Reach 112 Teaching for English Learners Self-Assessment/Observation

When comparing my self-assessment to the observations notes, I realized that I have some holes that I need to fill in terms of my ELL's. Specifically I knew I was weak with explicit forms of academic language; however, upon receiving the observation notes I see where I could work it in and it be successful. I had initially had the idea of incorporating more academic English into the assessments that I give. I see that I could weave it in during the specific opportunity where I constantly remind and push students to show their work. Instead of using "check your work" I could use vocabulary like proving, evaluating, justifying etc.


I knew that I used a lot of visuals like large paper coins, a big model analog clock, base ten blocks, charts etc to conduct my math meeting. Even in the centers I have it manipulative heavy, so the students can work, touch, and see the math. I will continue to to provide manipulatives during math meeting, direct instruction, guided practice, and independent practice because I know that ELL's need that.

I need to change how I use my voice. WHen I asked the students how many agreed, my phrasing coupled with my tone clearly let the students know that I agreed, and it did not give the opportunity I was looking for to see who understood and who did not. I have to work on that so I don't give it away with my phrasing or tone.

There was one comment about my sticks being out but I was not using them. I was using them. I don't know how it was perceived that I did not call on students using the sticks. I used them to call students up to the board. Some other questions I called on students because I was targeting specific Broncos on certain concepts. I just wanted to clarify what I was doing.

In terms of thematic instruction, I was observed doing math meeting which is a daily practice of many math skills. Our theme right now is time and clocks.

I liked the suggestion that I need to incorporate more real-life connections into everything that I teach them. THis taps into respect for home language and culture which I should be able to do more. Using the knowledge that I have for the culture andlanguage and bringing that alive more in my lessons and daily math practice would be something that I could certainly do right away.

Reach 110 Equity (Teaching for Equity Resources)

I browsed several websites, and it appears that there are a lot of different resources out there on the topic. I would like to take the initiative over the summer and choose one or two good readings on this subject as it hits a personal chord with me. I hope that I can be steered in the right direction by my coach to narrowing down some possible reading for the summer break.


I took a look at one particular reading on one of the suggested websites. It was Brian D. Schultz's Spectacular Things Happen Along the Way. This might be one of the reading I look into over the s ummer. According to the article, a fifth grade teacher by the name of Brian Schultz who worked in Chicago's Cabrini Green neighborhood took a group of fifth grade students in room 405 to work on a sophisticated advocacy plan calling for a new school building. Brian Schultz their teacher and author of the book, enacted a social action project with the fifth graders to address their concerns. Although the school was never built, their actions did gain a lot of media attention and supporters including Ralph Nader.

The article goes on to discuss how many teachers due to the rigidity of testing and scripted curricula are limited in the likelihood of the enactment of social change or action projects. Many times teachers are so focused and under such pressure to pour all of their energy, resources, and planning into meeting the standards and preparing students for state tests that they have no room to develop projects that address issues of social change.

Finally, it made me think of one of the reasons I have stayed in education for so long. I stay for exactly that reason: social change. I see that at Rocketship we reach out to our families to be involved in things like the upcoming PACT meeting in which the community is able to ask questions of public officials about schools of choice in the community. We do things at Rocketship that are not part of most public schools. Reaching beyond just the adults, this article made me think about what we can do with all of those students who sit in our classrooms everyday. There are so many social issues out there to make society a better place. What is possible is that these social action projects can be done in a way that will simultaneously develop activist and standards-oriented academic skills. This idea is definately one worth futher exploration.

Reach 110 Equity

The reading by Lisa Delpit, " The Silenced Diologue" was an excellent article about how the white middle-class culture is the one in power, and how this shapes education. When the author got into detail about the culture of power and the five aspects of power, the first one jumped out at me right away. I have always been aware that as a teacher, I am in a position of power over the students. I remember taking a multiculturalism in education course back in college that specifically talked about this very issue. Racism can and will be repeated if a teacher holds that power and prejudice. However, this goes further into things that are not under my direct control like the textbooks that are published, the creators and decision makers of curriculum, the power of the state and federal government to establish educational policy, the authors/creators of the very test which are used to gauge who graduates, who gets into college, who earns credentials, degrees, and who can ultimately be successful in this culture.


One quote that touched me in the article was when the author brought out the point that she has frequently heard schools call poor parents, "uncaring." When parents respond they many times say or show an attitude such that, "it is the school's job." I admit that I am guilty of thinking those exact thoughts and feeling frustrate over the years by parents who seem to hold that attitude. I as a teacher have wanted support and needed support in making sure that these students of mine are successful, and I get angry and frustrated at times when a parent is sending me that message. However, after reading this article and specifically this quote, I had not stopped to think where this idea or attitude was coming from until now. As the author points out what we fail to understand is that if our parents belonged to this culture of power they would transmit these codes and rules to their children. It made me think of what I have tried to establish in terms of my own daughter and value education and do everything in a certain way to ensure that the doors of opportunity are open to her. I know the rules of the game because I have played it already; however, many of our families are immigrants who do not have the information to know what all the codes and rules are, and yes they are going to be unfamiliar with those rules and codes. That made a lot of sense to me. The next time I am tempted to react with that opinion that certain parents don't care, I will step back to think of this article and remember that those parents or families probably are not equipped with the tools, codes, rules, etc to play the game of the culture in power. It makes sense that these families would be teaching another culture to their children that would enable them to survive in their communities.


The last quote that I want to bring up is the following: "In this county students will be juged on their product regardless of the process they used to achieve it." I believe that we are results obsessed as a society, and we value more the final result than the process. How can I take this and teach my students that the process does matter? Do I just arm them with what they will need to know or master in order to fall into the culture of power and teach them to ignore the other pieces?

I am looking forward to our discussion on Tuesday.

Reach 108 Differentiated Assessment

These reading were so powerful and generated a lot for me to think about. I am going to start writing and see where that takes me in this blog. More and more I am understanding the significance and power behing good diagnostic, formative, and summative assessments. I will get into my personal skill in this area later in the blog. As I started reading, I like the idea that reliable assessments come from multiple sources of evidence. I liked the comparison of viewing assessments like photo albums vs. single snapshots. I thought that was a clever way to phrase it. One single summative test at the end is less likely to provide a complete picture of student's learning than a collection of diverse evidence. I have always thought that we as a society (probably for political purposes) rely too heavily on those standardized tests to be the sole determining factor. My question has always been well then if we know that, then why do we still focus or continue to emphasize that one big standardized test? In my classroom, some children are going to do well on the paper unit assessments and others will not. As an example, the last unit I finished was almost two weeks ago, and I had worked really hard on this unit and decided to extend it a bit longer due to the fact that there were still a lot of students who during the formative assessments like teacher observation were still not showing understanding. While we were doing the fact families, some students were able to put the three numbers correctly in the right order to make correct number families, but they were falling short with that key understanding of how the inverse relationship between addition and subtraction to solve problems. I was determined to make sure that there was understanding of that concept and not just being satisfied with students providing the correct number sentences. During the unit, one of my lowest students in my first class and probably overall was showing through other means like board problems or through bellwork or other tasks that she had a good understanding of the inverse relationship between addition and subtraction. Peggy was even in my room to observe a lesson where I had pulled a small group, and she was dominating the group by answering quickly and quite vocally and drowing out some of the other students in that group session. It had become clear to me that she was exhibiting some understanding during that formative assessment (my observation) and a work sample of building 4 number sentences out of the three numbers given in the fact family extension lesson. Peggy even commented in her observation notes that she was providing a lot of answers and seemed ready to go back to her seat and "graduate" from that small group. I was excited each and every time before this particular day and after that she had made big steps in acquiring that understanding. Then came the unit assessment (big summative paper test), and she did not perform well on it. Should I use that one paper test as the only indicator of her understanding of fact families? Years ago I might have said that the one summative assessment cancelled out everything else, but now I see that my little "M" in the Broncos really does know a thing or two about fact families number sense that a paper test does not show.

We were all given a benchmark assessment to use for Math as the method for placing our Rocketeers at either far below basic, below basic, basic, proficient, and advanced. The test is pretty good, but now I am in a place to start to question if we should solely be using only the scores from that assessment to place our students at the end of the year? WHat about my "M" who clearly has some understanding about fact families because she has demonstrated it to me on numerous occasions? It will be interesting to see this next round how she will test on that piece of the assessment. Using this big end of the year test to prove what a student can and cannot due seems to be like putting all of your eggs in one basket. I am a bit uncomfortable because of those students like "M" who show understanding inother ways, just not on the paper test.

I liked the piece about giving feedback also. I wanted to take time to make a comment or two about that. I agree that we attach scores and percentages but those are not feedback. Feedback is exactly what the chapter metnioned which is giving students information about their strengths and weaknesses. I am familiar with rubrics and I have seen really good kid friendly rubrics in writing; however, I have never seen one for math. I would like to know if anyone has seen one or has an idea about how you might use one for math. Sometimes math can be so cut and dry because there is one right answer you are looking for unlike writing where one is able to be flexible and more creative. Could a math rubric be developed an if so what would you use it for and what would it include? I share to a certain extent feedback with my students. I probably do not do it in the most effective way, but I do share with them information about what they are doing in terms of showing their work that maybe is stumping them and which specific steps they might have confused or missed in working a problem. Maybe it was that they did not get the key word in a word problem which contributed to the wrong operation being applied. That would just be an example. I always stress for them to show their work and that means that there should be some kind of number sentence or equation or drawings or something there to prove it. I include that in the assessments because at the first grade level the math can be pretty simple and the really advanced ones are able to figure things out in their head without writing it down, but I stress the importance of them working every single problem out and proving it no matter how easy it can be done even if done in their head.

Right now I am so excited to see growth on the big benchmark assessment;however, I know that those kinds of tests even the unit assessments I have are not "fair." As the article mentioned some with be penalized by using that format and it will favor others. I have some pre-assessments and unit assessments in place and I am learning to use a variety of things for formative assessments which is good because I did not have those things going for me years ago. I am in a stronger place now as a teacher, but I need some serious work on creating even stronger diagnostics and summative assessments and that will be a work in progress.

REACH 108 Strategies

These chapters had so much information that I had to read a few pages at a time, stop, and then pick up and read again another day. The chapters listed a lot of different strategies, and I hope to talk about them more in depth during our sessions to get a better idea of how each one works because after reading, I don't feel I completely can envision what each one of these strategies looks like actually being implemented. I guess that says something about the kind of learner I am. I need to actually see things being done to fully understand them and be able to do them myself. The reading mentioned stations, agendas, complex instruction, centers, tiered activities, compacting etc. I really found it difficult to take this all in and make direct applications to math based on the examples that the reading provided. I can understand the concept of centers and stations as this is a target area for me to begin implementing very soon. I have already discussed with this with our coach and a little with our principal, and I am waiting to figure out maybe in which specific direction I can go with it. I have implemeted centers when I taught in another district, and the program we used required a minimum of 7 centers around a specific theme or unit of study. I think centers is the one strategy listed that I feel most comfortable and knowledgeable about. Jason, I know you finally implemented your centers this week, and I wanted to know how that worked out for you and the students. Based on your reaction the other day, it sounded like you had a considerable amount of success with it. I have wanted to ask for some collaboration time for us math teachers just to bounce some ideas off of each other in terms of differentiation, and I hope we can get the chance to discuss and make our math program even stronger. I guess one of the questions, I have for you would be which other strategies mentioned in this reading assignment do you feel would be most effective for math. I liked the compacting one as it relies on encouraging and emphasizing teachers to assess students at the beginning of a unit and those students who get at least three-quarters correct would not continue work on what they already know. I feel like I have made the grave error of falling into the trap of teaching it anyway even if they know it and I want to set this as one of my goals and start using those assessments in a better way to organize and structure my instruction for different groups and levels of students. I am sure I probably bored them a bit, but my rationale was well it will be good review or reinforcement for them. Another idea that I liked about differentiation is providing opportunities for children to make choices. I think this goes back to 105 and our discussion about how people learn, and choice is definately a piece of that. I am struggling a bit right now with the huge difference between the really high groups and the lower ones that are still struggling with number sense or number recognition. I hope we can have a deep discussion at our next session about issues we have and how we see differentiation working to as the author wrote, " the goal is for the teacher to meet a student where he is in knowledge, understanding, thought, planning, and presentation, and then to help the learner push forward." That was the quote that summarizes what we as teachers are trying to learn more about right now in this course.

REACH 109 ASSIGNMENT 2 STEP UP TO WRITING

I really loved the two articles given for the writing piece of 109. Years ago, I would have never stopped to think to incorporate so much writing into math, but through good training and excellent guidance by my school and my teacher program, I am starting to see the value in doing so. I push my students for oral explanations to their answers which is good, but I also understand that having a time and place for them to process their thinking and express it in written form would also give me great insight into their exact thinking process, their strengths and their weaknesses as mathematicians. I want them not to just give me the answer whether it is right or wrong, but I constantly push them to defend their answer to the "jury" the rest of the class. Going along with pushing them for oral answers, I could continue to expand on that and give them an outlet for writing it down and explaining it through words, sentences, and drawings. I do provide them with some ways in which they can write it down. One of the ways is to write it down in their math journals. Since they are only in First Grade, I have had to provide prompts to get them started, and I have asked them to write in their own words something that they either did today in class or learned, or reviewed that they can share. I provide vocabulary words in their unit assessments in which they have to provide a definition of the word and use it correctly in a math related sentence. I see that I can model more some think alouds and model the writing process more as it relates to their own thinking and answers so that they can see how that proces works and how they might apply it in their own process of understanding concepts in math. I think I could improve by asking this everytime we do an activity and it goes into their notebooks. I could ask for it also by choosing one or two math problems of the day on the board, and then upon going over the answer going a step beyond and modeling my thinking process and writing it on the board. I also think that I can incorporate more writing into their homework assignments even if it is writing down one thing that was easy or difficult about the homework and explaining why it was either easy or difficult. I think there are so many different ways a good teacher can incorporate more writing into math, and I am excited about improving and pushing them more and more in math but also with the literacy piece as it relates to math.

Reach 108 Self-Assessment

Differentiated instruction is such a powerful piece of a quality classroom. Being at Rocketship and in the Reach program is helping me to put the pieces together so that I can more effectively teach the diversity of learners all 82 of them who sit in my classroom everyday. At the beginning of the year, I had very little information about those 82 students and it has taken months to really grasp all of the factors that combine to make each student who he or she is. I began thinking about how I could possibly teach all 82, and know each one of them in specific ways relative to their socio-economic background, language, motivation, experiences, personal interests, and learning styles. There is so much information to consider when evaluating and creating differentiated instruction. Although I am no master at the grandiose task, I feel like my school and my teacher training program are guiding me in the right direction. I find that I am doing certain things right like carving out effective blocks of time to work in either small groups or one-on-one students. I am searching for appropriate ways to teach the curriculum and implement those strategies to ensure that all of my students are understanding the topic in relevant ways. I have looked at where I fall in terms of the continuum and I have placed myself professionally in between emerging and applying for TPE 4,5, and 7. In terms of TPE 2 and 3 Monitoring student learning during instruction, and interpretation and use of assessment, I again have placed myself between emerging and applying. After reading the articles, I am more aware each step of the way how important those pre-assessments are because they provide the information for alternative learning paths for students. These pre-assessments will guide me into the right direction of making sure instruction is where it should be for individual students. UbD planning will help me plan and focus on the "what" part of instuction, and the DI piece will focus on the who, where, and how. I am understanding that these two pieces of a quality classroom need each other, and even the best curriculum will falter if it does not address the who, where, and how. I look forward to growing professionally and developing my skills as a teacher to tap into combining UbD with Differentiated Instruction and finding effective strategies that meet the needs of a wide range of learners. I would like to challenge my students to achieve at their level and eventually moving over into more innovating teaching where as to guide my students to start making appropriate choices for their learning. I have a way to go on this road to mastery, but I am on the path and seek any and all support in that adventure.