Comment on one of the chapters that you read last night. Describe an idea or piece of information that resonated with you. Name the chapter and text in your posting.
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Anonymous
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How People Learn: Brain, Mind, Experience, and School (Ch. 4)
This chapter about how children learn was interesting and important to me as it seemed to deepen my understanding of the origins of what I see, later on in life, with my students (and children). While I found that the style and format of the writing was quite dry and densely written, I was able to extract some key information (with the help of coloured highlighters!). I think knowing the theory (such as Vygotsky theory of proximal development) are sometimes overlooked in teacher training/inservcing diminishing our ability to look at new methods and approaches critically and thoroughly.
Chapter 1 of Teaching Every Student in the Digital Age helped me in my thinking and learning about Universal Design for Learning. What I like about this concept is that it forms an umbrella under which many other teaching strategies can fall. After a number of years of teaching it sometimes seems that we are encouraged to abandon one approach in favor of another. What I like about universal design is that you use strategies appropriate to the needs of the students. This can include a variety of strategies such as integrated units, differentiated instruction, performance assessment etc. I'm thinking of universal design as a way to minimize barriers, and to help each student be the best they can be. It's changing the way that I'm thinking about technology in the classroom, using it as a way to engage students and support them in their learning.
Last night I found the reading challenging because I was printing the readings out. For the CAST chapters, it took a long time to print them out because you had to print out each section separately. I find it easier to read off paper rather than a screen. I found the information presented in the CAST chapters very valuable. Looking at recognition, strategy and affect is important when you consider that they are central to everything we do. Of great importance to me was the affective domain. It really hit home with me that it is so important to consider how students feel or attribute knowledge in their brains. This explains why students do well in areas that they are interested in. They have a positive feeling towards the area so they are more able to learn and construct meaning. It is so important for us as teachers to make learning a positive experience. I also agreed with the reading about strategy. Strategy is in everything we do. Strategies are a plan but it goes deeper than that. The students need to monitor and assess as they carry out the plan. Some students may have a plan, but they may not know how to carry out that plan. Some may not be able to monitor themselves while they are carrying out the plan. Teaching students strategies is very important to help them self-regulate their learning.
I found chapter 2 in Teaching every Student to be fascinating. The three networks of recognition, strategy, and affect really explained why some students learn in some ways and others in different ways. Being able to recognize whether students are stuck in either a top-down or a bottom-up process also helps to make things easier for students to learn new material. I liked the fact that the article gave some ideas like the fact that poor lighting or a poor copy could really impede some student's progress. I don't think that all teachers think about these things as really important to students.
A couple of phrases really grabbed me from Chapters 1 and 2 of the Teaching Every Student text. The first phrase was "To transform the pressures of diversity into opportunities for all learners..."(p.1) For me, coming from a place where I do not have formal training in special education, this comment aligns beautifully with one of my personal life philosophies - that is to be part of the solution not part of the problem. In chapter 2, the concept that a child with perfect pitch but difficult reading letters was considered disabled - but the child who could read well but not sing was not considered disabled. This combined with the phrase from chapter 1 above led me to wonder if there's sub a thing as a normal vs. abnormal learner or just a variety of different learners? I'm developing the view that its more the latter - there's a variety of different learners and UDL is means of accomodating all learners.
The first chapter from "Teaching Every student in a Digital Age," gave me a few thoughts, especially within the introduction. The whole realm of technological advances and the resources at hand for educators - what with computers and digital media - had me thinking about a comment made during one of our discussions.The issue was some of the instructors, at one of the postsecondary institutions having a concern of accommodations required and the quality of the their program when students with disability graduate. The idea being that extra time for test taking and the concern that this may not happen in "real" life - wouldn't all the advances technological and all the resources in digital media and the computers be a help with these concerns.
Differentiated Instruction: A Research Review (AISI) This article was very interesting to me, as I have been involved in AISI projects & I am the leader at the school level to get teachers to buy into differentiated instruction. The research verified what I have "sensed"-- that the biggest block to effective DI is TIME available for implementation (from the teacher perspective). I have generally tried to encourage my teaching colleagues to do ONE thing (eg, at junior high: pick one subject, and work to differentiate ONE topic in ONE unit). Hopefully, that will be a positive experience, and a teacher would then be willing to do another topic the next year. It's all about experiencing success- staff need to experience success in their work, just like our students do. Teachers would experience quite a breath of fresh air when they come to understand that what works well for students with severe needs benefits everyone! (Eg visual supports for learning, technology interface, etc). I also thought the example scenario was very good, demonstrating what DI looks like in the classroom.
7 comments:
How People Learn: Brain, Mind, Experience, and School (Ch. 4)
This chapter about how children learn was interesting and important to me as it seemed to deepen my understanding of the origins of what I see, later on in life, with my students (and children). While I found that the style and format of the writing was quite dry and densely written, I was able to extract some key information (with the help of coloured highlighters!). I think knowing the theory (such as Vygotsky theory of proximal development) are sometimes overlooked in teacher training/inservcing diminishing our ability to look at new methods and approaches critically and thoroughly.
Chapter 1 of Teaching Every Student in the Digital Age helped me in my thinking and learning about Universal Design for Learning. What I like about this concept is that it forms an umbrella under which many other teaching strategies can fall. After a number of years of teaching it sometimes seems that we are encouraged to abandon one approach in favor of another. What I like about universal design is that you use strategies appropriate to the needs of the students. This can include a variety of strategies such as integrated units, differentiated instruction, performance assessment etc. I'm thinking of universal design as a way to minimize barriers, and to help each student be the best they can be. It's changing the way that I'm thinking about technology in the classroom, using it as a way to engage students and support them in their learning.
Last night I found the reading challenging because I was printing the readings out. For the CAST chapters, it took a long time to print them out because you had to print out each section separately. I find it easier to read off paper rather than a screen. I found the information presented in the CAST chapters very valuable. Looking at recognition, strategy and affect is important when you consider that they are central to everything we do. Of great importance to me was the affective domain. It really hit home with me that it is so important to consider how students feel or attribute knowledge in their brains. This explains why students do well in areas that they are interested in. They have a positive feeling towards the area so they are more able to learn and construct meaning. It is so important for us as teachers to make learning a positive experience. I also agreed with the reading about strategy. Strategy is in everything we do. Strategies are a plan but it goes deeper than that. The students need to monitor and assess as they carry out the plan. Some students may have a plan, but they may not know how to carry out that plan. Some may not be able to monitor themselves while they are carrying out the plan. Teaching students strategies is very important to help them self-regulate their learning.
I found chapter 2 in Teaching every Student to be fascinating. The three networks of recognition, strategy, and affect really explained why some students learn in some ways and others in different ways. Being able to recognize whether students are stuck in either a top-down or a bottom-up process also helps to make things easier for students to learn new material. I liked the fact that the article gave some ideas like the fact that poor lighting or a poor copy could really impede some student's progress. I don't think that all teachers think about these things as really important to students.
A couple of phrases really grabbed me from Chapters 1 and 2 of the Teaching Every Student text. The first phrase was "To transform the pressures of diversity into opportunities for all learners..."(p.1) For me, coming from a place where I do not have formal training in special education, this comment aligns beautifully with one of my personal life philosophies - that is to be part of the solution not part of the problem.
In chapter 2, the concept that a child with perfect pitch but difficult reading letters was considered disabled - but the child who could read well but not sing was not considered disabled. This combined with the phrase from chapter 1 above led me to wonder if there's sub a thing as a normal vs. abnormal learner or just a variety of different learners? I'm developing the view that its more the latter - there's a variety of different learners and UDL is means of accomodating all learners.
The first chapter from "Teaching Every student in a Digital Age," gave me a few thoughts, especially within the introduction. The whole realm of technological advances and the resources at hand for educators - what with computers and digital media - had me thinking about a comment made during one of our discussions.The issue was some of the instructors, at one of the postsecondary institutions having a concern of accommodations required and the quality of the their program when students with disability graduate. The idea being that extra time for test taking and the concern that this may not happen in "real" life - wouldn't all the advances technological and all the resources in digital media and the computers be a help with these concerns.
Differentiated Instruction: A Research Review (AISI)
This article was very interesting to me, as I have been involved in AISI projects & I am the leader at the school level to get teachers to buy into differentiated instruction. The research verified what I have "sensed"-- that the biggest block to effective DI is TIME available for implementation (from the teacher perspective). I have generally tried to encourage my teaching colleagues to do ONE thing (eg, at junior high: pick one subject, and work to differentiate ONE topic in ONE unit). Hopefully, that will be a positive experience, and a teacher would then be willing to do another topic the next year. It's all about experiencing success- staff need to experience success in their work, just like our students do. Teachers would experience quite a breath of fresh air when they come to understand that what works well for students with severe needs benefits everyone! (Eg visual supports for learning, technology interface, etc). I also thought the example scenario was very good, demonstrating what DI looks like in the classroom.
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