Rigor Redefined Summary

Compare the strengths and limitations of teaching and learning approaches used in own area of specialism in relation to meeting individual learner needs.

There are many components that make up literacy. In order to effectively teach students these components the teacher must model the concept for the students. As teachers, we can't expect or assume that the student already knows what we expect of them. Modeling gives students a basis of what to go by. Modeling is the first and most important step in order for the students to gain mastery of a concept. A teacher must also undergo guided practice with the students. A teacher should always provide

What evidence will you gather at the beginning of the lesson, during the lesson, and/or at the end of the lesson that will show the extent to which the students have made progress toward the academic learning objective(s)? Attach rubric or scoring guide as appropriate.

It is extremely important that the Learner / group clearly articulate what the problem / situation is to the class. It is essential that the

“Learners will develop the values, commitments, and ethics that positively impact the educational community as well as the educator’s own professional growth.” (COE-GCU Framework, 2010).

Students can be taught skills such as anger management, positive communication skills, and cognitive problem solving. These skills will allow the student to respond differently to issues that may arise. So this means if the instructional focus on teaching the required skills which will allow the teachers to use and implement such strategies appropriately and more effectively in the classroom.

Think about the objective above. What learning skills can you use to succeed in this lesson? Perhaps you will make a list of details and analyze them for their impact on the central idea. Maybe you will classify the information you find into categories.

The idea of Stand-alone Key Skills, Basic Skills or Functional Skills lessons or units can prove very effective in certain circumstances, however is not always suitable for all learners. Within further education embedding Literacy and Numeracy is generally encouraged and although in our department we have lecturers who teach more theory than practical (and vice-versa) there are no specific LLN/ICT teachers. When teaching I aim to embed a lot of numeracy during practical sessions with the students in different ways. One of the benefits of this is that they don’t often realise they are doing it: the idea of doing maths to some students is quite scary and hiding it within a recipe or task is a good way of developing skills. Dishes often have very specific recipes that need to be followed exactly; students need to be able not only to read and follow the recipes, but weigh and measure accurately too. Another simple way for me to embed LLN is to give a recipe and ask the student to double of half the quantities in order to make enough portions.

The teacher should aid discussion to focus students’ attention on key areas as well as prompting students by pointing out ideas from their “K” section and asking what more they would like to know about this. Each student must then write down 2 or 3 questions for “what I Want to know” (Appendix C) based on their own personal interests of the topic (Ogle, 1989). Asking their own questions encourages students to go beyond the lesson content to work out their own explanation rather than simple rote learning questions and answers from text books (McConachie et al., 2006). Both the class brainstorming activity and small group discussions encourage accountable talk, which aids students’ understanding as they must learn how to verbalise and rationalise their ideas (Michaels et al., 2010). This element of the activity also incorporates prediction. Students must decide “what I Want to know” based on what they predict the text is about from the pre-reading activity (Gibbons,

Today in many JROTC classes are focusing on centering their curriculum on building character and responsibility.

Students will work in collaborative groups to sort which information is needed, what can be acted out and what is not needed. (Which information do you think you can take out? Why? Is there anything you may be able to add to your part of the story? If so, why would you add it?)

When I teach a lesson I like to incorporate many different teaching styles, so the students are always engaged and not bored. In this lesson I wanted to incorporate both individual work and group work. In this particular class, I have a mixed range of students, from those with IEPs to highly intelligent students. Therefore, when I plan lessons I try to incorporate activities that all the students can participate. But, I do try to keep in mind that all of the my students are not on the same level, therefore I will give more time to students if they need it. I also go around and make sure all the students to give them more individual instruction, to make sure they understand what they are doing and what is being expected of them. One of the areas I am still trying to develop is direction giving, which is another reason why I use the individual instruction strategy. Since I know this is one of weaknesses, I also try to write the direction on their worksheet and on the PowerPoint.

Teach teamwork and conflict resolution skills. Use notecards to describe scenarios that arise when working in groups. Have students act out skits that demonstrate problems and possible solutions. Some issues that can

The focus of my study is on the development of advanced students. I feel so much time is focused on the development of struggling learners, that we as educators lose focus on developing our most advanced students. Analyze-Write-Pair-Share-Apply is a modified version of Think-Pair-Share I use in my pre-calculus classes. My pre-calculus classes are composed of mainly 11th and 12th graders. Aside from students thinking about a problem and sharing their ideas, I added the component of having them write down and apply their knowledge to similar problems. I am interested in conducting this study to see how the Analyze-Write-Pair-Share-Apply strategy, impacts my most advanced students’ understanding of the content. I plan on collecting information through interviews, observations, and surveys. Through my study I hope to gain some insight into how the Analyze-Write-Pair-Share-Apply strategy will influence my current and future advanced students.

I am basing my descriptions of my Average Learner’s academic development on their past work and observations. They can read and understand simple texts. In fact, the history textbook for this class is within their reading level and so they can read and understood information therein. In addition, they can listen and follow verbal instructions. For them, I do not have to repeat nor display my instruction on the whiteboard nor through PowerPoint slides, but I do sometimes have to speak slower to assure they can hear what I say. They can write simple and complex sentences, with a high degree of clarity. (I will provide further information about this when I describe their language development later in this paper). Collectively, they can collaborate in groups, preferably of no more than three students in a group, because anything more is not conducive to learning. The reason they work well together because most know each other from being in the same classes last year and the on the same sport team—this class has many baseball players. Insofar, this has proven to be advantageous, by having them in groups, and I could not be more satisfied with the results.