Part+5+30-34

Becca: This article compared constructivist teaching to traditional styles of teaching (teaching to the test). The essay argues that teaching to the test limits students thinking and prevents learning and growth. Instead the article claims that constructivist teaching, stimulates learning because it puts the learner in charge of their learning Unlike teaching to the test, constructivist teaching focuses on on how the students learn not what they learn. The article gives a great example of two different teaching methods, one being traditional teaching and the other constructivist teaching. In the first example the teacher asked for the meaning of the first two lines of a poem and told students their interpretations were wrong because they did not match his interpretation. On the contrary, for the second example the students completed an experiment on muscle movement. When the teacher went around to each group he posed individualized questions challenging students even if they were right. This helped students think critically about the experiment and find purpose in the content. I really enjoyed this article because I am an advocate for constructivist learning. The reality remains that students interpret and understand material based in their own life experiences. Constructivist Theory recognizes this and allows students to explore and reflect, which leads to higher order thinking. Overall, I think the article nailed it when it argues, it is not what students learn it is how they learn it. And if teachers simple drill content into students' minds and expect them to memorize it they are not really learning the information. But, if the students make connections and see purpose they retain the information and seek to learn more.
 * Brooks, Martin G. and Brooks, Jacqueline G. The Courage to Be Constructivist. **

Deanna: This article focused on the benefits of constructivist instruction and learning. I really related to this article in the section entitled “Opportunities for Constructing Meaning.” When I read about the teacher who asked students to interpret the first two lines of a poem and then told them they were wrong, I thought back to one of my college English classes. I had British Literature II my first year at Grand Valley and my professor did the same thing to me – asked me to interpret a poem, I gave my thoughts, and she told me I was wrong. I never raised my hand or volunteered information in her class again. How can an interpretation be wrong? Telling students that they are wrong, or their answers are not the ones you are looking for, can be detrimental to their learning. We are supposed to create a safe environment for these students so that they do share and participate. Constructivist instruction seems like an effective way to accomplish this goal. It encourages student discovery and student conversation/discussion. When students construct their own meanings and interpretations (instead of being told what the teacher thinks is correct), they learn better and it has a much better possibility of sticking with them longer than just the test or end of the class.

Alex:

“State and local curriculums address what students learn. Constructivism, as an approach to education, addresses how students learn.”

The essay addresses how standardized testing is fundamentally opposed to the research that informs the theory of Constructivist education. I am pretty on board with the whole idea of constructivism because it focuses on the idea of constructing meaning. It considers the fact that every single student comes to the classroom already equipped with personal suppositions about the world. They are conditioned and informed by their environments and their individual cognitive make up. Not only is it silly to ignore this fact (because bringing personal schema to any learning experience is inevitable), but it seems fruitless to knowingly oppose the research out there that supports. Legislation values policies that serve the masses. Legislators like boxed-lunch strategies—all students learn the same things at the same time because this is what everyone needs to learn. Research tells us that students may be presented the same things at the same time, but they will certainly not learn them in the same way, they won’t understand the same things and they won’t construct the same meanings. This goes back to the inevitability of individual supposition. The boxed-lunch approach to state standards doesn’t go well with this. The criticisms of Constructivism, I feel, aren’t very strong. Critics fear that constructivism is too permissive and lacks rigor. They feel that because students are given power over what and how they learn, the academic essence is lost. I feel opposite. I feel that the essence of academia or intellectualism is fundamentally experimental and exploratory. That is how people (learners) construct meaning and build understanding. Why should we fight against the natural way people learn? Why should we force students to eat a boxed-lunch when they could have a much more fulfilling meal? Because it’s difficult and time-consuming to teach constructively, but that doesn’t stop me from wanting to try.

Dustin: In this essay authors Martin G. Brooks and Jacqueline Grennon Brooks discuss constructivism, it's meaning for education, and how it should be used in the classroom. The idea of implementing constructivism within schools seems to go against the idea of having standardized testing within schools. Instead of desiring students to spit facts and essays out like machines, constructivism "seek[s] and value students' point of view." Constructivism also recognizes that students already have suppositions about the world in which they live, and seeks to challenge those suppositions. Other features of constructivist lessons including units on big ideas, relevance for students, and the construction of meaning (which is more or the less the summation of a unit).

I like the idea of constructivism, and while I've never known what the term meant before, I've known for a while that it is something that I would like to implement within my classroom. I really like the idea of making the curriculum relevant to students as I feel too often students are left wondering when they'll ever need to know what they are learning outside of the academic environment. I also like the idea of challenging the point of views of students as that helps to foster critical thinking, which I think is becoming more and more essential.

Luke: When first reading this article, I thought to myself, “Here's another article complaining about standardized tests that is not going to give meaningful solutions. I was pleasantly surprised to find that it was not all focused on the test. It argued that classes and teachers should be constructivist, not the means to measure them. As an English teacher, I love the idea of constructivism. I think that the big picture is all that is needed to teach, so going off on tangents, or letting the students have their own ideas is very important. This may not always be in line with the district's curriculum, but I think that teaching students to engage and think outside of the box helps them in the end on the standardized tests. What do you guys think?

Lauren: I agree with Luke; I thought this was going to be another awful article about the perils of standardized testing. However, I enjoyed reading the ideas regarding constructivist education. All learning is based on individual life experiences, so telling students their interpretations of things are wrong...is wrong. Especially as English teachers, we should never tell students what they think is wrong, because literature is meant to be interpreted. The thing I have been telling my students consistently is they can have any interpretation of a text, but they have to be able to support their opinions. We use accountable talk in order to make this happen, so I often get really crazy ideas about theme and symbols from my students, but I realize it is okay because they have different life experiences than I do, so their opinions are going to be different.

Becca: This essay talked about multiple intelligences and the role that they play in classroom. I especially like the articles focus on rich experiences and encouraging students to use multiple intelligences. Before I read this essay, I though the multiple intelligence theory meant identifying a students' strengths and encouraging them to use use those strengths as a means to learning. While we as teacher certainly need to identify these strengths and help students to identify them as well, we still want students to work with their weaker intelligences and learn from the intelligences of others. Specifically, the essay focuses heavily on generating rich experiences for kids where multiple intelligences are used. This way, the teacher is not creating a lesson plan for seven different intelligences, but instead incorporating the strengths and weaknesses of all students into one lesson. This gives students a chance to practice and teacher what they know as well as learn from a student that shine in their weak areas. Overall, I really like this articles focus on the seven intelligences and using them all in relation to one another. If a teacher can create these rich experiences then students can have rich and personal learning experiences.
 * Moran, Seana, Kornhaber, Mindy and Gardner, Howard. Orchestrating Multiple Intellegences **

Deanna: I have always been interested in multiple intelligence theory and do believe that it is a good way to consider the differences in students. Every person, and in our case student, is different, learns different, and understands differently. However, every time I had learned about multiple intelligence theory, I had never been exposed to the idea that people may (and usually do) have a combination of intelligences that they use well. I do not know why this thought hadn’t crossed my mind on my own, because now it seems such an obvious idea. This article talked about how people’s intelligences can interfere, compensate or enhance one another and that we need to be aware of this and know how to make sure we use the multiple areas in a way that is beneficial for our students. Knowing how to cater to each student’s individual needs is a skill that effective teachers must have. I liked that the article made it perfectly clear that, as teachers, we do not need to make sure that every lesson has eight or nine different ways to teach to the eight or nine different intelligences. I think that we just need to make sure that we vary our teaching styles so that all the intelligences are hit upon every so often and that we give students the opportunities to be assessed in ways that they excel at. I also really enjoyed reading about the Explororama in Denmark. This sounds like a very interesting place and I would love to go there someday to experience it.

Alex: This essay discusses the theory of multiple intelligences, not as a theory of education, but as a theory of the inner workings for the mind. It discusses how the traditional notion of IQ composition is largely ineffective in measuring someone’s aptitude because it doesn’t account for the several diverse components that make up one’s complex intelligence. It also discusses how the theory of multiple intelligences does not assert each person has one specific intelligence, but a number of interacting types. There are 9 total and each one has a relationship with the other. There are three types of relationships: interference, compensation and enhancement. These three are self-explanatory, but point to some important implications when it comes to instruction. It’s important for teachers to profile students intelligences rather than apply one comprehensive measure—either “smart” or “dumb”. Teachers, after having profiled these students, have the data to tailor their instruction to each student. Several students may be having trouble with the same assignment, but one may be a linguistic issue, while another is having a logical or intrapersonal issue. The important thing is that we recognize every student as a unique individual with a complex intellectual make up. Teachings strategies that encourage collaborative learning, interdisciplinary work and attention to the multiple intelligences are becoming more prominent in the classroom. I like this trend. Finally, the essay discusses the importance of developing and understanding both intrapersonal (knowing yourself) and interpersonal (understanding others through social interaction) intelligences. If students are able to identify and understand their own energies, talents, motivations etc. with the knowledge of how to collaborate, discuss, and use the talents of their peers learning becomes a much richer experience.

Dustin: Just like the previous article on constructivism, this article tackles another buzz word(s) within education in multiple intelligences. As we all very well know, each student is very unique, which sometimes can be problematic when trying to deal with all students equally. Multiple intelligences is a way of recognizing the differences among students and helping cater to those differences. If teachers are familiar with the multiple intelligences theory, they can get to know their students and recognize which intelligences are each students' strengths. This will only assist teachers in helping students with their learning experience as the teacher can help the student figure out how to turn something that he or she struggles with around so that one of their stronger intelligences can be used.

Luke: I love multiple intelligences because it makes people no longer think in terms of smart or dumb students. The way the article described an orchestra is great and poetic, but I don't think this is always the case. The reason why I say this is because no one has taught the conductor anything about the music. The article does suggest that multiple intelligences helps students understand more about intra and interpersonal ideas, but teaching them in a practical way inside of a junior high or high school is time consuming. Is it worth it? Or should we let students figure it out on their own? Providing rich experiences can be a great way for student's to understand in a variety of way, but who decides what a rich experience is? And how do we convince administrators that we are teaching and to trust us because when the students take the standardized tests, they will do better? It seems to me that this approach flies in the face of current ideas to teach toward the tests, no matter how useful it may seem. This is a great approach to a more free school, though.

Lauren:

The metaphor of the multiple intelligence orchestra (linguistic, logical-mathematical, musical, spatial, bodily-kinesthetic, naturalistic, interpersonal, intrapersonal, and existential) made profound sense to me. I have been trying to incorporate options for all of these intelligences in my classroom, and see now how to tweak my lessons up. I realize students may show less pronounced differences among intelligences, so giving students several options in terms of learning and assessment is key. I also enjoy the idea of combining students with similar or different intelligences in order to create a cohesive project. I used to do this all the time in my newspaper class without teacher instructions and it was very effective for me. I had a way with words, and coming up with some sort of layout, but was unable to make my design ideas come to fruition. I spoke to a classmate who was good at design, and he would make everything for me. This cooperation led to an overall cohesive piece, which was visually pleasing and well written. We need to give students more opportunities for collaboration.


 * Johnson, David W. and Roger, Johnson T. Making Cooperative Learning Work **

Deanna: This article was interesting to me. It talked about productive group work and the differences between the different kinds of grouping of students. After reading this article, I realize that a lot of grouped activities fall under “unproductive” grouping strategies. Pseudo learning groups are completely ineffective because the students are working against each other and not helping each other, which is the entire reason for grouping students in the first place. Therefore, that grouping strategy is very counterproductive and luckily I have not really encountered much of that. Traditional classroom learning groups are much more common and I think the most widely used. In these groups students accept that they have to work together and just share information instead of helping each other learn the material. Some students rely on others and just copy answers while the others do all the work. These learning groups are also ineffective because the students do not help each other understand, just finish the assignment. Much more effective groupings are cooperative learning groups and high-performance cooperative learning groups. In these types of groups students are working together towards a common goal and each student is responsible for learning and understanding the material, and for contributing something to the group. Therefore, when grouping students we need to make sure that when we choose to group students that (a) it is meaningful grouping and not just grouping to group students, and (b) that the groups are working together and yet each person is individually accountable as well.

Becca: I really likes this article's focus on group learning and the need benefits of effective group work. I also liked how the article explained ineffective group work versus effective group work. The article does not argue that all types of group work are effective, but instead explains the components that make up worth while group work. The essay also draws on the benefits of effective group work. Specifically these benefits include a higher achievement rate amongst students, developments of meaningful interpersonal relationships, improvements in students' psychological health, and the development of the social skills needed to become an effective member of society. With cooperative learning, teachers don't just create learning objectives but also generate social objectives. These objectives are just as crucial to a child's development as the learning objectives. Students need to learn how to be a an effective group member as well as learn accountability and and responsibility. Too often students don't pull their weight in a group because they are not help accountable. At the same time, if they are held accountable individually, students compete and hide information form one another. Cooperative group work avoids both of these sceneries and creates a balance. Overall, cooperative learning teaches students to support and encourage they peers while supplying individuals with the tools need develop as an self aware individual. A cooperative learning research that offers a lot of cooperative learning activity ideas is Kagen, I recommend looking him up.

<span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">Dustin: <span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">It may just be me, but when I think of cooperative learning I quickly associate it with group work. And when I've seen teachers implement group work, I've seen it fail as much as it works. That is because, as the authors of this article point out, there are many different things that teachers need to do and be aware of in order to make cooperative learning work. The authors begin by describing the types of groups that often occur when students break into groups (pseudo learning groups and traditional learning groups) and contrasting those with cooperative learning groups and high-performance cooperative learning groups. The differences are significant as in the first two groups it is unlikely that all of the students are reaching the learning goals. The authors then list and discuss the different methods that teachers need to use in order making cooperative learning groups including: the preinstructional decisions, the explanation of the task and the positive interdependence, the need to monitor students and intervene in order to help with the students' learning, and the assessing of the students' learning. I feel as if often times teachers expect to get other things done when their students are working in groups, however students need instruction and guidance once they are in their groups too. In short, it's a lot more work for a teacher than it may first sound to be.

Alex: This essay focuses on cooperative learning, quite obviously, the different types, the basic elements and, not only how to use it in the classroom, but also as an organizational strategy for the faculty in a school. There are different levels of cooperation that yield different results. Will students out-perform or under-perform the sum of their abilities. The hope is that working collaboratively will allow each student to achieve beyond his or her individual ability. This takes place in both a cooperative learning group and the ideal high-performance cooperative learning group. In these types of groups emphasize shared goals, discussion, encouragement, support and assistance. Each group member is committed to the group, making decisions that are in the best interest of each individual. Cooperative learning takes place in a number of ways. I use it in my classroom all the time. Turn to your neighbor and discuss your thoughts on this question. Share your answer with the person next to you. I am going to break you up into small groups to come to a consensus on these issues. The essays calls this informal cooperative learning, and I find it to work nicely. Many students like working together. Cooperative based groups are more formal and work together for a longer period of time. I think the next time I assign a project I will strategically break my students into cooperative based groups and assign a more in-depth project. The benefits of cooperative learning are vast. I agree with the essay when it points out that collaboration works to improve achievement, it helps develop interpersonal skills, psychological well-being and the ability to participate in the social sphere of life. These skills become increasingly important as people age. Developing them in school, I believe, is essential. I recently assigned a short story project and required that each student complete the project individually. I didn’t think the project really required more than one person. They were not that difficult. The response I got (the quality of the projects) was dismal. In hindsight, I think allowing the students to work in groups would have been more fruitful.

Lauren:

Can’t we all just get along? The Johnsons discuss the benefits of cooperative learning in this article, and ideally, this is what my classroom would always look like. They write, “cooperative learning promotes the development of caring and committed relationships for every student…”and what teacher doesn’t want that? I want my students to work together in teams, not only because it facilitates learning, but because teamwork is something they will have to do for the rest of their lives. As the Johnsons write, we want students to understand all classmates are linked, and their neighbor’s work and ideas benefit them in their own learning. I would like to tell my students each person has different knowledge, and when we come together on a task, we can only do great things because there is more information to share. However, the Johnsons don’t spend time discussing how to make sure students don’t turn against each other, hide answers, or try to sabotage one another. I have a strong feeling many of my students would try to bring one another down…or just take time to copy/cheat.


 * <span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">Tomlinson, Carol A. Mapping the route Toward Differentiated Instruction. **

<span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">Deanna: <span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">“Differentiated instruction is teaching with student variance in mind and using practical ways to respond to learner needs.” Differentiated instruction is something that is very beneficial for students and helps teachers hit on and incorporates students’ multiple intelligences since all students are not alike. However, it is important to realize that simply doing different kinds of activities and instruction. Many times we see teachers who do different kinds of activities and give students choices and they think that they are differentiating instruction. However, that is not enough. Differentiated instruction is engaging the students but also it is making sure they understand the material and understanding what they are learning and why they are learning it. Without understanding, all you have is students having fun learning (which is not a terrible thing but not the only thing we want to accomplish). Without engagement, all you have is students “learning” the material long enough to pass an assessment or get by and then not caring about it. Sometimes students do not even learn the material if they are not engaged, but instead they tune out and just do what they need to do to get by. Therefore, we need to incorporate both into our classrooms so that maximal learning and understanding will occur.

<span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">Becca: <span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">I had the opportunity to read and write about this article in a different class which stimulated some great conversations about the ideas presented. Differentiated instruction must take into account more than just diverse learning style. Instead, the teach must explicitly identify goals, provide diverse learning choices, engage students, and accommodate to different levels of understanding. In the first example with Mr. Appletons class, he clearly states his objectives and what he wants students to learn but fails to offer choices or engage the students. On the other hand, in Mrs. Bakers class, she engages the students and offers project choices that accommodate to different levels of learning, but fails to identify learning objectives. In the last example given, the teacher incorporates all of these components of differentiated instruction. Differentiated instruction is incredibly crucial to a students success. It is impracticable the say that all students must function at the same level and understand material in the same way (even thought NCLB states that). Instead it is our job as teachers to provide students with the tools that they need for success. This means that teachers need to differentiate their instruction based on the students in his or her classroom. Overall, differentiated instruction puts the students and their needs first, which is what education should be about.

Alex:

I just recently read this article in my Content-Area Literacy course as part of our discussion on differentiation. The different classrooms presented provide us with an interesting look at how differentiation can often be ignored (Mr. Appleton’s class) and how it can be executed beautifully (Mrs. Cassell’s class) to benefit students immensely. I think the questions that the essay asks, “is it reasonable to expect that all [learners] learn the same thing, in the same ways, over the same time span?” and “Do single-textbook adoptions (or any implementation of generalized instruction) send inaccurate messages about the sameness of all learners?” are very important ones. Because we know that all students are a composition of multiple types of intelligence, filled with experience, unique perspectives and individual learning styles and highly individually important, how can we teach the way Mr. Appleton does with any success? Because of this I think that differentiation is important to every classroom no matter who makes up the student body. Differentiation, as we can see by Mrs. Cassell’s example, is not the separating of students into “dumb” and “smart” groups that are transparent and demeaning. Nor is it dumbing down or teaching up. Differentiation is about identifying students at different levels, meeting them where they are and designing their instruction to help them improve what they do. Mrs. Cassell uses techniques like first-person data sheets, student choice and other assignments to differentiate based on readiness. No student is singled out, not student is aware that they are in a high or low achieving group, in fact, those words aren’t even used. The teacher systematically identifies each student’s learning-profile and works from there. The important thing is that the teacher knows where each student is at all times. The other important thing (most important I daresay) is that every student has and reaches the same goals. There is a destination in mind. It may differ how the student reaches that goal and the depth with which they attain that goal, but every student has the same ultimate goal. In this way no one is singled out. It is customized learning. This isn’t any easy task. Mrs. Cassell’s skills have taken years of honing and perfecting (I’m sure they’re still not perfect). This is something to work toward.

Lauren: <span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif; font-size: 13.3333px;">This article showed me how I would like to run a classroom, and I how I hope to never have a class run in my life! I kept hearing about differentiated instruction from my CT, but didn't really know what it was. When I read about it, I realized I've been learning this all along, just with a different term. I am such an advocate for explicit, clear goals in instruction. I know when I tell my students EXACTLY why we are doing something and how it will help them in the future, it gives them something to hold onto. Instead of letting information slip in one ear and out the other, students are actually trying to learn the content because they know (if nothing else) they will need it to perform a task in the near future. In each lesson I plan, I also incorporate (as the article suggests) accommodations to different levels of understanding and engaging activities. Keeping things engaging is proving to be difficult, but I think as long as it is drilled into students' heads the content expectations, it can take you far.


 * <span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">Shepard, Lorrie A. Linking Formative Assessment to Scaffolding. **

<span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">Deanna: <span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">This article, linking formative assessment and scaffolding, was beneficial and explained scaffolding in a way I had not thought about. Scaffolding is an important factor in student development because if the student does not know how to do something, they need help in order to get to the next level. Students can only teach thems elves so much before they get frustrated with not understanding and just give up. Formative assessment can be a beneficial tool in evaluating how and what students are learning and what they are still struggling with and what they need help with. However, we have to remember that the assessment needs to assess not only the student’s understanding of the material, but the level of understanding. If mastery is the goal, we cannot be content with a general knowledge of the topic. Formative assessment should be used to help get the student to the next level and should do so by telling the teacher what that next level is so that we may better help the student get there. The assessment helps provide feedback for us and the student so both will be on the same page. “Feedback is most effective when it helps move the student forward.” This feedback gives both the teacher and the student a better understanding of what needs to be done to achieve the goal.

<span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">Lauren

In this article, Shepard discusses assessment and its effects. One thing she addresses is utilizing prior knowledge is essential in learning any new material. As Shepard writes, “teachers should not think of prior-knowledge as a discrete pre-test to use from time to time.” When we are more inclusive of students in the learning process, they will (you guessed it) learn more! Being discrete with students and testing them on what they already should know does not help them assess their current knowledge and apply it to the current content. We should make it a collaborative process and have students monitor their own learning. Also, by letting students self-assess, they will become “more interested in teacher comments and feedback than in grades.” Cluing students into the goals of learning and letting them collaborate with the teacher will (hopefully) create a more cohesive learning environment.