Task Five:Deeper Thinking about Domain One

I spent way too much time trying to find just the right article and video to watch that might relate to my classroom situation. In doing so I read many interesting, informative articles and watched several videos. Probably the most interesting were articles about using video games to motivate students to want to learn and the depth of knowledge they can gain. Games have also proven to lower violence, improve school culture and improve quality of education. If you get a chance, they were quite enlightening especially for high school teachers.

The article How Should We Measure Student Learning? The Many Forms of Assessment contends that assessment is the heart of education. This is sad but true. Instruction is driven by testing in our school district. The article was so true in saying that teachers and parents use scores to gauge student’s academic strengths. The quality of the education system is judged by the community by looking at assessments scores. Many good points stood out in this article such as teachers teaching to the test at the expense of more meaningful learning activities. I don’t know how many times I have to cover certain material so the students will be prepared for the test instead of doing other beneficial activities that would probably better prepare them for life. The Edutopia staff emphasizes that standardized testing does not teach teamwork, collaboration, and moral character that will make a literate 21st century citizen. Ultimately this should be our goal as educators. As more districts experiment with project learning, etc. hopefully the ideas will spread throughout education that standardized testing is not the way to go.

The video I watched reiterated the ideas and concepts of the article. Some of the key terms I jotted down while watching included students being over tested and under examined. Standardized testing shows little indication of what kids can do in the real world. I scanned numerous blogs and found much of the same information. So it seems most agree on assessment issues. It just seems we don’t know how to come together to fix the problem that would make students better prepared for life. It is encouraging to know that steps are being made in the right direction.

It is hard for me to answer how this fits into my classroom. For those of you that don’t know, I mostly do data collection and analysis for grades K-5. I only teach 1 hour a day involving math intervention. And some days ironically I am assisting teachers with other tasks such as helping prepare students for the upcoming GRADE test which measures reading/comprehension skills. So I am starting to find it difficult when trying to relate these concepts and ideas into my instruction. It concerns me trying to decide on an inquiry plan. Hopefully through more research and my group member’s recommendations it will all fall into place. Dr. Clarke-thanks for your suggestion about developing a resource binder. Now I just need to pick a topic.

Task Four: Instuction Domains of Professional Practice

After a lot of thought and rereading information on the 4 domains, I chose Domain 1 to research at a deeper level. I am finding it difficult to pick a domain because of the type of work I do which involves very little classroom work. Since I really don’t know for sure what position I will have next year I chose this domain because I think I could utilize this information especially if I am in a classroom.

I am most comfortable with Component 1b…demonstrating knowledge of students. As Danielson says in chapter 4 on this component, he stresses that part of knowing students is knowing which ones require additional assistance in learning parts of the curriculum or which ones must demonstrate knowledge in unique ways. I interact with most of my student’s families which enlightens me in many ways about the student. The students are also assessed at least every 6 weeks or sooner so this also gives updated data to better group the students and reteach certain skills. So I feel I have this component covered from all areas.

I believe that component 1a…knowledge of content and pedagogy is most strongly tied to instruction. Let’s face it, if a teacher doesn’t know the content it would be impossible to have a successful classroom where learning takes place. A statement from the book was “A person cannot teach what he or she does not know.” So I firmly believe this component is strongly tied to instruction.

I would like to focus on component 1d: Demonstrating Knowledge of Resources. While I have ample resources that go along with the curriculum, I know there is a world of information and activities out there to reteach certain concepts that I am not aware of. Danielson says that when teachers are aware of this wide range of resources, they can plan instruction to incorporate the resources into their teaching. This leads back to Domain 1:Planning and Preparation which I would like to focus on. Right now planning and preparation is done with 2 other interventionists. We follow the curriculum but we also discuss activities that worked and what didn’t and supplement with new ideas. We have common planning on Fridays which certainly helps in preparing for the next week.

From my group members I would like to know any useful resources you might use in your classroom to enhance learning in small intervention groups. Hopefully I will learn many throughout this course but I thought you might have a resource that I could use right away. It would mainly be for reteaching kindergarten math skills.

Task Two:Enacting Curriculum

First let me say that I love snow! I love snow days! And if it is going to be cold, it might as well snow! My kids love it and so do I! Sleigh riding, snowman building and snowball fights are favorite activities at our house. I am also looking forward to the Super Bowl tomorrow and hoping for a snow day on Monday because we will be up late. Now I will try to refocus my mind to comment on curriculum. Enjoy the weekend!

While recalling the articles for this week’s readings I am pondering on what the purpose of curriculum is and what role do teachers have in this purpose? My first thought is that teachers have a huge role in the purpose of curriculum whether we like it or not. In the Morey Schwartz article, he states that all curricular materials are subject to the interpretation and individual application of the teacher. Wow…what pressure that places on we the teachers! The purpose of curriculum revolves around the student and is used by the teacher to organize the year in order for the students to cover the necessary material. As the article, “Put Understanding First” states that curriculum is not just about covering material but preparing students for the world beyond school allowing them to apply their learned skills to issues and problems they will face in the future.

In considering how much control we have in designing the curriculum, I have to say we have very little control. Up to this point teachers in our district have been encouraged to follow the curriculum that has been laid out for them. It seems the administration likes this tool to help evaluate the effectiveness of the teacher. Change is in progress where a new curriculum coach is encouraging teachers to branch out and find new ways to enhance learning while still using the curriculum as a guide. Ultimately the teacher should have a lot of control in designing the curriculum since they live it day to day and are aware of the changes that need to be made in order for all students to be successful. A lot of documents look great on paper but the execution of those plans depends on the intuition and insight of the teacher of what works and what doesn’t.

It is hard to say what curriculum looks like in my classroom since I have students for very short periods of intense instruction. Curriculum throughout the school in which I teach and which my own kids attend seems to be quite rigid. Teachers are expected to finish certain units in a given nine weeks in order to cover all material in the curriculum for the year. Hopefully our school is beginning to move toward some of the advanced new ideas in curriculum design. I feel we have a successful curriculum in place but the different approaches and expectations I read about in these articles reiterates that we need to be more flexible to individualize the curriculum to make our students more successful after graduation.