Homework and Practice - Danielle Pauley

The last week or two of my clinical, I gave my students homework. We were doing a unit on Newton's laws and physics is a hard subject. So, I gave my students problems to calculate for homework. A lot of them complained because they were not used to having homework in science. My clinical teacher had been out on leave for the past two months before I started my clinical. She came back a few days before I started my clinical, so this was not her fault that they were not accustomed to homework. They had several substitutes and I do not guess that any of the substitutes gave them homework. Not only did I give them problems to calculate, but I also assigned a project for them to do for homework. Since we were studying Newton's laws, I had the students to build a balloon race car. The day that the race cars were due, we actually raced them in the classroom. They had a lot of fun with their cars and it was a great way of applying Newton's laws to a real-world situation. I felt that when I assigned homework, I followed Marzano's rules. The ones I really tried to facilitate were rules three and four because I found them to be most important. Marzano (2001) states in rule three "the purpose of homework should be identified and articulated" (p. 63). I felt that my students knew the purpose of the homework because it related to Newton's laws and what we had been doing in class. In rule four, Marzano (2001) states "if homework is assigned, it should be commented on" (p. 64). Before I returned their problems that they calculated, I made sure to make comments about each problem whether it was correct or incorrect. I really think that commenting on homework is an excellent way for the students to know that you care. Especially, if you comment on the correct answers.

Providing Feedback - Last Blog

Providing feedback is so essential in keeping students aware of their progress. I know that even as a gradudate student, I value it tremendously! I like to know what I am doing right and what I need to improve on. While teaching in my clinical, I tried to do this every chance possible. I would always make comments on students' papers. I would also offer verbal feedback as I walked around the room watching students work. Marzano talks about how necessary it is to do this and that it needs to be done in a timely fashion. Part of the unit that I taught had students to write fairy tales as a group. For instance, a group of five would have a five paragraph fairy tale, with each student writing a paragraph. During this process, I was constantly walking around the room making sure that each person was doing his/her part. When I saw a student who was writing a good descriptive paragraph, I would tell them "good job". If I saw that someone was slacking or needed some direction with their writing, I would give them encouragement or the 'how to' to achieve this. Providing feedback and praise/encouragement are very similar. Students need to hear what they are doing right, as well as, what they need to work on. A constant marking of papers that portrays only the bad things that a student has done offers no intiative to do better. Providing feedback that is positive and getting it back to students quickly so that they can remember what they were doing and correct it is essential to making education more important for the student. The teacher I worked with did an excellent job of this, and I tried to do the same. The fairy tales were graded that night (as I watched "Dancing with the Stars") and returned to the students the following day. This kept them familiar with what they had written and made the editing process much easier to accomplish. The benefits of providing immediate, encouraging feedback is a no-brainer! We like it as college students, and school-age students like it as well!

Chandra Ely --- My First almost full week of teaching

This past week I taught every day we had school (4 days). I am teaching all of my teaching supervisors social studies classes. This allows me to get all of my hours in and it helps him out as well. This week we began talking about WWI. I began with a lecture (which included a power point) on Monday. I provided the students with a note taking based on my power point with areas for them to fill in. I was advised that I needed to do this because the students would not take notes on their own or pay attention with out it.

On Tuesday we began with a partner journal activity. They had to put themselves in WWI and tell me what and who they were, what was going on, the supplies they had, and their reactions and interactions. I told them to pretend that they were writing a movie script of their experiences in WWI. I asked them to be creative while at the same time staying true to WWI. Some of my students were very creative and really go into it. This took the whole class period but was well recieved by the students and got them to put think about WWI from the perspective of someone who was there. On Wednesday we began by getting into our journal groups for the second half of the activity. What I did was to give them a "New Scenario" after which they had to write a reaction together. The new scenario I gave them was: it rained for a week and there was flooding and mud slides. Based on who/what they were and where they were, the groups had to describe what was happening to them and their reaction(s) in detail. They had about 10 minutes to complete this before we moved on to a map. I plan to have them complete one to two more WWI journal activities and then have them present their best one (the one that they decide is their best) to the class. I think that it will be fun and interesting to see what they have come up with.

I gave the students a blank world map and together (guided practice) using colored pencils, we colored in the Allied Powers, the Central Powers, and the Neutral Countries from WWI. This allowed the students to see the locations of those countries involved as well as size and strength. It also helps them to make inferences about the outcome of the war as well as other things. We did not get finished with the maps and so we decided to finish them on the next day. On thursday (the day before spring break) I decided that I wouldn't start any new material. So we finished the maps and I asked some open questions about the maps and had them turn them in for points and because I plan to have them do a similar map for WWII and then have the students compare and contrast the two maps and write down what they can tell from the two maps about changes, differences, and similarities from WWI and WWII. We also had a discussion of the bell ringers from Monday, Tuesday, and Wednesday; each of which built upon the other (about the jobs of women, men, and minorities during WWI). I printed off the three slides I had from my power point and put them up on the ELMO to help generate discussion. This went very well.

When we come back from Spring Break we will be finishing up WWI on Monday and Tuesday, using the power point and lecture, and the note guide. We will also be doing a photograph analysis of pictures from WWI. We will do one in class on Tuesday and then they will do one on their own for homework. I haven't assigned homework yet, so this will be the first time that they will have gotten homework from me. On wednesday we will be having a 10 question quiz on WWI. The questions come straight from the note taking guide that I provided, so they will already have a study guide.

After the quiz on Wednesday, we will wrap-up WWI and move on to WWII. I'll spend about a week to week and half on WWII and then move on to the Cold War. I will spend about the same amount of time on the cold war as on WWI and WWII. At the end of the Cold War the students will present a project on the Cold War and have a Unit test on Conflict. I will not provide a study guide because they will have one if they have filled out all of the note taking guides provided. But I do plan to review with them the day before by playing jeopardy with an interactive power point. That's all for now. I know it's a lot but I wanted to put it all down.

Chemistry, chemistry, chemistry

I have been teaching my unit since April 1st. I assigned homework every night (except the night before the test). Usually there is time at the end of the class to begin working on homework so I can answer any questions that arise. I didn't make it through my entire unit since we got stuck on Lewis structures, VSEPR theory, and molecular geometry. My school supervisor agreed that we shouldn't force ion, ionic compounds, metals and metallic bonding down their throats the day before the exam. We did start a lab about metals, but its an investigation into the properties of three metals, and using these properties to successfully separate a mixture, then to successfully identify the composition of an unknown mixture. The kids didn't all get finished with the lab - I find that many of the kids have to prompted for each step of the lab - I know these students can read but apparently they can't follow directions. I went over in detail what they would be doing by demonstrating the lab, and I wrote the steps as a graphic organizer on the board.
Lewis structures are nonlinguistic representations of elements and compounds. The students seemed to understand (finally!) but many of the can't remember how to determine bonding configuration, which is essential to drawing Lewis structures. I think that its more that the kids don't want to remember, I know that they are bright and that they can do this stuff, but they just won't do it. When I ask questions in class I require an answer, even if we have to wait for someone to look it up. I do accept "we have no idea" but that does frustrate me, because I know that they have the information and the prior instruction needed to answer the questions. I used graphic representations on the dryerase board for students to be able to relate the information. I emphasized the importance of taking good notes, and told them I am going to grade their notes and homework. There is no reason for anyone's homework to be incomplete, because we discussed it everyday, so students could see where they made mistakes and we could talk about things that they don't understand. I gave an exam on Thursday and I let them use their notes and homework and I'm amazed at how poorly they did. The best scores so far are from the students who asked the most questions in class. I didn't think the test was that hard, and I give partial credit and accept nonlinguistic representations for answers to questions that really want a written answer.
Tomlison/McTighe say that "instruction is both planned and improvisational" (p.89) and that perfectly describes my teaching experience.

Providing Feedback Blog #3

Since I read the chapter aobut providing feedback I have tried to leave some kind of comment on all the papers I grade. Sometimes this is more than time consuming. It's redundant and boring! But, I continue to do it because I want my students to feel like the work they have done is meaningful. The teacher I am working with is fantastic about feedback. She even gives stickers for 100% papers. The class is a Freshman honors class and they LOVE the stickers! Her 10 graders want some scratch-n-sniff stickers. So, yes! Kids do love to be recognized in some way. The way she provides criticism is always productive. She is never negative toward the students even when it is obvious that they are just lazy!! I've learned a lot from her about giving feedback and being positive even when there is nothing positive about the paper. This past week was so hectic. The students are working on a research paper. That takes up more class time than anyone can imagine. But, this is a block class so we also have to get in stories from their literature book. Certainly not an easy week by any stretch. I think it was around Thursday and I was asking my Teacher if there was anything I could do to help her that day. She looked at me with a desperate look and said, "Could you comment on these papers? I have graded them and recorded them, and they are on engrade but I just didn't have time to write anything on them. Could you possibly say something encouraging on their papers?" I got so tickled. Of course I said that I would. I sat in the back and read the papers and wrote comments on them for her. It was such a breath of fresh air to have to do that for her. She is always on toip of things and has everything organized. It was nice to see that even the Perfect Teacher needs a little help every now and then!