Differentiated Instruction

I have found an area where differentiated instruction strategies would benefits students if implemented into Accounting I. There are "gifted" students in this class who are bored to death with written problems that are in repetition. The teacher always assigns them every problem in the book to complete per chapter. However, she does not incorporate computerized accounting systems into Accounting I even though it is a CSO. She feels they need to master the basics first and may implement this if they take Accounting II. There seems to be a lack of interest for Accounting II as there are only two students taking this course this academic year. I feel some students should be given the opportunity to skip some of the basic problems and be given enrichment activities to complete which utilize the computerized accounting software. This may keep these students from getting bored and generate more interest in accounting as a career. These students do not have perfect grades because they dread the work and then rush to complete it on time. Therefore, I think they would be motivated to put a little more effort into the course as well.

Cooperative Learning

I used cooperative learning this past Friday. The accounting students in my clinical teaching experience give little effort, copy off their neighbors, turn in incomplete (or no) work but then seemed shocked when they learned their grades for the first nine weeks. I attempted to take advantage of their state of "shock" to teach them to improve their level of effort.
After completing the bell ringer, I asked students to look over their work from the previous chapter and identify the mistakes they made. I then went over some common errors and pointed out these errors could have been prevented by better time management, using me as a resource for questions, not rushing, not copying from their neighbors incorrect work & checking their calculations. I then divided the class into groups and asked them to go to a website containing a blog about accounting errors at Overstock.com. I asked the groups to work together to determine the amount of money lost by Overstock.com due to accounting errors ($265M). I then assigned each group a perspective (Accountants, Investors, Other Employees, Government, Consumers) and asked them to list the ways their group of people would be affected by losses at Overstock.com. This was followed by a class disscussion and summarized by tips for accounting success which I presented on PowerPoint. I feel this was one of my better lessons thus far because it met an important CSO (relating accounting to the economy). In addition, I was attempting to be a responsive teacher by providing feedback in a way that responded to each learner's specific needs. I did this using the Marzano teaching strategy of Cooperative Learning.

Chandra Ely --- CI 515 ---- Marzano (Graphic Organizers)

Chandra Ely --- CI 515
Blog Post --- Graphic Organizers
For the past two days the students in my social studies class have been using graphic organizers along with a power point and lecture. They’re finishing up a unit on the industrial revolution and getting ready to give presentations on Monday and Tuesday. I’ll start my unit on Wednesday. Anyway, the teacher I’m working with gave the kids questions to answer, that followed along with the power point and then at the end of each day’s lesson, had the kids do a graphic organizer.
Yesterday they did a brainstorming type graphic organizer. The teacher called it a spider and instead of just brainstorming information they used came from the power point.
The type of graphic organizer that he used today was a cause and effect chart. The teacher gave the effect and the students had to determine 4 causes.
I start my unit on conflict next week on Wednesday and I plan to use several of Marzano’s strategies, like: graphic organizers, homework (just a little), feedback, and reinforcement; just to name a few.

Summarizing and Note Taking - Danielle Pauley

I started teaching my unit on the body systems about two weeks ago. In this unit students took a lot of notes because as we all know, the human body is sophisticated and has a lot of details. So, for the purposes of this unit I used Marzano's note taking strategy. Since we were more than halfway through the semester when I started my clinical, I did not feel that the students needed a lesson on how to take notes. From observing my clinical teacher, I could tell that her students knew how to take notes. However, I did try to follow Marzano's rules for the strategy. The two rules I found most important were "notes should be used as study guides for tests" and "the more notes that are taken, the better" (Marzano, 2001, p. 44). When I was giving my students notes, I used the whiteboard to write down the most important information for each lesson. The students took notes on the important information. This was vital because the information that I wrote on the board was information that would be on their test. This allowed students to use their notes as a study guide for the test. When I was writing information on the whiteboard, a lot of the students complained that it was a lot of notes. Marzano (2001) states "the more notes that are taken, the better" (p. 44). Of course, I know there should be a limit to the amount of notes. However, I knew that I had not crossed that limit with the notes and assured the students that it was to their benefit that they had the notes.

Post 2 Brandon maynard Ch 8

I wanted to give some time for me to be in the classroom before I really started making posts. I felt that if I posted once a week I would be more making things up and fitting them to what the assignment is for instead of it being based on truth. I have been teaching now the past nine days. I felt now was as good a time as any to share some experience. I have only been at Vinson for two full weeks, tomorrow will make my third. The students have been really great coping with the transition from working with the regular teacher, to a full on student teacher, and back to the regular teacher, and then to me. It has appeared to be a hard time for the students because teaching styles have constantly changed for them since December. The big news has really happened the past week. I was given the opportunity to start a cooperative group assignment with the students or allow the teacher to finish hammering through the chapters so we could reach my unit faster. We decided on the group activity.
I feel I can relate this section better with Marzano's chapter: "Setting Goals and Providing Feedback." The students are currently working on an activity which covers all of Gardner’s intelligences. That would be to create a new state. The teacher and I set a scenario up to where a major earthquake erupted in Washington DC leaving nothing but a gaping hole in the earth like Death Valley. The students groups were instructed to create a new state which would represent the new capital of the US. There was a checklist provided, similar to a rubric, which provided information which they must include in order to create the new state. Within this checklist, there were some pretty difficult tasks. I made them difficult because I know, as a group, the students could complete the tasks with a little extra thinking. One task all of the students had difficulty with was using longitude and latitude to mark the four directions of the state (north side, south side, etc.). The next day I presented them with a bell ringer which they were to tell me what longitude and latitude were and some characteristics of each.
This was great because it really helped them understand what the objective was for that section of the activity. I saw the bell ringer as positive feedback because it permitted us time to talk about what the coordinate system was and gave me a chance to do some public "great answer!" or "that’s really close, your on the right track, keep trying!" I think this kind of feedback is really great because it can be directed to the individual or the entire class. Everyone hears me say "Great job Sam" or "You're really getting close Alex!" and the students can see that I am encouraging them to try harder.
Back to the checklist. I designed this as part rubric and part checklist. The students can see ALL requirements for the assignment and see what each section of the activity is worth, but can also check off each section as they finish it to show me as I walk around and observe that they are making progress. This entire checklist is my goal. I want to see them complete everything on it and do it asking as many questions as possible. That is my goal because you can't learn if you're not asking questions. If you are not asking questions you already know how to do something and there is really no point in doing it if you already know how it's done.
Tomorrow the students are presenting their work to the class. We will be using an ELMO to display their states new flag and the smart board to show us where they placed the new state. I am really excited for tomorrow and cannot wait for them to show off their work. Some groups are even singing a new national anthem. It's going to be great!

cooperative learning

I had a very short week at my school this week due to electricity and asbestos on Thursday and Friday. Monday there was a field trip for the well behaved students and Tuesday there was a guest speaker. In other words there was only one day this past week dedicated to social studies. With all of the snow days and now this I am a firm believer that we have to increase our school year. I know that is an unpopular opinion but if we want our students to compete in a global market it is something that has to be done. I saw a chart on Japanese students’ study times and it floored me. The average Japanese student goes to school 245 days a year, from 8AM until 5PM, Monday through Friday. Sunday through Thursday students are required to spend two hours after school studying. I am not saying that we should encourage that but I do believe something has to change in our educational system.
On to my actual classroom experience related to Marzano, my supervising teacher allowed for cooperative learning on Wednesday!!! It worked really well. She used cooperative learning as a review for the test that was supposed to be the next day. We put the class into groups of four and played a game similar to Jeopardy. Each group was given a question and after a discussion between the group, members had to give an answer. The winning group received five bonus points to add to their test. The kids loved it. It was awesome to see these kids really thinking about what they had learned. They really wanted to win. We even had individuals go up in front of the classroom and answer without help from their group members. The students who my supervising teacher would never expect to answer anything correctly did. One student who doesn’t say a word in class was the leader of his group. I like to think that this is because I am constantly checking on him to make sure he stays on task. I call on him every day when I ask questions. Perhaps I shouldn’t do that because he has never answered a question correctly but I keep thinking one day he will. I believe that he is fully capable of learning the concepts of 8th grade social studies. My point behind this post is cooperative learning is a great thing and it should be used frequently in the classroom.
I have one quick question. Does anyone have a suggestion on how to deal with a child who refuses to do work, is argumentative with the teacher, and disrupts the class? I really do not think that throwing the child out of the classroom is the answer but this student makes it impossible for class to move forward sometimes. This student has made it clear that school is the last place on earth that she wants to be. She sees any assignment as useless and a waste of her time. It doesn’t matter how you try and make it relevant. She is a test of my patience already. This student is not in the two classes that I am teaching but she is in the first class that I observe. Any suggestions are greatly appreciated. Happy Spring Break to everyone!!
Until next time,
Anisa Dye-Hale