Course Reflection

This course was a first for me.  I have never had an online class  and I didn’t know what to expect.  I guess I am like a lot of teachers and think of a student doing work solo on-line is an ineffective method for learning.  To the contrary, I have found it to be a beneficial and effective learning method.  I have realized that with something such as a blog, it is simply an electronic version of a more traditional paper/pencil product.  The great benefit of the blog is the ability to share ideas instantly world wide.  It has the possibility to be open to global exposure and discourse (though I don’t think that mine was all that popular).  As a teacher, I see myself utilizing the blog as a tool to publish my students’ work and share with others our progress.  In the future I may also keep a personal blog or blog about my experience as a teacher, we’ll just have to wait and see.

The assignments were great.  Being online and me being a bit of a procrastinator, I found myself several times scouring the internet at the last possible minute trying to find lesson plans or resources.  The great thing was that I never had trouble finding material.  There is a great deal out there on the web, and a lot of it is actually useful.  I have always been a competent web user, but now I am experienced enough to say that I am competent in using the web for teaching.

The most interesting part of the course for me was the “reading” component.  Never before I have thought about all the different definitions and levels to literacy.  I always stuck to the simple definition of reading and writing, but now I know that there is a tad bit more to it.  I was able to see how as a science teacher I am gong to need to consider and incorporate reading/literacy into my science classroom.  The most recent example of this was the article that I read for the last unit that was about vocabulary.  With all the things about reading that I learned, I think that simply saying “I teach science” is crude understatement.

-Justin

Lesson Plan 2: Graveyard of The Atlantic

Source:  LearnNC.org

http://www.learnnc.org/lp/pages/5999

Again, I have used this site because of its ease of use and relevance.  One thing that I did not mention in my last post using this site is that it is a great way to find lesson plans in different subject areas that you could integrate into your own.

This lesson is designed for the 8th grade social studies classroom and covers the unique history of North Carolina and its shipwrecks.  This lesson plan actually gives a list of different activities based on this theme.  The first example activity is to have students create a newspaper cartoon based to explain why the North Carolina coast was known as the Atlantic graveyard.  Another example activity is to have students break into groups and give them each a famous shipwreck or lighthouse to research and report back on.

I will definitely some of the activities listed in this lesson plan.  I think that for myself I would give my students the option to pick between any one of these activities, that way they can choose an activity that fits their learning style better.  I also think that there is a lot of potential for this subject to spark some interest in North Carolina history.  There a lot of shipwrecks, pirates and buried treasure in NC’s past.

-Justin

Lesson Plan 1: The Lords Proprietors

source:  LearnNC.org

http://www.learnnc.org/lp/pages/2910

This site has wonderfully designed lesson plans and materials that have been specifically designed and selected for the North Carolina Standard Course of Study.

This lesson is designed for the eight grade social studies class and covers the early colonial government of North Carolina, more specifically from the perspective of the Lord Proprietors.  With this activity students first look at the territory of the Lord Proprietors and start determining the geographic characteristics and natural resources.  From there they are given a limited budget and told that they as Lord Proprietors need to invest in materials and supplies to start the construction of their colony.  This simulation goes on for several rounds with the students slowly accumulating wealth and at the end there is a large discussion.

I love this lesson because it uses the key concept behind history education and that is empathy.  Students get to think like the people history and see things from their perspective.  This simulation allows them to experience some of the situations and to see first hand why certain things happened.  With this simulation students will see in the end that they weren’t able to create a successful or wealthy colony because of the natural landscape of Carolina and the poorly designed government.  I would definitely use this activity, though I might modify the time to meet my teaching style and schedule.

-Justin

Response To “…Vocabulary Instruction…”

I have always thought of vocabulary as an extremely important and integral part of my content areas (Science and Social Studies).  There is quite a bit of technical jargon for science and students need to be taught that vocabulary as well as be instructed further in using different strategies to interpret those words themselves.  The article had several different examples of vocabulary instruction in different subjects and contained several strategies that should be useful in my science classroom.  The idea behind the vocabulary education is not only to have students understand the meaning of the word, but be able to correctly use it and understand the etymology of the word.  I really appreciated the information, because in my methods classes we have never discussed strategies for teaching vocabulary, I guess because it is reserved for only the language arts methods class.

-Justin

Response To “The Multigenre Paper”

I really liked the idea of the multigenre paper.  A lot of students, such as myself, hate nothing more than to write prescribed, boring papers.  With the creativity and the flexibility of the multigenre paper the interests and needs of most learners can be met.  The room for creativity seems to give it that special trait that makes it appealing and fun for students.  From the article it seems that the quality of the papers goes up as as well when the choices are allowed.

My only hesitation with such a paper, as seen below in my questions, is how to use such a thing in the science classroom.  The content in science is very specific and such a paper would not be used as a primary way to learn writing, but instead a particular topic.  Even with a little freedom to choose any scientific concept, you will still have students who will lack any interest in science.  Even considering this, I would still like to try it out in my science classroom instead of using the traditional research paper.

The three questions I have:

1.  How much freedom in topic choice can students have in a class where the learning objectives are based on a particular content and not just the correct writing of papers?

2.  What is the balance between creativity and research in a non-Language Arts classroom?

3.  Will middle school students have enough knowledge of writing research papers to be able to write a multigenre paper?

-Justin

Response To “I Poems”

At first I wasn’t too sure about this type of activity.  I love poems and I believe that they can be used in all the different subjects, but I also have trouble seeing the inclusion of hard facts (content) in such open ended assignments.  After reading through several of the examples and seeing different applications of the “I” poem, I believe it can be extremely useful when used correctly.  In one of the examples the teacher made a list of specific plants and other characteristics of the environment so when the students wrote their poems from the perspective of the prairie they could have specifics.  I think it would be important to have such specifics that need to be included so students are getting exposed to content.

In science I see this being useful to write poems from the perspective of different animals in the food chain or different processes in the mitosis.  With a list of vocabulary to include the students will have a creative way to learn science as well as work on perspective.  In social studies these poems are great for establishing empathy.  Most students don’t think from the perspective of historical figures so such a poem gives them the opportunity to practice that empathy (the most important “social studies” skill).  I will definitely try this out in my social studies (or science) classroom.

My three questions were as follows:

1.  How can this idea be applied to an academic subject such as science?

2.  Is it possible to use such an open ended assignment as a structured formative assessment?

3.  Is there a way to modify such an assignment to meet the learning needs of students who are more visual or kinesthetic?

-Justin

Instructional Strategies 4

Justin Ausburn

Name of Strategy:  3-2-1

Source:  Reading Quest

Link to the Strategy:

http://www.readingquest.org/strat/321.html

Give a thorough description of the strategy and how it will be implemented. This should be a summary of the strategy according to the original source:

This is an activity for students to do while reading and after to help summarize and reinforce the information.  Students are to write down three things that they learned, two interesting things and one question they still have.

Explain what part of the standard course of study is addressed by this activity.

8^th Grade Science

1.10 Analyze and evaluate information from a scientifically literate viewpoint by reading, hearing, and/or viewing:

• Scientific text.
• Articles.
• Events in the popular press.

Explain why you think this strategy will work. How does the strategy help your students learn?

This strategy is a great follow up for reading assignments in any subject area.  First off, it is method of making sure students actually read the assignments and requiring a sort of response for the material helps students remember the content.  As well, the 3-2-1 can serve as an effective tool for discussions.  The other great thing is that the 3-2-1 can be modified by individual teachers to meet their needs.  For example, in one of my classes we used this technique, but backwards, requiring us to find 3 questions instead of one and so on.

Instructional Strategies 3

Justin Ausburn

Name of Strategy:  Reciprocal Teaching

Source:  Reading Quest

Link to the Strategy:

http://www.readingquest.org/strat/rt.html

Give a thorough description of the strategy and how it will be implemented. This should be a summary of the strategy according to the original source:

Reciprocal teaching is a strategy that is practically right out of the social constructivist brochure.  The idea is that students deliver content to each other.  The recommended method for this is to break this teaching down into four specifics (summarizing, questioning, clarifying, predicting).  Students can work in groups of four with each student being responsible for a different task.

Explain what part of the standard course of study is addressed by this activity.

8^th Grade Science

1.10 Analyze and evaluate information from a scientifically literate viewpoint by reading, hearing, and/or viewing:

• Scientific text.
• Articles.
• Events in the popular press.

Explain why you think this strategy will work. How does the strategy help your students learn?

This strategy is great because of the social aspect to it.  I feel that you learn something better when you know you have to teach it and doing so just reinforces the information.  Students can come together and groups and use this model to guide their discussion of the texts.  The one thing that the article advised about using this method, was to make sure that students are fully instructed on the specifics on the four tasks.  In the minds of students there can be a bit of overlap so a sheet with guiding questions or a format for each task may help.

Instructional Strategies 2

Justin Ausburn

Name of Strategy:  Interactive Notebook

Source:  Greece Central School District

Link to the Strategy:

http://www.greece.k12.ny.us/instruction/ela/6-12/Reading/Reading%20Strategies/interactivenotebook.htm

Give a thorough description of the strategy and how it will be implemented. This should be a summary of the strategy according to the original source:

The interactive notebook is a method of taking notes and then interacting with them.  In normal spiral notebook, students take notes from lecture and demonstrations on the right side of the notebook.  The left side of the notebook is reserved for students’ interactions with the content.

Explain what part of the standard course of study is addressed by this activity.

8^th Grade Science

1.10 Analyze and evaluate information from a scientifically literate viewpoint by reading, hearing, and/or viewing:

• Scientific text.
• Articles.
• Events in the popular press.

Explain why you think this strategy will work. How does the strategy help your students learn?

I have the opportunity to see this method used in a science classroom as well as in a social studies class.  The idea is that students will have a product at the end of each unit (and the class) that they can use for reviewing the content.  It requires note taking which holds student accountable for content and then the left side of the notebook gives them a chance to apply the information.  Learning by doing is key and this has such interactivity built in to it.  Students can open their notebook and see the content and its application right next to each other, giving this a great organizational benefit as well.

Instructional Strategies 1

Justin Ausburn

Name of Strategy:  Dense Questioning

Source:  Greece Central School District

Link to the Strategy:

http://www.greece.k12.ny.us/instruction/ela/6-12/Reading/Reading%20Strategies/dense%20questioning.htm

Give a thorough description of the strategy and how it will be implemented. This should be a summary of the strategy according to the original source:

This is a guided reading activity designed to generate three specific fields of questions.  Using the table, or even a graphic organizer, students generate questions about the text in relation to themselves, other texts and the world.  These three fields allow the generation of questions that are helpful in comprehension as well deeper thought.  The “Dense Question” comes at the end of the reading when students generate a question that combines all three fields and yields a very high order question.

Explain what part of the standard course of study is addressed by this activity.

8^th Grade Science

1.10 Analyze and evaluate information from a scientifically literate viewpoint by reading, hearing, and/or viewing:

• Scientific text.
• Articles.
• Events in the popular press.

Explain why you think this strategy will work. How does the strategy help your students learn?

In the science classroom, it is important to connect the content to the real world and to the reader.  To effectively use this I would make a slight modification to the design by having students instead create questions based off of the relation to other science topics and not other texts.  This three tiered approach can generate the necessary questions to connect the content as well as help in the processing of the text.