West’s World

Interview with Liu Xiang

 

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I think and know that essential questions can be used in all subject areas on a curriculum map, as well as your classroom.  Because I feel essential questions are beneficial in ALL areas, I have typed up essential questions on banners for the main content areas (language arts, math, and either social studies or science) and posted them in my classroom.  By doing so, it helps to guide my instruction, keeps me focused and organized on the main ideas, and informs my students as to what the most important concepts are in our unit of study.  When I’m planning a unit of study, after the 2-3 essential questions have been created, I then move on to the assessments that I will use (both formative and summative.)  I can’t say that my assessments would change if I utilized essential questions, because I do incorporate essential questions into my curriculum map and into my classroom.  What I would say is that I would evaluate how well an assessment fit the need of my students, the essential questions, etc.  I would constantly be monitoring the assessments based on the results (data.)When I read in chapter 5 about ‘Developmental Assessment’ I was reminded of a conversation I had while I was a Reading Recovery© teacher.  The conversation had to do with the level or scaffold of help a teacher gave to a student while they were reading.  If a teacher was using ‘lower level’ strategies to help a struggling reader, then you really weren’t doing much to build that student’s repertoire of reading strategies.  I suppose the same could be said of assessments of the same kind, only at different grades.  If we are asking students to be assessed on the same genre, even though it is at a higher grade level, then we aren’t doing much to build up that student’s repertoire of strategies.  I’m not sure if using developmental assessments would improve a student’s scores on a State test.  There are so many other factors that are involved when one takes a State test, but it certainly wouldn’t put one at a disadvantage.  It has been said that “…teachers must make critical choices as they plot a course for their learners (like) navigators use maps to chart a course,”  Mapping the Big Picture: Integrating Curriculum and Assessment, Heidi Hayes Jacobs.  Essential questions on a curriculum map allow for this to occur. 

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As educators, how do we fit everything in?  In fact, I don’t know if I want to fit everything in.  Looking at how I can best serve my students, my goal is to keep Howard Gardner’s Multiple Intelligences in mind; creating and planning assessments that students have a choice in, as well as standard assessments that are mandatory.  In planning for an additional performance assessment for our CA 2nd grade Life Science unit, I have tried to keep the M.I. in mind.  For further reading, click on the attachment.

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In the near future, I will begin a 3 week long study of Life Science in 2nd grade; life cycles of plants and animals.  With so many Formative and Summative Assessments to choose from, which one(s) are applicable to my current class.  For further reading, click on the attachment.

Interview  

I have to say, that working with my tech coach has been a rewarding, creative, collaboration.  Technology is not something that comes easy or natural to me, but I am very interested and curious about the options that it can bring.  One such interest has led to the use of Audacity; putting this interview and adding music to it has been challenging but has brought me such intrinsic rewards when I finally finished it (which took awhile.)  As I tell my students, “Don’t give up, work through it.”

In order to help me better understand a task at hand, an article I’m reading, or a chapter in a book, I need to know the “Why” in order to connect to prior knowledge or understand the ‘Goal.’  While reading Smith and Throne’s book Differentiating Instruction with Technology in K-5 Classrooms, I asked myself “Why do we need to use technology to differentiate by product?”  The answer was forthcoming in that in such a diverse world and a diverse population of students it is a way for students to own their learning and their work.  Differentiating their work gives students a choice of how they want to represent their understanding of the task.  Two ideas for product differentiation that I can take back to my classroom are thought of as the Food Pyramid and a Tic-Tac-Toe Board of possible products based on the Multiple Intelligences.  In a food pyramid, one has a choice of what to eat within that category.  The same can be said for technology.  Based on a student’s interests or readiness, they can choose what product best suits themselves.  This can be accomplished by planning out different activities based on the Multiple Intelligences on a grid of some sort.  I foresee letting students have a choice of 1-2 products that they would like to have the responsibility of bringing to provision.

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In this audio interview of American Psychologist and Educator, Howard Gardner, he defines intelligence as the ability to solve problems and/or make things that are valued in at least one culture.  As he goes on to describe the 8 intelligences and his proposed 9^th, Existential (Who we are?  Where did we come from?), it’s clear to me that if I

want to get my students to “fall in love with learning” I need to find out what interests them by including as many of the 8 intelligences as possible. 

Nowhere was this clearer to me than in the Earth Science unit I taught.  With the strong emphasis and use of technology, along with music, writing, math, I have seen students who I never would have thought, become excited about their learning; not only for what they were learning but how they were learning. 

 Towards the end of his interview, H. Gardner suggests that the United States sacrifices student learning by trying to cover many topics.  In contrast, Asian countries study fewer topics but in greater depth, with the contrary effect as in the U.S. 

Food for thought…

The website http://www.everythingdi.net/index.htm was created as a helpful resource after authors Smith & Throne wrote their book, Differentiating Instruction with Technology in K-5 Classrooms (2007 International Society for Technology in Education.) Its purpose is to offer a plethora of websites that will help teachers differentiate their instruction by using technology.  Another use for this website is summed up in this quote, “Our purpose is to stimulate thinking about some ways teachers can use technology to support multiple intelligences.”   

As I navigated around I asked myself how this would be useful for my own classroom and what information would I take back to my 2^nd grade colleagues.  There were 2 pieces that I found to be extremely relevant: 1) This site links to other sites based on a technology activity you may want to pursue, (i.e. WebQuest, Jigsaw, I-Search, and R.A.F.T.), and 2) MI and Technology.  Not only did I find this interesting, but under the Verbal Linguistic, I discovered a lesson that I will be incorporating next week.           

 The Flat Stanley website, (which is actually a book written by Jeff Brown) offers ideas of how to incorporate writing and sending those letters to pen pals. Flat Stanley, during the night, has a bulletin board fall on him and now is only ½ inch thick when he wakes up.  The book tells of his adventures getting rolled up and mailed to different places.  After buying the book at Borders, I thought this would be a great way to continue our friendly letter writing activities.  My idea is to read the book to my students, have them color their paper Flat Stanley, and then take him home with the student.  They can take Flat Stanley with them wherever they go and when it is time to bring him back to school, they can write about their adventures with Flat Stanley.  The final process will be mailing their letters to the recipients.           

We’ll see how this goes, but I plan on sharing this Flat Stanley idea with my co-workers, as a way to opening up the doors to the everythingdi website.

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