Presentation Of Information, No Matter How Technically Sophisticated, Is Not Enough?

According to Cohen, Swederlik and Sturman (2013) the psychometric soundness of a test is evaluated through its validity, which ensures the test is measuring what it claims to and reliability, which ensures accuracy of the measure across different times and people. While the Australian Curriculum Assessment and Reporting Authority (ACRA) presents information regarding the informed checks and balances in place for drafting and monitoring the NAPLAN, such as quality assurance, trials, expert advice, common scales, and difficulty equating (Reliability and Validity of NAPLAN, 2010), there remains a lack of data regarding testing of the specific psychometric elements of the tool.

Describe your overall reaction to your assessment. Did you find it accurate and informative? What other typology, if any, do you believe might also describe you? Were you surprised by anything that it said about you? Why?

I agree with the authors, “It is precisely through information of these kinds of social activities that we identify funds of knowledge that can be used in the classroom to help improve academic development” (Gonzalez, Moll & Amanti, 2005, Pg. 80). We start teaching at the beginning of the school year holding biases towards certain students. Sometimes we heard in the office or teacher lounge that student XYZ is a “nightmare”, we are scared of those students because we are afraid they will ruin our classroom environment. This was my mentality when I first stepped into a classroom as a tutor.

There are people who work better by listening to instructions and working from there, looking at drawings, diagrams, datas and understanding visually and others who simply need to get out there, “touch the project”, and play around with it, for their brains to register the information. However, in order for all of the information to be remembered, “the lecture” must be engaging, or at least according to Howard Gardner.

The classroom environment effects instruction and learning by having an open area for the students to learn while exploring/playing. The educator uses the open space to model the task that needs to be completed. There were two table, which each seats seven students, for instructional hands-on work. Here students complete worksheets, drawings, and tracing words, shapes, and letter. Students encourage and help each other when sitting at these tables. Students learn to communicate when working in two groups on the same task. There were no effective practices that built an anti-bias environment that supported diverse learners.

An intentional group takes more planning on the teacher, but the final result is more positive. The intentional group will have a teacher goal that will be arrived at and resolved. A social group is also used as an intentional grouping to allow for the shy student to be paired with the more outgoing student and they are given learning activities to increase the social interactions. This also allows for a model student to be placed with an underachiever and they, in turn can teach them to accept their learning situation. A number of small groups could address one topic, just four different subcategories, and pull back together to finalize their conclusions. Teachers are given a chance to utilize the personalities and skills levels to advance the group learning experience.

Mrs. Kurz’s classroom is a mix of traditional and special education students. They are supporting the democratic guideline of having more adults in the school. She has a co-teacher Ms.Milton who specializes in special education. Both teachers were helping students and giving direction alternatively. Co-teaching allows these teachers to help all students who may need it as well as helping both learning and teaching to happen in the classroom. Many classrooms have this method to help all students get the most out of school as well as to help students with special needs, those who are learning English as a second language, or students who need more help. They also offer a tutoring session from 3:30-6 for any students who may be struggling in classes. Three teachers are there to help with English, math, and other general classes. Mr. Hester also talked about how the counselors help students with their futures’ as they are interested in the whole

In the education world of today, it is understood that one can only be effective in teaching by taking into consideration the different learning styles of students. In a classroom, it is expected that teachers would want their students to acquire a meaningful knowledge base, become proficient problem solvers and learn how to work productively with others (Biehler and Snowman, 2006, p. 370). If this is the case, teachers need to know how to be able to develop this situation in the classroom and make it more conducive to learning. Therefore, it would seem that they need to encourage students to converse with each other with group discussions and assignments, to make sure they are active in

Tekeisha Postell 9/15/15 ECSP 3131 Dr. Hill Dream Keepers Summary (Chapter 4-7) Chapter 4 In chapter 4, Gloria Billings applies the concept of family to the classroom. Teachers should look at their students as their own. She mentions how students should not be selfish by only caring about themselves; they should look at each other as one.

In addition, educators need to build positive relationships with students that are carried outside of the classroom to set a precedent for learning. The statistics in chart 7 below allow me to focus on the students that may need extra assistance in the class and it will require an implementation of powerful methods of differentiated instruction. Also it makes me aware of what kind of students I will be teaching in my internship at Knox Middle School. In connection to teaching my unit on The Great Depression I will be using the scaffold technique as a powerful method to ease in higher level thinking because many students may be at a slight disadvantage when they walk in the 8th grade classroom at Knox Middle School. Scaffolding assists many students that may struggle by providing a clear and concise way of learning from the help of teacher and other students. Also, as an educator I must coordinate with an ELL specialist to assist my special students’ when support is needed. Many students need extra guidance while coming in the classroom because there may be little help at

My field experience was in Ms. Felkins third grade classroom at Washington Elementary School. The class there are nineteen students total, nine boys and ten girls. There are two different ethnic groups in the class, four African American students and fifteen white students. Additionally, there are three students who go to a resource room throughout the day for academic instruction. One of the students goes to the resource room for thirty-minute increments throughout the day. Three students go to a small reading group each day to work on reading skills.

Having had the opportunity to assess children’s learning during PPL3, it is clear that there are certain strategies that best suits the needs of individuals. From studying lesson plans and evaluations, and from general observation it is clear that group work was often beneficial, and gave the children the chance to work with peers of different ability levels and different learning styles, so that they were able to develop and learn from their peers. Group work is great for getting children to work collaboratively, whether this is as a pair, or as a group of 6, or a group of 12, it takes them out of their comfort zones and to adapt to new situations. Using different strategies such as think-pair-share and mixed ability groups as well as self chosen groups can really determine the quality of children’s learning. I shall be looking into these strategies and reviewing my own teaching and how they were beneficial or detrimental towards a child’s education.

Interestingly, other studies support the perceived barrier of the lack of face-to-face interaction noted above in social theory of learning. Daniel, Schwier, and McCalla (2003), noted that the concept of community as a learning organism provides the framework for investigating learning concepts as it relates to individuals and groups and serves as the basis in analyzing and understanding learning as a social process (Masika, R. & Jones, J., 2015). Tinto (2003) goes on to support this by concluding that students learn better together and build support groups that go beyond the classroom when they

One practice that can be implemented in classrooms to help teachers combat this problem is ClassWide Peer Tutoring. A considerable amount of research has been done evaluating the results of using ClassWide Peer Tutoring in the classroom. ClassWide peer tutoring has been shown to improve both academic and behavior problems for students with disabilities.

The first stragtey to discuss is her use of effective groupings arrangements. For instance, students are part of a whole group lesson, small group, cooperative activity, and partner work. First, Ms. Sullivan starts the lesson with the whole group seated on the carpet. This is when she introduces both the content and language objectives, discusses the target vocabulary, and explicitly reviews the lesson targets using visuals and modeling. Next, students work in partner groups using a “think, pair, share” strategy. To illustrate, students work together in partner work to discuss how they solve problems. At the end of the lesson, students also work collaboratively in a small group to complete a graphic organizer to reflect on what they learned. These grouping strategies are supported by Lev Vygotsky’s Constructivism theory. According to Vygotsky, discourse and interaction are channels for learning