I have really enjoyed all of the assignments and I wish this was not a sumer class so I could do it more. I have learned alot about how to teach so that what a student reads just does not go in one ear and out the other. I have enjoyed the experience with bloging and will use it when I finally get to teach.
Thanks so Much!!!
Lesson #1
Name of Site: Science NetLinks
Link: http://www.sciencenetlinks.com/lessons.cfm?BenchmarkID=11&DocID=385
Name of Lesson: Systems of the Human Body
I liked the way this lesson was broken up, it had a section for motivating students, how to assess them, purpose and extensions on ways to relate or carry it over to other subjects. I like and will use this lesson plan because it is really easy to understand and would not be stressful for the students, because it is well structured. I like this lesson plan because it would be great to do the day before a lab, or review for a test. This site has a cool web qust that goes along with it, that has a game where you put the body parts where they belong. I thought that it was cool that in the begining of th e lesson it addresses what students should already know, and activities for upper level students. The game is really cool and you can find that at the e sheet link, I played it for a litte while and the comments and voice made me laugh so I am sure it would do the same for the students.
On that website: Science NetLinks
Summary and Review: This website has a ton of lesson plans for science broken into different topics for science. The neat thing was that if you just wanted to look through all thier lesson plans, you could just scroll down the list to the grade and topic and there were symbols beside each lesson which told you if it was hands on, worksheets, book work or internet.
Lesson #2
Name of Site: Discovery School
Link: http://school.discoveryeducation.com/lessonplans/programs/thebigwet/
Name of Lesson: The Big Wet
Summary of Lesson: This is an hands on lesson which allows students to map out the twelve differnt limates found around the world. It has the students looking at and comparing the different types of climates around the world. I like that it also uses the three, two, one rubric to assess what each student has learned from doing the project. This lesson also gives the standards and objectives that are involved in it. The vocabulary that the students would be using are found on the site in a way that you can listen to how to say them as well as the difinition. It also gives the links needed to use with this lesson. Overall, I would say that this is a well written and easy to use lesson.
Summary of Site: The Discovery School site is unique becasue it has all sorts of lesson plans sorted out by the different topics in science. It is very useful all round and not just for lesson plans.
I really enjoyed and learned a lot from reading these two articles. I really like the multigenre project idea, I think that it could be used many more ways than just an alternative to a research paper. I would like to use it as a final project for the things that were studied in a nine weeks. When students are given the chance to be creative and not just stick to the traditional ways of doing things a majority of the time they will go an extra mile and really surprise the teacher and their parents. The multigenre project has so many ways for students to shine that every student would feel some sort of success in school. I think that visual learners would really benefit from this project because they can see the artifacts and the different types of writings, and see how each can be used.
The vocabulary instruction gave me a whole new way to think about how to teach vocabulary. I never thought that there was that many ways to teach vocabulary. I really liked and will probably use the literature circle ideas for learning vocabulary. I think that as teachers we do not think or sometimes talk the same as our students and in letting the students discuss and agree on what a word means they truly do get a deeper understanding than if the teacher stands up and tells them what a word means. The other idea that I thought rocked was when the students drew what a word meant, which would really aid the visual learners.
All of the ideas were just wonderful!! I think that these articles could really help a teacher teach and be able to differentiate much easier. The multigenre though would really give students a creative turn to te traditionally boring research paper.
Summary
The multigenre paper is truly unique and a creative way to get students to research a topic. This article gives a wonderful alternative to writing a research paper. The only problem that teachers seemed to have when using it was that it was hard to grade, because of the different genres used. Research papers are good, but with all the technology around us, research papers are out of date. Students are getting bored with them and so are teachers. The creativity that is used for this engages and interests the students so that they can truly learn from what they are researching. His creativity of this project allows the students to practice writing using the different types of genres and reading them. The students’ view of the multigenre paper was that they enjoyed doing it; they loved the creativity that it allowed them to use. Students’ were also very surprised about all the time that they spent on it. From a teacher’s standpoint, it was hard to grade, because of some of the questionable plagiarism and lack of information. So some of the teachers decided to use a learning log so that the students could write down their research, and some teachers use endnotes and a bibliography. When these were used these problems seemed to dissipate. This article gave a wonderfully explained alternative to the traditional research paper.
Thinking Questions
1. Is a rubric appropriate way to grade a multigenre paper?
2. Are there any ways to accommodate exceptional students?
3. How could a science and math teacher use the multigenre paper?
Comment
I think that this is a wonderful idea and could be used in any class. I can see students making a scrapbook full of information in creative ways and actually enjoying the project. I wish that the article would have given more description to how each one was graded. I think that these projects would be much more fun to grade rather than the traditional research papers. Overall I think that this article done a wonderful job describing how to assign, make and show a multigenre paper. The only thing that I was disappointed about was how did the teachers grade each one and what were the justifications.
Amanda Felts
Discussion Notes
Tools for Reading, Writing, and Thinking
Link: http://www.greece.k12.ny.us/instruction/ela/6-12/tools/discussionsnotes.pdf
Summary: This is a worksheet that students fill out as they read. It gives them promting questions to think about as they read. This worksheet prepares students for a discussion after they are done reading. It gives them a place to take notes and a few sentences to lead into what they may want to bring in to the discussion. The worksheet gives very specific directions about what to look for and at. It gives the students questions to ask themselves after they read so they can capture and write down thier thoughts.
NCSCOS: This worksheet will help prepare students for the writing test, and the reading and science EOGs. This worksheet teaches students to look at what they are reading and to ask questions and take in what they read and interpert it into thier own words.
How will it help students learn? Students will learn how to pull out information in what they read and be able to look at the notes that they took to add into a class discussion. This worksheet will also aid the shy students into becoming more open about what they read and say in class. This will help students learn to focus in on what they want to say in a class dicussion.
I believe that this will work, because student love to talk, so giving students the opportunity to share thier thoughts and how they understood something, will help others understand a concept. The main reason this will work is because no two students view what they read the same way, so pulling in more ways to see or understand something, as a teacher you will be able to reach more students. Personally I always got more out a class if I am able to share my understanding of what I read with others and I get the opportunity to look at what we read in thier shoes by them sharing thier ideas with me.
Amanda Felts
Strategy: Sticky Notes
Before-During-After (BDA) Reading Strategies
Link: http://www.pde.state.pa.us/reading_writing/cwp/view.asp?a=196&q=98157
Summary: This allows students to write down thier thoughts as they read. Since they are not allowed to write in the book, this is a way for students to be fully engaged while they read. It is kind of like when teachers show a movie or a documentary in class and have the students write down interesting facts about what they saw or heard. With the sticky notes if a student had a question about something, they could write down thier question, place the sticky note where thier question is and when the reading is gone over in class they will be able to point out directly where thier question is and ask it.
NCSCOS: This strategy can be used with any topic on the standard course of study. When you assign anything for the the students read you can be sure they are engaging in the assignment by watching them stick thier sticky notes to the text or what they are reading.
How will this help students learn? This will help students learn by them being engaged in what they are reading. I do this myself, and since I have strated doing this I have gained so much more information and comprehension from what I have read. Some of the note I may write could be, “Thats just wrong” or “I need to look up more information about this topic”. By doing this students will be looking at what they believe and what they may have questions about, but do not relieze it until they read it.
I think this will work because I have seen it work. I have seen this same technique used, but the students were allowed to write in the book. When I went back and looked at what some of the students had written, I saw how they were bringing in old knowledge and applying it to what they were reading to come up with questions. On some of the articles that the students were assigned they would write, “I do not think that was nice” or “Global warming is a problem, that we need to fix.” When students are asked to put in questions, or describe how something makes them feel as they read they pull out all sorts of things, rather than just skiming through what they are assigned to read to answer the worksheet with ten questions before the end of class.
Amanda Felts
Dense Questioning
Reading Strategies Scaffolding Students’ Interactions with Texts
Link: http://www.greece.k12.ny.us/intruction/ela/6-12/Reading/Reading%20Strategies/dense%20questioning.htm
Summary: This strategy teaches students how to ask different questions. It basically teaches students to ask questions in many different shoes. For example a student might ask, ” How does this affect the world I live in, and how does the world view this?” The three steps to this is: comparing text to text, comparing text to self, and comparing text to world connections.
NCSCOS: The course of study could e addressed in many ways, for example if I assigned my students to read a current event about the Ozone. I would have them compare what they read to other things they have read, to what they know and then compare to what the worlds view is of Ozone. Then I would have them advocate for what they read, for themselves, and for the world, by asking questions as if that is what they were.
How would it help students learn? I think that having the students think outside the box about what is happening in class will help them develope thier own points of view as well as kind of push them to research on thier own to find out more about what ever the topic may be in class.
Why will this work? Middle school students are full of questions, but as teachers all we ask of them are for answers. By having the students develope questions and having them think about everything that they know about a topic, you will create a very accepting atmosphere in your classroom. With that type of atmosphere student will not be shy to ask questions, or to defend something that they believe. To me if a student can ask complex questions about a topic and defend something that they advocate for they know what is going on with that topic.
Amanda Felts
Name of Strategy: Interactive Notebook
This Strategy comes from Addison Wesleys History Alive Program
This Strategy I thought would be really easy to use in any classroom. The students use both sides of thier spiral note book to take the same notes differently. On the right side of the notebook you have the students write down lecture notes, book notes, and other notes just as they appear in the classroom. On the Left side of the spiral you have the student write how tey can relate old knowledge to newly learned material. They can draw pictures to represent what they are learning in thier own way. It is a great way to check for understanding and comprehenision in any subject.
The NCSCOS would be addressed in this activity by the students taking notes and putting them in thier own words. Since this activitity could be used in any subject and topic the NCSCOS applies by whatever you are teaching.
This would really help all sorts of learners learn and comprehend much more, because students are given the opportunity to put what is done in class in thier own words, and understand topics in thier own way. For example: the visual learner can draw pictures on the left side of thier notebook to demonstrate to themselves how something works and interacts.
This strategy will work because the students will get out of it what they put into it. So if you set very high expectations for students in your classroom, they will go the extra mile to make sure that they can understand something thier own way rather than the way everyone else does.
Amanda Felts
Name of Strategy: KWL Chart
Link: http://www.pde.state.pa.us/reading_writing/BEFORE-DURING-AFTER_READING_STRATEGIES.pdf
The KWL chart is a very neat and collection idea. I would use it when I would assign students a section to read in thier textbooks. K stands for what they already know. W stands for questions that they would like to be answered. L stands for what the student learned from reading the section. I would personally assign this as homework or group work, just because no two students know the exact things that another student does or they will more than likely not have the same questions.
This activity does not really have a praticular subject or topic that this can only be used for. I have personally seen this used in SS and in Science.
I think that this will help students learn, because they are pulled in personally. Since the chart asks for what the students want to know and what they learned, that keeps thier mind constantly engaged in what they are reading, so thier reading comprehension is going to rise.
I beleive that this KWL chart will work because the students are being asked to process the information and ask questions rather than answer questions that the NCSCOS needs them to know. I believe that any time that you have a student ask questions and have them reflect on what they already know you are going to get some great reading comprehension from them.
When I looked at the Study Guides adn Strategies site I liked how everything was laid out. It seemed to look at each phase a teacher goes through when planning, teaching, assigning homework or classwork to preparing students for thier test. I really thought it was neat that it had sections that advocated for the student athlete and ADHD.
The Kathy Schrock’s Guide For Educators was neat is its own way, because it had different subjects and links to good resources for the topics you may be teaching. I did not really see anything that really struck me as a Instructional Strategy, I may not have been looking in the right area though.
The Educational Reference Desk was cool. I liked how it had different instructional strategies for reading a text book, or Television Companion materials. I am going to explore more about the different links to aid students in reading textbooks.
The best of the resources was the Graphic Organizer site. I like how while students read they can pull out a topic and add more bubbles to that topic which gives the student more time to comprehend and think about what they read. To me the more students are provoked to stop and think about what they read, then to write down bits and peices of what they understand or what they may have questions about they will learn and remember that material alot better.
The Global Classroom site looked to me to be more for younger elementary students rather than middle school. Some of the links that I opened on the site looked as if they could be used for the middle school classroom. This site though did only focus on LA and Math. I never did find anything for Science or Social Studies.
