Get To Know Your Students!

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As some of my readers know I am a prospective teacher currently in my fourth year at Brock University studying Physical Education. Through my time at Brock we are continually encouraged to design lesson plans with a "pre-test" at the start of this. The theory behind this is that by utilizing a pre-test a teacher will be able to quickly gather an understanding of the student's prior knowledge, experience and expertise on the subject. I believe these pre-tests are incredibly important and allow a teacher to make any last minute refinements, simplifications or extensions to the their lesson plans.

This all makes perfect sense; you don't want to be teaching a class how to add by twos when all the students can already do so at ease. The ideal lesson content for a student will be within their personal zone of proximal development.  Through this post I want to focus on the importance of working towards a deep understanding of where each of your students come from.

Why is it so important to get to know the individualities of your students? 

Each student in your classroom will come from a different family, in a different part of town, had different teachers, been on different teams and have so many other traits that makes them unique. To think that your lesson plan will work for each and every student is naive at best. As teachers it is our responsibility to get to know our students and adjust our teaching methods to best accommodate them. Having the ability to adjust the curriculum the match the needs of diverse students and the ever-changing issues impacting their world is a skill all successful teachers must have.

Drake. S., et al. (2014) suggest further depth to the individuality of a student. They suggest that students vary in learning styles, exhibit multiple intelligences and have preferences for their learning environments.  Each of these variables have had ample research done to determine which are best for students to learn. However, it is not about which is best for students but which works best for the students you have. It is all about actively deciding on a structure to your lesson that will work best for the student.

How can you get to know the individualities of your students?

There are many ways to get to know the the background information of your students. The first step is acknowledging that this is part of being a better teacher. This will help you connect to and understand your students much better. The following is a compilation of sources you many utilize to gain knowledge of your student's backgrounds as described by (Drake, S., et al. 2014):

• Review official school records, including current and previous report cards.
• Consultation with parents.
• Consultation with previous teacher(s)
• Consultation with support team.
• Classroom observation checklist.
• Educational assessments (pretests)
• Multiple Intelligences Survey or Learning Style Inventory
• Work samples, assignments, and projects.
• Portfolios.
• Teacher-student conference
• Peer and self-assessments.
• Interest surgery. 

Each of these sources of information go hand in hand with being a good teacher. It may seem like an incredibly daunting task to gather and comprehend all this background information on students but it will definitely pay off. This is the different between knowing that that kid in your class isn't participating because he hasn't had breakfast at home and all you have to do is give him an apple compared to dismissing him as lazy. 

Where do you go from here?

Gathering this background information is not the end of the story for teachers. The profiling and understanding of their students is an ongoing, developing process. From here it is important that teachers continue to seek out those personal pieces of information to make sure they understand what is going on in the child's life. Soon, as a teacher, you will be able to know your students well enough to judge their moods and determine when something is just off about them. This then translates directly into each and every lesson you have planned. Some days you may need to do something totally different than planned to accommodate the mood or stresses your students are dealing with. 

My point is that being able to get to know your students and be able to judge their moods and understand them at a personal level will make you that much better of a teacher. It will make you a teacher who is able to connect and influence your students lives in the ways they need you to. 

Until next time,

Mr. Studenny 

Drake, S. M., Kolohon, W., & Reid, J. L. (2014). Interweaving curriculum and classroom assessment : engaging the 21st-century learner. Don Mills, Ontario : Oxford University Press, [2014]

What type of student you were/are? :). JPG. Retrieved from: https://s-media-cache-ak0.pinimg.com/736x/f5/57/5c/f5575c334502af9e19807b4b0e903cd1.jpg

Approaches To Instruction | Developing Your Teaching Identity

In a few years time I hope my aspirations of becoming either a physical education or mathematics teacher materialize and I have my very own classroom. Through my time at Brock University thus far, I have been introduced to the importance of developing my "teaching identity." This is a broad term that encompasses the importance of understanding your values, stances and beliefs of practices in the classroom. Furthermore, it is address the understanding that there is not one set method of instruction to manage a classroom effectively.

I believe that all prospective teachers need to address this idea of developing their teaching identity.  It is worth carefully thinking about various aspects of teaching and what your views are on them.  It will be all prospective teachers responsibility to develop a stand point on issues that arise in the classroom and educational world.  These issues could range from how to properly discipline students to the best way to arrange seating in a classroom.  Today I would like to address the various approaches to instruction. I view the choice of methods of instruction a primary concern for all teachers.

Studenny, Mike. "Approaches to Instruction." 2015. JPG.

There are many approaches to choosing a method of instruction. I have developed the following graphic organizer to show a variety of different approaches to instruction as described by Drake, Reid and Kolohan (2014).  As you can see the organization of instruction methods is circular. I have attempted to convey the message (one I strongly believe in) that these are not ranked through a hierarchy but rather viewed as equals. By this I mean that a teacher should understand that each method has it's place and uses. This video (Long-Crowell, E. 2015) demonstrates a good contrast between the values of direct instruction and the guided discovery model.

Now I would like to get back to the idea I presented on developing your own personal teaching identity. I believe every teacher has a bias to which instructional approach they can best utilize in the classroom. This bias may have developed from you being taught this way or possibly you having seen good results from it thus far. Either way as prospective teachers we need to cast these biases aside and realize that students have their own individualized learning styles (Advanogy, 2015) and therefore find will  find various approaches of instruction may work better than others.

So, if a teacher is able to ignore any biases to instructional approaches and really understand that each student will have an individual learning preference how do we cater to all of our students? I propose that we view these approaches to instruction as a spectrum and focus on the importance of building a blend of many approaches into each and every lesson we teach.  It is through this progressive approach to building your classroom dynamics that a teacher will begin to address more individualized needs of our students.

References

Advanogy. (2015). Overview of learning styles. Retrieved from: http://www.learning-styles-online.com/overview/

Drake, S. M., Reid, J. L., & Kolohan, W.  (2014). Interviewing Curriculum and Classroom Assessment: Engaging the 21st Century Learner. Don Mills, ON: Oxford University Press.

Long-Crowell, E. (2013-2015). Direct Instruction and Discovery Instruction: Definition and Differences. Retrieved from: http://study.com/academy/lesson/direct-instruction-discovery-instruction-definition-differences.html

Studenny, Mike. "Approaches to Instruction." 2015. JPG. 

Constructivism And Normal (Bell) Curves.

Bell curves. I remember first hearing about them in high school. My rough understanding was that a teacher would be able to look at any group of grades and, hypothetically, produce a curve where the majority of students will receive similar grades. However, this means that the other-smaller group of student's- grades would be equally split between being lower than average and above average. During my time in high school the practical aspect of this bell curve was that if the majority of students didn't do well on the assignment the teacher could just move everyones grade up in proportion to this normal curve i.e.. bell curve the grades. As an adolescent this idea made sense to me and I believed it was beneficial to the students as it made up for any discrepancies between the teachers methods and the grades you deserved. 

Enter constructivism. I was first introduced to the ideas of constructivism during a first year university education course. I remember the explanation that resinated most with me was that constructivism is an ongoing partnership where the teacher helps the student build their own understanding.  At that point constructivism-and later on the Socratic method (Scarince, 2015) as a teaching tool-made so much sense to me.  As I have such a big interested in athletics I have a strong grasp on that doing something is a great way to learn it.  Another great explanation of constructivism by Drake, S., Ried, J., & Kiloton, W. (2014) "if learners are active, self-motivated builders of their own understandings, all students can learn and succeed...". 

Studenny, Mike. "Bell Curves in the Classroom." 2015. JPG.

With that quote in mind I'd like to re-evaluate those bell curves, their implied principles and their place in "traditional" teaching. Having a classroom that is based around the expectation that grades will be distributed across a normal curve means that the majority (68.2%)of your students will get grades that are considered average, standard or normal. Furthermore, this model predicts that 3.2% of students will excel and achieve high standards.  So far this model seems to be looking pretty positive for the classroom. However with looking a little deeper you can see that although 3.2% are achieving a high standard an equal amount of students are at the lowest level as well. Personally I believe any teacher that has student's falling in this section should focus on their lessons and teaching to accommodate these students. But what about that 68.2%? Doesn't having the majority of the class achieving average grades classify as successful teaching? No. Every single teacher should have an approach that aims for each student to achieve the highest standards possible. A teacher should not be satisfied with mediocracy but instead strive for exceptionality. 

I believe gravitating away from a principle that is based on bell curves and towards a more constructivist based learning classroom students will begin to transfer forwards on the curve and join the 3.2% who are achieving a high standard. It will be this idea of students learning by building their understandings and knowledge that pushes them forward and down the curve to this area. 

References

Drake, S. M., Reid, J. L., & Kolohon, W. (2014). Interweaving Curriculum and Classroom Assessment: Engaging the 21^st     Century Learner. Don Mills, ON: Oxford University Press.

Studenny, Mike. "Bell Curves in the Classroom." 2015. JPG.

Hello and Welcome!

First of all I would love to extend a warm welcome to any new readers visiting my blog. This blog will be my very first attempt at publishing myself online and I'm honoured that you're here to be a part of it! As of this post, I am a fourth year student at Brock University in the Concurrent Physical Education program with a second teachable in Mathematics and am very excited to be start sharing my thoughts, opinions and experiences with all of you. My goal, and plan, is to develop this blog by addressing issues related to education and analyzing my own experiences in the world of education. I hope you enjoy my posts and share your opinions with me through comments.