Kristarae's Weblog

When students are learning………….

kristarae — Sun, 26 Oct 2008 14:10:01 +0000

Something that I have always observed from students that were learning, is that when they are, they become the teacher. They want to share their knowledge with other students. They have discovered something and want to share it. If I am the student or the teacher I am aware of this. It is one way. Why is this important? How concerned is the teacher with the learning that is taking place in the classroom, is the material being covered? Is the material being covered. That is a sad statement. How much are the students soaking in so they can take the year end assessment and make it to the next grade level. All their work is complete – so graduate them on the the next grade level. That is how student learning is evaluated. Really?

“thinking like a learner”

kristarae — Sun, 26 Oct 2008 13:56:05 +0000

Assessing learning to a student that is thinking like a learner. This student is outside the box, they aren’t looking at how they were instructed to solve the problem – they are looking at it from how many different ways can I learn this, what angles are there. When assessing these students you must look at it from the students perspective, you must think like the leaner as well. Students want to think like a learner, so let them go, forget the format of the curriculum or the book, this is about the student discovering for themselves how it works. Observing the student and examining their completed work, comparing this to what the assignment was. When the student is ready to learn they will and it is amazing the results when the teacher lets go of the wheel and allows the student to take control, the teacher is the learner.

Portfolios

kristarae — Sun, 26 Oct 2008 13:42:38 +0000

Portfolios – hmmmm. My first experience with them was in high school. It became a requirement to graduate we had to have a completed one. The big deal is that it is a big waste of time. My portfolio was not even my own writings. My teacher would mark through most of my writings and add in whatever they thought would get me a Distinguished. My sister, who is a genius at writing anything, wrote 2 of her pieces in one night. I guess even then my question was how is this benefiting anyone. How is this educating me? What am I learning? My sister received a distinguished for her writings. She could have cared less, she did it because she was forced to because of the “had to have one to graduate” policy. I found very little use for them ,except that on an elementary level, 4th grade teachers are pulling out their hair, stressed out because of the demands of forcing the students to write pieces that are not their own. 95% of these students are not the writers that the portfolio requirements want them to be. Teachers push and push until they create something that is acceptable, but isn’t what the student would have ever written if they had been on their own writing a piece. When did writing become the focus of student learning? It isn’t what defines us as learners. I have had to grade portfolios. It makes me wince when I read them, because I know that the work is not that of a fourth grader, but that of a teacher pushing a student into a thesaurus to come up with a writing that “meets” the requirements. They should be thrown out of the schools and left alone.

Clarence Fisher

kristarae — Sun, 26 Oct 2008 12:57:36 +0000

“What Business Are We In? What I found interesting in this story is the question that is asked at the end; What are we offering in the school that cannot be offered anywhere else? Sometimes it makes sense why parents home school their children. What is offered at school that educated parents can’t offer at home? Not much. Parents can educate their children at home, social interaction could come from YMCA. This could include sports activities and social interaction with other students. Of course, most parents work, and home schooling is not even close to being an option. So then the question arises – Is it a daycare for parents? Sometimes I think it is. As a teacher, sometimes I get so little involvement from parents, especially when their child needs the extra attention, I feel like I am just there to provide a place for the child to go while they are at work. It has become a vicious cycle. My son got into trouble the other day because he was rolling on the carpet and refused to sit still. I have taught second grade, I understand that this is a distraction for other students and rules have to be obeyed. Since I am in the military I understand fully the militant form that sometimes we expect students to have. I just wonder how strict we should be and does this restrict their exploration of different learning experiences. Or does it even matter. I have only my own opinions – I am not the teachers that requires students to sit still and be in a constant “quiet” mode in the classroom. I want them to have ownership in my room, as much, if not more than I do. If this is going to work (their learning experiences) students need to be able to learn/experience things that they wouldn’t anywhere else. Providing this is something that will require educators to step up to the plate and bring it.

What I KNOW………………….

kristarae — Sun, 19 Oct 2008 08:01:26 +0000

What I know…..okay in a classroom full of students, I am given a curriculum to follow, I have students that are on every level but the same one. Everything I teach has a taste of learning theories in it. I have a basic knowledge of learning theories that I gained from the learning Theories that I took my second semester at MSU. Haven’t given them too much thought since I saw this question posted in Week 9. How much do teachers really go back and review them? Some more than others. I knew nothing about learning theories before the class that I took at MSU. It was all foreign to me then and seemed like a bunch of dead theorists that had come up with some ways of learning, should we follow that after all the changes that have taken place over the centuries, is it relevant in today’s classroom? I have knowledge of them through classes, but ask someone on the street, bet they don’t know. Most average educated people have limited knowledge of these theories. It isn’t something that I was taught until college.

Theory or Religion

kristarae — Sun, 19 Oct 2008 07:54:39 +0000

No, I do not think that constructivism is a religion. It is another theory of learning that another theorist did some research on and here ya go. Can a theory every really be proven to be such. I don’t know. This theory goes way back. There are truths to it. Piaget seems to have wanted us to think about how learning happens. Do we know how learning happens after all these years? can it be pinned down to “one” specific thing. No, i think that it is everything that we experience and everything that is brought to us as learners to experience. What we do with this knowledge is where the learning takes place. In a classroom of students or in our home reading online postings – what are you doing with the knowledge that is given to you. I think that we control our learning or lack of learning, even young students do this. What are they the most interested in and what aren’t they. This will show in the work they produce or don’t.

Constructivist Theory

kristarae — Sun, 19 Oct 2008 07:43:21 +0000

As learners, observers, etc, we experience many things. Everyday we are given opportunities to learn. Most will take these experiences and store them for later use. The constructivist theory allows that we will use these experiences during future learning moments. It will be during these moments that we pull from past experiences and use that knowledge gained to understand the present knowledge. I believe that this actually happens. Once we have experienced something and gained knowledge from it, I think that we use that knowledge during future lessons. This includes all levels (ages) of students. Once we have a certain background on a subject we can pull from that knowledge and improve what we already know about something.

Theories

kristarae — Sun, 19 Oct 2008 06:05:39 +0000

http://ignatiawebs.blogspot.com/2008/09/cck08-will-connectivism-without.html

This touches on how students use knowledge to connect with previous knowledge. This allows students to use what they already know, use that adding new meaning to the new lesson. We used this in math a lot in my second grade classroom. The students used previous knowledge and explored different ways of learning a concept. It was an interesting year. I did this almost every lesson, especially in math. Because we were a school in “Crisis” we were appointed a Math Instructor that came in and help with lessons, etc. Reading through the posting, I know that the students that struggled the most were the ones with the weakest background knowledge of the lesson that was being presented. The students that excelled, assisted these students, very helpful.

Roles

kristarae — Sun, 12 Oct 2008 09:04:14 +0000

There are many roles the students have in the classroom: student, peer, teacher. All of these can bring a different view of the classroom to the student. The student wants to learn, the peer has learning and teaching to bring to the table, and the teacher can bring new knowledge to the classroom. A “know-it-all” in the classroom brings a lot. They bring views that the students and teacher may have never thought of, right or wrong. A “teacher’s pet” usually is the one student that makes the grade and is always available to help do any extra duties. As far as “front row/back row dynamics, there will always be the students that stand out as having taken more initiative to want to achieve at their highest level, back row students get dne what is necessary, with low expectations of the class.

Meeting in the Middle

kristarae — Sun, 12 Oct 2008 08:55:10 +0000

Reading the article just reinforces the ideas that we were trying to put into action at the last school that I taught at. Giving the students the tools and allowing them to show us (teachers) how they work and what lesson could be taught and learned from them. Students are way smarter than what we give them credit for. As teachers we have so much to learn from them. Giving up that control is the hardest part. I am the teacher therefore I must be the one to teach the lesson and you the student must sit still and listen. How boring is that?