Month: February 2019

When watching the video “Applying Knowledge at a Museum” from TeachingChannel.org, something that the teacher said is “your job in a museum is not to see everything, it is to look closely at the things that you find most interesting.” This reminded me of museum visits with my family. I’ve been to a handful of museums with my family, either for school projects back at home in California or when we visited other states or countries and wanted to go to a museum to learn more about the culture. My, mom, brother, and I always raced through each room, trying to see everything, and feeling accomplished once we felt we had seen it all. However, my dad was the complete opposite. He would read every placard and every small detail; He would spend hours in just one room. He loved renting the headsets where you could press a button and learn everything about one painting or piece of pottery. Looking back at it now, my dad probably had gained much more from these museum experiences than me, my brother, and my mom combined. Like the teacher said from this video, the goal is not to see everything in a museum, it is to look closely at a few select things. Even one of our guides at the VMFA today said that the average person spends 7 seconds looking at one picture, artifact, or sculpture. Instead, the more effective way is to choose a picture, artifact or sculpture that interests you and then dig deep, ask questions, research more, and reflect. Complete certain activities like the “I see, I think, I wonder,” “connect, extend, challenge,” or “perceive, know, care about.” Like what was demonstrated in our class period today at the VMFA, it is easy to spend 20-30 minutes just on one picture. Spending time to actually look at the information and the picture allows for connection and the ability to recall the experience in the future. Thinking back on the museums I have visited, I do not remember much more than seeing Mona Lisa in the Louvre or bits and pieces about the purpose of the Mission San Juan Capistrano in California. I am sure I could call my Dad and he would remember much more than me because he took the time to connect and reflect on what he saw.

Something that stuck with me after last class was what professor Bland said at the end of class, “we actually want our kids to succeed!” This comment was in reference to testing and assessment in schools. When going through my schooling in middle and high school, the grade you got was the grade you got. I never had the opportunity to re-take a test if I got a low score. This ‘you get what you get’ attitude lead students to have a very fixed mindset. Students were able to take one test and this determined if they understood the material or not. If they got a bad grade or ‘did not understand the material’ then there was no opportunity for growth. What students understood, they understood, but what they didn’t, they seldom had an opportunity to expand upon it and show their growth. This comment that professor Bland made stuck me, because yes we do want our students to succeed! But then why is it that teachers would not allow for growth in the classroom when it came to assessment? I think this is changing in classrooms today. Teachers are allowing for re-testing or even allowing students to show their knowledge in individual ways other than mainstream assessments. It is interesting to be able to compare my schooling with what we are learning is best to do in class today.

Something that will stay with me after todays class was the video we watched about the teacher conducting a lesson on Slavery in America and Black History Month. What struck me the most was the continuous formative assessment she did, saying “thumbs up if you’re thinking I kinda get what we’re talking about now.” Reflecting on my elementary education, I do not remember teachers doing as much formative assessment in the classroom. They did not know what we knew or were confused about until it was time to take the test and the student did not do well. My question is, is formative assessment a new strategy instilled in classrooms? Formative assessment has been encouraged when taking my elementary education classes for my minor, but before my career at UR I had not heard of it. Is formative assessment new to the education realm or was it something that teachers just ignored in the past? Something else the teacher in the video did that teachers did not do when I was in elementary school was sharing the learning targets with the students. My teachers would usually say “today we are going to learn about the Civil War.” But this teacher specifically told her students, “after todays lesson you will understand slavery in America and understand Harriet Tubman’s role.” When I have gone into Richmond public schools to complete my observation hours, I have also noticed how teachers write the learning objectives or “I can” statements on the board. Is this a new strategy implemented in elementary schools as well?

What I noticed today is how background knowledge is heavily connected to long term memory. In my other education class, Diverse Learners with Dr. Brenning, we spent last class talking about short term and long term memory. Long term memory allows us to save things we have learned for future use and while memories do not always last forever, they can be revisited and strengthened. Long term memory can be referred to as a library full of printed books. When doing the activities today with George Washington and King George III, I realized how this was true. Even though my memories from learning this information in high school was a little dusty, I was able to remember George Washington and bits and pieces about the Revolutionary War as well as King George the III and his reign during turbulent times. As said by Shoob and Stout, “learning new content is strongly tied to background knowledge about a subject.” And furthermore, background knowledge is tied to the frontloading and information stored in long term memory. Like seen in the Social Sciences Skills Progression chart, skills and learning build off of one another from frontloading, to long term memory, to retrieval as background knowledge when learning more about the topic.