The Leadership Style Assessment has identified myself as an Adaptive Supportive. The primary characteristics that I can identify with are trustworthy, charitable, hard working, traditional values and consensus building in my work environment. I disagree with the characteristic of supporting the status quo in my classroom. Those are the characteristics that I believe matches my style. I believe my colleagues would agree with my own assessment.
The other leadership styles I can identify with has the characteristics of Creative Assertive and Dynamic Supportive since the matching virtues of Imagination and Empathy. I feel I demonstrate those qualities to my students and help students find their own leadership style when I am in the coaching environment.
This has helped me find areas where I can find other people who can compliment my leadership style to work towards a common goal. I would demonstrate to my class and students that we need to find others to collaborate with who are different from us and can bring a new perspective on things.
Saturday, February 22, 2014
Saturday, January 11, 2014
AGAPE-Engagement
The St Mary's program has helped me develop my educational community with the AGAPE themes in mind. It was started with being mindful of the different Associations that have with the current people in our profession and my school community. I have grown in my education profession from the different aspects that were talked about in the program. Some of the topics were eye opening to see how I may need to Adapt new ideas and procedures in my class.
My own area of interest that I wanted to grow in was researched by finding articles and written in a literature of review. I have adapted those thoughts in my classroom and have collected data to see how I need to change my Engagement with my class. I have engaged my colleagues with the results and hope to challenge them in their professional career to grow themselves.
I see how I can Engage more people from outside of our school for students to see how the skills they are learning is applied to the world around them. It could be recruiting professionals to come and speak to my class. Our school has made the connections with other cultures from our study abroad program and teacher exchange programs.
My own area of interest that I wanted to grow in was researched by finding articles and written in a literature of review. I have adapted those thoughts in my classroom and have collected data to see how I need to change my Engagement with my class. I have engaged my colleagues with the results and hope to challenge them in their professional career to grow themselves.
I see how I can Engage more people from outside of our school for students to see how the skills they are learning is applied to the world around them. It could be recruiting professionals to come and speak to my class. Our school has made the connections with other cultures from our study abroad program and teacher exchange programs.
Sunday, December 8, 2013
Project Based Learning with Technology
Project Based Learning with my students have helped them comprehend and retain the material better with the use of an iPad app of Explain Everything. The students will make their own video and explanation of an example. This has caused the students take their time to understand how to explain the processes they are showing on their iPads.
Most of my students' responses have been positive in working on those examples. Another benefit of student created examples is the use of the math vocabulary in their explanations which would show how much do they understand the uses of those words.
The students are able to upload the videos into a common Drop Box account so the students are able to watch other student's examples. I feel the students are going to be more attentive when they are getting an explanation from their classmates since the students have a better connection with student talk.
To have an accountability of their work, the students are assigned a different example from a different section of the chapter so they will get a review of another concept that was different from the one they made. The video checkoff sheet will have questions of 1) did they answer the questions, 2) did they do the proper procedure, 3) what terms did they use, 4) could they have used more terminology in their explanation, and 5) did they explain their example with confidence.
I believe this has challenged the overachieving students to go beyond the doing the math and getting the answer right. The students will have to show that they can communicated effectively with their writing down the example and also talking through the process of doing the math.
I have challenged the students to do one example from each of the different types of example in a chapter as a review. The students had more confidence in understanding the material for going into the test and did better. A few of my students who did take the time to do this made a remark to me of how much better they did on their test since they had to slow down the process of understanding the material.
This is one of the benefits of student iPad uses in the classroom I have seen when I changed towards a project based learning focused classroom. I hope to find other ways for students to show their creative side and make a product that other students can see and learn something from each other.
Most of my students' responses have been positive in working on those examples. Another benefit of student created examples is the use of the math vocabulary in their explanations which would show how much do they understand the uses of those words.
The students are able to upload the videos into a common Drop Box account so the students are able to watch other student's examples. I feel the students are going to be more attentive when they are getting an explanation from their classmates since the students have a better connection with student talk.
To have an accountability of their work, the students are assigned a different example from a different section of the chapter so they will get a review of another concept that was different from the one they made. The video checkoff sheet will have questions of 1) did they answer the questions, 2) did they do the proper procedure, 3) what terms did they use, 4) could they have used more terminology in their explanation, and 5) did they explain their example with confidence.
I believe this has challenged the overachieving students to go beyond the doing the math and getting the answer right. The students will have to show that they can communicated effectively with their writing down the example and also talking through the process of doing the math.
I have challenged the students to do one example from each of the different types of example in a chapter as a review. The students had more confidence in understanding the material for going into the test and did better. A few of my students who did take the time to do this made a remark to me of how much better they did on their test since they had to slow down the process of understanding the material.
This is one of the benefits of student iPad uses in the classroom I have seen when I changed towards a project based learning focused classroom. I hope to find other ways for students to show their creative side and make a product that other students can see and learn something from each other.
Tuesday, October 8, 2013
Backward Design
The backward design has helped me plan out how will the students show me evidence of understanding of the essential question. Listing out the different assessment tools and separating out the evidence by Of, For, As learning can help separate out how your assessments can be used at the different stages of learning for the students.
The backward design has helped me in my class by the video notes that I have already laid out and can plan which day we will go over the material. I can then plan out how I can use some of the assessments tools for the students to make their own example recordings for their project based learning and when the other students can see each others product.
The backward design has helped me in my class by the video notes that I have already laid out and can plan which day we will go over the material. I can then plan out how I can use some of the assessments tools for the students to make their own example recordings for their project based learning and when the other students can see each others product.
AR Abstract
Does teaching literacy skills in a math classroom help increase the retention of the material and increase achievement?
My action research is on the impact of teaching literacy skills in a math classroom to increase the retention of the material through vocabulary development, written communication of mathematical concepts, and increasing dialogue among the students. The research has shown how students reflecting on their work and clarifying their thoughts has help them consolidate the concepts.
The strategies that I used for increasing literacy skills are classroom word wall for vocabulary, journal questions to process their thoughts, and student dialogue through classroom discussions and student example explanations by using iPad recordings.
I will collect data from student journals, formative assessments of their recorded explanations, and end of chapter survey. I hope the students will be able to reflect on how their thought process is slowed down to process the material better.
My action research is on the impact of teaching literacy skills in a math classroom to increase the retention of the material through vocabulary development, written communication of mathematical concepts, and increasing dialogue among the students. The research has shown how students reflecting on their work and clarifying their thoughts has help them consolidate the concepts.
The strategies that I used for increasing literacy skills are classroom word wall for vocabulary, journal questions to process their thoughts, and student dialogue through classroom discussions and student example explanations by using iPad recordings.
I will collect data from student journals, formative assessments of their recorded explanations, and end of chapter survey. I hope the students will be able to reflect on how their thought process is slowed down to process the material better.
Monday, September 2, 2013
According to dictionary.com,
Presence-1. the state or fact of being present, as with others or in a place.
3. immediate vicinity; proximity: in the presence of witnesses.
I like these definitions as we move on into our 4th semester and starting the school year with our action research topic in the forefront of our minds. The experiences of our last year together learning from each other as classmates has given us ideas of what we can do to change in our classrooms. We have the opportunity to put these ideas into practice from the start within our classrooms. The presence of these ideas put into action will give us opportunities for us, as teachers, to grow and self-reflect on how or if it fits into our teaching styles.
From the research that we have done over the summer, we must be mindful of the presence of our students' learning as we are exploring the new ideas put into action. We are hopeful for the opportunity for growth for ourselves and finding positive results from our students.
Presence-1. the state or fact of being present, as with others or in a place.
3. immediate vicinity; proximity: in the presence of witnesses.
I like these definitions as we move on into our 4th semester and starting the school year with our action research topic in the forefront of our minds. The experiences of our last year together learning from each other as classmates has given us ideas of what we can do to change in our classrooms. We have the opportunity to put these ideas into practice from the start within our classrooms. The presence of these ideas put into action will give us opportunities for us, as teachers, to grow and self-reflect on how or if it fits into our teaching styles.
From the research that we have done over the summer, we must be mindful of the presence of our students' learning as we are exploring the new ideas put into action. We are hopeful for the opportunity for growth for ourselves and finding positive results from our students.
Monday, August 5, 2013
Circles of Self Reflection
The Circle of Self Reflection was an activity where you identified what roles you see yourself. The roles were tied to our family and professional lives. The two roles that I got rid of first was easy since they were tied to my professional life. That left with roles in my family that I saw myself. To take one role off my plate was difficult but to take two off eventually was really difficult to identify. It made you think of what role do you want to have for the present time or in the future with your family. I can see where it can vary from different seasons in our lives.
The roles that our students see themselves as would be similar to how we selected our roles. I would see the students pick friends and family over being a student because that is a small part of their lives and the values of family would trump the importance of being a student.
The lessons that I would take away from this activity would be the importance of what we teachers want the students to learn. At times, it is not the most important thing in the world since people struggle with the importance of family issues and our own personal issues. When students are struggling with their schoolwork, teachers will need to reflect and ask the students if things are fine at home first before emphasizing the importance of their homework. Then I can help them learn and grow as they struggle with balancing family life and modify the schoolwork to make them feel successful in my class.
The roles that our students see themselves as would be similar to how we selected our roles. I would see the students pick friends and family over being a student because that is a small part of their lives and the values of family would trump the importance of being a student.
The lessons that I would take away from this activity would be the importance of what we teachers want the students to learn. At times, it is not the most important thing in the world since people struggle with the importance of family issues and our own personal issues. When students are struggling with their schoolwork, teachers will need to reflect and ask the students if things are fine at home first before emphasizing the importance of their homework. Then I can help them learn and grow as they struggle with balancing family life and modify the schoolwork to make them feel successful in my class.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)