Month: February 2019

One of my biggest fears as a future teacher is the feeling of not knowing the right thing to say or not knowing the answer. With field trips, teachers need to get comfortable with this feeling of not always knowing the answers. I would think that in many cases the museum expert or tour guide will be much more knowledgeable than the visiting teacher at the topic covered by the trip, and that is okay. When I completed a long-term substitute teaching job, I remember a staff meeting where the teachers talked about it being okay to not always know the answer and that it was good to model in front of students what to do in this situation. It is important to show students how you would approach finding the answer when you don’t know it. I think this goes along with what has been discussed at our teaching courses at UR as well – that it is the thought process that is so much more important than the actual answer and that we need to teach kids how to logically problem solve. With so much information available after a couple of clicks on a device, it is so much more important to teach students how to think and how to know what to do with information. While I know this in my head, it still is a challenge for me to let go and know that I don’t need to have all of the answers. Also, since I tend to be an analyzer and introspective, it is a challenge for me to remember to think out loud and share my thoughts with students.

I think the VMFA field trip was a great opportunity and learning experience for me because it gave me a chance to observe what a field trip with students might look like. It gave me a chance to learn how to help students find “the maybe.” (i.e. maybe the gentlemen is a lawyer, maybe family is important to him, maybe the columns indicate his position in society, etc.) and promote their curiosity. I had no idea how much information was on the VMFA website. I love all the tools that are out there as well as the guide cards that were in our informational materials. These resources will be very helpful to practice the skills of modeling for students how I SEE, THINK, and WONDER.

The assessment resources shared this week in class are very helpful. In past semesters, I found it challenging to write assessments for elementary math and elementary science, and I am still developing in my knowledge of constructing assessments. We have talked about some similar strategies of backward design (writing assessments early in the unit planning) and matching assessments to the learning targets/objectives, but I am still growing in this skill of trying to find the best match. I imagine that it will take many years of practice to become strong at building ideal assessments, and I appreciate all of the great examples shared in class of do’s and don’ts of assessment writing.

For me, rubrics can be very confusing – both as a parent when my children bring them home from school and as a future teacher trying to design a rubric that measures what it intends to measure and that is clearly written. Lisa’s question about the difference between the 4 and the 3 in the example shared in class is similar to questions that I have. Sometimes it is very hard to see what distinguishes a 3 from a 4 without an example of each to go along with it. This is why I really like the idea of providing examples of each category for students and teaching them to self-assess their own work against the rubric.

I am excited to learn about the Virginia Quality Criteria Review Tool. I had never previously heard of this resource. I think that it will be helpful to spend some time working with this tool and using it to assess the quality of other rubrics. Personally, I still need some work brainstorming ways to measure student progress through performance assessments. It always seems easier and less time consuming to have the students do a written test, but I am interested in learning more about and planning for performance assessments that assess students ability to apply their knowledge. I had an “AHA” moment during the course reading this week when it talked about how project scoring often places disproportionate weighting on attributes like the neatness or colorful display, etc. versus the true subject matter content or skill that the student was supposed to be developing. I have often seen this to be the case with assignments that my children have completed. I will definitely try to keep this in mind when I am developing rubrics for my future class projects.

The theater box video shares a great example of a possible summative assessment project that could be used in an upper elementary classroom. I love that it incorporates intelligences outside of the traditional mathematical and linguistic intelligences that are the most frequently focused on at school. This project allows the students to be creative and showcase their talents in their own way. What a great idea to have each student share their own “special secret” about the time period they are researching to add to the excitement of the project. I hope to use this same activity in my future classroom.

This week I really enjoyed learning about how the different school systems manage sharing lesson planning tools (i.e. Canvas in Chesterfield, and Google Drive Toolbox in Henrico) and how some schools see greater pressure from the SOLs in their lesson planning choices. As I am winding down to my final few classes in the UR program, it is nice to get a glimpse of some of the realities we will deal with as teachers as we enter our real working lives. Hopefully, I will end up in a school that understands the importance of front-loading instruction and of taking time to incorporate primary and secondary documents into social studies instruction, but it is good to be prepared and know that you may not always have the flexibility to teach as you wish that you could.  I also really enjoyed the opportunity to watch the Harriet Tubman lesson plan video and discuss as a group which similarities and differences we see to the elements of the UR lesson plan. I have often thought that it would be helpful to get a chance to share and discuss the lesson plans that we develop for our assignments with other members of the class, but this type of discussion has not been frequently incorporated into the teaching classes that I’ve had so far (outside of a few of microteaching experiences). For me, I learn a lot about my own lesson planning by reviewing other lesson plans available online, and I think it is very valuable to have a chance to hear the thoughts of others on what works best and what may not be effective in a lesson plan. I know there is a lot of material to cover so it may not be possible, but I would love the opportunity if possible to discuss and share the lesson plans that we create with other in our classroom if time allows so that we can receive and give feedback to one another and discuss what challenges we had in our lesson planning.

During our 4th class, I really enjoyed the timeline exercise where we took various documents related to Dr. Stohr’s dad’s life and tried to put them in order and see how they connected with the historical events of the time. I think the students would really enjoy this type of exercise as well, and I think that it would draw some reluctant learners into the lesson with some high interest items and the chance to discuss in a small group with peers prior to discussing as a whole class. I also loved the Antiques Roadshow: Show and Tell video. I think kids would really get into this kind of assignment. I thought it was so neat to see the necklace beads that the student had with an old picture of his grandmother wearing the same beads as a child. What a neat way to teach students about history and things of the past at a young age! My children are 10 and 13 years old, and this has me thinking about activities they could do with their paternal grandfather that served in Vietnam. Now, I am curious to ask him and find out what types of primary source documents that he had from the war that he could share with me, the kids, and possibly a future classroom.

Our classes, textbook, and readings/videos have been very helpful, but I still have various questions circling in my mind:

1. Do most schools have many primary documents available for use at the school or do teachers generally collect these on their own for their lesson plans?
2. Is it pretty easy to find instructional aids for primary and secondary sources to guide the teacher in interpreting more complex primary documents (Ex: political cartoons, symbolism in paintings)? I think I could usually interpret them on my own, but it would be nice to check and make sure that I am not misinterpreting or missing any key points.
3. Are most schools supportive of using historical fiction, as in our class literature circles, in our guided reading groups for upper elementary? Do parents ever complain that this type of content is too mature for an elementary reader? It is very helpful to start with the books that we are doing in our class as recommended historical fiction choices. My son also read and enjoyed Making Bombs for Hitler in his 5^th grade class. Do you have a list of recommended upper elementary historical fiction books that you could share?
4. How do you find balance between use of social studies textbooks, primary and secondary documents and historical fiction novels? Is there an ideal breakdown of how much time should be dedicated to each?