This week is going to be hard to reflect on. Both Tuesday and Thursday were spent in our groups working on our sixth grade lesson plan. So... it has been kinda boring but i will write about it anyway. We are teaching the kids about assembly lines and having them put one into practice by building a balloon car.
Thursday we spent a few minutes discussing some of the timing of our lesson and finalizing who was teaching what. I am in charge of the activity, instructions, and materials. So far so good. I also spent some time creating some jigs in Shums lab for the activity. I created a block for one student to use as a hole punch for the lids/wheels. I also spent alot of time making a holder for the bottles that will allow for them to cut a hole in the top of the bottles. This device uses a cardboard tube and a wooden base. Works pretty good I think.
Here is the quick version of our lesson plan.
Sequential Order
Sugar Cookies
with quality control pre-test
I love Lucy Video
History
Good Assembly Line Video
with 3 principles of Assembly Line
Instructions/ Split up Groups/ Handout Materials
Friday, November 18, 2011
Monday, November 14, 2011
Reflection #10
I have to say this was kind of a fun week. Despite having lectures on both days I feel like I learned a lot this week. Tuesday we talked about teacher salary, benefits, perks etc. and why it is awesome to be a teacher. I thought that is was very interesting to see some of the different starting salaries of school districts. It seemed that for the most part Utah districts had about the same amount within a couple thousand. It wasn't surprising to me that out of state districts had higher starting salaries. What was surprising to me was the about of students in our program that plan on leaving Utah to teach. I really thought more people would be sticking around.
1) Organizers should focus on what is important as opposed to what is unusual
Thursday was interesting as well. We spent the first half or so of class in our teaching groups discussing our lesson plan ideas and getting ready to teach the sixth grade class.
The rest of class was spent listening to Jeff LeBaron, a graduate of the program from a few years ago. He talked about some of the activities that he has his Jr High class do and they sounded way fun. I could really see me loving to teach an intro to tech class at the Jr High level. I had already heard of a lot of the activities that he does but the one that caught my eye was the hot air balloons that they made. Out of crete paper they built six foot high balloons and then actually heated them up and let them fly. That is a way cool idea! The other thing that I loved about Jeffs presentation was that you can tell he loves his job and his students. It was also easy to see that he is making a difference in his classroom, something that I will strive to do.
The rest of class was spent listening to Jeff LeBaron, a graduate of the program from a few years ago. He talked about some of the activities that he has his Jr High class do and they sounded way fun. I could really see me loving to teach an intro to tech class at the Jr High level. I had already heard of a lot of the activities that he does but the one that caught my eye was the hot air balloons that they made. Out of crete paper they built six foot high balloons and then actually heated them up and let them fly. That is a way cool idea! The other thing that I loved about Jeffs presentation was that you can tell he loves his job and his students. It was also easy to see that he is making a difference in his classroom, something that I will strive to do.
We also finished the readings for the Marzano book and I just wanted to add a couple of things that impressed me:
1) Organizers should focus on what is important as opposed to what is unusual
2) Higher level organizers produce deeper learning that the lower level
3) Advanced organizers are most useful with information that is not well organized
4) Different types of advanced organizers produce different results
Sunday, November 6, 2011
Reflection #9
This past week I really enjoyed the discussion that we had about assessment. It was interesting to talk about what an assessment of learning is as opposed to an evaluation of learning. Other than it being a three hour lecture it was very enjoyable and informative. Although I beleive Geoff has a strong (biased) oppinion i would agree with what he said.
"True and False tests are a waste of everyone's time!"
This statement was very interesting to me because i have never enjoyed taking a true and false test. The questions always seemed the most confusing to me and the most unfair. Now after this lecture i understand why i have always felt that way. Geoff informed us that he could always score at least a 72% on a true and false quiz. He claims this is because you are not required to know the material, rather, by following a few key words and rules there is no knowlege of the subject required. Long story short there is no way to get a true evaluation of content.
Evaluation = measuring the understanding, judgment of merit
Assessment = process of documenting in measurable terms
Another interesting point that Geoff made about tests was on multiple choice questions, he showed many different questions that were written wrong and we picked out why. He showed examples of questions that either guided the students toward the right answer or didnt allow them to get the right answer because it contained the wrong article. Another example was using less than four answers or using garbage just to fill one of the answers. I thought that these ideas were obvious but i think they are mistakes that everybody makes.
Rubrics = a list of criteria and ranges of content
Reliability = measument is repeated
Validity = accuracy of measure
All in all it was a good week. I enjoyed the last few teachings that we had (especially the Lego activity that Jared prepared).
"True and False tests are a waste of everyone's time!"
This statement was very interesting to me because i have never enjoyed taking a true and false test. The questions always seemed the most confusing to me and the most unfair. Now after this lecture i understand why i have always felt that way. Geoff informed us that he could always score at least a 72% on a true and false quiz. He claims this is because you are not required to know the material, rather, by following a few key words and rules there is no knowlege of the subject required. Long story short there is no way to get a true evaluation of content.
Evaluation = measuring the understanding, judgment of merit
Assessment = process of documenting in measurable terms
Another interesting point that Geoff made about tests was on multiple choice questions, he showed many different questions that were written wrong and we picked out why. He showed examples of questions that either guided the students toward the right answer or didnt allow them to get the right answer because it contained the wrong article. Another example was using less than four answers or using garbage just to fill one of the answers. I thought that these ideas were obvious but i think they are mistakes that everybody makes.
Rubrics = a list of criteria and ranges of content
Reliability = measument is repeated
Validity = accuracy of measure
All in all it was a good week. I enjoyed the last few teachings that we had (especially the Lego activity that Jared prepared).
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