Thursday, 22 December 2016

Differentiating Lesson Plans

A Summary

Click here to view the Mind Map

Reading different research about differentiated instruction, it becomes clear that the learning experience should be social and engaging; although the learning responsibility of what happens in the classroom is guided by the teacher, the learner should is also actively part of this process by means of valuing their strengths.

With this in mind, I created a mind map of my choice of activities and strategies in order to enlighten students in a challenging and productive way; especially with the use of 21st century technology will benefit students with their basic search and ICT skills as well as listening skills. According to Tomlinson (2001) most classrooms are multi-cultured these days and thus most learners have different learning styles. There are three aspects teachers should take into account when planning differentiated lessons:
  1. Student readiness
  2. Student interests
  3. Student learning profiles

Readiness
Together with teaching rules and routines, assessing the students’ skills is one of the first things I do in order to see where their levels are. This is very important, because as McCarthy (2014) states “[i]nstruction should begin where the student's skill level currently exists” otherwise those who are at a lower level will not catch up and those at a higher level might be bored or unmotivated. The key is to have different strategies in order to bridge the gaps and keep the students engaged. In order to learn about my students’ levels of readiness, I will have two types of assessments:
  1. Pre-assessments
    1. I always use this at the beginning of the year to test their overall knowledge of their previous grade regarding math, language, writing and reading skills. This will give me an overall idea of their level of readiness for my class.
    2. I also use pre-assessments sometimes before I start a new unit to have an idea of how much knowledge they already have of a certain topic.
  2. Formative assessments
    1. Exit Tickets: this is something I only heard of recently and really like the idea. I will let students answer some questions at the end of the lesson as a recap or reflection on work done in class. This can also be used to anticipate something that you will use for the next day's lesson (like a pre-assessment), to see how much of a topic the students know.
    2. Tiered assignments:  this involves “all children being focussed on the same content or curriculum objective but the process and/or product will vary according to the child’s  readiness  or  ability” (PPDS).      

Learning centers are also a great way to observe (and assess) students’ skills. I will talk about this more in the “Interests” part.

Within the context of differentiated instruction, [...] flexible small group instruction yields greater benefits when compared to large group instruction, within the literacy classroom. (Subban & Round, 2015:124)

I agree with this and including group instruction and group work is also a good differentiation strategy in that it helps with pairing lower level students with stronger students (as stated in the mind map).

Interests
If students are interested in what you are teaching, they will be more focused and engaging during lessons. It is very difficult to occupy all students’ interests, but not impossible. According to Tomlinson (2001) there are two ways of approaching student interests:
  1. Identifying the students already acquired interests.
  2. Encouraging new interests.

I think getting to know your students in general will already help you a lot to plan your lessons and know what will work and what won’t. During circle time in the morning or in between classes (as a kind of brain break) I would gather the students and just talk a bit about any topic and ask them questions. A positive student-teacher-relationship will also encourage active engagement in the classroom. As stated before, learning centers are a great way of identifying your students’ interests through observing them in action. This will help you gain more knowledge about what type of lessons they will enjoy (visual, artistic, logic and kinesthetic). However, you can add to learning centers more if you already know what the students like. At the beginning of the year, I would make a student interest survey for the students with some questions like:
79589be8c3bb7af633ff4dd0e67717da.jpg
Before my poetry unit, I will ask questions like:
  • What is your favourite poem?
  • What do you like to read about?

In my poetry unit, I will also have a poetry book where the students will gather research about poetry and rough drafts in order to complete their big project by writing, illustrating and presenting their own poem. They will do this through:
  • Learning center activities
  •    Graphic Organizers
    • Sense-O-Grams
    • Brainstorming webs
    • Venn Diagrams
  •    Writing poetry
    • Rough Drafts
    • Originals
  •    Illustrating poetry to show the meaning

Learning Profiles
As stated before, observing students in the learning centers will give you a better idea of their interests and also their preferred learning styles. I can usually divide them into 2 categories:
  1. Visual and artistic
  2. Logical and Kinesthetic

Something that would apply to both these categories are the use of technology. If possible, students can use IPADS to illustrate a poem or different crafting materials (especially for the visual and artistic students). For the logical and kinesthetic students, they would enjoy moving around more, so when doing rhyming activities, students can use the whiteboard or computer centers to practice their rhyming. The Funny Kids Poems application is a great tool to use in this case.

Conclusion
Focusing your differentiated lesson on these three principles are important to attend to the students’ needs. In my opinion, students should have the opportunity to express themselves in an environment that is open and responsive to their needs. In order to do this, teachers have to change and adapt their lessons in order for the students to learn something. If not, some students won’t benefit from the lessons and would just be left in their confusion.


-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Also see my previous blog post for more information about assessments: Planning Assessments
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

References

Posted by at No comments:

Friday, 16 December 2016

Planning Assessments

Creating Formative Assessments

What are formative assessments and why is it considered so important?

Formative assessments are ongoing assessments that helps students achieve the objectives. In a video on formative and summative assessments, Rick Wormeli (2011) argues that teachers should pay more attention to formative assessments, because it helps teachers to give better feedback to their students. A big part of these types of assessments is descriptive feedback. Feedback has a great impact on students' performance and helping them bridge the gap between the work and their understanding of it. 


In this blog, I will give examples of some formative assessments using one learning objective of a Common Core ELA standard I chose: 

Grade Level: Elementary Grade 2
Subject: English Literature 
Unit: Poetry 
Standard: ELA RL.2.4: Describe how words and phrases (e.g., regular beats, alliteration, rhymes, repeated lines) supply rhythm and meaning in a story, poem, or song.

Selected Learning Objective


Click here to see my infographic on all the learning objectives I created for this standard.

3 Formative Assessments

1. Exit tickets
On an education blog, I saw the example of a formative assessment I enjoy using, called Exit Tickets. This is a great formative assessment technique to see if students have a superficial understanding of the information or has some depth of understanding. They are typically short questions and focused on one particular skill. The teacher will let students answer it at the end of the lesson as a recap or reflection on work. This can also be used to anticipate something that you will use for the next day's lesson, to see how much of a topic the students know.

My objective (and standard) focuses on 3 main skills: identifying 1) rhythm 2) rhyme and 3) alliteration. I would have a few classes focusing on each individually. The questions I can ask are as follows:

For Alliteration
I will display the following instructions on an interactive whiteboard:
  1. Write down at least 3 words that show alliteration. Ex. Sally sings songs
  2. Why does it show alliteration? The "s" sound at the beginning of the words repeats.
For Rhythm
If possible, the students can do this at a computer in order to listen to a poem. Otherwise a printout could be given.

How many beats are there in:

Line 1__________
Line 2__________
Line 3__________
Line 4__________







For Rhyme
If possible, the students can do this at a computer in order to listen to a poem. Otherwise a printout could be given.


What are the rhyming words?

_________ and _________

_________ and _________

_________ and _________

Circle the ending sounds that creates the rhyme.







Self-reflection
I can also ask students to reflect on lessons:
  1. Write 1 thing you have learned today.
  2. I didn't understand...
  3. Write one question you have about today's lesson.
The students will receive cards that they will use to write their answers. At the end of class, they will put it in a box. I can then group kids together in such a way that one student who grasps the meaning of alliteration/ rhythm or rhyme are in each group and then give them a quick Think-Pair-Share activity or an individual "Do Now" activity at the beginning of the next lesson. This will give me an idea of how well they grasp a concept and if I need to spend more time on something in this lesson.

You can also give differentiated instruction with tiered exit tickets to challenge students who has high-achieving levels (Teaching Channel). Due to poetry being quite a new type of text for 2nd Graders, I would start doing this after I explained certain poetic elements. It would look something like this:

First exit ticket:
What poetic elements does the following represent:
1. Sally sings songs _________
2. I like to run
   Because it's fun

 Second exit ticket (for high-achieving students)
Write examples of the following:
1. Alliteration _______________________
2. Rhyme __________________________
                __________________________

2. Popsicle Sticks
This is a technique I have always used in my class. You will always have those kids in your class who wants to (and are able to) answer all the questions and those who sits back, maybe knows the answer but are too shy too answer or just does not care. To encourage student participation, use Popsicle sticks with students' names on them and draw one when you want a student to answer or reflect on something. This way, every student will definitely answer a question and you can see who struggles and who grasps a new concept.

This is part of a Checking for Understanding (CFU) strategy that allows teachers to make instructional decisions during a class and monitoring student progress in real time (Smartatmath 2011). It is also important to think about how you will respond to right answers, incomplete answers and wrong answers. You don't want a student to lose confidence in answering questions. Here are examples of how I would handle 2 different answering situations:

Repeating the correct answer given by a student together with the whole class step by step in order to ensure that everyone knows why the answer is correct:

Teacher: Rebecca, how many beats/syllables are in line one of the poem?
Rebecca: 3
Teacher: That's right, there are 3 syllables in line 1. Class, let's all say and count with our fingers the amount of syllables in line 1. "Spring (1) is (2) here (3)".

According to Lemov (2010) providing a cue helps guide a student to the correct answer:

Teacher: Of what poetic element do you think when you here Sally sings songs, James?
James: Uhm...rhyme?
Teacher: James, let's look at the line again. Look at the beginning letters of each word. They all start with...? (cue)
James: An "S"
Teacher: Great! Now what poetic element does it represent? What do we call a sound at the beginning of each word that is being repeated? (cue)
James: Oh, alliteration.
Teacher: That's right!

3. Poetry Book (graphic organizers)
Students will have a poetry book where they will include all their research for their final project: writing a poem, illustrating it and presenting it to a younger class. This will be done through:
  • Learning center activities 
  • Graphic Organizers
    • Sense-O-Grams 
    • Brainstorming webs
    • Venn Diagrams
  • Writing poetry
    • Rough Drafts
    • Originals
  • Illustrating poetry to show the meaning 
Research and planning is a big part of writing poetry and it is important to teach this skill to students in this unit. I will help them and guide them through this process and show them what to include in their books. This will be continuously assessed and it will show me how well students understand certain poetry concepts. This is also a great way for students to self-assess their work and providing them with a visual representation of where they need to improve.

Conclusion
Formative assessments gives students a chance to improve their skills before the big (summative) assessments that influence their grades are implemented. In the video (at the beginning of this blog) Wormeli (2011) states that teachers tends to focus more on summative than formative assessments, but formative assessments should be equally (if not more) important:
Can kids learn without grades?Yeah. Can they learn without formative assessment and the feedback that comes from it? Not at all.
 My main goal as a teacher has always been to help students in any way I can. This really made me think more about formative assessment and appreciate it more. I will definitely be spending more time designing this than ever before.

-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
References
Edutopia. (May, 2010). Use Formative Assessment to Differentiate Instruction. Retrieved on December 15, 2016, from https://www.edutopia.org/stw-differentiated-instruction-learning-styles-video

Lemov, Doug. (2010). Seeting High Expectations. In Teach Like a Champion. San Francisco: Jossy Bass: 27-56..

NWEA. (n.d.). Classroom Techniques: Formative Assessment Idea number six. In Teach. Learn. Grow. [Education blog] Retrieved on December 15, 2016, from https://www.nwea.org/blog/2012/classroom-techniques-formative-assessment-idea-number-six/

Smartatmath. (Jun, 2011). Checking for Understanding.wmv. [video file] Retrieved on December 15, 2016, from https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vd7TO9alAss

Rick Wormeli. (Nov, 2010). Rick Wormeli: Formative and Summative Assessments. [Video file] Retrieved on December, 15, 2016, from https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rJxFXjfB_B4

Teaching Channel. (n.d.) Daily Assessments with Tiered Exit Cards. [video file] Retrieved on December 15, 2016, from https://www.teachingchannel.org/videos/student-daily-assessment




Posted by at No comments:

Saturday, 10 December 2016

Understanding and Applying Standards

A reflection on this week's activities.

How long have you been teaching? This is a question I have to answer a lot, especially to new parents at my school, and the answer seems fairly simple: almost 4 years. However, this week's unit on Standards made me reevaluate my answer. I might have been teaching for almost 4 years now, but I realized I have never truly been a "real" teacher.

You learn a lot (and fast) when you start teaching in Korea. My first time ever teaching, I was given a book and just asked to teach a story and finish it in 3 weeks. No lesson planning, no curriculum explanation...nothing. So, I taught myself how to be a teacher, but I have always struggled with lesson planning and being a planner by heart, this bothered me a lot. I love being prepared for my classes and the whole school year. This unit helped me think differently on the process of planning and understanding the meaning and importance of standards. We learned about unpacking standards, backwards mapping and how to create learning objectives using the SMART guide and Bloom's taxonomy.

Unpacking a Standard


When I first started teaching, I taught English as a foreign language to Koreans at a hagwon. There, the school did not inform me of the standards (and being unqualified, I did not really ask). Then after 2 years, I started teaching preschool at an International Kindergarten, they were talking about how the report worked. Although they did not have standards, for the first time I had something to work towards with my students. I knew what they needed to know when the finished the school year.

Unpacking a standard was quite a challenging activity, however while I was attempting to do it, I found my thoughts starting to flow and really think about the meaning and importance of standards. This process includes taking a standard and adding detail to it by looking at the verbs and nouns and breaking it up so it is simplified.

I chose the common core ELA standard RL.2.4 to use for a Grade 2 Literacy class in a Poetry unit:

Describe how words and phrases (e.g., regular beats, alliteration, rhymes, repeated lines) supply rhythm and meaning in a story, poem, or song.
This standard stood out for me; not only because I studied poetry at university, but also because it made me think of the poor literacy level of kids these days. Technology have taken away books from kids and the literacy level, especially in my motherland South Africa, is very low. I have my parents and teachers to thank for my interest in literature, because they made it fun and engaging. So I thought, maybe if I make a poetry class fun and engaging, it will help students understand language and literature and maybe encourage them to read more. 

After unpacking it, it looked like this:
After really looking at the standard, I realized that I can elaborate on what the students need to be able to do if they want to achieve this standard.
Have a look at my Prezi on unpacking standards here.

Backwards mapping

In the second activity, we had to use the backwards mapping design in order to plan what I as a teacher will need to help my students reach this standard. The name already explains what you will do: start at the end and work backwards. So first the teacher looks at what the desired result is (the goals the students need to achieve). Secondly, the teacher should think of assessments that will determine how the students will reach this goal. Thirdly, the teacher should look at the learning experiences and activities (or what they will be doing in class).

 As I used the example standard for a Poetry class I will be teaching for 2nd graders, I focused on working towards them writing poetry themselves. If they can write a poem, it will show me that they understand the poetic form and features.

 Have a look at my previous blog post on Backwards mapping for examples of the 3 steps.

Without knowing it, I have been doing this to plan my preschool lessons. We have a new theme every 6 weeks and before a new theme starts, I would sit and plan out activities related to that theme and what activities I will keep in their files in order to assess them. This backwards mapping activity helped me to understand why I am planning this way and gave me a step-by-step scaffolding plan in a more detailed way to use when I have to plan another 6 weeks theme again.

Learning Objectives

This was another challenge, because I have never been asked to do this at the schools I have worked at. I found this activity easier than the other two activities, probably because the previous activities helped my though processes go wild, so by the time I got to the third activity, I have mapped out the standard in so much detail already that I already knew what I wanted the students to be able to do.

 We used the SMART guide, which is a very easy way to remember how to incorporate it into your objectives.











Together with the SMART guide, it is good to use Bloom's taxonomy as well to accommodate higher levels of thinking instead of just remembering facts.


Here is my infographic on the Learning Objectives of the standard I chose.





Overall, this week started out to be very difficult and challenging, but it was worth it. Now I have a much better understanding of what standards are and how to incorporate it into lesson planning. This week's unit opened my eyes and broaden my knowledge about planning my lessons in accordance with standards. It showed me very good guides to use and taught me how to think as a teacher. Finally, I know how to plan my whole year around subjects and standards I will teach and I cannot wait to use this when I finish my studies next year. 

Posted by at No comments:

Standards and Backwards Mapping

ELA Common Core Standards

This week for our new module we had to choose a standard and use a strategy called backwards mapping to design a curriculum and lesson plans. It is a process where teachers create goals, assessments and learning experiences/ activities by starting at the end: what is the desired result? After that, you can start thinking of how you will help the students achieve that goal (through assessments and activities).

My Choice of Standard:

I chose a standard from the English Language Art (ELA) Common Core standards: RL.2.4:
Describe how words and phrases (e.g., regular beats, alliteration, rhymes, repeated lines) supply rhythm and meaning in a story, poem, or song.
I have always had a love of literature, especially poetry, and I have my parents and elementary teachers to thank for that. Currently, there is a big literacy problem, especially in South Africa, my motherland. Children are not reading enough anymore and if I can show children how fun literature can be, maybe I can help them achieve a good literacy level, which will help them in many aspects in their life.

 I plan on teaching Elementary Education, 2nd Grade, because it is a very interesting age where students are busy becoming independent readers and writers. They are starting to get used to using appropriate vocabulary to form opinions and describe their thoughts and feelings. And what best way to practice that through the language of feelings: poetry!

 In the subject, English Literature, I will teach a literature unit on Poetry. In my opinion, poetry should not be taught as a short unit, but instead if possible throughout the school year or semester. This will encourage enthusiasm for poetry (and the language arts) and also raise its value. There are so many ELA standards that you can reach through poetry alone (writing, reading, speaking, listening, comprehension etc.). That is why it is a good idea to teach it throughout the year (once or twice a week) and apply your knowledge when acquiring other standards in other subjects. A variety of topics gives students experience in rich literature, opinion pieces, stories, letters and explanations together with building grammatical knowledge, practice reading for meaning and join in conversations.

4 Proficiencies

  1. Recognize and identify rhythm, rhyme and alliteration in a poem.
  2. Explain how rhythmic words and phrases add meaning to a poem.
  3. Demonstrate reading comprehension through illustrations and answering questions.
  4. Apply knowledge of rhythm,, rhyme and alliteration to construct own poetry.

Assessments

I will use pre-assessments, formative and summative assessments to test their understanding of the standard.

Pre-assessment
Before the unit starts, I will assess the students' background knowledge and opinions of poetry with a poetry survey. This will give me an idea of where the students are with developing their opinion and their interests in poetry. This will also help me to adapt my teaching style and strategies to fit a certain group of students.

 Formative assessment
Comprehension
Students will read and comprehend a big amount of fiction and nonfiction poetry while assessed with a scoring guide on comprehension.
 
This will include questions on rhythm, rhyme, alliteration and the meaning of the poem. Later students will be able to form their own opinions on poetry as well, in order to develop critical thinking skills. 

Poetry Checklist 
Students will show and/or describe how words and phrases in a poem have rhythm which helps them build meaning. Students will explain how meaning builds from a previous line. Students will explain and correctly use the correct meaning of many meaning words and real life uses, assessed through a checklist and/or teacher observation.

 Summative assessment
Writing and reading aloud poetry
Students will write poetry during classes throughout the year/ semester and 2 times within that time period, they will choose their best poem to create an audio/visual presentation (choose easy obtainable and user friendly technology) to be presented to a younger class. This project will be assessed with a scoring guide.

 Graphic Organizer/ Poetry book
Students will have a poetry book where they can write ideas for their own poetry assignments. They can also include illustrations to show what the meaning of their poetry are. This will be continually assessed.

Learning experiences/ activities

The main goal at first will be the comprehension of poetry, because through this the students' understanding of poetic elements and meaning will be enhanced.

Alliteration Activities


Rhyme activities and games


Rhythm activities
This will include clapping to a read aloud and doing worksheets on  counting how many beats are in each line. This will also allow the students to identify patterns in a poem (see the musical center in the next section)

Learning Centers (practice)
I am a firm believer of using learning centers to enhance the students' learning experience of certain subjects.
  • Language center: where students can collect interesting words/ phrases from poems they have read or heard.
  • Illustration center (or poetry window): this will include writing utensils to describe/ illustrate what they see or hear when reading a poem using sensory words.
  • Listening center: where students can listen to performance poetry and teach their ear to identify poetic elements (rhythm, rhyme, alliteration).
  • Musical center: this will include instruments or noise makers for students to identify and describe sounds in order to use it in their poetry.
  • Computer center: there are so many digital tools available to enhance students' learning experiences: (Example) Construct-a word: the students can select a word ending and create a list of rhyming words. They can print their words and use it in their poetry book.
  • Reading center: include poetry books for students to read as much poetry as possible. To make it more engaging, print out some poems and let the students highlight or circle poetic elements. They can use this to include in their poetry book.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

References

Posted by at No comments:
Subscribe to: Posts (Atom)