February Book Of the Month Quotes

I have officially posted, e-mailed, and send home copies of this months newsletter!  I hope you all enjoy reading it and collaborating amongst yourselves as much as I enjoyed creating it and finding my own quotes from our B.O.M. 

Mrs. Winters's favorite quotes from the B.O.M:

Before the War...
I rode my brother's shoulders, hung in the crook of Dad's good arm. I rode them across the long shadows of afternoon, high over hedges, heading for home base, when our street was the world, before the war, when there wasn't a cloud in the sky.

Passengers burning alive staggered on fleshless feet through its melting steel skeleton...

"He held the lantern high, and he was looking everywhere," Mrs. Hiser said.  "Then I heard him myself, a voice that moaned like the windpump.  "Where's... my ... hand?"  the ghost of Jimmy Johnson cried.

Remember to leave your favorite quotes in the comments below this post!

February 2017 Class Newsletter

 

Chapter Two

 

Pages 28-35

2-1a ERIKSON: PSYCHOSOCIAL DEVELOPMENT

·       Epigenetic Principle-states that in fetal development, certain organs of the body appear at certain specified times and eventually “combine” to form a child. 

·       Psychosocial Crisis-Erikson has benign meaning behind the word “crisis”.  His thoughts are: Crises occur when people feel compelled to adjust to the normal guidelines and expectations that society has for them but are not altogether certain that they are prepared to carry out these demands fully.

·       Described crises in terms of opposing qualities that individuals typically develop.  For each crises there is a desirable quality that individuals typically develop

2-1b STAGES OF PSYCHOSOCIAL DEVELOPMENT

·       Trust vs. Mistrust (Birth to 1 year) The basic psychosocial attitude for infants to learn is that they can trust their world.

·       Autonomy vs. Shame and Doubt (Two to Three years; Preschool) The stage where children exert a degree of independence after they learn to trust or mistrust

·       Initiative vs. Guilt (Four to Five Years; Preschool to Kindergarten)  the ability to participate in many physical activities and to use language sets the stage for initiative, which “adds to autonomy the quality of undertaking, planning, and ‘attacking’ a task for the sake of being active and on the move.”

·       Industry vs. Inferiority (Six to Eleven Years; Elementary to Middle School) A child entering school is at a point in development when behavior is dominated by intellectual curiosity and performance. “He now learns to win recognition by producing things…develops a sense of industry.” 

·       Identity vs. Role confusion (12 to 18 years Middle through High School) to develop roles and skills that will prepare adolescents to take a meaningful place in adult society

·       Intimacy vs. Isolation (Young Adulthood) to experience satisfying development at this stage, the young adult needs to establish close and committed intimate relationships and partnerships with other people.

·       Generativity vs. Stagnation (middle Age) “Generativity…is primarily the concern of establishing and guiding the next generation. BROAD

·       Integrity vs. Despair (Old Age) Integrity is the “acceptance of one’s on and only life cycle as something that had to be and that, by necessity, permitted of no substitutions…Despair expresses the feeling that the time is now short, too short for attempt to start another life and try to out alternate the roads to integrity.”

2-1c Helping Students Develop a Sense of Industry

·       Grading on a curve and creating competition.  (Problem)Students who are forced into this unhealthy type of competition may develop a sense of inadequacy and inferiority that will hamper them for the rest of their school career.  (Solution) Emphasize to students and others that a more relevant and useful goal is to help all students develop attitudes, values, and cognitive skills that lead to high levels of meaningful learning.  Make an environment where the students feel accepted no matter what and will encourage learning in a healthy manner by helping in all degrees.

2-1d Helping Students Formulate an Identity

·       The most complex of Erikson’s stages.  Identity is experienced merely as a sense of psychosocial well-being - Feeling at home in one’s own body.  Psychosocial Moratorium-period marked by a delay of commitment.  Should be a period of adventure and exploration, having a positive, or at least a neutral, impact on the individual and society.

2-1e Adolescent Identity Statuses

·       Identity statuses- (4) reflect the extent to which individuals have explored and committed themselves to a set of values on such critical issues as occupation, religion, sex role and politics.

·       Identity diffusion

·       Foreclosure

·       Moratorium

·       Identity achievement

o   see table 2-1 page 33

2-1f Criticisms of Erikson’s Theory

·       conclusions based on personal and subjective interpretations only partly substantiated by controlled investigations of the type that most psychologists value

·       his stages reflect the personality development of males more accurately than that of females

o   girls are concerned with the nature of interpersonal relationships as they are with achievement, whereas boys focus mainly on achievement.

Pages 38-45

2-2  PIAGET: COGNITIVE DEVELOPMENT- postulated that human beings inherit tow basic tendencies: organization and Adaptation

·       ORGANIZATION-the tendency of all individuals to systemize or combine processes into coherent systems

·       SCHEMES-the environment given to children as they develop which becomes the basis for understanding and adapting to the world in which they live.

·       ADAPTATION-accomplished in two sub-processes (1) assimilation (2)accommodation  -A child will adapt by either interpreting an experience so that it fits an existing scheme(assimilation) or changing an existing scheme to incorporate the experience (accommodation)

·       RELATIONSHIPS AMMONG ORGANIZATION, ADAPTATION AND SCHEMES-The product of organization and adaptation to their environment.  He called this process equilibration.  What drives people to this state is disequilibrium.  When people are encounter something that is inconsistent with or contradicts what they already know or believe, this experience produces a disequilibrium that they are driven to eliminate.

·       EQUILIBRIATION, DIEQUILIBRIUM, AND LEARNING- (Equilibrium and Disequilibrium are the two sides of the learning coin.  Equilibration to occur, disequilibrium must have already occurred.  Disequilibrium can occur spontaneously with in an individual through maturation and experience, or it can be stimulated by someone else (such as a teacher).

·       CONSTRUCTING KNOWLEDGE-Constructivism-the process of creating knowledge after solving a problem

2-2b Stages of Cognitive Development (4)

·       Sensorimotor Stage (Infants and Toddlers)

o   imitation and the importance of this stage as it’s behaviors like this that show an increasing ability to think in terms of symbols

·       Preoperational Stage (Preschool and Primary Grades)

o   Mastery of symbols (mental imitation)

o   Piaget believed that many symbols are derived from mental imitation and involve both visual images and bodily sensations

o   Action carried out through logical thinking

o   Conservation problems-those that test the ability to recognize that certain properties stay the same despite a change in appearance or position (most well-know is the conservation of continuous quantity. (Page 41)

o   Perceptual centration—strong tendency to focus on only one subject

o   Decentration—ability to think of more than one quality at a time

o   Irreversibility—no logical thinking behind simple mathematical reversals

o   Egocentrism—young ones find it difficult or impossible to understand and take another one’s point of view

·       Concrete Operational Stage (Elementary to Early Middle School)

o   Schemes are developing that allow a greater understanding of such logic-based tasks as conservation, class inclusion, and seriation.  But operational thinking is limited to objects that are actually present or that children have experienced concretely and directly. 

o   Students in this stage are more capable of learning advanced concepts than most people realize

·       Formal Operational Stage (Middle School, High School, and Beyond)

o   Being able to generalize and engage in mental trial and error by thinking up hypotheses and testing them in their head.

o   This stage reflects the ability to respond to the form of a problem rather than its content and to form hypotheses.

o   See the difference in formal thinking vs. operational thinking

Pages 50-55 

2-3  VYGOTSKY: COGNITIVE DEVELOPMENT

·       How One’s Culture Affects Cognitive Development

o   Parents and schools shape children’s thought processes to reflect that which the culture values.  Even when individuals are by themselves what they think and do is a result of cultural values and practices

·       2-3a The Importance of Psychological Tools

o   These are the cognitive devises and procedures with which we communicate and explore the world around us. 

o   Children are introduced to psychological tools through social interactions with their parents and later in more formal interactions with their teachers

·       2-3b How social Interaction Affects Cognitive Development

o   For social interaction to produce advances in cognitive development they have to contain a process called mediation.  Mediation occurs when a more knowledgeable individual interprets a child’s behavior and helps transform it into internal and symbolic representation that means the same thing to the child as to others

·       2-3c How Instruction Affects Cognitive Development

o   Spontaneous concepts-learn various facts and concepts and rules by-product of activities as engaging in play and communicating with parents and playmates. 

o   Empirical learning-the way young children acquire spontaneous concepts (forming general concepts)

o   Theoretical learning- involves using psychological tools to learn scientific concepts.  (problem solving)

·       Instruction and the Zone of Proximal Development

o   Zone of Proximal Development (ZPD)—the difference (time period) between what children can do on his own and what can be accomplished with some assistance.

o   Scaffolding- helping students to answer questions or solve problems of difficulty by giving them hints or asking them leading questions

·       Vygotsky suggests

o   Model desired academic behaviors

§  Children will imitate all behaviors

o   Create dialogue with the student

§  Discussion brings about understanding

o   Practice

§  Practice speeds internalizing

o   Confirmation

§  Bring out the best in each student, focus on what they can do and it will build trust and a mutually supportive relationship between teacher and student.  Good quality work will come even if some assistance is necessary and should always be offered.

Pages 58-64 

 

2-5            Piaget, Kohlberg, and Gilligan: Moral Development

2-5a Piaget’s Analysis of the Moral Judgment of the Child

·       Piaget discovered that interpretations of rules followed by participants in marble games changed with age.

Moral Realism vs. Moral Relativism

·       Morality of Constraint: the moral thinking of children up to the age of ten or so (moral relativism)

·       -Morality of Cooperation: the moral thinking of children eleven or older

·       -The two differ in several ways

Kohlberg’s Description of Moral Development

Kohlberg’s Use of Moral Dilemmas

·       His study was based on analyzing how individuals responded to a set of short stories that involved a moral dilemma.

Kohlberg’s Six Stages of Moral Reasoning

·       Stage 1: Punishment-Obedience “You might get caught.” Physical consequences of an action.

·       Stage 2: Instrumental Relativist “You shouldn’t steal something from a store, and the store owner shouldn’t steal things that belong to you.” Laws should involve an even exchange.

·       Stage 3: Good boy- Nice Girl “Your parents will be proud of you if you are honest.” Impress others with good actions.

·       Stage 4: Law and Order “It’s against the law, and if we don’t obey laws, our whole society might fall apart.” Fixed rules must be obeyed.

·       Stage 5: Social Contract “Under certain circumstances, laws may have to be disregarded – if a person’s life depends on breaking a law, for instance.” Rights of the individual should be protected.

·       Stage 6: Universal Ethical Principle “You need to weigh all of the factors and then try to make the most appropriate decision.” Moral decisions should be based on ethical principles.

2-5c The Caring Orientation to Moral Development and Education

Gilligan’s View of Identity and Moral Development

·       Gilligan opposes Erikson’s and Kohlberg’s theories and believes that they are based on the teenage male not teenage female. Many females have a different primary concern. They care less about separation, but more about loyalty.

Nodding’s Care Theory

·       Care theory has come to focus clearly on relationships and how those relationships function. According to Nodding, it is not good enough to say that we care, but to express a concern for someone or people.

·       Establishing a caring relationship with your students also means responding to their needs. Educators should involve students in discussions of moral issues to emphasize the utility of both orientations.

Does Moral Thinking Lead to Moral Behavior?

Hartshorne and May asked students questions about what was right and wrong

·       The results showed that many children acted dishonestly. While some knew cheating was wrong, they would not cheat in school, but in sports they would.

Character Development as an Educational Goal

·       Intellectual Character refers to ways of thinking that direct and motivate what a person does when faced with a learning task and that often lead to a meaningful outcome. A learner with intellectual character is, curious, open minded, reflective, strategic, and skeptical.

Moral Character is a disposition to do both what is good and what is right.

Ed Psych-Chapter 1 and 4 Articles Reflection

     Chapter One of our book discusses the educational psychology and the scientific discipline behind it used to improve a students learning and a teacher's instruction all together in the classroom environment.  The most important topics I learned from the chapter were as follows: (a) Teaching is complex and requires knowledge (b) Research literature can improve teaching/learning methods (c) Teachers that go to and acquire continuing education and professional development are more effective than those that do not.  Being an effective teacher is always a person's primary goal and to do that one must always be on the cutting edge of technology and research and want to further his/her learning to be the best teacher possible.

     The four articles that I read were ranged broadly on topic.  One discussed teaching across state boarders, being a professional in the field, Inequality at school, and types of teacher education.  Needless to say that is a lot of difference.  I will say this, even though the topics were wide ranging, those articles all tied together using one common theme and that is that if you are going to be a teacher you must have an open mind and adapt easily to situations that require critical thinking and situations that require "street" thinking skills.  Both equally important.  Not only do teachers have to conform to each environment as it is presented but they must be able to think on the "fly" and not just in situations with students but the work place also.

     This is where I see that the articles and chapters are mutually exclusive in the sense that each brings a skill set to teachers needed to improve the longevity in the field and perhaps the stability to remain in one place versus jumping from one school system to another in or out of state.  Even though teaching can come quite naturally to some it will still require skill.  Skills from everyday life, psychology,  and colleagues.  Skills not just used in the classroom but in the work place environment.

     The phrase in the article I liked best was, "I've come to the conclusion...that I'm never going to be the world's greatest teacher - and that that's OK".  What a statement and lesson.  To be the best teacher I can be and grow in my field I think it's important to realize this statement reigns true.  Yes, we must treat our students fair and equally within their individualized learning.  Look at each of them in their own scope and push their limits daily to the best of their ability.  To do this we do not judge their skin color but their drive and need for learning because no matter the race they are all LEARNERS.  To be the best educator I can be I must constantly push the envelope of my own learning, be consistent in the environment of learning I offer to myself and others and the colleague to my fellow educators that I desire to grow from.  Teaching will be hard but we can ease that feeling by equipping ourselves with the same framework of knowledge, consistency, cooperation, and fairness we will offer to students.   

    

TPACK LESSON PLAN AND REFLECTION

Kelli Winters

Technology Education

January 11, 2017

 

Lesson Plan for TPACK integration

Application
Roles and powers of the U.S. President using game-based classroom response system, Kahoot and Spelling City.   IPad/IPhone will be used to interact between students and smartboard applications.

                     

• Learners: This lesson is designed for 5^th to 8^th grade social studies students. (but not limited to this age group as it can be used for higher level learners 3^rd grade and above)

 

• Learning outcomes: Learners will gain a better knowledge and understanding of the president’s role through this game. Focus of content is the role and powers of the president. At the end of this activity students should be able to verbally communicate as a class the more specific details of what the president’s role is as our commander in chief.

 

• Assessment: I will be able to gage/assess the student’s knowledge by going to my “dashboard” in Kahoot and in Spelling City and viewing results to see every student’s response the each question in Kahoot and vocabulary review and results in the spelling city dashboard also.  Both Applications and web-sites give me a results dashboard and will be able to see what questions were answered correctly/incorrectly and what may need to be reviewed before moving onto another lesson.

Timeline of planned events and procedures

 

• To start my lesson I will create individual groups.  Each group will have 3 members to form a team but each will have their own device so they can answer individually and as a team.
• The students would then spend the next 10 minutes Spelling City and reviewing our week’s vocabulary lesson I have set up for them in the site it will be terms about the roles and powers of the president.
• Once the students have finished their exploration and review in the Spelling City site I will open up Kahoot.
• When the Kahoot application is open and on the smartboard and students will log into their iPad/iPod devices and be able to create team names and sign in using the given PIN on the smartboard.
• While waiting on the other teams/students to sign in I may flash some interactive questions to challenge the student’s prior knowledge and activate their brains!
• Once all students and teams have all logged in to the Kahoot system we will begin playing the game.
• The interactive application game is 12 questions and each question has a timer of 30 seconds for the students to respond so they must be quick in their discussion and answer.
• Once each question has been answered on the devices it will show up on the smartboard under the team names and tell the students who answered the quickest and correctly or incorrectly.
• The Game will keep track of answers and when finished it will show statistics and which team one and placed.

 

            Resources

 

• www.getkahoot.com
• www.spellingcity.com

 

 

Reflection
considering your learning activity described above, write two paragraphs or three for each section below addressing the questions. It may be helpful to keep in mind the followings when reflecting:

1. How well the use of this technology may support your teaching strategies in this activity.

 

I believe that using my technologies accelerated my student’s learning capabilities.  First by using Spelling City to create a base of knowledge for them in teaching them terms and meaning of words using many types of games.  This is important as it keeps students engaged where as I feel that writing definitions from a text book onto paper may not be as successful for learning in the classroom as it once used to be.  Now, I am not saying that it is not successful but I believe we as educators have to encourage our students to learn differently in a manner to which they are accustomed and technology is what they are accustomed to using in everything. 

 

Furthermore, after students have spent time building their knowledge about the subject in which we were learning I felt it was equally as important to match my assessment to the learning style I have allowed throughout that lesson.  I used Kahoot to test the students’ knowledge base to see if they had actually retained what was taught.  If the students were not successful it would be very important to seek out those areas of where comprehension was weak and find a different style of learning to go back over that area and allow students ample opportunity to re-learn the lesson. 

 

2. How effectively the use of this technology may enhance students' understanding of and learning from your particular content in this activity.

 

I feel my methods were effective with the use of these two technologies because students did show a comprehension when asked direct questions by answering correctly through the Kahoot program.  Furthermore, cementing my belief that they retained knowledge the student’s discussed the answers as they were answering and even corrected each other in a friendly manner if somebody answered incorrectly.  Learning was an open forum during this lesson and the students were very comfortable in the situation and for me that shows I was successful in my methods used. 

 

 

--Pedagogical-Content:

Your pedagogical content knowledge refers to your understanding of teaching strategies that are specific to a content area. That is the knowledge about choosing appropriate pedagogies for teaching a particular content Example: Using drill-and-practice to teach math problem solving. This strategy however may not necessarily be effective for other content areas.

 

Now, forget about the technology for a while…..Just tells us about your teaching strategies that you employ in your activity (e.g., analogies, demonstrations, illustrations, examples, explanations, group work, drill-practice, simulations, role-play, lecturing, self-guided learning, inquiry-based learning, problem based learning or etc). Specifically:

• My strategy was to allow students an open and competitive forum to answer questions in review for what we learned over the week about our government and presidential roles.  I believe my students held a comprehension as when the “game” was over the dashboard showed me statistics of every student’s answers.  The activity was to answer questions asked in a timely manner and compete with each other for the correct answer and the speed in which the question was answered.  This was done using computers in coordination with the Smartboard.
• Different conceptions would be students not from the U.S. may have a hard time transitioning from their previous governmental views and policies into the policies we have here in the United States. I would have no about students' prior knowledge, experiences, motivation because it is my job to teach all students and make sure they are gaining the knowledge and content as it being taught.  Part of teaching is expressing those differences and turning them into learning moments as not every learner is the same. My strategy is to have as many open forum of discussions on our president’s role in government as possible.  Not any forum will be the same and that is where you will have those teachable moments where elaboration can happen on subject of differences in government leaders and policy and discussion of why it is different and if that different is good or not so good.

--Technological-Pedagogical:

Your technological pedagogical knowledge refers to your understanding of technologies for particular learning tasks, your ability to choose technologies based on its fitness, your knowledge of pedagogical strategies, and your ability to apply those strategies for use of technologies   Example: Selecting Edmodo/Facebook for facilitating student generated debate. Edmodo here is the technology that supports the main pedagogy-group discussion/debate.

 

In the previous section, you talked about your instructional strategies. Keeping these strategies you stated in mind, now tell us how the technology is used in your activity.  Specifically:

• My technology supported my activity in the manner that it allowed students to build a deeper knowledge and understanding by testing their account of government roles and definitions by using Spelling City and then further allowing them to compete with each other from their retained knowledge in the Kahoot activity.   
• Since both of my activities were student centered I may change it up so they have to work as teams next time and not individually.  So that I can encourage discussion and team work.   For example in Kahoot they each had a computer and raced to see who could answer faster individually and to change that I would make them be in separate teams and collaborate before answering.

--Technological Pedagogical Content:

Your technological pedagogical content knowledge refers to your understanding of how teaching and learning from content may change when technology used and is our knowledge about selecting technologies that suits, support, and enhances teaching strategies and learning activities in your particular content area. It is your understanding of teaching strategies to effectively teach the particular content and help student conceptual difficulties in this content by meaningfully incorporating technologies.   Example: Using a flash card app on iPad as a means to aid students memorize words and definitions in language learning. IPad app is here chosen as a tool to support the pedagogy around instant feedback, quick repetition, and individualized learning. These are some of the strategies used in language learning content area.

 

Now, let’s focus on the content you’re teaching in your activity. Think about your decisions to incorporate this technology and the teaching strategies in relation to your particular content area. Tell us specifically about:

• I think using my technology enhanced the learning experience differently because some students are not comfortable with verbal communication and are very smart and tech savvy so introducing a way to answer with an anonymous name those students have more confidence and may excel more naturally than they would if asked verbally in front of the class the answers I was seeking.  
• The different ways students would practice or understand the content in my activity would be just to write definitions from a text book and perhaps doing a book report on the roles of the president.  In addition to motivational benefits, Students could use technology to find out specifics on the president and see what our current president has done while in office to exert his power and responsibilities in a more in depth role.  They can find factual articles and build their knowledge of what a president is supposed to do and if he/she has done so and how he/she has asserted his rights as the president.  What I mean is find real life scenarios that show how the president has carried out his duties within his role as our commander in chief.