Chapter 11 Review

Learning Log 8

            This was my favorite chapter by far. It might be unpopular to most other educators, but I really like diversity in the classroom. I spent most of my time in elementary and middle school at very diverse schools and I loved it. Well over half my classes were usually comprised of people from a variety of backgrounds. All the different diverse learning groups seemed to be represented as well. I even had class with a terminal patient...but that was actually quite sad (I guess the book didn't mention that type of situation because I think most parents wouldn't consider making a child go to school if the are not going to make it to the end of the year). My family moved to Northern Virginia when I entered high school, and I witnessed the most homogenous school I thought could ever exist. I noticed such a difference in the learning environment at that point. Creativity and independence were stifled. It seemed like everybody thought the same, acted the same, dressed the same, and class discussions were dry and empty. That's when I started hating school.
            Because of my own experiences, I think the learning environment is actually enhanced by having many different types of learners in one room. For one thing, I think that a homogenous grouping doesn't always yield a lot of independent thinking. Students with a variety of learning disabilities, struggling students, or even at-risk students could benefit from teaming up with gifted students, meanwhile gifted students become more creative and open-minded when they work with non-gifted students. Furthermore, having diverse learning group comprised of students from a variety of backgrounds means that the students will all have more opportunities for creativity and expansion of world views. It also makes students more sensitive to people who are different. I could go on and on. On the whole, I just think that a diverse classroom is a blessing, not a detriment. I know that having such a heterogeneous group makes life harder for the teacher, as they have to individually tailor lessons to meet each of the diverse learners' needs, but I think that overall the benefits for the students outweigh the teacher's setback.
            I was really surprised by a couple things in the chapter. First, I had no idea that higher incidence disabilities make up more than 80% of the student population (page 321). That's a lot! Second, I was surprised to learn that not all illiterate households impair student's success. In fact, the book talks about how some of these homes offer rich oral literacy experiences (page 327). While on one hand, the students from these homes will need additional help learning to assimilate to academic discourse, I think they also gain more in some ways than students who grow up in a literate, yet non-oral home setting (a home where everybody reads yet no one talks to each other).  
            I was really confused about the UDL or Universal design for learning. The book made it out to be something of a miracle fix-it for a variety of challenged students. I understand it to be a framework, much like PAR, but does it provides technique, materials and assessment that target different types of diverse learners. So does it come in a manual, is it a accumulation of things other teachers have found useful, is it available on the internet...how does someone get a hold of it so it can be used in a classroom?

 
1. What are some cultural and economic problems that impact students?

·         poverty= having no money for essential school resources, poor nutrition, or having to work after school instead of doing homework

·         a lack of parental support

·         trauma or abuse at home

·         substance abuse problem of the student or someone close to them

·         culture clash (ex: coming from a background that is much more or less conservative)

·         transient or having no domicile

·         lack of resources that foster educational development (ex: preschool, summer camp, tutors)

·         ELL

2. Are there things that can be done to solve some of the more difficult diversity issues?

A) Some people think most teachers come from middle or upper income environments, where there tends to be less diversity. These teachers need to have experience working with a variety of students because they will inevitably encounter them at one point or another in school, and they'll need to understand them. Therefore, I think all teachers should have some experience working in low income areas and/or areas of greater diversity, before they begin teaching. They should be required to spend some time during their practicum or student teaching in schools that have a higher proportion of diverse learners.

B) I was thinking that maybe pre-service teachers should take a course or two in counseling. This might help them become mentors so that when a situation arises, such as dealing with an at-risk student, they would have a better idea how to handle it.

Self-Assessment and Revisions of Paper

1. REWRITING AND REORGANIZATION: I rewrote my entire first page . I changed the introduction so that it better engages the reader and then I rewrote my "what I already knew..." section and provided background information more concisely. I also added a comment at the end of my paper that I thought would remind the reader of my initial comment about a teacher "losing her mind." I added a conclusion paragraph where I provided my final thoughts about each of my sources, how they addressed my original questions and how I finally feel about my initial hesitation for teaching.
2. FORMATTING: I changed my source documentation to APA format and added more sources that I used.
3. FLUENCY: I tried to plant in better transitional sentences between paragraphs and main ideas. Then I included a preview paragraph in my introduction which informed what sources I would be talking about later in the paper. It was also used in my conclusion.

I-Search Final Paper

Achieving a Work-Life Balance: Is it Possible?

         Last Fall, 2012, I spent 35 of my total Practicum hours in a fourth grade classroom with a teacher, Miss B, who was about to lose her mind. She was in her fifth year teaching. I thought with grim apprehension, "Oh God, what is in store for me?" Granted, this teacher was a great teacher. Her kids were mostly respectful and well-behaved, they all knew their multiplication tables, could read beyond a second grade level, and were constantly recognized for having the least absentees. But I knew Miss B was great because her kids were always excited to learn. She captivated her students everyday with an ever-changing array of activities that were both challenging and fun. So when I arrived for my fifth day in her classroom, I found Miss B in her usual predicament: hair disheveled, dark circles under her eyes, towing a huge crate on wheels bigger than any suitcase I'd ever seen. She spent another near all-nighter getting ready for today's lessons. I asked her how many hours she spent working beyond the classroom and she just laughed. She said most nights she didn't get to bed until after midnight. As for weekends, she was lucky to have a day off every month.

         From my experience talking with my teacher-friends, this sounds pretty typical of the first year or two in the profession. But after that, isn't it supposed to get better? Can Miss B's experience be the norm? As an expectant mom, I'm really concerned about the amount of time I will have to put in to do my job well. The more teacher candidates I talk to, the more I realize: this is a concern we all have. So I set out on a quest to find out how many hours teachers really work, and maybe hopefully I'd learn a few tips on how to balance work and life along the way.

         To really investigate my concerns I reviewed journals and articles that tracked the amount of time U.S. teachers worked. Their data gave me a general idea of the work life of the "average" American  teacher. But I really needed a more personal, narrower field of vision to fully understand the job of a teacher, so I interviewed a close friend of mine who had just "graduated" from being a newbie teacher. I then interviewed another teacher, a close friend of my mom's, who taught for 31 years. To find out how to manage having a personal life while being a teacher, I turned to blogger, Sean Reid, and the authors of The Lazy Teacher's Handbook for advice on how to best budget work time.

         To answer my questions about how much a teacher actually works, I found the most conclusive information from a study that thoroughly researched the working hours of teachers compared to that of other professionals. The American Time Use Survey (ATUS) followed U.S. Teachers and other professionals for three years to determine how many hours they worked, where they put in the work, how much time they spent doing non-work tasks, as well as many other factors. Participants were required to log their data throughout the day in diaries. The most compelling data they found was that teachers and other professionals (non-teachers holding the same level of education) worked about the same amount of hours per year. Of course, this might indicate that since teachers don't work summers or school holidays, they make up for lost time by putting in extra hours when school is in session. However this isn't really the case as the study found that only about half of all full-time teachers take off for summer break (Krantz-Kent, Rachel). The other half taught summer school or worked other types of jobs during the summer. And most teachers were apt to put some time in preparing for the next school year during their summer break. Furthermore, the study compared the hours teachers and other professionals worked during weekdays and surprisingly found that teachers worked slightly less hours than many other professionals! This includes the time teachers put in outside of the classroom.           
       
            Teachers on the whole put in more time earlier in the day than other professionals (great news for early birds), meanwhile other professionals tended to work much later into the night. As for working on weekends? Both teachers and other professionals were as equally likely to work on Saturdays, whereas teachers were 20% more likely to work on Sundays (Krantz-Kent, Rachel). Another surprising bit of data the study found was that teachers older than fifty tended to put in more hours than any other age group. And teachers in their 20s and 30s...well they reported working the least! I always assumed that the opposite was true. What I took away most from this survey was that teachers really don't work more than other professionals, they just work a slightly different type of schedule. It was really quite reassuring to me.

         My friend, Marisa, teaches algebra, algebra II and geometry to high school students in a low income school district in Long Island. When I spoke to her about how much time she puts in, I was surprised to hear that she rarely works beyond the hours of a normal school day, which for her begin around 6:30am and end around 2-2:30pm (B., Marisa, personal communication, June 15, 2013). She is only in her fourth year of teaching. Marisa said that as a single mother of two small boys, she got to a point where she had to put her foot down on taking work home. Yes, her first few years were much longer than what she puts in now. It was necessary since she had lesson plans to create, she had to find her "groove," and it took awhile for her to learn the various programs her school required her to use for grading, attendance and progress reports. But once all that came together, the biggest opposition to her free time was the administration at her school.

         "When you're a new teacher, they will ask you to take on extra tasks and assignments: prepare a speech for the next board meeting, oversee an after-school club, attend the football games, tutor students, bring food to the PTA meetings, chaperone the school dance, oversee detention, and the list goes on and on." If you say yes, as most new teachers often do, your work day doesn't end 'til late into the night. When you get your grounding, you get support from teachers and staff. You should not feel compelled to do the extra tasks asked of you.            

         "Your job is to teach. Now that your performance as a teacher is evaluated solely on how many of your students pass the standardized tests (and she has much to grumble about this aspect) this is more important than ever. So you just find ways to do the job you came to do, and that's it. Don't let the administration bully you."

         Marisa states that she now does what she needs to do during the school day for the most part. Her tasks include revising lesson plans, grading papers, interacting with parents, and meeting with staff members. But she does add that if a student needs extra assistance and wants to meet during lunch or after school, she is more than happy to comply. Because to her, that is what her job is all about: being there for the kids.

         It seemed like my friend, Marisa, had it pretty easy as far as working hours were concerned, so I spoke with a family friend, Peggy Soltero, for a second opinion on the working situation of a teacher (Soltero, Peggy, personal communication, June 25, 2013). Mrs. Soltero has taught for 31 years in a variety of areas. She has taught in eight states and grades Kindergarten through eighth grade. She has also taught in both public and private settings, as well as Title 1 schools and "blue ribbon" schools. She has been around the block.

         According to Mrs. Soltero, she worked a pretty consistent schedule no matter what grade or school she taught in. She would usually begin work around 6:30am and leave work around 5pm. As a rule, she would never take work home. On weekends, she would usually spend a few hours on Sunday grading papers or preparing lessons, but she never, ever worked on Saturdays. That puts her work load at about 60 hours a week, which is only ten hours longer than the average teacher's work week, according to ATUS. But Mrs. Soltero never worked over summer break or holidays (another rule of hers) so that would put her work load per year on par with most teachers and other professionals. Mrs. Soltero had some advice for all the new teachers out there: Always set rules for yourself to keep your personal time yours. And never break those rules.

         Sean Reid is a blogger and professor at the University of Buckingham with oodles of experience teaching in the K-12 arena. He states that, "Numerous studies have shown that, above all other factors, it's the teacher in the classroom who inspires, cultivates and enthuses learning. How can you do that when you're surviving on four hours of sleep a night and on the verge of despair?" (Reid, Sean). It is just as important for teachers to look after themselves: their health, their wellbeing, as it is important to look after their students. Teachers need a social life, hobbies and dreams if they are going to be able to relate to their students and inspire positivism in the classroom.

         Authors Smith and Gilbert created a book for just such a purpose: The Lazy Teacher's Handbook. The title is more tongue in check; the authors don't excuse teachers from working hard. Rather it outlines how to craft student-centered lessons plans that put the work back on the student, where it belongs. Instead of spending hours creating worksheets and developing questions for quizzes, teachers should have the students devise questions and make worksheets which they can trade in class. This creates opportunities for cooperative assignments and group discussions. Furthermore, teachers shouldn't be standing at the front of the room lecturing all day. Instead, teachers should trade places with the students often. Studies show that students tend to learn more when they are the ones teaching content to others (Richardson, Morgan, Fleener), so why not? The bottom line is that the teacher's job is to guide, advise and promote a learning environment by intervening with all students. Providing this type of student-centered teaching comes with an added benefit. It takes a lot of the work and planning off the teacher.  

         Reid has a list of rules he says will save your career and your life. Plan free time into your day, everyday, and stick to it. Have at least one full day off a week, no matter what. Limit work emails to one hour a day and restrict emails to weekdays only, if possible. Give yourself free passes to leave work early at least once a week. And lastly, stop feeling guilty about what hasn't been done yet, or how something didn't meet your expectations. It never will. Teaching is not a job for the perfectionist. Rather, focus on what did get done and remember to find ways to enjoy each and every day instead of just counting down the days until the end of the year.

         From my investigations, both with the hard data and my personal communications, I have to conclude that a teacher has a lot of freedom in regards to how much time they spend working. My friend, Marisa, barely works 40 hours a week, while my mom's friend, Mrs. Soltero, put in about 60 hours. Then there's poor Miss B, who must work at least 75 hours a week. All in all, I think teaching is what you make of it. Using the advice of blogger, Sean Reid, and authors Smith and Ian, I hope to promote the ideal student-centered classroom, and in the meantime, hopefully I can achieve a perfect work-life balance and keep my sanity.

References

Adelman, Nancy E. (1998). Trying to Beat the Clock: Uses of Teacher Professional Time in Three Countries. Washington, D.C.: U.S. Department of Education.

B., Marisa, personal communication, June 15, 2013.

Krantz-Kent, Rachel (2008, March). Teacher's Work Patterns: When, Where and How Much do U.S. Teachers Work? Monthly Labor Review, 131 (3).

Kuhn, John (2012, September 12). The Exhaustion of the American Teacher. The Educator's Room. Retrieved from http://theeducatorsroom.com/2012/09/the-exhaustion-of-the-american-teacher/

Reid, Sean. (2011, December). Can Teachers have a Work-Life Balance? The Guardian. Retrieved from http://www.guardian.co.uk/teacher-network/2011/dec/07/teachers-work-life-balance

Richardson, Morgan & Fleener (2012). Reading to Learn in the Content Areas. Belmont, CA: Wadsworth Cengage Learning.

Smith & Ian (2010). The Lazy Teacher's Handbook: How Your Pupils Learn more when You Teach Less. London: Crown House Publishing.

Soltero, Peggy, personal communication, June 25, 2013.

Chapter 8 Review

Learning Log 7

Studies have found that writing for exploration of knowledge enhances reading comprehension, and therefore enhances learning. Rather than using writing as a way to test for knowledge, writing should be used as a means to clarify, reinforce and support concept learning and this can be accomplished by through direct instruction, modeling and practicing (page 215). Some examples that demonstrate effective means of learning through writing after a lesson could be having the students write letters, create storybooks, write poetry or design magazine articles.

The text states that on-demand writing, or writing for a given prompt, can't be ignored during instruction (as it is the main form of writing for high-stakes testing) but should be augmented with a variety of other types of authentic writing assignments, or real purposes for writing that go beyond the classroom. Types of on-demand writing, or nonauthentic writing include completing worksheets or writing book reports about a topic, whereas creating brochures, writing letters to real people, creating a blog or podcast or writing a speech to be given are examples of authentic writing assignments. Authentic tasks aid learning because it provides a connection between meaningful experiences and classroom curriculum.

There seems to be a positive correlation between reading being followed by writing and the ability to learn content because they were better able to clarify what they read. This is called the reading-writing connection. The authors make a lot of generalities about meta cognitive strategies that help students write better, but it seemed like a bunch of statements about strategies I have never heard of nor could I understand. For example, the statement that Self-Regulated Strategy Development helped students write long, schematic stories (page 219), but yet there was no further detailing of this strategy.Where are the examples? How can I use this strategy development in the classroom?

I thought it was really interesting that the experiment in which 4th grade students tutored 2nd graders on writing using the 6+1 TRAIT helped boost the 4th graders' writing. This is yet another example of having students wear the "teacher's hat" as an effective form of teaching the students.

I think keypals is a great way to engage students in writing. According to the text, students are digital natives who respond well to forms of communication that involve computers, and furthermore, this type of task yields fast results and helps connect classroom material to real world things. Using computers also speeds up just about every stage in the writing process. Plus, it's cleaner than the traditional pen and paper method (think the revision process). It is possible that the planning stage of writing may be inhibited with computers, but there are always programs like Inspiration that can aid in the planning/brainstorming of writing.

Writing with PAR:

The prewriting stage of writing happens in the preparation phase, drafting, revising and editing happens in the assistance phase, while the act of producing a product happens in the reflection phase.
The P Phase
I really like Cubing because it makes you consider six different tasks before a reading, tasks being: describe, compare, associate, analyse, apply and argue. Perspective cubing is also a great variation which helps expand one's view of a subject (page 228).
The A Phase
Four key attributes of the A Phase are: the audience must be someone other than the teacher, the task must be important to the student (consequential writing), writing tasks should be varied and, lastly, it should connect prior knowledge.
My favorite was the biopoem and its many variations such as the geopoem, cinquain and see-what-I-found. I had never heard of this type of writing task before but I thought it was really cute. It covers a decent amount of information about the topic in question and as long as the student follows the proper format, can turn out to be a nice poem.
The R Phase
Content-Focused Drama was my favorite. I think it could turn any subject into something fun and memorable.

Practice Quiz 9

1. A teacher should begin teaching and modeling mnemonic strategies:

A) in secondary grades
B) with at risk students
C) in primary grades
D) with students who do not have/exhibit good study skills

2. What is considered to be the most important reading and study skills?

A) note taking
B) listening
C) mnemonics
D) previewing

Chapter 6 Review

Learning Log 6

            I have to really agree with the section on "Why textbooks cannot stand alone." I never really considered how important it was to use other forms/modes of text in conjunction with a textbook in the classroom, but everything the authors stated about this makes sense. This section gave many reasons why textbooks can not stand alone. First, they stated that textbooks contain too broad a range of information, are written impassively and usually only contain secondary sources. Therefore students are less likely going to be motivated to learn the material because it's presented in a boring way and the information is too dense. It becomes impersonal to them; they have less of a chance making connections with what they read. And if it's too technical, struggling readers and ELL students will have a difficult time comprehending the material. Secondly, relying only on the textbooks to learn information gives students the wrong idea about how to seek out reliable sources for information. They assume that using just one resource for homework or a project is satisfactory. Third, classrooms tend to have outdated versions of textbooks as well. Fourth, textbooks are often used as the curriculum, rather than being just a guide for the curriculum. Lastly, schools in lower income areas don't always have the funds to make textbooks available for all students. For these reasons, having a variety of different types of text as supplemental material is really crucial for students' learning potential.

            So what does this mean to me as a pre-service teacher? It means I have to be on the lookout for a variety of texts that can be used in conjunction with student textbooks. I love the book's suggestion of keeping a personal database (page 139). I should pay attention to literature that reflects a variety of student interests, hobbies and cultures, as well as digital forms of media, like blogs, interactive websites, online articles and videos. What I think will be challenging for me is that I need to keep an eye open for things that ELL students will need, such as visual representations that relate to content they will be reading about. It's hard for me to understand how to teach bilingual students. I know I didn't do well in any of my Spanish classes in high school, whether from my inability to grasp another language or my teachers' inability to teach it to me. For me, I never had a good example of learning anything in a classroom in which English wasn't spoken.

            I will definitely use the strategy of read-aloud in my classroom. I've seen it work very well in the classrooms I observed. The students, I mean all the students, loved read-aloud time and even the most hyperactive students were completely attentive and captivated by the stories that were read to them. I can understand why some teachers would abandon this strategy at the upper levels, but I was surprised that the book still insists that it's necessary. Now that I think about it, it does make sense: for centuries humans orally telling tales to an audience. I guess it's in our genes to want to listen to someone tell us a story. I was also surprised by the high school boy's thoughts towards read-aloud, saying, "When you read to us, then I know how it's supposed to sound in my head when I read so that I can understand it" (page 140).

 Literature Circles can be applied to non-fiction and all content areas. The following is the book's example of how a literature circle might work with a scientific text.

 
Tasks for a Science-Content Area Literature Circle:

• Science Translator- records important words and their definitions within the text
• Science Biographer- reports on notable people involved in the topic
• Fact Finder- finds more detail and facts outside of the source
• Everyday Life Connector- finds how the topic relates to everyday life 

Assessing the readability of a textbook involves evaluating many factors:

1. Whether the book is well suited to the reading level of the reader

2. Eliminate texts with "inconsiderate discourse" or loose organization, lack of discernible style, incorrect syntax and incoherent passages

3. Must have textual coherence and dumbed-down text. Global Coherence refers to making sure main ideas span the entire text, while Local Coherence involves many kinds of cues within sentences that connect ideas at the more immediate level (page 148).

4.  Make a checklist which analyzes the book's readability factors, which is better than using a readability formula which only takes into account the length of words and sentences and other factors listed on page 156. Factors on checklist should include:

a) linguistic factors

b) writing style

c) conceptual factors

d) learning aids

e) other factors like illustrations, format and book appearance

5. Have students use the "rule of thumb" or as the book describes it the rule of fingers and fist

6. Have students use the Cloze procedure on a selection of text. It seems like this procedure is a good way to assess prior knowledge in the preparation phase of a lesson, perhaps better than its intended purpose to assess students' readability level.

7. Have students use the Maze procedure (which is a better version of the Close)

Keywords pages 193-200

This section focuses on teaching vocabulary as a reflection activity. The importance of teaching vocabulary in the preparation phase is often stressed but reviewing and elaborating on vocabulary in the reflection phase is very important as well. The following strategies were included within the chapter for learning vocabulary in the reflection phase.

 

 

The Dictionary Game: groups of 3-5 predict what a selected word means. The members members take turns choosing/predicting the definition of a word, then they compare their predictions to the actual definition. Points may be awarded for correct predictions.

Categorization: this is all about assigning something a class, group or division. The teacher selects a topic and the students supply words that help describe that topic. Then they organize the list into smaller lists of like items. Last, they decide on appropriate labels for each list of words. This strategy is intended for whole class participation.
In a Closed Word Sort, the teacher gives the categories or labels ahead of time versus an Open Word Sort.

Four-Column Organizer for Word Mastery
Within this strategy, the students are given a worksheet/graphic organizer with three columns on the front labeled Words, Definitions, and Knowledge Connection and one column on the back labeled Visual. Students will write the specified vocabulary words under the Words section and the word's definitions under the Definitions category. Underneath the Knowledge Connection section of the organizer, students are instructed to provide examples of how this word connects to them, whether it be in or out of the classroom environment. On the back page in the visual section, students are asked to draw a picture illustrating the meaning of the vocabulary words.
Vocabulary Self-Collection Strategy
The Vocabulary Self-Collection Strategy (VSS) is used after students have completed a reading. The students are asked to look for words within their reading that they feel are important for their other classmates to know. The students are to share these terms with their classmates while the teacher records them on the board for everyone to see. Once each student has shared their words, the teacher will explain the meanings of each word and the class as a whole will decide which words are the most important for the class to know. After the students have chosen the words, they are instructed to write them down in their journals or some place that they can find them for future reference. The teacher will host discussions where the students are encouraged to use these words in sentences when talking with their peers.
Postgraphic Organizers- Students construct a postgraphic organizer after they have read. This organizer helps students make connections with other important keywords in the reading and allows them to review vocabulary.

A vocabulary study system- This strategy promotes the learning of vocabulary through different phases that are emphasized by the acronym TOAST.
T: Test. Students self-test in order to figure out which vocabulary terms they need to review.
O: Organize. Students use similarities to organize these vocabulary words into categories.
A: Anchor. Students use methods such as assigning a picture and a caption to a vocabulary term in order to make connections and gain a more in-depth understanding.
S: Say. Students work with a partner to review the words by calling out spellings, definitions, and uses in sentences.
T: Test. Student self-test themselves to prove understanding.


Semantic Feature Analysis
-technique to help students understand deeper meanings of language. A graphic example of this is a matrix with  a list of terms/words on one side and list of characteristics on the other. As you go thru the list you cross out common features  /characteristics of the words/terms.

example

Common Characteristics/features	horse	dog	cat	snake
1.4-legged	X	X	X
2. warm blooded	X	X	X

 
Language Enrichment through Reflection
additional techniques that will aid in helping students understand and enjoy working with words.
Theses are the 8 techniques
1. imaging through keywords
2.word analogies
3. magic squares
4.vocabulary bingo5.vocabulary illustrations
6. word bubbles
7.odd word out
8.word inquiry

 
Four-Column Organizer and Self-Collection Strategy

T.O.A.S.T. and Post Graphic Organizers

Semantic Feature Analysis and Word Games

I-Search Proposal

Topic: Balancing Work and Life

Questions: How many hours are teachers really putting in, compared to other professionals? Is there a way to be a great teacher while working a "normal" work? Can work and life be balanced and how? How can new teacher burnout be avoided?

General Resources: Old Dominion's EBSCO's database of research and articles on education.

People to interview: I plan on interviewing my friends and family who are teachers, and possibly taking a survey from the people in our class who have experience teaching

Titles of articles planned to be used:

Trying to Beat the Clock: Uses of Teacher Professional Time in 3 Countries. By Nancy E. Adelmar

Teacher's Work Patterns: when, where and how much do U.S. teachers work? By Rachel Krantz-Kent

Teacher's Spend 10 hours More per Week on Work than Other Professional. By ATA News.

 Giving 110%: A Portrait of a Michigan Teacher's Work Week. Policy Report No 22. By Marisa Burian-Fitzgerald, Debbie Harris

Incentives and Effort in the Public Sector: Have U.S. Education Reforms Increased Teacher's Work Hours?

Can Teacher's have a Work-Life Balance? By Sean Reid

The Exhaustion of the American Teacher. By John Kuhn

Are Teacher's Paid Too Much? How 4 Studies Answered 1 Big Question. By Jordan Weissmann

What I already know:

            I experienced a lot of teacher frustration when I was doing my practicum last Fall. One of my teachers, who was in her fifth year, claimed to spend most of her waking hours working on lesson plans, grading, preparing supplies, going to meetings, and performing administrative tasks to name a few. She said she tries to have one day off a week for herself, but she said it doesn't always work out that way. Her school changes her grade level's curriculum objectives so much that none of her lesson plans can be reused for the next year. She's constantly having to start from scratch.

            From my experience speaking with other teachers, I have heard two sides to this situation. It seems the majority of new teachers will work very long hours and have little time for social life or family until they acclimate. That's understandable, but then some teachers go one to report that they still work much longer hours than other professionals outside the field of education. They claim they still have little time for family or friends, and spend much of their holidays and time off preparing. Meanwhile, others seem to get most of their "work" done during the school day and have time for an outside life. How do they balance their work and life? And does this jeopardize their students' education, or are they just better at time management? Perhaps its the grade level/content area that makes the difference. Or maybe it's just about the school district. Either way, I hope to find out which perspective is more accurate, as well as what the average amount of hours teachers need to put in (while still being successful teachers), and if there are things I can do to better balance my work and life.

            As an expectant new mother, being able to have time to raise a family is just as important to me as being a great teacher. I want to believe that non of my priorities need to be sacrificed.
The  journey to finding the sources for my paper began with a pretty ndirect google search. found articles from news companies as well as blog entries from teachers. The was a plethora of information available on the web, so I knew it was a hot topic. From then on, I researched Old Domion's library database for articles, books and research on this topic. Again, there's a lot of information out there on this topic

Chapter 7 Review

Learning Log 5

            Vocabulary is crucial to the success of our students, because words are labels for everything and they are critical for understanding sentences and passages. Chapter seven in a nutshell, "explores what it means to know a word, how vocabulary develops, how many and what types of words are important for learning..." (page 170). Because reports show that students' vocabulary scores are on the decline, probably due to such an overreliance on technology and the need to use words most efficiently  in the form of acronyms and the such, teachers must take on the challenge to reinvigorate the students interest in vocabulary. This in turn will increase comprehension and knowledge.

            As stated on page 170: "Word knowledge is not static, but rather dynamic-changing and growing over time as a learner experiences, hears, and reads a word in a variety of places and circumstance." I like how the chapter equates word knowledge to the process of getting to know a person; first as a stranger, than an acquaintance and once depth of understanding has been reached: a friend. It becomes clear that a student learns vocabulary through repeated exposure, and that takes time.

            Word knowledge also results from both incidental (experiences that develop naturally) and intentional learning experiences (experiences that are better developed via strategy and instruction).  Incidental vocabulary can be developed by word games, classroom discussion, role play, storytelling, getting exposure to a variety of spoken word, conversing and reading. Students from less affluent homes, or homes where English is not spoken, need teachers to help fill the gap in their exposure to words by providing these experiences in the classroom. Intentional experiences can come in the form of direct instruction, with activities like think-aloud, modeling and opportunities to practice in order to help clarify. Interactive strategies, which include semantic maps, semantic feature analysis and word sorts are also effective strategies to create intentional experiences. Lastly, vocabulary instruction needs to be before, during and after the lesson in order to provide the needed exposure. I think providing incidental experiences sounds a lot more fun than the other one, but both types of experiences are needed for vocabulary development.

            Content-specific vocabulary, terms that are critical to a specific discipline, and academic vocabulary, words that are commonly found in many expository texts, formal presentations and speeches, are the two types of vocabulary that are important in instruction. The book states that content-specific vocabulary should often be introduced in the preparation portion of the lesson, because of those words hold a lot of meaning in the lesson. There are also a lot of words in the English language that have multiple meanings depending on the context, such as the example from the Calvin and Hobbes comic, so its best to clear up confusion ahead of time.

            I don't quite understand the paragraph on page 170 about AWL. I'm not sure what morphological families are, the Academic Corpus, or Spanish-English cognates. But, nevertheless, according to the textbook, attending to AWL, or the Academic Word List of the most commonly found word families, during instruction can increase the learning potential of English Language Learners as well as other struggling learners, especially those from lower income families.

            It's obvious that making students do rote vocabulary exercises doesn't give them the experience, exposure and engagement they need to gain full-concept learning of the words. This type of learning requires four mental operations, according to page 173:

            1. recognizing and generating critical attributes

            2. seeing relationships between the concept to be learned and what is already                     known (such as with the brainstorming exercise)

            3. applying the concept to a variety of contexts

            4. generating new contexts for the learned concept (such as by creating new sentences using previously learned concepts, like in paired-word sentence generation)

Chapter 5 Review

Learning Log 4

            The Reflective Phase of PAR is important because it enables students to think more in depth about the things they have learned, helps retain the material they've read, provides demonstration of one's learning through processes of informational evaluation (page 109), and lastly, helps students become autonomous learners. Students can become autonomous learners by comprehension monitoring, or keeping track on one's own thoughts and learning by pausing, analyzing, recalling and retelling information. Forms of reflection in a nutshell involve, discussion, debate, lab application, writing, reorganizing, rehearsal, and activities where students use schemata to process ideas and contemplate complex interactions (page 109).

            Three important skills to emphasize during the Reflective Phase of PAR :

            1. Communication- listening and speaking reflectively about reading reinforces learning in a social context

            2. Critical Thinking- this involves inductive skills like hypothesis testing, proposition creation and creative argument which help to form more complex and interrelated schema. Teachers have a hard time providing situations that reinforce critical thinking skills (page 112) but one easy way is to create activities that engage in problem solving. The chapter outlines the steps needed to design a good problem solving lesson plan: gather ideas and information, define the problem, form tentative conclusions, test these conclusions, and make a final decision while giving reasons for choices.

            I really like activity the book presented on page 113, Activity 5.1: Critical Thinking Guide: Problem Solving. Not only is this applicable for a lot of different types of content areas, but I think it's a really useful life guide. Students should get acquainted with its design and apply it to everyday life choices. I could've used this critical thinking plan during times in my life.

            3. Critical Literacy- aka, "reading between the lines" (page 115). This skill helps students critically examine the text and consider the author's motivation for writing the material. I believe this skill develops over time. I only say this because I don't recall being very adept at critical literacy until I was in my high school years.

            I am very biased against the very lengthy section on cooperative learning. I think that importance of this type of learning is over hyped. I have not experienced increased learning very often through this method. I guess this just goes to show you that not everyone learns the same way. I often found myself either taking charge of other people's work (who were freeloading) or being swayed by the loudest group member into doing what they wanted. I know this sounds horrible but I also struggled to feel confident in the work some of my group members submitted. They only time I have benefited from cooperative learning activities was when I was taking science lab classes (for science majors only), which I found very difficult. I really hope my groups didn't think I was free loading, but I was often very lost during lab exercises so being able to rely on stronger, more able group members helped me understand the material. Another way I see this type of learning being effective is when each member has a very time consuming, in-depth task. If each member works diligently at their task, and shares the results with the group, this can be an extremely efficient lesson for everyone. But other than the things I have mentioned, I do not think cooperative learning should get the praise it does. Please let me know what you, the reader, think about this. What kind of experiences have you had with this type of learning?