Standard 10: Understands
effective use of research-based instructional practices.
I strongly believe the Instructional Strategies
course was one of my favorites. It offered so much such as digging into the
different components of a lesson. I remember seeing the syllabus and freaking
out about how much work there was with the videotaping, readings and
discussions, it looked like so much. But all that work, I really reaped the
benefits. The readings we had were very beneficial to reflecting on our own
teaching practices.
Such as in Hattie’s ‘Starting the Lesson’
chapter, there are some core ideas that are brought to the reader’s attention.
First and foremost, Hattie describes how each lesson a teacher gives should
have a flow, where many components of the lesson just mesh together. One of the
first big ideas he explains is establishing a positive classroom environment
which includes-care, trust, cooperation, respect, and team skills must be all
present from both the students and the teacher to create a positive and
effective learning environment. Another big idea that I took away from Hattie
relational trust. On page 79 it states “relational trust is an essential
element of positive and effective school governance that focuses on school
improvement policies. Such trust is the glue that holds the relationships in
both classroom and staffroom together when deciding policies that advance the
education and welfare of the students.” I feel that my school has really
struggled with this component in the past. Our last principal was not been a
great leader for the years that I had worked with her. She struggled with
communicating a variety of different things that have been both a positive and
negative impact on the school. Along with her delivery always came with a lot
of backlash to follow-either from the grade level or people involved also tend
to go down with her. Making it hard to trust each other fully. The 4th grade
team, which I am on experienced this 2 years ago. Our principal introduced the
idea of co-teaching, which many of our staff members were not for (due to not
knowing how it would look, etc.) The whole staff treated the 4th grade
team like we had the plague. They would avoid eye contact or any form of
communication with us. It was a very unpleasant environment to be in,
especially for me as a second year teacher. Since then, the workings of
co-teaching have simmered and have become more understood. This took a lot of
communication from us, the individuals living it, than from the principal at
the time.
The final idea from Hattie that I walked away
with, would be in chapter 6 and how the chapter overall explains the importance
of offering multiple strategies of learning for our students. That the three
most effective are: goal setting, self-monitoring, and self-evaluation (116).
After reading these two chapters, I have really tried to implement Hattie’s
ideas of 1) teachers getting of their podiums with teacher talk and allowing
their students to do more of the talking and 2) implementing the practice of
students setting goals, monitoring themselves in relation to that goal and then
evaluating themselves and setting next steps. With my students both of these
are HUGE to take on. Having mostly ELL students, makes student centered
discussions a little more difficult, but we are setting up those sentence
stems, and looking at those social-emotional skills.
For my artifacts that show my work from using
what I had learned from Hattie, was the lesson plan and videos I used for an
Earth Day lesson last year. For the lesson,
there was some higher order thinking involved. With the students reading about
the three R’s for Earth Day, they had to analyze and evaluate the situations
that others and even themselves do in order to keep our planet clean. Since the
readings for each of the students was differentiated to meet the needs of my
students, this helped my students be able to access the material in the science
area that they may or may not have been familiar with. Having the jigsaw graphic
organizer and team puzzles allowed me to see student’s individual take away
from the material. I believe that the jigsaw activity, allowed my students to
really communicate with each other a lot more than other activities. They were
responsible for paying attention to their articles in order for them to return
to their “home groups” to teach. With the students working together in small
groups, I was able to work and communicate with individual groups easily and
then communicate findings whole group if I saw a pattern arising. I think that
with this lesson being sort of an intro to the study of Earth and Conservation,
my students are were not quite at the level of critiquing and second-guessing
the text-they mostly questioned more for understanding (like reusing the
toilet/paper towel rolls). For vocabulary, each text had two bolded words with
definitions on the bottom. There was also a vocabulary 4-square activity, which
met the needs not only of my ELs, but for the whole classes understanding
throughout the activities.
For Dean’s Classroom Instruction that Works, chapter 3 focuses on
the importance of Cooperative Learning. That “students of today need to possess
not only intellectual capabilities but also the ability to function effectively
in an environment that requires working with others to accomplish a variety of
tasks” (35). The interdependence and individual accountability aspect is one of
the most essential components. Allowing the students to work towards a common
goal, but are not weighted down by others efforts in order to be successful
with their own part. Within my classroom, I set my students up in groups of 4,
following Dean’s idea of keeping the groups small to allow everyone to have a
voice and a role. I feel that my area to grow here, is getting roles
established within my groups-during science we have those roles established, it’s
during other lessons and activities that I need to be more intentional with
roles for my students. As for chapter 4, Dean talks about Cues, Questions, and
Advance organizers. On page 52, he states that “Effective cues and questions
help students access their prior knowledge and put that knowledge to use
learning new information.” This reminded me of previous readings, that we must
meet students where they are at. Once we find out what our students know, we
can plan or shift our lessons to meet them and build the new knowledge from
there. With Dean’s talk on using Advance Organizers, it allowed me to reflect a
lot on my own practice. I use a lot of graphic organizers with my students,
since majority of them are ELL, they need more structure and guidance with
vocabulary and concepts. I use one that is referenced as one of the most efficient
ways to check for understanding according to Todd Finely’s article on
Edutopia. The one I use a lot is like a
KWL-but in GLAD is referred to as an Inquiry Chart. Allowing students to share
What They Know (or what they THINK they know) and What They Want to Learn. This
is a running chart, which we revisit and add notes and answers as we go through
our units.
Even though videotaping and looking at yourself
and lessons with the kids is kind of awkward, it really is a helpful learning experience.
With the class of instructional strategies, it allowed us to be reflective on
what researched based instructional strategies are we using, if any at all, and
think about how we can take the strategies and make them work for our
particular students.
References:
Dean, C. B., & Marzano, R. J.
(2013). Classroom instruction that works: Research-based strategies for
increasing student achievement. Boston, MA: Pearson Education.
Finely, T. (2014, July). Dipsticks: Efficient Ways to Check
for Understanding. Retrieved from
https://www.edutopia.org/blog/dipsticks-to-check-for-understanding-todd-finley
Hattie, J. (2012). Visible learning for
teachers: Maximizing impact on learning: London: Rouledge
OCDE Project GLAD®NTC. (n.d.). Retrieved from http://www.ocde.us/NTCProjectGLAD/Pages/default.aspx
Wiliam,
D. (2011). Embedded formative assessment. Bloomington (In.): Solution Tree.
Artifacts:
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