Week 2
With this week’s reading, the pages from AMLE This We Believe talked a lot about different ways in which middle grades educators can help students learn. Page 13 describes four essential attributes in helping middle schoolers achieve. They are developmentally response, challenging, empowering, and equitable. Out of all of these attributes, the goal of equitable stands out. This goal is to help ensure that every student has the right to learn whether that be challenging yet relevant learning opportunities for every student. This relates to a specific time in my middle school experience with spanish class. I was having a difficult time test taking and remembering the vocabulary. Rather than my teacher simply thinking that I “wasn’t trying hard enough” she provided me with a word bank for every test. This was a way in which my teacher helped challenge me yet provided me with a learning accommodation that fit my needs. The reading talked about different aspects reading curriculum, instruction, and assessment characteristics. Some things that stood out within the text is the mention of middle school teachers as role models. Middle school teachers send out critical messages with their behaviors, both verbal and subtle behaviors. I also loved the point the text said about how important it is that teachers learn alongside their students. This often helps students receive a genuine learning experience. The text stated how important it is for interactive and collaborative learning to occur for middle school students. Interaction is key to learning, especially in middle school. Another part in the text that stood out was the mention of having students compose a rubric or grading system with the teacher. This helps the students understand what they are really being graded on because they helped create the rubric. This is something that never happened when I was in school and I wish that it did. I remember looking at rubrics that my teacher handed out, in high school. A lot of the time, I was confused at what the teacher was really looking for. I never thought that the rubrics made sense in my head because I wasn’t sure what to do for them. That wasn’t the case all the time, but occasionally it was. Rubrics should involve students. I thought that was a great way to incorporate collaboration between the teacher and students; it would help students understand that their teacher is with them and for them by coming up with how to grade work together. I thought that was a great idea and it was something that stood out while I was reading.
As for the online article, there were a lot of interesting points that I took away from it. The article talked a lot about how there is a lack of cross-level communication between elementary and middle school educators. This is not necessarily anyone’s fault for there are many different reasons as to why different school buildings don’t communicate well. The article did talk about different ways in which to help middle schoolers with the transition from elementary to middle school. An effective way to help students is in the form or teacher teams, meaning that there are multiple teachers that work together who teach the same subject and similar age groups. This keeps expectations and ideals routine. The article also talked about how middle schoolers experience extreme or high self-consciousness. The students have different expectations, responsibilities, friends, and have changing bodies. It is especially important for middle school teachers to remain positive to help with those levels of changes. The article also gave some great tips for teachers to use.
I particularly liked how the article talked about teacher teams. The article gave an example of if a teacher is having difficulties with a student, that teacher should go to the team and ask if they are too. If the student is giving all the teachers trouble, there is a bigger issue at hand. If not, the teacher needs to do more for that student. I have experienced teaching teams at some of my placements. I saw teachers who taught the same content meet together to talk about different lessons they want to try as well as different strategies that they want to incorporate. From what I have seen of teacher teams, they are extremely beneficial and they work well. Teacher teams are essential and it also is a great way to have support during the school year.
I also loved how the article included actual comments from students. One that stood out was how a student spoke about how a teacher only really knows the bad students. That is so sad. At the same time, I feel it is true. In some of my placements, there have been some students who do not act with good behavior due to the circumstances they are in. Those students were always talked about with me. I was always set to work with them with a type of heads up. But if I were to work with the “good” behaved children, I would get no warning about them nor how they work. I imagine it is hard to get to know every single student. But it should be a goal for a teacher to get to know every single student of his/hers. I had another cooperating teacher who even told me that she didn’t know all the students' names in her class. It was awful. She had been teaching them for half a year already, that action had no excuse. When I am a teacher, I want to make it a point to show each of my students that I care about them and their progress, even their hardships. Overall, I thought that this week’s readings gave great insight as to how to help middle schoolers transition, learn, and succeed in middle school.
I do like to read your blog because your perspective is very different than mine, I am surprised by what stood out to you and it helps to point out things that I just read over without it standing out. Particularly, the idea of teachers composing rubrics with the students. I honestly thought when I read that section in the text, that it sounded like a lot of classroom time that might be better spent elsewhere. However, your experience and insight helped me see that I was missing the whole point of the strategy. In bringing the middle school students into the rubric creation, they understand the expectations and are personally involved in the assessment, which is key to middle school education.
ReplyDeleteI too really liked reading what the students had to say and also agree with you regarding teachers talking about the students with poor behavior, they always seem to get the attention of everyone, teachers, principals, councilors, the quiet and shy student becomes appreciated but put on the back burner and seldom considered the rest of the year. Student surveys can reveal a lot about what is being missed by an instructor in a classroom and can present unheard perspectives. Knowing each student personally is essential to engaging them in active learning and teachers will succeed much better if they collaborate with a positive approach with other instructors.
Hi there!
ReplyDeleteEquitable is the essential attribute that stood out the most to me as well. I liked your personal example and it was not exactly what I thought of when I thought of equitable. I thought of equitable in the way of what I am providing my students when it comes to readings, instructional strategies, and content I am providing. The content or text sets, for example, should be diverse and show a wide range of perspectives and opinions. I take a look back on my education and my education was truly not diverse until maybe my senior year of high school, maybe.
Also, on the rubrics, I loved this part. I hated rubrics as a student. I never read one, ever. Not even in college. To be honest, I always looked at it as a tool for the teacher, not me. I think this is at fault of the teachers. If they find it to be important, then they should portray that to their students. One of my professors at Trinity walked through the rubrics with us and it made so much more sense to me. Maybe when we assign a paper or whatever it is that has a rubric, when we are explaining the assignment, we can take out the rubric and go step by step on the rubric. This way there are no surprises for the students and they know exactly what is expected. Also, I think this would be a great and easy way for teachers to make sure they are hitting their Common Core Standards or objectives. At least for me when things are written out and I can put a little check mark, it is a no-brainer for me the accomplishment, and it feels good!
I enjoyed reading your blog post and insights. You provoked some good thought as I was reading through your points. I have to agree with the students being involved in the rubric. I may be dating myself but I had no clue what a rubric was until my oldest son explained it to me when he was in middle school doing a language arts assignment. I never was graded with a rubric matrix until I came to Trinity! I like the concept of the rubric and it has taken some thought when I had to create one for some class assignments. I agree with you and AMLE that a collaboration with the students and teacher would work best. It gives the student ownership and understanding of the assignment expectation. The key is to include students in certain classroom and assignment expectations as it fosters a working relationship with each other and that is not always what the adult or teacher thinks is right. As teachers we can learn from our students and know we are not the ones with all the answers or the correct way of thinking.
ReplyDeleteHi,
ReplyDeleteI liked what you said about teachers being positive role models. I remember in my own experience that teachers influenced me socially more so than my parents because they were the ones that I would spend most of the day with. My teachers would sometimes even demonstrate to us how to interact with other people socially and even though I think that we had the social standards that Illinois has, we still had lessons that implemented social skills that were somewhat like the Illinois standards. I think that teachers are positive role models not only socially but also with attitudes towards learning. If a teacher creates an environment where failure is looked down upon, it will help create a fixed mindset towards learning and the opposite is true too. A teachers influence on learning is also lifelong and could affect how students react to challenges that will always be thrown at them in life.
I did not entirely grasp what the text said about rubrics until reading your post. I too remember times where I did not understand what the teacher wanted and so if I had been able to be apart of the rubric making process, I think that would have helped too. I think sometimes teachers create rubrics and expect students to "read their minds" in a way. I think another way this could be done is having a teacher explain the rubric and having students ask questions and then maybe altering the rubric in order to help them. I guess my main question and concern is to what extent are the students helping make the rubrics?