How can teachers empower students to be self-motivated learners? Student voice and choice is often the answer.

 

The general idea behind student-centered teaching is to give the student a greater voice inside the classroom. The concept of frequently giving the students choices is terrifying for many teachers because of the importance being placed on state testing.  The looming standardized test haunt teacher into making decisions based on fear as opposed to a professional understanding that all students are capable of learning and will learn when their needs are met.  Teachers often forget to ask students what they are

Getting  Student’s Input

Teachers use a variety of qualitative and quantitative evidence to make instructional decisions. Teachers evaluate tests, homework and class work to decide on moving forward with content or offering a reteach. The reteach can be geared to a small group of students or to a whole class. District wide tests let teachers compare their class to others with similar parameters and seek guidance from coworkers.

Teachers are constantly reflecting of student’s performance. Classroom discussions help teachers guide students to a deeper understanding through questioning. Students’ behavior and engagement is being considered and adjustments are made mid lesson.

I often ask my student to record on a sticky notes questions they still have about the content we are covering is one suggested by Palmer (1990). While I monitor the class I ask questions like: “What is something that is still confusing?”, “ Is there something you want explained in a different way?”  or “What is something you just don’t fully understand yet?”. We place our questions on our board. If I notice a trend I will present a short reteach and ask students to summarize on an index card. If there is a variety students select a new sticky and has the opportunity to research the information. This has helped build student relations and class community.

Student Choice

Often teachers allow student choices to engage them in the learning process. Many of the choices include a variety of ways to show mastery through menu boards or tic tac toe grids. Students may be given the choice of working in a group or working alone.  Students sometimes get the option of where to work utilizing flexible seating options and class learning zones.

Giving Students More Ownership

We have a 30 min RTI time used to reinforce Reading and Math skills. In the past we group students across grade level. We use data to group them according to needs. Often this can result in the struggling students feeling disheartened by their placement. However, what would happen if students were allowed to select the skill they needed improvement on. Teachers can list the lowest scores according to the most recent data and students chose which lesson to attend.  Flowerday and Schraw (2000) feel this decision making power is what current students need to develop the traits of a lifelong learner. Would this type of responsibility help students feel more in power of their education?

 

Reference

Flowerday, T., Schraw, G. (2000) Teacher Beliefs About Instructional Choice: A Phenomenological Study. Journal of Educational Psychology, Volume 92, Number 4, 634-645.

Palmer, P. (1990) Good Teaching: A Matter of Living the Mystery. Change, Volume 22, Number 1, 10- 16.

 

“Critical thinking should be taught only after students have mastered the lower levels of Bloom’s” Do you agree or disagree?

 

 

I believe that critical thinking can be used for higher level students to discover more knowledge of a subject. In Douglas Oylar’s paper he states “the ability to think critically relies to some extent on domain knowledge and practice. . . .One cannot think critically about an issue in which they have no point of reference.(2014)” It is important for teachers to encouraging students to research and explore the concept and draw their own conclusions. Michele Norfleet agrees with this when she writes “ the higher levels of learning on the hierarchy, which led to critical thinking, are not utilized until the lower levels are achieved (2015)”. That being said for most of my student population it is important that they have a basic understanding of the knowledge.

Teachers should help students move fluidly among different levels of Blooms.  For example when asking student to think critically about our government structure a teacher may ask students to create a presentation discussing government structure that would work in a small town in a newly discovered continent. In order for student to accomplish this task they need to have an understanding of various government structures. As they apply this knowledge they need to analyze and evaluate the different needs of a small town over a large country. It should be a fluid as the student moves between Blooms to better understand the information. Often this can be done through a small group session of Socratic thinking. According to Ulku S. Karrabul, “discussion, either small or large-group format, was essential and beneficial for development of critical thinking” in students (2012).

I believe one of the reasons for this is it allows students to explore different perspectives and evaluate the validity of them in a safe setting. Then the student is allowed to respond using their knowledge and reevaluate their understanding by justifying their response. As discussed in Was Bloom’s Taxonomy Pointed in the Wrong Direction  Students can use their basic background knowledge with critical thinking to build a more solid foundation of understanding.(Wineburg and Shcheider, 2010). Perhaps, critical thinking is a cycle that is ongoing. A well cultivated thinker . . . communicates effectively with others in figuring out solutions to complex problems.( Paul and Elder, 2007)”. This is the goal as educators, to facilitate students in figuring out solutions that are communicated in an effective manner. Then guiding the student to apply the skills learned in new problems or experiences.

References

Karabulut, Ü. S. (2012). How to teach critical thinking in social studies education: Anexamination of three NCSS journals. Eurasian Journal of Educational Research (EJER),49, 197-212.

Norfleet, M. (2015). What are the steps to critical thinking according to Bloom’s Taxonomy?

Retrieved from http://everydaylife.globalpost.com/steps-critical-thinking-according blooms-taxonomy-28811.html

Oyler, D. R., & Romanelli, F. (2014). The fact of ignorance revisiting the Socratic method as a tool for teaching critical thinking. American Journal of Pharmaceutical Education, 78(7), 1-9.

Paul. R and Elder.L. Miniature Guide to Critical Thinking: Concepts and Tools. Foundation For Critical Thinking (2007) Retrieved 2/1/2016 from: http://www.d.umn.edu/~jetterso/documents/CriticalThinking.pdf

Wineburg, S., & Schneider J. (2010). Was Bloom’s Taxonomy pointed in the wrong direction? Phi Delta Kappan, 91(4), 56-61.

Investigating and Reflecting on My Assumptions

Like all teachers I believe in a brighter, better, future and I believe education is key in creating that future.  I have some very deep rooted assumptions about learning and critical thinking.  Some of my assumptions come from my own experiences as a student while others are formed from teaching. The assumptions I formed as an educator have been evaluated and tested.

Every teacher knows student’s have to want and have the ability to learn. “Students learn when they’re motivated to learn. If they (students) want to learn, they will” (Kolderie, T, 2001). This is reinforced with Stephen Brookfeilds idea that “Emotion is right at the core of critical thinking (Johanson, 2012). If students don’t feel safe and accepted they cannot learn. Dr. Becky Bailey writes that human brains have 3 states of functioning, survival, emotional and executive. Only in the Executive state can they problem solve and think critically (2015 p 30-54). School has become more than just a place to seek knowledge. Schools are a place for children to get a warm meal, a loving smile and acceptance. It is impossible to think critically until basic needs are met.

The underlying factor is how we keep students engaged? When students are engaged moving them from the lower levels to the higher levels of boom can be easier. We as educators are looking for ways to keep students engaged and help them develop more effective critical thinking.  According to Ulku S. Karabult class discussion, writing and application of questions have been used to teach students in Social Studies classes since 1977 (2012). These are still used in Social studies classes today. Kathryn Carr suggests critical reading, writing to learn and classification games to help keep students engaged and move them to a better understanding of their critical thinking (1990). In “Revisiting Bloom’s Taxonomy: a Framework for Modeling Writing and Critical Thinking Skills the authors suggest a modeling approach (Jacobson and Lapp 2010). While these are ways to keep students engages a way to understand a student’s learning experience is to ask them. Stephen Brookfield created a “Critical Incident Questionnaire (CIQ) to evaluate what the students find helpful and engaging (Johanson, 2012). This questionnaire can be used for a wide range of ages as well as for any subject. It is helpful for teacher to better plan upcoming lessons based on their findings.

One of my other individual assumptions one of my colleges is  that students need constant modeling and practice to obtain a better understanding of the information taught and then more modeling is needed of the critical thinking process to aid students in effectively applying the skill to new ideas and concepts.  This scaffolding process needs to be scaffold and well planned out.  We use the think aloud method mentioned in Jacobson and Lapps article when reading aloud, breaking down test questions, editing writing and in other learning opportunities (2010). Often during the think aloud we incorporate the Socratic method of questioning the student. It turns into a whole class discussion of interpreting information analyzing and clarifying understanding. The district I work for has discovered that these think aloud questioning session help students in “arriving at judgments through their own reasoning” as well as help  students analyze thinking and thought including its purpose, assumptions, questions, points of  view, information, inferences concepts and implications” (Oyler, D. & Romanelli, F. 2014).  This process over many lessons has students start thinking independently and more critically. We use think, pair, share partners for student to discuss their answers with a classmate. Students think on their own about their answer. Then they pair with a partner to discuss their finding.  As they discuss they are required to agree or disagree and then justify their answer.  Finally a few answers are shared with the whole class where we again analyze the depth of knowledge and evaluate the answers. Students are asked to evaluate their own answer before finalizing their own answer.  Often I have students saying to their, think, pair, share partner “Mrs. Ryan won’t take that answer because it does not prove up understand.” Or “Mrs. Ryan will ask us to be more specific.”  This reinforces my assumption that the modeling and questioning are important to student understanding as well as engagement.

As I myself learn more about the process of critical thinking some of my assumptions are challenges. As a collaborative effort I have shared some of my findings with my coworkers and discussed and hunted out underlying assumptions to better improve my own teaching. I originally held the assumption that while real life application can engage students it is not necessary to build a deeper understanding.  This is one of the assumptions that has been challenged and changed is that students need authentic connections to their learning.  I myself have always enjoyed school and felt motivated to get a good grade. The idea behind authentic tasks was one that I was aware with but did not effectively use in my own classroom. After reading “Steps to Critical Thinking” written by John Hughes I immediately emailed my districts Gifted and Talented teacher as well as other teachers who I felt would find the article interesting.  Our district recently received a grant to implement problem based learning. Hughes clearly indicates that authentic tasks or tasks where student work on real life situations builds critical thinking skills. I enjoyed how Hughes clearly laid out an easy to follow plan to introduce critical thinking as well as engage students in critical thinking. Wineburg and Shneider simple states “Problem solved. Picture painted. Knowledge gained. That’s critical thinking”. Their article “Was Bloom’s Taxonomy Pointed in the Wrong Direction” also gave clear examples that I related to my own experience to help adjust my assumption (2010).

“Unless we take that first step into unknown, we will never know our own potential!” is a quote by Allan Rufus that speaks to hunting assumptions. This has been a change for me during this course I find myself researching and evaluating the way that I run my own classroom. My assumptions are changing and shaping and strengthening my knowledge base.  Allowing myselg to critically think about the way I approach my own role in education. I have started to implement ways to keep my students more engaged including the use of padlet.com to allow a more collaborative approach to questioning and analyzing information. I also have started working more with small groups of students, using Quizlet and Kahoot, both online interactive quizzing games, to build one group of students’ basic knowledge while using strategic questioning with another small group. This has helped me build a better bond with my students and meet their basic need for attention and validation. I am hoping to integrate the use of Brookfield’s Critical Incident Questionnaire to help understand what they find as effective and engaging. Constantly evaluating my assumptions and making changes to my current actions allows me the ability to model the critical thinking that I strive to help my students understand and apply.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

References

 

Bailey.B (2015) Conscious Discipline: Building Resilient Classrooms. Oviedo, Fl: Loving Guidance.

 

Carr, K. S. (1990). How can we teach critical thinking? ERIC Clearinghouse on Elementary and Early

Childhood Education.

 

Hughes, J. (2014). Steps to critical thinking. English Teaching Professional, 6(91), 4-6.

 

Kolderie, T ,(2001)If Kids Don’t Want to Learn You Probably Can’t Make’ Em: Ted Kolderie’s Notes

 

From Jack Frymier’s Visit to Saint Paul (2006) retrieved (2/7/2016) from:

 

Click to access Frymier-Motivation-Matters.pdf

 

Jacobson, J., & Lapp D. (2010). Revisiting Bloom’s Taxonomy: A framework for modeling writing and

 

critical thinking skills. The California Reader, 43(3), 32-47.

 

Johanson, J. (2010). Cultivating critical thinking: An interview with Stephen Brookfield. Journal of

 Developmental Education, 33(3), 26-28.

Karabulut, Ü. S. (2012). How to teach critical thinking in social studies education: An examination of

three NCSS journals. Eurasian Journal of Educational Research (EJER), 49, 197-212.

Oyler, D. R., & Romanelli, F. (2014). The fact of ignorance revisiting the Socratic method as a tool for

teaching critical thinking. American Journal of Pharmaceutical Education, 78(7), 1-9.

Quotes About Knowledge and Education (n.d.) Good Reads. Retrived 2/1/2016 from:

http://www.goodreads.com/quotes/tag/knowledge-education

Wineburg, S., & Schneider J. (2010). Was Bloom’s Taxonomy pointed in the wrong direction? Phi Delta

 Kappan, 91(4), 56-61.

 

 

Digital Fluency

Digital Fluency

As part of growing up we are taught how to become fluent in language. We are taught the basics like being able to read and write where we can develop skills to be able to communicate and have conversations with others in everyday life. We are constantly learning and developing new skills, knowledge and techniques to make connections and better understand the world in which we live. Fluent refers to being flexible, accurate, and efficient (Spencer, 2015). Students will need to use the basic technology skills taught to explore new programs and extend on this foundation skills.

Research has shown that students with disabilities are at greater risk of being victims of bullying and harassment.  This risk also extends to online environments such as texting and social networking sites (Kowalski & Fidena, 2011).  The difficulty students with disabilities have with complex social skills, decision-making and problem solving potentially compounds their online risks. (Center for Technology Implementation, 2014).  “Most risks fall into the following categories: peer-to-peer; inappropriate content; lack of understanding of online privacy issues; and outside influences of third-party advertising groups”(OKeefe et Alt., 2011, p. 809).

Students benefit from specific instruction and repeated practice in safely accessing the internet as well as understanding the responsibilities associated with online communities (Ash, 2009).  Instruction should be concrete, systematic and multimodal — students must engage with new literacies as they learn about them!

Facebook is the most popular and frequently used social media platform among teens — 71% of online teens use Facebook and 44% report that they follow it daily (Lenhart, 2015).  According to a study by Shpigelman and Gill (2014), people with disabilities who have online access use social networking sites such as Facebook as often as nondisabled peers and engage in similar online activities as the general public.

It has been established that individuals with disabilities, especially ASD and cognitive impairments, possess skill deficits that directly affect their ability to successfully and safely interact within social networking sites such as Facebook (Shpigelman & Gill, 2014). Students who are deficient in reading and writing will struggle with new literacies. They require explicit instruction as well as a safe way to practice the skills. With this in mind, teachers can use Seesaw as a hands-on medium to teach personal safety and social skills.

As teachers we can create opportunities to explore new programs while in the classroom, providing them a space to ask questions, take calculated risks, work collaboratively and explore on their own to cultivate their digital fluency.

References:

Ash, K. (2009). First line of defense: Internet-safety curricula emphasizes students’ role. Digital

Directions, 2(3), 26–27.

Center for Technology Implementation. (2014). Teaching students with disabilities about online

safety. Washington, DC: American Institutes for Research.

Kowalski, R. M., & Fedina, C. (2011). Cyber bullying in ADHD and Asperger Syndrome

populations. Research in Autism Spectrum Disorders, 5(3), 1201–1208.

Lenhart, A. (2015). Teens, social media & technology overview 2015. Retrieved from

http://www.pewinternet.org/2015/04/09/teens-social-media-technology-2015/

O’Keeffe, G. S.,et alt. (2011). The impact of social media on children, adolescents. Retrieved

from http://pediatrics.aappublications.org/content/127/4/800

Shpigelman, C., & Gill, C. J. (2014). Facebook use by persons with disabilities. J Comput-

Mediat Comm, 19(3), 610-624. doi:10.1111/jcc4.12059

Spencer, K. (2015) What is a digital fluency?. Retrieved from

What is digital fluency?

 

Guiding Questions In Math

 

Often when I talk with my students about their feelings about the math concept we are working on they ask “ Why are there so many word problems?” or “I  just  don’t know what to do.” When We work on similar problems that are ,solely computations the students demonstrate mastery but when asked to apply this skill many students struggle.

There is a huge shift in mathematics education students are no longer asked to memorize procedures but are asked to understand the concept behind the procedures. The why behind how it works. How do we achieve that?

 

One strategy I use often with my students is questioning.  One way is by asking the right questions. At first my class would look at me with a blank face and some brave child would comment “Umm I think you’re the teacher you should know” or “Let’s google it”.

 

One day I did just that I went to Google and typed in guiding questions. I found over 742,000 hits popped up. I viewed a few web sites and noticed a trend. Many of the guiding questions where asking how and why?

 

I am working with a small group of  5^th  graders on multiplying by decimals so I started with the TEKS related to decimals. I was focusing on strand 5.3.

(D)  represent multiplication of decimals with products to the hundredths using objects and pictorial models, including area models;

(E)  solve for products of decimals to the hundredths, including situations involving money, using strategies based on place-value understandings, properties of operations, and the relationship to the multiplication of whole numbers;

I thought of some questions to ask my group. How is multiplying by a decimal different from multiplying by a whole number? What type of relationship do you see with the factors and the product? How can we visually show multiplying by a decimal? How would I use this outside of the math class?

I was set to go. In our small group I started questioning and noticed that once I got the conversation going with my question the students were able to piggy back on one another’s’ ideas to build each other’s understanding. We then used Seesaw our online journal to show some of our examples and record our new understanding so the students can use them later. One of the rules in posting in our Seesaw is to use professional language and this means our content vocabulary.

There are many different routes one can take to solve math word problems. Guiding questions help student develop a map in their mind of what route they are going to take to get successfully to where they need to go.