Category Discussion Questions

May 13 2010

Jeepers, Squeepers

Which techniques related to SDAIE could be used with native English speakers?  Explain your answer.

One of my favorite things about this class is there are very few, if any, instructional techniques we are being taught that are not applicable in all instructional environments.  SDAIE techniques are simply educational “best practices.”  Or as Rothenberg & Fisher (2007) said, “Specially Designed Academic Instruction in English (SDAIE) strategies are just good teaching strategies. Sheltered instruction is just good teaching” (p. vii).

My personal favorite strategy is one about which I was initially dubious.  However, over time I have grown to see its brilliance. That would be “SQP2RS” (or “Squeepers” for short, apparently).  SQP2RS is an acronym for:

  • Survey
  • Question
  • Predict
  • Read
  • Respond
  • Summarize (Echevarria, Vogt, & Short, 2008, p. 98)

What I like about this is that it incorporates best practices for reading educational material, powerfully departing from the “read and forget” model so popular in the traditional classroom.  It’s particularly fascinating to me because a similar approach was featured in 1993 “underground” book on being a better student that I follow closely (Robinson, 1993).  Now, nearly 20 years later, this approach is being taught in graduate schools.

Another SDAIE technique I learned in Robinson (1993) is activating prior knowledge (Díaz-Rico, 2008, p. 115).  I think that is a technique that is still too little known and seems to me to be fundamental in anchoring learning and powerfully launching a lesson.

Another technique I discovered elsewhere is Mind Maps (Buzan & Buzan, 1993).  As near as I can tell, graphic organizers are similar, although more basic.  If graphic organizers become successful in my classroom, I would like to add mind maps as well.

I think “Directed Reading-Thinking Activity (DRTA)” (Díaz-Rico, 2008, p. 230) is very interesting as well.  When I read fiction in particular, I tend to try not to look ahead because I prefer being surprised. However, from a cognitive and metacognitive point of view, I think tracking not only what the author is saying but what is being telegraphed about impending content is a very effective way to empower the reader as a reader and model good habits for when that reader writes.

References

Buzan, T., & Buzan, B. (1993). The mind map book. New York, NY: Penguin Books, USA.
Díaz-Rico, L. T. (2008). A course for teaching English learners. Boston, MA: Allyn and Bacon.
Echevarria, J., Vogt, M., & Short, D. (2008). Making content comprehensible for English learners: The SIOP Model (3rd ed.). Needham Heights, MA: Allyn and Bacon.
Robinson, A. (1993). What smart students know: Maximum grades. optimum learning. minimum time.. New York, NY: Three Rivers Press.
Rothenberg, C., & Fisher, D. (2007). Teaching English language learners: A differentiated approach. Upper Saddle River, New Jersey: Merrill Prentice Hall.

Apr 23 2010

NCLB and ELL’s

How have changes in the law affected classroom practice in relation to ELLs?

The dominant legal change in recent years is NCLB. NCLB has a number of provisions intended to improve success rates for EL’s. Unfortunately, NCLB’s other requirements end up applying at least as much pressure on ELL’s as it offers help. The biggest problem is that setting high, uniform standards is particularly challenging for students facing the twin pressures of learning achievement and language gaps. The standards themselves are challenging enough for English speakers, but when applied identically to students who are also challenged by language comprehension and fluency issues, these standards can become almost unachievable. Compounding this particular problem is the NCLB requirement that achievement of these standards be tracked across various social and demographics groups of interest, including ELL’s. This creates considerable pressure on the schools and therefore on the students to make Herculean progress under difficult conditions.

Two of additional challenges are worth mentioning. The first challenge is the California law (upheld against legal challenges) requiring that all standards tests be administered in English. So, not only do the ELL’s have the challenge of learning in L2, they have the challenge of being test on that learning in L2. Second, we are in a world of ferocious budget cuts. At a time when the ELL population is growing far faster than the general population and the pressure (as above) to improve results in this ELL subset is growing exponentially, cash available is dropping precipitously. There is some cushion in that many ELL’s are in Title I schools, but even there, and more so across the board, schools and teachers are being asked (demanded) to do much more with much less.

To conclude, the legislative focus on ELL’s is theoretically positive but the practical aspects of the current legal climate are challenging for ELL’s nonetheless.

Apr 23 2010

Cambourne in the Classroom

How may a classroom activity be adapted for students at various stages of language acquisition?  Address evidence of student comprehension and assessment methods.

Many of the techniques that improve outcomes for ELL’s are also good techniques overall.  Echevarria, Vogt, and Short (2008) take Cambourne’s “Conditions of Learning” and apply them to the ELL friendly classroom.  These eight conditions are immersion, demonstration, engagement, expectation, responsibility, employment, approximation, and response (Echevarria et al., 2008, p. 24).  I will briefly describe their application below:

1.       Immersion – Constantly use all aspects of language (listening, speaking, reading, and writing) to practice English language and content concepts.

2.       Demonstration – Show students the core learning in practice and have them model those concepts as well.

3.       Engagement – Create a safe environment, emphasize the relevance of the material, and teach it at appropriately challenging levels of difficulty.

4.       Expectation – Hold appropriate but high levels of expectation for all students.  Look past language challenges to the full capabilities of each student.

5.       Responsibility – Give students choices, encourage reflection, hold students to high standards of independent performance, and encourage critical thinking.

6.       Employment – Allow students to demonstrate the skills and concepts they have learned.  Explain real world context and value of the concepts being learned.

7.       Approximation – Encourage and reward risk taking.  Embrace “approximately correct” answers as stepping-stones to completely right answers.

8.       Response – Allow for continual constructive and focused feedback from multiple sources, including peers (Echevarria et al., 2008, p. 23).

All of these eight principles do double duty.  Not only do they promote powerful learning in ELL’s (and other students), they create better opportunities for assessment.  By recasting learning tasks away from passive into active learning, students’ proficiencies and weaknesses are more clearly observable and more easily remediated.

Reference

Echevarria, J., Vogt, M., & Short, D. (2008). Making content comprehensible for English learners: The SIOP Model (3rd ed.). Needham Heights, MA: Allyn and Bacon.

Apr 15 2010

Lessons Learned

Has your impression of teaching changed after taking this class?

Yes, very much so.

Before I took this class, I had a much more teacher-centered approach in mind.  I understand much more clearly the importance of student-centered and other alternative approaches.  Now my vision is very different and much more dynamic.  I am confident this will be more interesting for the students and much more effective in creating learning and learning retention.

My vision of classroom management has expanded considerably.  I am now very clear on the central place respect will play in rules and routines.  I see respect being an operating concept that not only provides the philosophical foundation for the rules and routines but also trues all of us to our best selves.  Respect will inform not only interpersonal behavior but also how we treat learning and how we treat ourselves as students. 

Maybe not most importantly but most significantly, this class has renewed my hope and respect for the teaching profession.  My historic experiences with teachers have been generally poor.  I carried a vision of educators as being generally self-important, intolerant, and one-dimensional.  I fully expected this course to follow the traditional teacher-centered model with politically correct vignettes throw in for bad measure.  I was truly shocked by the openhearted, thoughtful, and very modern textbook.  I was very pleased that the teacher also exemplified the highest standards of what being an educator is or should be. 

I was even more gratified to find that this class took me beyond my preconceived notions of teaching strategy.  It showed me, to paraphrase Hannah Arendt, how well I had learned to emulate the teaching styles I so despised.  I am grateful to the teacher and to the authors of our text, for holding a mirror to my scars and for opening a doorway for me to become the teacher I did not know I always wanted to be.

Apr 15 2010

Kaizen

How do you use reflection and self-evaluation to develop your skills as a professional educator?

The Japanese have a concept called “kaizen.”  It means constant improvement.  Kaizen means watching day-to-day activities and being ever alert for opportunities to refine the process, to improve the efficiency, to fix the glitches.

This process is very useful to teachers.  All of us have opportunities to learn and improve all the time.  Fine-tuning what works and what does not work in the classroom is a never-ending process.  Reading new books and taking new classes to broaden understanding and skills is critical.  Trying new things is a great way to add capability and effectiveness.  However, it is unlikely that every experiment will be a successful one.  In fact, it is almost certain that each experiment will need refinement before it becomes truly useful.  Even after it does become a classroom standard, the same opportunities for improvement will apply.  Finally yet importantly, the students are constantly changing.  What works with a class one week, might not work as well a week later as they continue to develop and learn.  In addition, of course, every year we start fresh with a new class of students and start afresh to understand them and tailor education to their needs, skills, and abilities.

Likewise, we are all vulnerable to our own conceits.  It is all too easy to become complacent.  It is too easy to believe that “our way is the best.”  Reflection and self-evaluation are critical to expose areas where we may have become too comfortable or where we incorrectly take as a given the superiority of our approach.  Constantly searching for areas of mistaken assumption is perhaps even more important to attaining full potential than the less challenging pursuit of constant improvement in areas of clear need.

Reference

Kaizen. (2010). In Wikipedia. Retrieved March 15, 2010, from http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kaizen

Mar 25 2010

Respect, Again

What are some easy or simple things that you can do as the leader or boss that can set the tone for a respectful and positive learning environment?

Respect will be the foundational concept of my classroom.

I believe that all too often the love and importance of learning is lost in the rush for both students and teacher to achieve their narrow survival-based goals.  Respect for the learning, respect for the process, and respect for the subject matter will keep the focus on the importance and joy of learning.

I believe a teacher’s respect for students is all too often at least occasionally lost to the frustration of unmet behavioral and/or learning expectations.  However, it is the adult’s job to be the adult.  The students are children and entitled to their native behaviors.  Managing and evolving those native behaviors is one of the teacher’s responsibilities.  The uneven development of improved behavioral patterns must not be allowed to break affinity with the students or lead to disrespectful behavior by the teacher.

Students in my classroom will behave with respect towards each other.  There is no room in my heart for hurtful, isolating behaviors in the classroom or elsewhere.  Disagreements will be resolved through communications.  Each child’s personality will be cherished as a unique expression of humanity.  There will be no requirement of friendship, but there will be an inviolable requirement of respect.

In all these regards, the teacher is the example for the students and the protector of the behavioral code.  To have any reasonable hope of a respectful classroom society, the teacher needs to consistently model respectful behavior.  This includes behavior towards the material, towards the craft and discipline of teaching, towards the students, and towards peers, parents, and all others.  I believe children recognize and prefer the decency and safety of a respectful environment.  For respect to become the operating principle, they simply need come to trust that all will be held to that standard.  A teacher who models respect and strictly protects that fragile code of behavior will earn that trust.

Mar 25 2010

Broadening Understanding

How does effective questioning support student learning?

Lang & Evans (2006) say, “good questioning is not something that works in isolation” (p. 249).  They cite Weiss and Pasley (2004) saying that “teacher questions are crucial in helping students make connections and learn concepts, and that effective questions monitor students’ understanding of new ideas and encourage them to think more deeply” (Lang & Evans, 2006, p. 249).  

Questions test for comprehension.  In the teacher-centered world of Direct Instruction, it is critical to assess comprehension in anticipation of re-teaching areas of uncertainty.  To paraphrase Frank Luntz (2007), it’s not what you say, it’s what they hear.

Questions can help students integrate the concepts presented, expand upon them, and make connections to other concepts even in other disciplines.

The Declaration of Independence was signed in 1776.  How long had there been European settlers in what was to become the United States?  What are the social, economic, and familial implications of a revolution after such a long period as a colony and as an extension of the mother country?  How does that length of time compare to the amount of time the USA has existed as a country subsequent to that?  What else was happening around the world at that time?  What was happening in France and how did the French colonies and French king compare to this English one?  What was happening in Russia, China, and India?  What were the military, diplomatic, and economic implications of the American Revolution for England?  What was the domestic political situation in England and how did this event effect that situation? 

Suddenly, a narrow, American-centered story of the country’s founding becomes part of a tapestry of interconnected events around the world.  Other interesting leads to follow might be the lifestyles and technology of the American Revolution.  How was the news passed, what changes in the American economy were caused by the war, what changes in military technology were spawned in the conflict, and on and on.  What was happening in the world of fine art at this time and what impact might the Revolution have had on fine arts?  Each subject is an opportunity to bring life to other areas of learning; mathematics, science, literature, English language arts, history, fine art, etc.

Direct instruction is the food of education.  Questioning, whether teacher led or in student discussions, is the digestion process whereby the nutrition is made available for use.
References

Lang, H. R., & Evans, D. N. (2006). Models, Strategies, and Methods for Effective Teaching. Boston, MA: Allyn and Bacon.

Luntz, F. I. (2007). Words that work: It’s not what you say, it’s what people hear. New York, NY: Hyperion.

Mar 25 2010

Wissenschaft and Kenntnis

How does teachers’ use of multiple instructional strategies benefit students?

Leonard Sax (2007) talks about different kinds of knowing.  He explains that in most European languages, there are two separate verbs for knowing.  In German, for example, “knowledge about a person or a place that you’ve actually experienced is Kenntnis, from kennen, ‘to  know by experience’; knowledge learned from books is Wissenschaft,  from wissen, ‘to know about something’” (Sax, 2007, p. 28).  He goes on to argue, “American education, today more than ever before, is characterized by a serious lack of understanding of, and respect for, Kenntnis” (Sax, 2007, p. 29).  He cites “more than fifty years of research on the importance, for child development, of multisensory interaction with the real world….in order for the child’s brain and mind to develop properly” (Sax, 2007, p. 29).  Combining direct instruction (DI) with indirect and experiential instruction creates better-rounded educational environment.

In particular, adding experiential instruction to a wissenschaft-heavy curriculum creates a much more meaningful context for learning.  Sax says it well, “You can easily find high school students in America today who can tell you about the importance of the environment, the carbon cycle and the nitrogen cycle, and so on, but they’ve never spent a  night outdoors” (Sax, 2007, p. 30).  An all-wissenschaft curriculum sucks the life, energy, joy, and curiosity from learning.  Human beings are social animals and made of flesh and blood.  To be fully realized, they need social interactions, exchanges of ideas, touch and taste and texture.  Depriving them of these human experiences necessarily reduces the education and the student.  Of course, there are situations and subjects that require direct instruction.  However, even then the learning, breadth of learning, and the learning retention will benefit from a generous integration with indirect learning strategies.
Reference

Sax, L. (2007). Boys adrift: The five factors driving the growing epidemic of unmotivated boys and underachieving young men. New York, NY: Basic Books.

Mar 15 2010

Task Analysis

What are the advantages of being able to task analyze your objectives?

Task analysis is an essential part of planning the achievement of any objectives, educational or otherwise. 

Task analysis identifies the steps necessary to achieving an objective.  In doing so, it highlights all the alternative routes to achieving that objective.  By identifying the steps, it also identifies the physical and temporal resources required.  Each of the different routes have different implications for student readiness and capability and place different demands on students’ learning abilities.  Each route requires different resources.  Task analysis highlights the executional details and, by doing so, allows the thoughtful, informed choice of learning path. In short, task analysis makes the choice of lesson plan easy. 

Having chosen a lesson plan, task analysis allows that plan to progress seamlessly and successfully.  It identifies materials and other resources needed.  It identifies time required.  It identifies areas of particular challenge, where special care must be taken.  It provides a roadmap that facilitates mental (and, perhaps, actual) rehearsal.  Perhaps most importantly, it is a confidence builder.  With a solid task analysis, the teacher can be confident of the steps to be taken and confident that the resources are in place to support those steps.

It also allows the teacher more confidence in dealing with any unanticipated issues that might crop up in the execution of the plan.  Having run through a variety of scenarios of how the lesson plan might have progressed, the teacher already has alternative strategies in mind. In addition, having rehearsed the clearly delineated plan, deviations from that plan can be done with more confidence. At very least, the teacher will be clear on where the ‘baseline’ lesson is. There is always a clear path through the material, no matter how far off that path the teacher has to go in the moment.

Task analysis is a basic skill required of effective planning. It is especially useful in the volatile world of teaching.

Mar 10 2010

Teaching to the Test

How do you relate the development of measurable goals and objectives to effective teaching?

The answer to this question entirely depends on how one defines effective teaching.  If one is a NCLB essentialist, the measurable goals and objectives are whatever the essential body of knowledge is deemed to be.  However, I am not an essentialist.

With apologies to Yeats, I believe that education is the filling of the pail and the lighting of the fire[1].  I believe the most important objective of teaching is to kindle the love of learning in each student.  This requires teaching to their souls, their passions, their interests.  That usually means finding that relevance in the required body of knowledge, but it also includes finding extra material that meets the needs of the curriculum and the students interests.

On the other hand, I know that we live in an essentialist world and to ignore the press of standards and standardized tests is of service to no one.  My intended solution is to “teach to the test” as a creative act. I will teach and drill both the test’s contents and the skill of how to take tests as a subset of the year’s learning.  Hopefully, simultaneously embracing the need for such teaching while rigorously narrowing focus of this teaching to succeeding on the tests will free considerable classroom time for lighting the students’ imaginations with learning of a more nourishing kind. 

Reference

Famous quotes by William Butler Yeats. (1998-2010). Retrieved January 26, 2010, from http://www.famous-quotes.com/author.php?aid=7889

[1] “Education is not the filling of the pail, but the lighting of the fire” (“Famous Quotes”, 1998-2010).