Week 8: The last one! (maybe...)

Determine one unit in Differentiating in Practice: A Resource Guilde for Differentiating Curriculum (Tomlinson & Eidson, 2003) that seems appropriate for the grade level of your field/student-teaching class. Read everything about that unit thoroughly.
I chose Unit 4: The World of Geometry
Explain:
1) what impresses you most about the unit? In the unit, I was most impressed with how thorough it was. It covered everything that was basic about geometry. I also liked that it used tiered activities, as well as journal keeping! I think math journals are WONDERFUL and completely underrated.
2) anything you learn about differentiation, just from studying this one unit From this unit, I learned that it is so important to differentiate in every content area. Math is (I would assume) the most disliked subject of all the subjects. If you only have one way for math to be done in the classroom, you aren't working WITH all of your students and their learning needs. However, when differentiated, math can be adapted to the learning ways of all of the students when options are given. For example, in a math journal the students can record their notes however they want. They can reflect on circles instead of learning blah blah blah about "this is a circle" (in a Ben Stein voice).
3) what you don't understand about the unit or how it works This seems like a lot of information to be learned before the final assessment. I don't understand how the students are to remember things from Lesson 1 when they are all the way at the end working on the assessment. Is that what the journal would be used for? So the students can look back on their notes from previous lessons? I guess that's a very general question, but I don't understand how that works. Period.
4) what, other than the content, you believe you would have to modify in the unit if you were going to teach it to your student-teaching class I would definitely have to modify Lesson 8 where they look for shapes in flags. I would make it where the students would look for shapes everywhere!
5) why you would modify it I don't want students to just think that interesting geometry is found in flags; I want them to know that it is everywhere. This would help them think outside of the box, instead of me giving them a flag picture and telling them to find geometric shapes.
6) how you would modify it I would have them go on a scavenger hunt around the school in groups (to keep them under control) where they have to find figures in geometric shapes, interview various faculty members about geometric shapes, and introduce an interesting fact about geometry to that faculty that they did not already know. This would force interaction, but because I would put them in groups, only those who wanted to talk would have to. (Not everyone likes to interact... I know this because I was one of those people!). Or, instead of doing it around the school, they would have to do it around their town as a weekend homework assignment so their parents could get involved too.

Week 7: What do I need?

What do you, individually, still need to know and understand in order to tier (differentiate) a lesson of your own choosing?
First of all, let me start off by saying how much I enjoyed reading your thoughts on your blog. It's comforting to know that someone who has been teaching for the amount of time that you have still loves what they do. I hope that when I am that experienced of a teacher that I will be able to feel the way about teaching that you do!
What do I still need? Hmmmm... besides knowing more about what differentiation really IS, I think I need more tools. I'm thinking about my little tool bucket that we drew in class. As much as I love all the tools that I have right now, I still feel as though my bucket could use a little more. I want to know more about how to differentiate so that, when I am writing up my lesson plans, I will know how to tweak my lesson plans to make them more differentiatable (is that a word??).
Okay, I'm just going to say it. I WANT ANOTHER DIFFERENTIATION CLASS after this one! I don't think I've ever wanted more classes and more work, but this class doesn't even seem like a class because I enjoy it so much, and the work doesn't seem like work because, again, I enjoy it so much! I wish that we could have another class next semester with more differentiation. To me right now, differentiation means loving all of your students, but I learned in class that that's not what it means (...or is it?). I am still confused, but I learned in my Math Methods class that being confused is exciting! When you are confused, that means you are about to learn something... and I am about to learn what differentiation is!
I hope what I've said is an appropriate answer to the question you posted... I feel like I babbled and jumped around with my thoughts.
OH! And I NEED to go buy a morning meeting book! What is YOUR favorite morning meeting book???

Week 6: Chapter Seven

1. Choose 4 bullets from the list on pages 88 & 89 of chapter 7 (repeat them in your posting), and explain why you believe these 4 traits, or beliefs, or mantras are true for you?
Oh gosh, I like all of them really! They are all SO true! But here are my top four...
“Students consistently want teachers who respect them, listen to them, show empathy toward them, help them work out their problems, and become human by sharing their own lives and ideas with their students.”
Teachers are supposed to be very warm and welcoming to their students in order to create an inviting environment where the students can feel comfortable learning and growing. A kind voice should always be used, even when being stern (it doesn't have to be AS kind as usual during scolding...) and the teacher should treat all students equally. I remember my fifth grade teacher... He never left his seat and favored the boys. It was almost like he teamed up with the class clown and they teased each other. I'm sorry, but a student teasing a teacher is just as bad as a teacher teasing a student... THEY ARE BOTH UNACCEPTABLE! My fifth grade teacher is the OPPOSITE of what this trait says!
“Effective teachers clearly identify learning goals and link them with activities designed to ensure student mastery of the goals.”
This sort of goes with classroom management... well, and everything else. It is so important to give clear instructions and expectations to the class. In my field experience this past semester, my cooperating teacher told me that she always tells the students, "Soon, you will be experts at _________!" It gets them excited about learning, AND it states the objective. That way, the students know what is expected of them as far as learning goes. The cooperating teacher also said that sometimes the principal would make rounds to the classrooms and visit with the students, and sometimes he would ask what they are learning about. That way, they were able to say, "I am going to be an expert at __________!"
"Teachers' enthusiasm for learning and for their subject matter is an important factor in student motivation that, in turn, is closely linked with student achievement."
Would you think I'm crazy if I said that Ms. Frizzle was who inspired me to be a teacher??? SHE DID! I loved watching Magic School Bus because Ms. Frizzle was always so excited about everything she taught, and because of her creativity and enthusiasm, her students got into it as well! (Well, when you're traveling through the human blood stream, how can you NOT be excited!?) Anyways, by showing enthusiasm and an eagerness to learn, the students will reflect the same feelings about learning. If you're up there and acting like, "Blahhhhhh, what we're learning about today is so boring, just thought I'd give you guys a heads up...", then your students will be bored even before any material is presented.
“Effective teachers emphasize hands-on learning, conceptual understanding, and links with the world beyond the classroom.”
This ties into the question of "When will we ever use this stuff?" I teach College Algebra and all I hear from my COLLEGE students (yes, it goes beyond grade school) is "Why do I need to know this? When will I use it?" However, if I automatically start off by applying the material to their lives and not just numbers on a whiteboard, the students get into learning and can apply it to real life situations. I really saw this when we were dealing with combinations and permutations (like, if I had 8 markers, how many ways could I select 5 of them? ...instead of just being like, ok, 8 taken 5 at a time is... what?) So, when you make learning hands-on and applicable, it gets more exciting.
2. Comment on one of the metaphors in this chapter. Explain why it makes sense to you, or why you don’t agree with it.
I really liked the metaphor about the bread maker and how he was meant to make bread. It got me thinking about teaching... I am meant to be a "bread maker" as well! My loaves of bread (students) will start out all bumpy and lumpy and doughy (before learning new material), but once I mix all the ingredients (give knowledge) and bake it (make it applicable and exciting), I will be left with wonderful yummy bread (a learned student). However, not all loaves will turn out or bake alike, so I will need to adapt my baking styles to cater to their individual needs (I don't think I need to explain this one..). The baker loves the process of baking and "evolving" the bread, and I, too, will love the process of teaching and watching my students "evolve" as well.

Week 5: Teaching vs. covering

Okay. Before I address any of the following questions, let me just reflect on the title of this blog: teaching vs. covering. There is a HUGE difference between teaching material and just covering material. To me, covering means being very unattached, disinterested and unenthusiastic. I had a high school science teacher who just covered the material, and I learned nothing in there. However, teaching means you are into what you're teaching; you are, how they say, one with the material. Yes yes, so teaching instead of covering makes a world of difference to the students. Okay, sorry for my babble... onto the questions.
1. In chapter 5, Tomlinson discusses 5 (five) bullet points about the differences between teaching curriculum that is important, and “covering” what she calls “scaling Everests of information [that is] not effective for our students." Choose two of the bullets to explain what they mean to you, and how they help you envision the kind of teacher you want to be.
One of the bullets that I liked was the one that said, "Students, classrooms and educational systems that teach less and teach it better score higher on standardized measures than students that seek coverage of massive amounts of information with little emphasis on understanding. In other words, curriculum that is a mile wide but only an inch deep is ineffective in producing real learning.”
To me, this means to teach deep, not wide. When I hear this saying, I picture in my head a really small pond, but one that is a mile in depth. Then, I picture the Nile, being very long and windy, and shallow. We want to cover less material, but in depth, like the small deep pond. If you teach like the shallow Nile, the students may be taught a wide range of material, but they weren't taught the material in depth; they just skimmed the surface. TEACH DEEP and DON'T SKIM any surfaces! I don't want to be a skimmer... I want to be a diver! (I tried to be metaphorical with the deepness and shallowness... did it work?!)
The second bullet that I liked was the one that said, "The brain is inefficient at rote memorization and seeks instead to make meaning of information. If we don't make meaning of what we study, we are likely not to remember it, be able to retrieve it, or be able to use it".
This really spoke to me because of a personal reason... I wanted to badly to be a dental hygienist before I came to the realization that teaching was more for me; however, I had an obstacle: MICROBIOLOGY! I would go to every one of my classes, take notes, then go home and make flashcards of the notes. I would spend my days and nights neglecting all of my other classes just to memorize the facts that I had on my flash cards. Needless to say, I may have been able to memorize those facts, but when it came to applying those facts in the lab and in class, I didn't pass a single test and got my first and only F in college. Just by memorizing the facts, my brain made nothing of that material. Looking back, I should have spent more time in the lab doing hands-on things to apply the notes I took in class and to actually make more of those notes than just words on a page. This bullet is saying exactly that: If we don't make meaning of what we learn, the information will be meaningless to us. Because of this experience, and being able to compare it to this quote, I need to make sure I don't make this mistake with my students. I need to shun any memorization of facts (unless, of course, memorization is necessary), but I need to definitely enforce the application of information.
2. From chapter 6, share 2 (two) exact quotes that are meaningful to you and explain why they matter to you.
The first quote I liked was the one that says, "Products crafted for an audience that is important to the student generally seem much more compelling and the work that goes into them much more important than when the teacher is the sole audience." To me, this means bulletin boards. Use the walls of the classroom and bulletin boards in the hallways to put up student work. I picture in my head a student and his/her parents walking down the hall, and the student pointing to a board with pride and a smile saying, "LOOK! I DID THAT!" To the student, the teacher seems proud of their work to display it in that manner. Also, in field, my teacher had a bulletin board in the classroom where the students could be free to post up their work if they were proud of it. As students came back in from recess (since the board was by the door to outside), several students would gather around the board and look at every one's work that was posted. I want to do as much as I can as a teacher to show my students that they make me proud every day, and I think that displaying their work is a great way to do this.
The second quote I found was the one that says, "Aim high. It is likely that we underestimate what any student can accomplish, often establishing as performance ceiling goals that ought to be planks in the floor." It is SO important to set high standards for the students and to push them. Not having high standards is a great way to discourage students, and then, they lose motivation. As a teacher, I will be sure to push my students with realistic, yet challenging, expectations. This will require serious planning, because if students aren't challenged, they won't learn as much as they could. However, the level at which students are challenged is different for each student, and that's where the extra effort comes in. Busy work is very BLAH, for lack of a better term. I need to be sure that I am an effective teacher by putting thought into the assignments I give so there will be no such thing as busy work in my classroom!

Week 4: Three memorable quotes

Share 3 (three) exact quotes that are meaningful to you (from across these two chapters), and explain why they matter to you.
The good teacher communicates a deep regard for students' lives, a regard infused with unblinking attention, respect, even awe. An engaged teacher begins with the belief that each student is unique, each the one and only who will ever trod the earth, each worthy of a certain reverence. Regard extends, importantly to an insistence that students have access to the tools with which to negotiate and transform the world. Love for students just as they are--without any drive or advance toward a future--is false love, enervating and disabling (Ayres, Klonsky, & Lyon, 2000, pp. 2-3). This quotes opened up Chapter 3, and it automatically caught my attention! It sends the message the a teacher must be compassionate and engage the students consistently in order to reach the students. It mentions the importance of communication; I AGREE! My favorite part of the quote is the part where it talks about love for students. If a teacher doesn't have love for their students, it would be a cold, cold classroom without any feeling of unity at all. If a teacher loves all their students, all of the students are then treated equally, which is SO important! However, it's wrong to love the students without drive because, as the quote says, that's "false love" and then becomes "disabling" for the students.
Classroom environment, classroom communication, class guidelines, working routines, support systems, and shared responsibility are molded according to the roles they must play in achieving the goal of maximizing the growth and capacity of each individual learner and of the class as a group (pp. 37). This is a very general quote, but I think it sums up a lot of important things. It is key to make the classroom environment positive and warm, filled with trust and love. Not only will this help the teacher to love every student, but it will help students love one another. It is important to communicate classroom instruction and expectations clearly; I learned this in field. My cooperating teacher always stated her expectations of the lessons by saying, "Today, students, you will be experts at _____." Then, she would call on random students and ask what they will be experts at. The cooperating teacher said that sometimes the principal would come into the classroom to observe, and he would ask some students what their goal of the lesson is. This student then tells the principal what he/she is going to be an expert at. This worked wonderfully, and I even used the technique in my teaching! It is also important to share classroom responsibilities. All students like to feel as though they are accountable for something in the classroom, so a job chart might be helpful! Also, let students help out and do teacher jobs, such as handing back papers or cleaning up. Actually, I think that all students should help clean the classroom at the end of each day!
Whatever disturbs that balance in our teaching disturbs our teaching (pp. 55). What I took away from this quote is PREPARE PREPARE PREPARE! If a teacher fails to prepare for a lesson, the balance of that lesson is disturbed. Maybe you're short on materials, or you don't know how to properly wrap up the lesson. Then, the teaching itself is disturbed and the students aren't taking as much as they should from the lesson. I really think that wraps it up... Bottom line: Preparing is essential to a smooth and "undisturbed" lesson, leading to a smooth and "undisturbed" learning by the students.

Week 3: Hallmark #1/Inventories

We’re taking a bit of a detour this week, and looking more closely at hallmark #1. Keeping this hallmark in mind, take a look at Fulfilling the Promise, pp. 100‐103; How might you use the information this would produce, in differentiating? What would you, personally, want to add to or remove from this inventory? Explain.
Hallmark #1 states that assessment and instruction are inseparably connected. I will continually need to assess student knowledge, understanding, and skill in both formal and informal ways. This way, I can make necessary adjustments to my instructional plan to fit the needs of my students. I would use the inventory tools from the book to find out information about my students, information that I couldn't get by the usual assessments of content knowledge. I want to really get to know my students, and this way, they could fill out a questionnaire and let me know how they feel about learning. I could also meet with the students one-on-one to give this more of a personal feel to it. I would administer one of these at the beginning of the school year, as well as one at the end. I think it would be fabulous to see students who have grown to love learning over the school year. The only thing that I would add to this would be an area for miscellaneous questions, such as what they like to do for fun, or what their favorite food is. That way, the students can enjoy filling it out more, and I can learn more about them on a personal level as well.
Also “read” (review/skim, etc.) the “File of Inventories/ Pre‐Assessments”posted on Blackboard in the “Inventories” folder, inside of the “Differentiation” folder. Be sure to scroll through the entire document, and notice the variety of types of inventories there are. If you are interested, the "Index to Inventories" document is just that -- an index that gives you information and advice about when or how to use different inventories. What are some relationships you see between this variety of inventory types, and what we are beginning to learn about differentiating content, or process, or product for readiness, or learning profile, or interest?
After reviewing the inventories on blackboard, I have gained a new meaning for what an assessment is. I always thought an assessment meant giving students a test or activity after a lesson and then grading them on it. However, an assessment now means to me that it's just a way for students to tell you what they know, whether it's about themselves, how they feel, or what they know about content material. I especially like that the inventories have pictures on them. I feel that when a student sees pictures on their "test", they will feel much more at ease. I especially like the one entitled "Thinking About My Reading" because it allows the students to almost assess themselves, while at the same time expressing to the teacher how he or she feels about reading. I am beginning to see that, through differentiation, I need to have an open mind as a teacher. I can't be so closed-minded to only think that assessments are tests given at the end of units. Assessments can be fun and personable, as shown by all these inventory samples. I love that there is even MATH inventories! This would allow students to assess how well they understand math, and I can see if they understand how they are understanding it, if that makes sense. Really, I am at a loss for words; I am so grateful that I have been shown these inventories. I will DEFINITELY use them in my classroom! (...saving them to the computer right NOW!)

Week 2: Reading Response

1) Carol Tomlinson mentions "definitions" or partial definitions of differentiation in chapter one. What makes sense to you, in attempting to define differentiation?
So far, to me, differentiation means to understand the students as individuals, becoming comfortable with the meaning and structure of my way of teaching, and being flexible to reach all of my students' goals to maximize their potential. The book gives several great examples of how to differentiate. If a student has "given up" on learning, the teacher should actively try to help the student rediscover their love to learn. Teachers should teach in a way to reach all genders, cultures, etc. If you have an ESL student in the class, the teacher should teach in a way that the ESL student can learn their new language, but still access and use their first language. If a student is having a hard time learning for whatever reason, the teacher should do whatever is in his/her power to make sure that student learns and has an active support system (NCLB). Lastly, if a student learns faster than the information is being taught, there should be material accessible for that student so they don't get bored.
2a) Carol Tomlinson mentioned a metaphor of baseball camp in last week's reading, and introduces the metaphor of taming the fox in chapter 1 of Fulfilling the Promise. Can you think of a metaphor that indicates your current understanding of differentiation?
When I was reading the quote from The Little Prince (which is a FABULOUS book, by the way), I thought of another metaphor. Taming the fox is like cleaning a bathroom. I get so busy and always find other things to do besides cleaning the bathroom, because so many other activities sound much more appealing than putting effort into that. However, once I clean the bathroom and tend to its needs, it is sparkling clean. Once I see how beautiful my bathroom is when it's clean, I tend to wipe the toothpaste out of the sink after brushing my teeth, or cleaning my makeup off the counter in the morning. When the bathroom is dirty, it turns me off and doesn't do much for me, OR my house guests. It needs me to clean it, but how does it ask? (Similar to students who don't know how to ask their teachers for personal help). Yet, once I clean it (once I help the student) I see what's beneath all that dirt, dust, and dried toothpaste (or what's behind any kind of shield the student had put up). The bathroom is clean and I want to use it more. Now that I see how clean the bathroom really can be, I want to keep it clean all the time (similar to how once I see the potential my student has, I want to help them succeed all the time). This might be a reach... am I making sense? Basically, if you neglect the bathroom (student), it will get dirtier and dirtier (the student will fall further and further behind, and feel less and less connected to you as their teacher). However, when the bathroom is cleaned (the student is paid attention to by the teacher as in individual), the bathroom is clean (the student will shine and feel special). I will want to keep the bathroom clean all the time because I now see how wonderful the bathroom looks once it's clean (I will want to keep that student feeling that sense of connection and success).