Khan Academy
I love website’s mission statement: “a free world-class education for anyone anywhere” and that it is a nonprofit. It is refreshing to see a website whose sole goal is to be a free teacher for all. I looked up the creator of Kahn Academy and I found out that he is the narrator of most of the 3,400 short instructional videos.
I will most likely use this website to keep my math skills sharp and to study for my math teacher exam. I also see myself using this website for my future math students. I would probably do 30 minutes twice a week if the students have computers in the class or assign it as homework. I love the targeted practice the website does because it gives student’s instant feedback on what they need to practice and what they are good at doing.
What I found most valuable from this website is that I can create a “virtual classroom” where I can view students practice session’s success and time spent. I can create a “playlist” for the students based on their math level so it introduces students who excel in math new concepts while assisting those students who struggle with math. The "interactive quizzes" and tools for teachers to chart student progress are really useful as a visual representation of students’ progress. Parents can also access the information from Kahn Academy and help his/her child at home.
Reading Response #1
The most important concepts in this reading section was to get me to think of this particular age group, not just as students but as a complete person and to acknowledge all their physiological and mental changes. These chapters outline the various changes from growth spurts to acne and social changes. The chapters also stress that knowing the student’s changes will make me a more effective teacher because I can create lessons that have background knowledge on their nature. It is important to know how the students feel, how they learn, how they change physically and emotionally so that I, as their teacher, can meet their academic goals.
The chapters also discuss how middle school students need the support of their family and schools even as they push them away thinking it will demonstrate their independence. Their friends become their world and the acceptance of their peers means life or death to them. The pressure to conform to the different norms of the media, their parents, and other people in their lives can be difficult for them to handle. As a teacher, I must do my best to be understanding and provide the silver lining they might need to get through the day.
Reading Response #2
Reading about how schools should be run democratically when it comes to the development of curriculum made perfect sense. The integration model allows for teachers and student to collaborate in a curriculum that looks to answer questions students have about the world, themselves and society. Involving students in deciding what they learn creates a more motivating environment for all the participants and as a result more is learned. I am a little intimated about this new model of teaching since my entire education was a subject centered curriculum. I have never seen this type of learning before but I am excited and willing to try it out because, as a teacher, I want to do what is scientifically proven to work and not just what has always been taught.
Reading Response #3
The most important points from the reading were the constructivism philosophy, “kid-watching”, and collaborative learning. Constructivism philosophy means that the teacher encourages the students to explore while he/she points them in the right direction so that they can build their own knowledge. During the carefully crafted hands on activity, the teacher does not tell the students what they will find but rather lets them figure it out themselves. “Kid-watching” simply means that the teacher makes it a point to get to know each of her student’s culture, abilities, and learning styles so that he/she can facilitate learning in a more effective way. Finally, collaborative learning can be a useful tool because the students can provide feedback to each other, offer alternative points of views, and develop collaborative solutions to activities.
Reading Response #4
"Curriculum integration" is a great method for creating programs because it creates a student orientated environment and it shortens the gap between the roles that a student and teacher must play. The students are in charge of their learning which in turn provides students with both the vested interest and a meaningful context for learning. This is a great opportunity for students to view democracy in action in their everyday life; it will help them become critical thinkers. The students have purpose and enjoy taking part in advanced and intriguing discussions with their peers. The students see their teacher as a friend and someone who cares about their future. I enjoyed the concept of teaming, it is a great way to cultivate closer relationship with the students and it makes the students feel as though they belong and contribute to something. I feel there should be more advisory programs in schools because they provide emotional support and guidance for students during a very challenging time in their life. These advisors can be a friendly third party parent who the student can trust and ask any question without feeling embarrassed. Another way that the school can implement different programs is by having alternative schooling that has been proven to be more effective in helping students learn more.
Reading Response #5
Brown Book
The most critical parts of this chapter were how important it is to implement the middle school concepts presented in this book in a complete manner. The concepts presented in this book will not be effective if they are only implemented by a few teachers; it must adopted by all the middle school teachers. For example, even if the students are placed in teams as the book suggests, without teachers working together to create a curriculum or plan the activities the environment is not optimal for growth opportunities. The overall tone of the book is optimistic about the future of middle schools and the curriculum it presented to us, the readers.
Technology Book
As a visual learner, I appreciate the concepts discussed in this chapter since it highlights how important well-structured visual aids are to students. Organizing information in a fluent and memorable picture will help students store and recall information. Kinesthetic activities are also incredible useful and memorable but underused by teachers because of the difficulty in implementing and creating them. Technology today allows teachers easily facilitate learning with objective oriented kinesthetic activities. I will try and create more activities using movement since it is a great way to keep students engaged in their learning. Since math concepts can become very abstract, it is a good way to bring numbers, graphs and functions to life.
Reading Response #6
The chapter focuses on the numerous techniques available for teachers and students to use to summarize information via notes. The chapter mentions slide show-based combination notes graphic organizers as some of the various ways to synthesis key information. The chapter also focuses on how technology can be used to help students learn how to write effective notes such as Microsoft Word which has numerous tools that highlights key information in text and has templates for cornell notes and “t” notes. The chapter also mentions numerous websites that can help students and teachers such as typewith.me, notestar and thinktank.
It is important to teach students how to take effective notes in every subject taught. Especially since the type of notes that work best for each subject varies. The math notes a student takes will need a much more different format than an English class since the type of information that needs to be remembered by the student is vastly different. In math class, procedural information and various examples are used as notes while English class has more definitions and concepts.
Reading Response #7
Connections between what a student already knows and new information is the key to successful retention of new knowledge for students. As a teacher, my job is to facilitate the connections my students make by asking them to compare, classify, create metaphors, and create analogies. Technology can be a useful tool to help students better classify the new information by using templates in a word document for example. I can design activities where students collect the same type of data about different objects and then compare the objects using bar graphs, tables, or a box plot. It is not enough that students are presented with a new lesson, they must be able to make sense of the information for themselves by first understanding what they learned, then analyzing what they learned, and finally storing what they learned.
The learning environment is created and maintained by the teacher and the students. The ideal environment is one where students are kept in the zone of proximal development, calm, and encouraging. From day one, the teacher must express her expectations of the students, have student involved in curriculum development, and encourage risk taking in learning.
Reading Response #8
There is a lot of inaccurate information about what the purpose of middle school is and how effective it is in terms of academic achievement. As educators, we must be advocates for practices that have been shown to benefit adolescent's learning and education environment. Unfortunatley, it is not just up to one teacher but the entire school and all the adults that work there to create an environment where students feel they can succeed. Partially implementing the middle school concept means that admin changes the structure but not changing instructional and curricular practices. Also, teachers are not given enough time for collaborative planning and teachers have limited decision making authority over the schedule or curriculum.
Reading Response #9
As a team, we all did a great job finding information and synthesizing into an effective paper. We also had a cohesive powerpoint with key information and possible solutions that could be implemented by teachers and parents. The integration of polleverywhere into the introduction allowed for the class to think about their own beliefs about sleep. We then identified all the impacts sleep has on cognitive and physical development. As for myself, I was not satisfied with my auditory skills because I did not efficiently communicate some points that I wanted to make. I need to work on not getting nervous during presentations because it affects my performance.
I love website’s mission statement: “a free world-class education for anyone anywhere” and that it is a nonprofit. It is refreshing to see a website whose sole goal is to be a free teacher for all. I looked up the creator of Kahn Academy and I found out that he is the narrator of most of the 3,400 short instructional videos.
I will most likely use this website to keep my math skills sharp and to study for my math teacher exam. I also see myself using this website for my future math students. I would probably do 30 minutes twice a week if the students have computers in the class or assign it as homework. I love the targeted practice the website does because it gives student’s instant feedback on what they need to practice and what they are good at doing.
What I found most valuable from this website is that I can create a “virtual classroom” where I can view students practice session’s success and time spent. I can create a “playlist” for the students based on their math level so it introduces students who excel in math new concepts while assisting those students who struggle with math. The "interactive quizzes" and tools for teachers to chart student progress are really useful as a visual representation of students’ progress. Parents can also access the information from Kahn Academy and help his/her child at home.
Reading Response #1
The most important concepts in this reading section was to get me to think of this particular age group, not just as students but as a complete person and to acknowledge all their physiological and mental changes. These chapters outline the various changes from growth spurts to acne and social changes. The chapters also stress that knowing the student’s changes will make me a more effective teacher because I can create lessons that have background knowledge on their nature. It is important to know how the students feel, how they learn, how they change physically and emotionally so that I, as their teacher, can meet their academic goals.
The chapters also discuss how middle school students need the support of their family and schools even as they push them away thinking it will demonstrate their independence. Their friends become their world and the acceptance of their peers means life or death to them. The pressure to conform to the different norms of the media, their parents, and other people in their lives can be difficult for them to handle. As a teacher, I must do my best to be understanding and provide the silver lining they might need to get through the day.
Reading Response #2
Reading about how schools should be run democratically when it comes to the development of curriculum made perfect sense. The integration model allows for teachers and student to collaborate in a curriculum that looks to answer questions students have about the world, themselves and society. Involving students in deciding what they learn creates a more motivating environment for all the participants and as a result more is learned. I am a little intimated about this new model of teaching since my entire education was a subject centered curriculum. I have never seen this type of learning before but I am excited and willing to try it out because, as a teacher, I want to do what is scientifically proven to work and not just what has always been taught.
Reading Response #3
The most important points from the reading were the constructivism philosophy, “kid-watching”, and collaborative learning. Constructivism philosophy means that the teacher encourages the students to explore while he/she points them in the right direction so that they can build their own knowledge. During the carefully crafted hands on activity, the teacher does not tell the students what they will find but rather lets them figure it out themselves. “Kid-watching” simply means that the teacher makes it a point to get to know each of her student’s culture, abilities, and learning styles so that he/she can facilitate learning in a more effective way. Finally, collaborative learning can be a useful tool because the students can provide feedback to each other, offer alternative points of views, and develop collaborative solutions to activities.
Reading Response #4
"Curriculum integration" is a great method for creating programs because it creates a student orientated environment and it shortens the gap between the roles that a student and teacher must play. The students are in charge of their learning which in turn provides students with both the vested interest and a meaningful context for learning. This is a great opportunity for students to view democracy in action in their everyday life; it will help them become critical thinkers. The students have purpose and enjoy taking part in advanced and intriguing discussions with their peers. The students see their teacher as a friend and someone who cares about their future. I enjoyed the concept of teaming, it is a great way to cultivate closer relationship with the students and it makes the students feel as though they belong and contribute to something. I feel there should be more advisory programs in schools because they provide emotional support and guidance for students during a very challenging time in their life. These advisors can be a friendly third party parent who the student can trust and ask any question without feeling embarrassed. Another way that the school can implement different programs is by having alternative schooling that has been proven to be more effective in helping students learn more.
Reading Response #5
Brown Book
The most critical parts of this chapter were how important it is to implement the middle school concepts presented in this book in a complete manner. The concepts presented in this book will not be effective if they are only implemented by a few teachers; it must adopted by all the middle school teachers. For example, even if the students are placed in teams as the book suggests, without teachers working together to create a curriculum or plan the activities the environment is not optimal for growth opportunities. The overall tone of the book is optimistic about the future of middle schools and the curriculum it presented to us, the readers.
Technology Book
As a visual learner, I appreciate the concepts discussed in this chapter since it highlights how important well-structured visual aids are to students. Organizing information in a fluent and memorable picture will help students store and recall information. Kinesthetic activities are also incredible useful and memorable but underused by teachers because of the difficulty in implementing and creating them. Technology today allows teachers easily facilitate learning with objective oriented kinesthetic activities. I will try and create more activities using movement since it is a great way to keep students engaged in their learning. Since math concepts can become very abstract, it is a good way to bring numbers, graphs and functions to life.
Reading Response #6
The chapter focuses on the numerous techniques available for teachers and students to use to summarize information via notes. The chapter mentions slide show-based combination notes graphic organizers as some of the various ways to synthesis key information. The chapter also focuses on how technology can be used to help students learn how to write effective notes such as Microsoft Word which has numerous tools that highlights key information in text and has templates for cornell notes and “t” notes. The chapter also mentions numerous websites that can help students and teachers such as typewith.me, notestar and thinktank.
It is important to teach students how to take effective notes in every subject taught. Especially since the type of notes that work best for each subject varies. The math notes a student takes will need a much more different format than an English class since the type of information that needs to be remembered by the student is vastly different. In math class, procedural information and various examples are used as notes while English class has more definitions and concepts.
Reading Response #7
Connections between what a student already knows and new information is the key to successful retention of new knowledge for students. As a teacher, my job is to facilitate the connections my students make by asking them to compare, classify, create metaphors, and create analogies. Technology can be a useful tool to help students better classify the new information by using templates in a word document for example. I can design activities where students collect the same type of data about different objects and then compare the objects using bar graphs, tables, or a box plot. It is not enough that students are presented with a new lesson, they must be able to make sense of the information for themselves by first understanding what they learned, then analyzing what they learned, and finally storing what they learned.
The learning environment is created and maintained by the teacher and the students. The ideal environment is one where students are kept in the zone of proximal development, calm, and encouraging. From day one, the teacher must express her expectations of the students, have student involved in curriculum development, and encourage risk taking in learning.
Reading Response #8
There is a lot of inaccurate information about what the purpose of middle school is and how effective it is in terms of academic achievement. As educators, we must be advocates for practices that have been shown to benefit adolescent's learning and education environment. Unfortunatley, it is not just up to one teacher but the entire school and all the adults that work there to create an environment where students feel they can succeed. Partially implementing the middle school concept means that admin changes the structure but not changing instructional and curricular practices. Also, teachers are not given enough time for collaborative planning and teachers have limited decision making authority over the schedule or curriculum.
Reading Response #9
As a team, we all did a great job finding information and synthesizing into an effective paper. We also had a cohesive powerpoint with key information and possible solutions that could be implemented by teachers and parents. The integration of polleverywhere into the introduction allowed for the class to think about their own beliefs about sleep. We then identified all the impacts sleep has on cognitive and physical development. As for myself, I was not satisfied with my auditory skills because I did not efficiently communicate some points that I wanted to make. I need to work on not getting nervous during presentations because it affects my performance.