4

One thing I believe I learned this week was that there are WAY more resources out there than any of us could ever have dreamed of.  Education is the perfect field for collaboration, because we are all here to help children learn.  By collaborating we can share our ideas and resources to help someone else better differentiate their instruction.  This becomes even truer when we are speaking about technology because now half the time technology either facilitates the collaboration or the learning.  Today our students are digital natives so by teaching them through technology we may be able to reach them faster.  This brings me to what I believe would be a good addition to our Sqworl.  I think that we should add TeacherTube.  This is a great resource for teachers to use to find educational and appropriate videos to show to their students.  This semester a tool that I would hopefully like to integrate into my teachings is the virtual field trips.  I have created a lesson plan using one of these sites before and I think that they are a wonderful tool to get to share with our students.  This is especially true for the special education students that I will be teaching someday.  Most of these children will have a hard time traveling to these places, so if I can virtually take them there it would be a treat!

Journal #6

This week our class was about differentiating instruction by using technology.  One of the quotes that really stuck out to me was, “If we teach today as we taught yesterday, we rob our children of tomorrow” –John Dewey.  To me this spoke about teachers not changing their ways to accommodate the changing times.  If we do not change with the times and the technology our students will never learn.  As teachers it is our responsibility to be up to date on the technology so that we can make our students 21^st century learners.  I think that this quote spoke volumes for what this unit is about.  Throughout the powerpoint we explored many different websites and technology tools.  I believe my favorite was Discovery Education.  On this website there are free lesson plans written by teachers for teachers.  These lesson plans help inspire students to learn in many different subjects.  Something else I found very interesting on this website was the “field trips”.  Teachers are able to go on month long trips to amazing destinations to teach their classes about the wonders of the world.  I did not know that this was possible.  I also love the way that Discovery has this site set up.

Journal #5

This week in class we started discussing our Concept-Based Curriculum Units.  My group has decided to theme our unit around the Solar System.  This unit will be geared towards the upper elementary grades (3^rd-5^th).  We have already started working on figuring out what we want our major and minor concepts to be for the unit.  We are now looking on to creating our essential and guiding questions.  I think it is interesting that we are now learning how to write these questions in SPE 382 because I am also learning about them in my CAT 250 class.  Just yesterday I had to write essential, unit, and content questions for the project I am putting together in that class.  I believe that my CAT 250 background of generating questions will help me enormously in SPE 382.  Again connections like this one, I just made, are the ones that we want to encourage our students to make throughout our unit.  This is a big reason why we have chosen major concepts that cover multiple areas of curriculum, rather than just one.  While executing lessons and projects, in the unit, we want our students to constantly be making connections and using their higher-order thinking skills.  If we as teachers are not expecting our students to do these things then we are limiting their ability to improve.

Discussion 3

Part 1:

Last week we had the Egyptian version of Cinderella.  It was a great story because it put a new twist and culture, on a classic fairy tale.  After reading the story I believe some great higher-order thinking questions to ask my students would be:

•  Can you distinguish between Rhodopis and the other slave girls?
• Who was it that gave Rhodopis the slippers? Why?
•  How would you have handled the other slave girls forcing their chores off onto you?
•  Which is true or false: the Pharaoh finds Rhodopis’s shoe in his garden while he is out picking flowers?
•  How could the story have changed if the Pharaoh had not found Rhodopis’s shoe?
•  How was this similar to the original Cinderella?

Part 2:

My group has decided to create a unit based on the solar system for the upper elementary grades (3^rd-5^th).  We really hope to focus on all four of these understandings in that they are the key to helping our students understand and reach their goals.  We hope to create factual knowledge through our smaller lessons within the unit.  In these lessons we will provide the students with resources and classifications, which will help them create concrete facts in their minds.  We hope to create procedural knowledge through our projects and activities.  Our students will perform tasks such as calculating the distance between the planets and documenting each phase of the moon’s cycle.  These tasks will help our students get a better grasp on what they are learning through working with the material.  We also hope to generate conceptual knowledge through incorporating the unit’s major concepts that cover more than one subject area.  If we can do this our students will be able to generate thoughts and connections between their different class subjects.  Our generalization/ essential understandings will hopefully give our students an overview of what we are going to be learning and help them to define the main ideas.  One essential understanding I have thought of for our unit is: Over time many different cycles take place within our solar system.

Journal #4

Yesterday in class we opened with a discussion on “How is questioning like an apple?”  Our class generated responses such as:
-An apple has seeds and when we ask questions it is like planting a seed.
-   An apple has a stem and many questions (as we came to learn) start with generic stems that help us communicate what we are trying to say.
-An apple is round just like most of our questions are rounded. We can keep them going around and around, jumping from one idea to the next.

This last one actually got me thinking how questioning is actually more like branches or raindrops.  My reasoning for this is because once you have the start of one (much like questions) it quickly leads to another and another and so on…  Once we got deeper into our lecture for class I started thinking about how I was going to most effectively use questioning in my future classroom.  Through questions I want to challenge my students to start using higher order thinking skills.  If my questions are open ended the students can expand and begin to make their own assumptions.  This can lead my students to problem solving.  A technique we discussed in class that I particularly found intriguing was to ask a question in a way that insinuates that you yourself (the teacher) also do not know the answer.  This challenges students to answer the question because they believe that just waiting for the teacher to give them the answer will not work this time.  I received many helpful hints like this one and many more from yesterday’s class.  I am really enjoying all the handouts we are given because I believe that even when I am a teacher in my own classroom I will be referring to them.

Journal #3

Differentiated instruction is like a new pair of shoes, because through it we are all ensured that we are ready to take the next step (Tomlinson, p. 10).  If we think back to when we were infants and our parents bought us new shoes each time we were getting ready for a new phase or step in our lives.  This is just like differentiated instruction.  With each new phase or step, the instruction changes to fit the learners needs.  When the learner has mastered a skill and is ready to move on to a higher strategy, the instruction is differentiated.  This is much like when a girl goes from being able to wear heeled dress shoes to actual pumps.  There is a certain trust instilled in the child/student as they are given the extra step.  This child's instruction has also just gotten slightly more challenging just like the pumps.  It takes more focus and determination to walk in pumps than in the dress shoes.  On the other hand if a child is having a tough time with the differentiation in place the teacher may implement a new instruction plan tailored to this child's specific needs.  This is much like if someone is walking in flip flops, but is having trouble with the shoes falling off and also causing discomfort.  In this situation this person may go to the store to buy sandals that have both straps and arch support.  The sandal and the instruction have both changed to fit the individuals personal needs so that they may move onto the next step in their lives.  Each new pair of shoes literally gets us off on the right foot for whatever our next step maybe.  Differentiated instruction helps prepare students for each new step they will take as they travel through their education.
Tomlinson, C. A. (n.d.). Advancing differentiation. Defining How Differentiation Looks in Today's Classroom, 08-12.

Discussion 2

     At this point in my education I would like to someday teach in a mild to moderate special education classroom setting.  The students I would primarily like to teach would be high school, but recently the elementary children have grabbed my attention.  In my future classroom I would like nothing more than to differentiate instruction so that my students receive the most valuable education their is.  The first way I would start to differentiate instruction would be to group my students according to better categories.  Instead of just putting two students together, I will place them based on their interests, their learning levels, or their individual talents.  Placing my students based on these aspects as compared to just placing two students together will enhance their relationships and the amount of information they learn from on another.  The second thing I would like to implement to differentiate instruction is to use learning centers.  In every classroom there should be a place for children to read and to use the computer.  Other centers that I believe would be beneficial would be those that change with each unit.  At these centers students can get emersed in art, history, and math puzzles.  Each of these centers needs to be uniquely different so as to keep the children interested in the material.  The third activity I would like to use to differentiate instruction is Extension Menus.  I really like these because they play to each students individual strengths so that know one will have a tough time applying themselves to the activities at hand.  I also like them because they give the children the option to chose their project.  I feel that we always enjoy something more if we are give a choice as to how we would like to perform it.
     The excerpts we read this we left me with some great food for thought.  One main idea that stuck with me was that differentiation is not a magic potion.  It will not solve all of our problems  (Tomlinson, p.9).  To me this means that we must not only provide differentiated instruction, but also social and emotional assistance.  Our jobs as teachers does not simply stop at providing instruction on curriculum.  We must always be mindful of our students and what their individual needs are.  Another idea that struck me was that differentiation is for all (Tomlinson, p.9).  I feel that many teachers over look this matter and believe that only those in special education require that teachers differentiate their instruction.  Differentiation focuses on students readiness, learning levels, and interests.  Some students may need more in depth material and others may need scaffolded material, but this does not mean that differentiation does not benefit all of these individual students.
     After this weeks lecture I feel that I still do not fully grasp compacting students.  If a student is compacted and is taking the math course a grade level above their own, would the student not always be a grade above their peers in math? I think once we discuss this in class a little further I will come to understand, but right now it seems that the child being compacted may always be one step ahead of their peers in certain subjects.
Tomlinson, C. A. (n.d.). Advancing differentiation. Defining How Differentiation Looks in Toda'ys Classroom, 08-12.

Journal #2

“All of these thinking ideas are wonderful, but they could never apply or be done with any children who have special needs” (Martin, 211).  During class on Tuesday I highlighted this quote because it really provoked me.  I feel that anyone who believes this is just limiting every child and holding them to the same standards before they even get to know them.  Children, no matter special need or not, have their own way of thinking and processing information.  Who is to say that what works for one general education student is going to work for another.  It’s not, and the same is true about special education.  If we as teachers can provide all students with explicit and appropriate instruction, they can succeed.  Yes children with disabilities have different ways in which they go about their thought process, but that does not mean that their results are any less important.  All of our students are going to learn and process information differently.  The sooner teachers learn to accept that, the sooner teachers are going to be able to stop limiting the cognitive processes of the individuals in their classrooms.  Students in special education have the right and the ability to use these thinking strategies; teachers need to just stop limiting them.
Martin, D. S. (n.d.). Thinking and the special-needs learner.Developing Minds A Resource Book for Teaching Thinking, 211-215.

Journal #1

I'd like to start off by saying I am really excited for this class. The first day is when you get the feel for what a course is going to be about and I cannot wait to learn how to teach different learning styles.  In education alone everyone has a different way that they learn.  We saw this on our first day through our North, South, East, West activity.  We all prefer a different way of going about activities and events.  We could also see that we all used our right and left brain in different proportions than our neighbor.  This stands true for the students that I will be teaching in special education.  They all will have different ways of learning.  As their teacher I need to be prepared with different ideas and ways in which I can approach classroom material with them.  This course can teach me to open my mind to new ideas and strategies, that I too hope to instill in my students one day.  I cannot wait to dive deeper into the content for this course because I know that we are all going to gain so much!

Discussion 1: Introducing Me

Part 1:
Voki: http://www.voki.com/pickup.php?scid=5200007&height=267&width=200
Part 2:
        My name is Kirsten F.  I am from Kennesaw, Georgia.  I chose to come to The University of Alabama for two reasons.  The first is because my older brother who already attended the university made me see how beautiful the campus was.  The second is due the the outstanding Special Education program.  I am now a Collaborative Special Education Major (K-12).  I would like to teach in my own classroom someday in the high school setting, but getting to spend the day with these students anywhere will be just fine by me.  After I graduate from The University of Alabama I aspire to attend graduate school, preferably back in Georgia so that my parents will no longer be on out of state tuition. At this moment I am still deciding my focus area.
      I believe that I have a more creative learning style to thinking.  When we were going over the powerpoint I was thinking that my right brain gets a lot more use than my left.  I am very good at applications and questioning, but I feel that I tend to want to get more creative. When it comes to being a North, South, East, or West, learning style I would write myself down as a West.  I like to carefully plan everything and make sure that I have it all laid out before I begin anything.  It drives me crazy to just jump in without a plan, I can do it, I would just rather see all my options.  I believe through this class I'll learn how to work with each learning and thinking style.  Being able to accommodate all of these styles is what makes effective teaching.  Not every student learns the same way and we need to be aware of that.