cep 802a ashley shahidullah september 23, 2011. observations how have they been going? difficult/...

TEACHING FOR INITIAL

UNDERSTANDING

CEP 802A

Ashley Shahidullah

September 23, 2011

Observations

How have they been going? Difficult/ easy Just case study student?

Interesting findings?

Have 1 person from your group bring observation folders to front

Plan for today

Instructional practices C-R-A assessments Meet TA

To gain real success for struggling learners, teachers MUST use instructional practices that are planned and deliberate.

4 instructional practices provide students with powerful opportunities to acquire understanding:

1. Using authentic contexts2. Building meaningful connections3. Modeling and scaffolding instruction using (C-R-A)4. Teaching problem solving strategies

Students will:

1. See the value in learning the concept

2. Have greater capacity to remember what they learned

3. Be more likely to have cognitive access to the meaning of the concept

Instructional Practice #1: Authentic Context

4 important components:

1. The context must be age appropriate / relevant (cognitive and chronological age should be considered)

2. The context MUST be culturally responsive – should resonate with students’ language, family, and community experiences

3. The context MUST be of interest to students

4. The concept to be learned must be depicted clearly through the context, not hidden

Videos

4th grade How to make & interpret “bar graphs” Explicit teaching within

authentic/meaningful context

Teacher helps students link prior knowledge they have about video games to the concepts of data and

graphing.

Teacher behaviors=effective teaching technique

• The teacher chooses a meaningful and authentic context

–_____ _______– within which to teach bar graphs.

• ______ _________ certainly have relevance to her fourth

grade students and it is something they all can relate to.

• This teacher ensured that only “appropriate”

____________were used as examples for this learning

activity.

• The teacher uses meaningful ________

objects (real video game boxes) to represent

what they will collect data on and then graph.

• Providing such ________ references for

students who have learning problems assists

them in making a meaningful connection to an

abstract math concept such as “data” or

“statistics.”


• She activates students’ ________ _______ from

another subject (science class).

• It is important that explicit connections be made

between subject areas where common concepts and

skills are learned.


• As the teacher refers to the concept of “data,”

she not only says the word aloud, but also

writes the word on the dry-erase board.


Teacher engages student interest for statistics and graphing by having individuals come to the board to

count # of students who play each game.

• The teacher ________codes each column that

represents the different video game boxes.

• Such _________coding can help some students who

have learning problems, particularly those who may

have auditory processing deficits or those who have

visual/spatial orientation problems.


• The teacher instructs students to represent

each frequency count both by drawing

__________and by writing the __________ for

the frequency value.

• Reinforces for students the meaning of the

abstract number symbol.


• Subtly providing several students corrective feedback

as they are at the board, but doing so in a very

positive and non-embarrassing way.

• Students who have learning difficulties often need

such corrective feedback, and how a teacher provides

this feedback can make all the difference in how the

student receives it and whether they benefit from it.


• The teacher cues students __________, _________

and kinesthetically by pointing to the tallies as the

class counts them aloud and by circling and saying

the number value of the tallies.

• She also reviews the totals for each category after all

counts have been completed.


• She engages the students in the learning activity by

keeping them involved throughout the activity.

• Keeping passive learners actively engaged in the

learning process is vital to their learning success!


• Question prompts to guide her students’

thinking regarding how to represent a category

for students who do not own or use any of the

video games displayed.


Teacher teaches the purpose of data collection.

• Ask key questions that activate student thinking regarding the connection

between data collection and graphing data.

• Prompting student thinking by asking questions can be an effective way to elicit

active thinking with students who have learning difficulties.

• Teacher has to provide structure as she prompts her students’ thinking.

• Simply asking questions alone will not “get the job done!” Questions should be

specific in nature and should be asked in a way that allows students to relate the

question to their prior knowledge.


• Wait time” is an important technique.

• For students who have such processing problems, you

and the student can agree on a subtle non-verbal cue

that let’s them know you will be calling for their response.


Teacher describes and models how to draw the graph on which they will plot their data.

• Explicit directions, using both visual, auditory, and

kinesthetic cueing.

• She models “how” to do the task but also “thinks

aloud” as she does this.

• Placing an “X” at the point where the “x” and “y” axes

should be drawn provides students an excellent cue

so that they do not get frustrated by the many lines

on the graph paper.


• Links the concept of the “x” and “y” axes to a previous lesson

on this concept.

• Continually providing such explicit “links” to student prior

knowledge is a vital teaching technique for students who have

learning problems.


• The teacher actively monitors students as they complete

the task after she has described and modeled it.

• She circulates the room providing corrective feedback,

answering questions, and providing positive verbal

reinforcement.


Teacher describes and models how to label the graph they have just drawn.

• The teacher does a nice job of cueing students where to

write the labels by telling them to count down “3 squares.”

• She also writes the label on the board, a particularly

helpful strategy for students who have spelling difficulties.


• The teacher models writing the number that represents the

total for each video game category, thus relating the

abstract numeral “6” to the six tallies drawn on the board.


• She monitors student work and provides specific feedback as

well as specific positive reinforcement (e.g. “Nice block lettering,

Matt”).

• For math skills, which usually have multiple steps, general

positive verbal comments such as, “good job,” by the teacher do

not let students know what step they performed particularly well.

• Specific positive reinforcement does provide students such

valuable information about their performance.


Teacher describes and models how to plot the data the class has collected.

• The teacher demonstrates a nice cue for gaining her

students’ attention.

• ________________

• ________________

• Providing clear signals for gaining student attention can be

very helpful when working with students who have attention

problems or cognitive processing problems.


• The teacher models how to plot the data and how to make a “bar.”

• She also models how to abbreviate video game titles so that they fit

on the graphs.


• The teacher cues students regarding how many different color

pencils they will need to color in the bars on their graph.

• Explicitly cueing students that they will need a particular number of

different colors and that they will need to color each bar on the

graph a different color, prevents potential student frustration from

coloring the bars the same color.

• Coloring each bar differently also accentuates that each bar

represents a separate value.


• The teacher circulates the classroom, providing corrective

feedback, positive reinforcement, and re-modeling the skill as

needed.

• Notice, especially, how she re-clarifies a confusing point for

students regarding keeping the bars proportional in size.

• As she does this, also notice how she cues a student to listen by

calmly walking toward his desk and cueing him to listen in a clear

yet non-threatening way.


Students plot their bar graphs while the teacher circulates the room and monitors their work.

• The teacher circulates the class, monitoring student work.

• Not only does monitoring student work help the teacher

__________ evaluate how her students are performing, it also

assists in the management of behavior by proximity control.


• The teacher answers student questions in a positive and

non-threatening way.

• Provides specific corrective feedback by re-modeling how to

perform certain skills and then asking her students to

perform them independently.

• She also prompts her students’ thinking with well-placed

questions as she does these things.


• When a student makes a mistake, she quickly explains to him that it is

“ok” to make mistakes and that it can be easily corrected by white out.

• Re-assuring them that mistakes are a natural part of learning and that

correcting mistakes is how we all learn can be of great benefit.


• The teacher uses ample amounts of positive

verbal reinforcement.


Teacher reviews the learning activity and provides closure.

• The teacher again provides effective verbal and

hand cueing to capture her students’ attention.

• The teacher does a nice job of prompting student

thinking about, “most,” “least,” “how many games in

all?”


• When relating the word problem to the questions, the teacher

highlights key words to cue students to important information in the

word problem.

• Notice also that students work the problem at their desks as she

has one student come up and calculate the sum. The teacher then

states that the sum is “35.”


• The teacher purposely engages students to extend their thinking

about the data they graphed.

• She does this by asking students to relate the authentic data they

graphed back to their lives, like trading video games at certain

video game stores.


• The teacher reinforces the meaning of a “bar graph,” a

major concept she taught in this lesson.

• She does this in a very effective way, pointing out that the

plotted data looks like bars. She shows one student’s bar

graph as she does this.

• Explicitly relating abstract concepts to concrete images is

an excellent way to help students who have learning

problems understand the concept.


Research

Instructional Practice #2Building meaningful student connections

assists students in making meaningful connections between what they already know and what they are to learn in the

present instructional lesson

Examples

Place value centers

What’s the Price?

http://www.learner.org/resources/series32.html?pop=yes&pid=872

CRA Assessment

Assess 1 group member Role-play Teacher documentation

Mnemonic devices… "Letter" "Pegword" "Keyword"

“Please excuse my dear aunt sally”

Next Week

Bring 3-5 Mnemonic strategies

Course Text – remainder of Chapter 9

Read Zentall article about ADHD

cep 802a ashley shahidullah september 23, 2011. observations how have they been going? difficult/...

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