Monday, October 19, 2009
FIAE Chapter 14
FIAE Chapter 13
Chapter 12
I cannot imagine making a rubric for every single assignment that I give my students. No matter how many times I make a rubric, it is going to be time consuming and pointless for some tasks. I don’t even see how I can use a rubric to grade a math test. On a math test, a student can get an answer wrong or right, but there is nothing in between. I feel that a 100-point scale is better for math because I can give partial credit for steps that they get right. I do not think that a rubric can obtain this same effect.
FIAE Chapter 11
Tuesday, September 29, 2009
Team 2- Chapter 7 MI
Abstract
How a classroom is arranged can aid or hinder the many different learners that are in there. Chapter seven of the Multiple Intelligences talks about one of the simplest ways to organize a class in order reach all of your students with the different intelligences; activity centers. Armstrong talks about the four different activity centers that a teacher could implement in his or her classroom; the permanent open-ended activity center, the temporary open-ended activity center, the permanent topic-specific activity center, and the temporary topic-specific activity center. The permanent open-ended center is a center that is in the classroom all year long, like a reading nook or art area. The temporary open-ended center is something resembling the permanent open-ended center but can be taken down and setup quickly. Games involving the multiple intelligences are the best ways to accomplish this activity. The most practical of the four centers is the temporary topic-specific centers. These centers change frequently as the unit or lessons change. These centers tend to be activities dealing with the eight intelligences that focus on a certain topic. The final center is the permanent topic-specific center. These centers are typically used in a classroom setting where there is a yearlong theme and the activities can change with the different lessons pertaining to the theme.
Synthesis
This chapter presented some ideas that most of us have never even thought of. The idea of the classroom arrangement had never occurred to many of us as an important aspect to teaching effectively. The activity centers were mentioned seem like excellent ways to use the environment of a class to encourage learning. Coming up with centers for a lesson could be difficult, but coming up with these centers is as easy as searching on the Internet for starter ideas.
FIAE Chapter 10
I am slightly confused about how to grade work that students redo. Wormeli says that averaging two test scores or giving back half credit for every question is not right. Students should be able to receive full credit for everything that they redo. I feel two totally different emotions with this; the teacher emotion and the student emotion. As a student who studied and received an A the first time I took a test, I feel as though students who get to redo a test and receive full credit is a little wrong. I don’t get anything for getting an A the first time, but those who didn’t get to catch up. However, as a teacher I want all my students to learn and do the best that they can do. How can I make sure my students get to learn the information for mastery, but still not slight those students who do well the first time?
FIAE Chapter 9
After reading this chapter, I realize I am not ready to grade in a differentiated classroom. Out of the ten approaches to avoid, I was either thinking about using them or I had never even thought about them. There were a couple in particular that stood out to me. The first was avoiding bonus points and extra credit. I agree with the last half of this sentence, however, I have always thought bonus points on tests and/or quizzes were like presents. I was never planning on using pointless or irrelevant bonus questions, but the idea of giving a couple of deeper thinking problems that they can attempt to solve for some extra points was an idea I had. I do agree that extra credit is not needed. I feel this instills the idea into students that they can slack off on an assignment and then get extra credit to make up the difference. The other approach that stood out to me was “avoid recording zeros for work not done.” Again I can see both sides to this. Sometimes there is a very reasonable and acceptable reason to not get an assignment done, but what should be done if a student just refuses to do that work? I feel as though something has to be done so that the students who do complete the work don’t feel as though they did it for no reason.
FIAE Chapter 8
I have always thought that attendance and classroom participation were a part of every class and every student’s grade. After reading this chapter I am torn. I believe that students should have to come to class and participate in the activities that are being done in that class period. However, I see that they are not the best aspects to grade students on, but how do you get kids to take them seriously if there is no grade for them? I understand that participation and attendance do not show a student’s mastery of a topic or information, but by what I have been reading, not many things show this mastery. I think I still want to include attendance and participation as some sort of point value in my future classroom, but I just won’t count it as a huge part.
FIAE Chapter 7
Monday, September 28, 2009
MI Chapter 12
MI Chapter 11
In this chapter, Armstrong discusses how learning disabilities can occur in all eight of the intelligences. I found it really interesting that if teachers taught more lessons to incorporate all of the multiple intelligences than fewer students would be referred to special education classes. I agree one hundred percent with this. Some of my peers had special education classes for only certain aspects of their lessons even though they knew the material. One person I thought of in particular when I was reading this chapter was a girl who was smart enough to do all the work; she just had a hard time reading. The school stuck her in special education for her reading disability, but if the teachers had taken a spatial approach with her, she would have learned easily. She was an artist and learned well with pictures. If teachers had known that she learned best that way, she would have been with all of her friends one hundred percent of the time in school.
UbD DI Chapter 8
MI Chapter 8
Classroom management is an important part of a teacher’s day. This chapter focuses on how to maintain a classroom and get the cooperation from all of your students. As we have read in previous chapters, every student has a more dominant of the eight intelligences. These students all learn in unique ways and learning classroom rules is not any different. I would have never guessed to introduce the class rules in all of those varieties. All of the ideas could be done on the first day of class as an introduction. I can see myself writing the rules out on for my class and having them come up with pictures, numbers, songs, animals, and gestures for each of the rules. This would get all of my students involved and it would help the students learn the rules because they are being taught in with the eight intelligences.
Wednesday, September 23, 2009
MI CHapter 14
Armstrong dedicates his last chapter to the eight and a half intelligence: the existential intelligence. I personally do not believe this should be completely used in a classroom. I know it is important to look into all the aspects that are in incorporated into this intelligence, but I think it would disrupt a classroom by using it. When my teachers used to talk about abortion and other current controversies, my classmates would go off on tirades to defend their point and the class would get completely out of hand. If the point in this intelligence is to have students think deeply about the world it should be dedicated to a separate class and not the typical classroom. This keeps those students, like myself, who do not care for debating out of that situation, but still allows those students who want to discuss those topics to have the opportunity to discuss them.
MI Chapter 13
This chapter is about everything that we talk about in Dr. Theresa’s class. Computers and technology are great ways to engage the eight different intelligences. The other part of the chapter that I enjoyed more was that of the career counseling. I would have never thought that showing jobs that involve the eight intelligences would actually be interesting to students. I wouldn’t have liked it, but maybe that is because I already knew what I wanted to be. I wish there were more ideas of how to incorporate all the different vocational opportunities into my classroom so I can encourage my students to find a job that they will love, because it deals with something they love.
MI Chapter 7
This chapter dealt mostly with the different types of activities stations a teacher could set up in their classroom for all eight of the intelligences. The activity station that I found the most interesting was the “Temporary Topic-Specific Activity Centers.” These seemed the most reasonable to implement in a classroom and the most fun from a student’s standpoint. The idea of taking a lesson and breaking it down into eight activities for the intelligences so that each student can learn through their best method seems perfect. The only issue is that every time a teacher does something like this, the students gravitate to the same station every time. I like the idea of making the students rotate through the stations. I do not think I would use this as an everyday activity, but instead as like a reward for the class. I would have loved to do different activities like the ones mentioned in the chapter. By making it a treat and not an everyday thing, students may actually appreciate the tasks that much more.
UbD DI Chapter 9
Monday, September 21, 2009
MI Chapter 6
Chapter six was dedicated to some of the ways that teachers can integrate the eight intelligences into their classrooms. Armstrong provides five examples for all eight of the intelligences. Some of the ideas mentioned I feel like are too distracting or unrealistic to incorporate into a classroom. Supermemory music was one of these examples. I cannot imagine allowing the students in my high school to lie on the floor and listen to music while a teacher was teaching. No one would have grasped the ideas and the class would have been useless. Then the one that I found unrealistic was a nature walk. I cannot see a class of twenty teenagers going outside and behaving enough to teach a lesson to them while walking outside. However, some of the ideas would have surely helped me while I was in school and I can only hope that I will be able to use some of all these intelligences in my class.
MI Chapter 5
I was shocked to realize how many different ways a teacher can teach the same material, yet with each strategy educate students with diverse multiple intelligences. Even a teacher standing at the front of the room lecturing can incorporate the variety of intelligences into his or her instruction. I was also surprised to find strategies for incorporating the multiple intelligences into my lesson plans. The MI planning sheet on page forty-seven was amazing. I would have never guessed that so many classroom activities could be done with punctuations. However, I am worried that I have to do all of these activities for every topic and that seems over ambitious. How is any teacher supposed to integrate all of those ideas into his or her classroom and still cover the necessary material to meet district standards?
UbD DI Chapter 7
UbD DI Chapter 6
Wednesday, September 16, 2009
MI Chapter 10
FIAE Chapter 6
This chapter was about how to make good test questions. However, some of the ideas mentioned seem to only make the test easier, like the order in which a teacher puts matching questions. I don’t see why it matters to put the sentences on the left and the words on the right. All it seems to me is that the student doesn’t have to think as hard. One of the ideas I loved in the chapter dealt with short quiz questions. The students write the answer done twice, once to pass in to the teacher and the other to keep for themselves so they can instantly know if they are correct of not. This seems like a perfect idea for math quizzes so they can know exactly which questions they got wrong so they can try to figure out what they did wrong.