Keeping with the standard

   My standardized test was slightly different than the Iowa standardized test. It did not have just fill in the bubble but short answer and essay questions. I took this test from third grade through my sophomore year in high school. The problem with this test is the stressed importance. The students will receive a pamphlet the week before CSAPs showing them where their school fell in the intelligence range of other schools. There was almost an expectation that the school will do better the current year on the tests. The students were told that it was very important to assess the school and see how the teachers are doing in their classrooms. However, I was hearing from teachers that CSAPs were ridiculous and simply a waste of time. This could be a possibility because by the time we were sophomores in high school, we could really care less about the test. Assessment is not a bad thing. It is very helpful in informing a teacher where a student is struggling and where a student is exceeding expectations. However, standardized testing has been stressed, I believe, too much. The scores do help compare schools but, how reliable are they? Students with learning disabilities are factored in to the schools overall score, students with mental disabilities also have to take the CSAPs and their scores are factored in as well, they get different tests as well as extra time on the tests but everyone has to take it and everyone is incorporated in it.
    After taking that standardized test for so long and every year having teachers tell me, make sure you get a good nights rest before the test and make sure you eat breakfast too, the test has a bad connotation in my mind. Yes their are students who do exceptionally well on standardized tests, that does not mean they are particularly smart, they just may know how to take tests very well. On the other hand there are the students who do not take tests well, have test anxiety, and simply do not score well on tests because they stress out very much before the test. I personally in the beginning it may be a good inclination of how a student is doing and what information they are actually understanding but I do not think students should have to take the test for a multitude of years. Many of the tests are biased towards a specific set of people. This is seen with standardized tests as well. If there was a way to lower the amount of standardized testing that the school systems do, then maybe they would not have such a negative connotation to many students as the become older. The testing could possibly improve if created through learning theory. If the test makers include SLT, CLT, DLT, and BLT, it is possible that the test would be better at explaining where a student's level of understanding is. Standardized testing is not the only answer. 

Motivation Factors

   Motivation in a classroom is very important to the success of the student. However, from reading most of the blogs we all understand that. I personally believe that motivation is something that most students have at the beginning of their education path. This is seen from kindergarten, students are excited to finally be in school and start to be a big kid. And then some where along the way the motivation becomes blurred and has to be reiterated by the teachers. This motivation can be forced upon students as well as it can be easily accepted by students. During the discussion in class we had discussed the forced participation that some of the students have felt during their education. From making participation 20% of the students' overall grade from getting the students motivated by good teaching.
   Forcing the students to participate in class can have some motivation but possibly the wrong motivation. The student is just simply responding to a negative stimulus of the grade and reacting accordingly, yes the teacher can get the students to participate but are the students motivated to learn or keeping their grade up? Then on the other hand the students can be motivated to learn by the scaffolding presented by the teacher. The scaffolding can be built up by establishing a respectful student-teacher relationship. Showing interest in how a student is doing and how well they are doing is very important for the teacher to express to show the student that the teacher respects the student's right to an education and is willing to help them along the way. Also it is important to have the facts of the lesson or the day relate or be important to the students. If the students do not care about what is being taught, the motivation of them is going to be really low. Having the information relate to them and have it interesting will keep the students more motivated than if the teacher just sat at the front of the classroom and lectured about pointless material.
    Keeping students motivated in a classroom is very important to the success of a student. How a teacher is going to accomplish this task may differ to each person. To me the important factors are establishing a respectful relationship with the student as well as understanding that if the information relates to the student they will be interested. And a teacher has to realize the importance of motivation, without motivation what is the point of education?

Managing a Classroom

   Managing a classroom is something some teachers do well and some do not. For myself I find it important to establish respect at the very beginning to start managing your classroom. We discussed in class having high expectations for each student. I also see that as respecting a student and their learning. To connect respect to learning theories it can be related to Behaviorist Learning Theory. The students receive a stimulus and respond to the stimulus. If they are shown respect and what I expect from them, they are more likely to respect myself and the classroom. Another important part of classroom management is making sure students are on task. This relates to the motivation factors of each student. If I relate the information to them in a form they can understand and relate to, they will be more willing to understand the information or to complete the task. Linking this to learning theory corresponds with Contructivist Learning Theory. I connect the new information to their previous schemas they will have a better understanding of the new information.
   Another portion of classroom management is how to handle situations. If a student walks in with a bad attitude and is throwing things and creating a scene I would first walk over and stand by him and see if that stopped his actions. If this did not stop his actions and they continued, I would ask him to stay after class and ask him questions about his actions in class. If he is truly disruptive during the entire class to where I am unable to teach, I would set the students on a question they needed to discuss in groups and then I would as the person to come up and talk to me. Then I would ask possibly the same questions I would ask at the end of class, how is your actions appropriate, why do you think that the actions that are being displayed are possibly interfering with their own education and the students around him. This can be connected to BLT while managing my class. Also I feel that I would treat each outburst or attitude in the same fashion. This way one student will not complain that she received a different treatment than he did.
   I truly feel that respect is the main thing that needs to be established when dealing with classroom management. That can come down to the respect of the students and their learning. Their motivation and their overall education would be coming from me. If I give them no reason to be motivated, no reason to want to learn, I am not respecting them, and my classroom will not run as smoothly because they will not feel the need to turn in homework, participate in class or behave in my class. Learning theory can connect and help structure the way a classroom is set up just like it can inform a teacher on how to prepare lessons. Keeping the learning theories in mind will make the classroom run smoother. 

Group 1: Eating well. I really enjoyed this presentation. They used an interesting polling website that I found could be very useful in the classroom. They also brought in concrete examples of healthy food as well as not so healthy food. It was very interesting when we all were able to look at lard. It was gross as well as educational. I have used Crisco before and know the texture, but it was interesting seeing the reactions on the other student's faces. I really enjoyed this presentation. DLT and SLT could be seen in their presentation. They used concrete examples of healthy food and not so healthy food. Also it was a discussion between peers and the presenter themselves.

Group 2: English homophones. This was fun to see how many people could think of different homophones. The lesson was not really concrete but they used SLT very well to inform their teaching. The riddles given at the beginning of the lesson were fun as well.


Group 3: Paper Bag Princess. This group use CLT  and SLT more to inform their lesson. They first started asking questions about what we believe respect was and how to show respect. They also keep active mental engagement while reading the book by asking questions about the book and what was going on while Cate was reading.


Group 4: Alphabet. This one got us to move around. This would be very helpful with children especially little ones who may have lots of energy in the end of the day. The use of finding and matching of the letters was fun and had to keep you thinking about where the letter could be and what the lower case looked like. Yes we are college students, but it was still something that we had to think about. Then using our peers as teammates through the race was influenced by SLT.

The lessons today all went rather well. Each group tended to use SLT a lot of the time and others did try to incorporate DLT, CLT, and BLT. I felt the presentation went smoothly today.

Thank You Iowa

The presentation today I felt went okay. I think that it could have possibly been better if we thought about all of the learning theories. When we started planning out the lesson I felt as if I was concentrating more on DLT and SLT, rather than BLT and CLT. Thinking about the questions they were yes or no. Even though they were not intended to be yes or no. I do like how the lesson went. I think the next time it would be rather important to think about CLT. This way to look at their schemas and see their understandings. That is what we were trying to do with the questions but the questions again were not worded correctly. I think the wording of the questions is something that is newer to the class. And trying to ask questions the way Prof Kruse does is a little harder than it seems. I think that also just takes a little practice.

So Far, Any Thoughts?

   This class is a rather interesting one. I try to explain to my friends how we do receive number grades and how it is more of an assessing yourself type class. As we have spoken about in class before, the way the class is ran does not fit into the schema of a classroom. Their schema says, there has to be numbers for our grades and I should just have to tell you vocab and be done. However, this class is not hard for me to accommodate into my schema. I feel that I have learned more and absorbed more from the way this class is ran. With Prof. Kruse constantly making sure we are actively mentally engaged really helps as well.
   Also, the way we learn about the specific learning theories and all aspects of teaching is by experiencing them. I find this very helpful. It was easier to grasp Developmental Learning Theory because we had seen how it worked when it came to understanding topics. We saw the Zone of Proximal development being tested when we were asked to describe how we believe the moon phases works. Working through the learning theories and having them explain why it is easier to learn a certain way is very helpful. I really have enjoyed this class so far this semester. 

My subject, in other words.

   I wanted to post this sooner but I had not figured a way to ask my roommates/friends about my subject matter. The first resource I would use is my best friend who is also an education major and I felt that this assignment I should ask someone who was not an education major what they thought about my specific subject. I have asked my roommates before about concepts in education. It usually gets me very annoyed. Mostly because they tend to believe teaching is easy. Which, as we have seen, is obviously not. This assignment however, fell into my lap, and I found that rather entertaining.
   One of the subjects that I rather love is math. Most people are probably making that scrunchy nose face right now and saying I hate math. That is perfectly fine. That is the subject that I would have asked my roommate about. So now it comes out, no I did not actually ask her, I overheard her. Eh yeah it is eavesdropping, but it fit so perfectly I really could not resist.
   My friend received a phone call asking her about a math problem. It was a "simple" algebra problem. The problem had one variable and her friend was asking on how to solve said problem. The way that she responded, I feel, was the way people view most teachers approach things. The problem was easy to her. And her friend kept asking her, "but why would you do that?" she kept saying because that is the way you do it. She also said "well you can do that but I do not know why you would it would just be stupid." The sad portion to me is that she had no patience when she was asked this question. Which is something that was not surprising. Through school some of us met teachers who did not have that patience and we were pushed to the side to figure out things for ourselves. I also found it was interesting that my friend said, "this is easy," when her friend kept asking her questions. I feel some teachers may think that, "hey I understand this concept, it is super easy," and they get frustrated when their students do not understand the concept. They may also think this student is just not trying, and they are wanting the teacher to do the problem for them. Another part of the conversation that I heard was the fact that after the phone conversation was over, my friend looked at our other friend and pretty much laughed at the fact that her other friend did not get how to solve the math problem. Not only do I find this gut wrenching, but I also think that it happens more often in the school setting.
   This assignment, to me, proves a lot of misconceptions about teachers. Teachers are labeled as people who do not care about their students. They tend to just keep moving on from subject to subject. Yes, I understand that has to happen sometimes, but I also feel that happens more times that is necessary. But I feel Professor Kruse and other like him at Drake are really trying to keep us from doing that and having actual care for our students. That is important in any subject at any grade. And it is possible that we become such amazing teachers that our students will have to ability to explain how to work through problems with other students without becoming frustrated themselves.  

Social Learning Theory

   Yesterday in class we started talking about Social Learning Theory. After talking about Developmental Learning Theory I feel that this one is an easier theory to grasp. Also I believe it is going to be easier to find was to use the theory as an influence when writing lessons. The "most knowledgeable peer" I find very interesting. When talking in groups I can easily tell who seems more knowledgeable about a specific subject. I find it also helpful because if one student does not understand the questioned raised by the teacher, his peer might. The students then learn to feed off of each others intelligence.
    SLT I have found throughout school. Teachers have always asked us to talk with our neighbors or work with a partner on this problem. This becomes very helpful in the classroom. The students now have a partner that they can count on to help them with problems they may not completely understand. This could also have a down side. If the teacher allows the students to work in groups or partners for too long, the students may end up relying on each other. Once the student starts relying on the other student to do the problems he does not understand, he feels that he does not need to learn that specific question because he has a partner to do it for him.
   I really enjoy SLT. I find the it is very important for students to learn to work together and feed off of others ideas. Even in class discussion, when a classmate comments on a question raised, I sometimes think, "oh yeah, that is what I was thinking too," and sometimes it is even, "whoa they looked at that completely different than I did." I find that important for students. They can understand the concept one way and another student can interpret the information another way, yet both can be correct. If each student hears both interpretations, then the concept becomes clearer and easier to grasp.

DLT in all aspects of teaching

   Thinking about the last couple of days in Learning and Assessment, the idea of DLT influencing teaching has really started to take form. The hardest thing I find when studying DLT is finding the most concrete place to start a lesson. Some subjects however, the most concrete is simpler to find. Then I look at math, writing, and reading and I begin to struggle with finding the most concrete. Although it is difficult to find a concrete starting position it is not impossible. I have to keep that in mind when I think about the most concrete, it is not impossible. When it comes to teaching all subjects, DLT should influence everything. Figuring out a way to break ideas down to the most concrete level, to find a way to help each student grasp every concept.
   I started thinking about the teachers we have said were "bad teachers." The idea crossed my mind that maybe these teachers were not all bad. Maybe they had been trying to break things down into concrete ideas. All of us have seen how hard it can be to break some subjects down into the most concrete form. No one said teaching was an easy job. Listening to Prof. Kruse talk about how he would break things down, I keep thinking, "I do not think I would ever think of that." I believe it is hard to see the most concrete ideas because we as students have been thinking abstractly for so long. Teacher believe once a student gets at a certain age there is no need to go back and forth between concrete and abstract. But then again once students reach a certain age they do not need the most concrete they need a step above that. Each teacher needs to realize how important going concrete it and using DLT as an influence when teaching could be their best tool.
   Finding ways to have DLT influence every aspect of teaching is harder than it seems. A teacher has to break down the concept to a concrete idea and move from there. The problem would seem that a teacher has been thinking abstractly for so long, that it would be hard for her to find the concrete level to start her lesson. Using DLT can help not only the students learn but allow the teacher to become a better teacher. She has to think on her feet and realize that finding the most concrete is not going to be easy, but once found her students will be able to grasp concepts easier.