Two instructional strategies evaluated this week were "Reinforcing Effort" and "Homework." Both of these strategies have wonderful places in the classroom. By reinforcing a students effort, a teacher ends up building self-esteem, acceptance, respect, and creating a desire to be a good student. Within the text many exciting ideas were presented, one of which is the effort chart, which I personally liked. The effort chart helped students to not only complete homework assignements, but they were responsible for charting their behavior over a given course of time (Pitler,Hubbell, Kuhn, & Malenoski, 2007). Technology was incorporated as the students themselves created the charts on Excel or on Microsoft Word. The student is responsible for creation of graph, maintaining the graph, and handing in the final document. It reminded me very much of self-monitoring of progress. A great idea in deed!
The strategies introduced in the "Homework" section of the text offered great ideas as well. In this chapter many websites were introduced that allowed students to work together, either from their school district or from around the world. In many ways, they were like Wiki's as students could post their work and then their peers would many necessary changes to help produce a product worthy of handing in. A website that was new to me was http://writeboard.com that site looked very interesting and user friendly. This was such a site that work could be posted and thoughts and comments were to be shared by other.
Both of these chapters demonstrated very exciting strategies that modeled the behaviorist learning style. The ideas presented were young, fresh, and full of technology to keep students learning.
Pitler, H., Hubbell, E., Kuhn, M., & Malenoski, K. (2007). Using technology with classroom instruction that works. Alexandria, VA: ASCD.
I feel you bring up some very important points about the idea of homework. Homework no longer has to be busy work or work out of a textbook. With the ever changing times in technology, teachers can create homework assignments that focus more on technology rather than just the standard textbook. I think as educators it’s very important to keep our students interested in school and one way to do this is by integrating different forms of technology into the classroom and also into their homework. You mentioned websites that focus on students collaborating together from different school districts and different states. I think an idea like this is the new direction of homework in our schools today.
ReplyDeleteKennie you are right on when you talk about homework not being just busy work. Nothing irritates me more than a teacher assigning homework just for the sake of assigning homework. That assignment needs to have justification, not just because the student should have homework. Technology is a great way to assign homework. Quite often I tell me students to watch the nightly news and then research one of the items they heard about. Current events are a great way to get students involved and age really doesn't matter. What matters is that they are furthering learning that they want to know more about, not something that was assigned because the teacher likes the topic. When students have a little control over their learning, many times they will learn more than the teacher could have expected.
DeleteYou make many great points about this week's readings. I also like the idea of tracking students' effort so they can see it. The use of technology while doing this is very valuable. It familiarizes students with programs that are essential for many people in their careers. Wiki's are a great way for students to work together and so are the websites you mentioned. Collaboration is a 21st century skill that students need to learn, the earlier the better.
ReplyDeleteSeamus thank you for agreeing with me on the ideas of incorporating Wiki's into the students educational world. The best thing about those is that it can be kept to just to the local school district or it can be opened to include students from other countries. Collaboration is a great tool and one that students need to be more exposed to!
DeleteI enjoyed your post and I also found this weeks resources to be be very helpful. My experience as a teacher has shown me that when students give effort it is always a winning situation in my classroom. Working primarily on problem solving based projects it takes effort to succeed. Many times it will not be the first answer that is the best choice, but a culmination of ideas that bring the students to their final answer. You cannot get to that point without effort.
ReplyDeleteTim you are right on when you talk about students using problem solving skills to solve projects and that the effort produces success! Students need to know that they will not always come up with the right answer on the first try, but with hard work and dedication as a team they will reach the final result they are looking for. Everything in life requires effort, and it is important for students to learn that valuable skill at an early age and know that it is a life skills necessary to successful in the real-world.
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