This week’s learning about Flipped Teaching and Challenge Based Learning was productive in helping me to fill many gaps in my understanding about them, as well as literature Culturally Responsive Teaching. Looking at these three paradigms in relationship to one another deepened my understanding of each of them. Both Flipped Teaching and Challenge Based Learning align with the principles of Culturally Responsive Teaching. One area I connected with in this week’s material about Flipped Teaching is the idea of students’ Live Processing relationships to Schema building. Dr. Ramsey Musallam describes Live Processing as the way that students “chew” on new information as it becomes part of their long term memory. However, if too much stress happens (intrinsic and extraneous loads) during live processing, the new information has less of a chance of working its way into the student’s schema. Flipped teaching helps to remedy this issue by dispersing information visually and aurally so that less load is put on the working memory. It allows for more chunking of information (preview of information, in-class work, further clarification time) so as to increase room for the working memory. It seems as though this focus on reducing stress to learn better absolutely aligns with Zaretta Hammond's teaching. Challenge Based Learning is very compatible with Culturally Responsive Teaching in that it:
I’m sure I’ve barely scratched the surface. At every angle, it seems that these two approaches were made for each other. The cool thing is that Flipped Teaching can be invited to this party, and seems like a wonderful way to provide individualized instruction or guidance to different groups working on various aspects of a challenge. What does all of this mean to me as a teacher? Well, I have two things to consider. First, I feel like I would need much more time to explore these concepts and how they could operate at even the lowest elementary levels. This would involve some research, but sounds like it would be well worth the time investment. Second, after learning about how this puzzle can be put together K-5, I would want to share this information with our teachers. I know that everyone can get overwhelmed with so many new initiatives and focal points, so I would want to embrace the concepts of CRT when presenting this info. Knowing how much work it is to present big ideas to staff, this would definitely be something I would want to gather a team to do. If I could find a few enthusiastic friends at school, we could work together to build interest among the staff and perhaps create our own “challenge.”
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My study aims to determine whether parent-led letter-sound interventions at home paired with regular text/email communications changes student performance on a letter-sound fluency assessment. Participating parents have been given weekly letter-sound awareness activities that correspond to the letter of the week in their children’s classes. I will compare 10 Kindergarten students’ pretest and posttest scores on the same letter-sound fluency assessment. The assessment administration involves measuring the number of letter-sounds a student can name within three seconds during a one minute time period using a series of randomly placed upper and lower case letters. Students were given the assessment before interventions began, and will be given the same assessment again at the end of the program (after five weeks). My research questions are:
Data Source: Pretest and Posttest Scores This data will reveal any changes in performance after treatment is applied. I intend to use descriptive statistics such as measures of central tendency to represent this data. I will use median and mode to describe the collective level of performance on both tests. I decided not to use the mean because I already have an outlier student score that will render the average as a misrepresentation. Although, I have considered using all 3 measures of central tendency: mean, median, and mode--just to be thorough, but it might be overkill! To indicate the diversity of the scores I collect, I will be sure to find the standard deviation. I believe this will be good because, even if I have an outlier, the distance from the mean will be averaged among all the scores so that the influence of the outlier will be slightly absorbed. Finally, I will need to use an inferential statistics method, the Repeated Measures T test, to determine whether the results of the pretest and posttest could be representative of a larger population. I plan to use a bar graph to represent the pretest and posttest scores. I will then use a table to show the median, mode, standard deviation and result of the Repeated T test, “P-value." Data Source: Parent Logs and End of Program Questionnaire I will be collecting data about how often and how long parents spend on the activities, as well as ratings (Likert Scale) on parent perceptions of the activities, text/email communications, and the program in general. The first three types of data will help me to answer all of my research questions about relationships between student performance and parent adherence to the program. To determine these relationships, I intend to use Pearsons Correlational Coefficient. This will tell me if there is a positive or negative relationship between student performance and parent ratings. To represent these data, I plan to use graphs because it seems like the simplest way to communicate this information to the reader. There will be three graphs: Relationship between student performance changes and time spent on activities at home, student performance changes and parent rating of text/email communications, and student performance changes and parent rating of literacy activities. The questionnaire items for parent perceptions about the program will help me to learn about which aspects of the program were perceived as most helpful to the parents. For this, I plan to use a histogram to show each of the program aspects, and the parent ratings for them. This was the assignment I needed to process the details of the data collection and analysis section of my paper. I had no idea how clueless I was before sitting down to figure out what to do!
I think that’s where I am! Or maybe it’s just a time pit… This week’s learnings around Culturally Responsive Teaching, Universal Design for Learning, and technology’s effect on childhood made me think of this Learning Pit. I think it’s because both concepts acknowledge that learning is a struggle, but offer approaches to build capacity in our students to face the challenges and overcome them. I had heard of both Culturally Responsive Teaching and Universal Design for Learning but did not know enough to elaborate on either subject. I was really glad this week to have the opportunity to learn more.
Approaching my reading on Culturally Responsive Teaching, I used the following two questions on which to focus:
The “Levels of Engagement” gave me perspective about the connections between attention and commitment and the level of trust and safety our students need to feel in order to learn. I also began to speculate about the youngest learners and how this might apply to them. One thought I had was that younger students seem to trust more easily, but might struggle more in the areas of attention and elaboration (she explains this is an information processing skill). I also loved the idea that extended learning opportunities should not involve more assignments, but instead extended elaboration time--to process content already presented. The learning on Universal Design for Learning was definitely a favorite. I was thrilled to learn more about this concept. I think I enjoyed it so much because it included layers and layers and layers of best practices. Again, I feel that UDL offers so much in the way of helping students climb out of the Learning Pit. Consider the guidelines and how they are organized to move students more and more towards self management in the “why, what, and how” of learning. I printed UDL resources out and am jazzed to share this with my staff--if they don’t already know. Back when I got my credential, UDL was not being talked about. I’m glad we got to dive deeper! The added bonus of learning about how technology has changed childhood reminded me of my own household and children. I was definitely alarmed with Liz Perle’s comment that was something to the effect that this much technology is the greatest experiment we are doing on our own children and we don’t know the outcome… However, I still feel that technology is a tool (like any other--hammer, medication, etc) that needs to be used carefully. Common Sense Media is a wonderful resource to help manage this tool. Technology has so many countless applications in the world of education. It can be used to help engage, represent, and express information (like in UDL) as well as to help build collectivism, engagement, and connecting new content through music and visuals (CRT). You could almost say that technology, when used carefully, could serve as an adhesive to many components of these exciting pedagogies. |
Jona SandauI'm a student in the Innovative Learning Master's Program at Touro University. I'm really excited to make a difference for my students! Archives
March 2019
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