Week 7

Curriculum is simply like a road map. When you set of on a journey you know where you are, and where you want to get to. If I know I am leaving from Windham, and I want to get to my sister's home in NYC, I need to know how long I have to get there, how I am getting there, what I need along the way, and other factors. Using the UBD system is just like making a good map. You first make sure you know exactly where you want to, or need to, get to. You then decide what are the considering factors, and what questions do you need to ask to figure out these factors. When I start teaching at a new school or new grade I always like to look at the report card BEFORE I start teaching. How can I teach if I do not know what the students are going to be assessed on that will appear on their report card. I can assess and teach items that are not going to be on their report card, but I must also teach and assess the items that are on the report card. I also like to know how often they are assessed and how they are assessed (as in what type of grading system I will be using) again these type of information allows me to be a better teacher to the student population I am instructing.

Week 5 Post

Teaching preschool is such a different experience then teaching many other grades. Because we are teaching the basic concepts across the board, so every book I read, every activity I do, is done to help students understand the various aspects of literature. Because I read aloud 2 to 3 books as day, plus additional readings, the students are exposed to a wide variety of genres and are frequently engaged in the reading. I believe the three statements I could make about education in America today are: 1) It is driven and obsessed with data 2) Many decisions are at the most fundamental, and hidden level, motivated by the bottom line 3) Approaching a period of great change

Week 6 Post

I think that "boredom" is a vague term. When I taught older students I would always question their use of the term "bored." I truly think many students are bored because they do not understand either the content matter, or what is being asked of them. They may, like us all, simply have other things on their mind, which makes them feel like their "bored" when really they just wish they were somewhere else. I think to be truly bored you have mastered a content and have no more questions or inquire into that subject. Questioning pre-schoolers really runs the gambit. This age is so young that there is no real difference between genders in participation. I really never question a student to gage their understanding in a large group setting, I will pose questions and see who answers and the logic behind their answer. Often times I am not looking for the correct answer to a question, but rather just encouraging students to think. Text books, again, are an area that I really do not work with in my profession. However as a student myself I do have to purchase and read text books. I think that like any educational material, some texts are amazingly helpful and some are useless. As I have learned more about the traditional American Public Education versus my education, I feel I am fortunate to have a limited exposure as a student to text books. I did learn very quickly how to effectively skim a text book for knowledge without ever actually reading the text. Professional Development only has value to people where the course has meaning to the teacher. Spending hours on end analyzing either useless data or being trained on how to administer the NECAPS is simply a waste of time. I cannot tell you how many staff meetings I have sat at where a vast amount of data is thrown at our faces, mainly from students who are no longer enrolled in the school, and we just crunch numbers. Yes, there is a value in seeing trends, but have someone tell us the trend and then give us the time or skill set to improve in the areas that require improvement. Most teachers, I have found, would rather spend the time prepping for their class, working with their co-workers or developing curriculum for their class. Lots of teachers would love to observe other teachers, or learn about how to help our students with behavioral problems or learning disabilities. I strongly believe in the statement that we assessing only those things that are most easily tested and graded, and have little true understanding of value. I want to know what our students go on to do with their lives, are they successful citizens who bring to our society? who bring value? I do not think any one teacher has the ability to make or break any student, as a student is of course a person, and fundamentally we are fooling ourselves to think we can change anyone other then ourselves. We do not have the power to really change anyone else, unless they want to make that change for themselves. It does not matter how smart or skilled a person is in their profession if they cannot master basic skills such as getting to work on time, talking to people, working out conflicts, etc. We are a society that has become so obsessed with data in order to justify spending that we are unable to handle the fact that there are fundamentally core aspects of education that are untestable, OR that are only "testable" over a lifetime. Education is now based on the bottom line, what can we do for the cheapest with the biggest bang for our buck, or how can we get more grants but taking mainly useless or meaningless data and turning into talking points in order to secure a grant or two.

Week 4

Within my immediate school there is very limited access to technology, the three classrooms have two computers, neither of which has internet connection. I use my own iPad in my class, which I either project on to my personal television or use individually or in small groups. From my understanding the rolling out of technology has begun within the district and there are a variety of levels of teacher utilization. In previous courses I have studied how best to teach decoding skills both in reading and in understanding unfamiliar words. In most cases readers decode words by using context cues and previous understanding of root words to decode unfamiliar vocabulary within text. I have approached my literacy instruction using these knowledge, therefore decreasing time spent on “sounding out” new words, and increasing the ability to use context clues (within in the text or images) to help students decode. I am new to my district so I am not sure in what areas my current district as struggled. However in my experience districts struggle when implementing new policies in lack of resources. Specifically; time and money. Also when a district has a new policy and lacks “teacher by-in” then they can often find a large disconnect between the administration and staff in regards to the effectiveness of the program, if staff does not want to implement a new policy, they can easily sabotage the policy, be it intentional or not. I read a few very interesting articles regarding effective preschool models. One was from NIEER titled “Preschool; Policy Matters” and another article from the same site titled “Increasing the Effectiveness of Preschool Programs.” Both articles discussed the importance of high standards in regards to teacher qualifications, curriculum, use of grade level assessments and consistent policies, proceeders and protocols across the preschool program.

Week 3 Reflectoin

The focus on the presentation, collaboration and comprehension within the ELA CCSS, reinforces the shift toward the value and importance of higher order thinking skills. if the goal of the CCSS is to prepare students to be ready for college or a career the nesserary skills of approperiate grammatical use, presentation skills and collaboration are fundamental. The simple act of applying for and interviewing for a job utelizes all of these areas. The pratice and experience that students gain by developing anf fine tuning these skills within the academic setting will allow our students to become more confident and successful in their ability to secure and maintain gainful employment. For me, I have found that the use of high level language even within the youngest grades is critial to developing a rich vocabulary. By giving some direct examples of how to use technology into the classroom is very useful. It is always most fusterating to have a series of new directives handed, and even resources purchased, but teachers not have the "know how" or understanding of how to embed techology into a lesson plan. During college a professor of mine told me that the best indicator of a student's success on a standardized test was what type of car the parent drives. I also remember from high school that students had heard the rumor that you wanted your SAT scores to "match" your grades. If your grades where much lower then your SAT scores, colleges would think you were lazy. If you grades where much higher then your SAT score you were a hard worker. I think we all wonder, and I know I do, what do assessments like NECAPS, iReady, NWEAS, measure? What is the correlation to scores on these tests and students grades? What type of ability do these tests actually have in predicting future success in college or a career? A recent article in The New York Times highlights this question, how valuable are the assessments? http://www.nytimes.com/2013/09/29/nyregion/didnt-ace-sat-just-design-microbe-transplant-research.html?src=me&ref=general&_r=0

Weekly Reflection, Week 2

As I continue to read and learn about the Common Core Standards, I am beginning to realize how a) blessed I have been to have always had top-notch teaching that was never focused on "high stakes assessment" and b) how fortunate I have been that I have not felt forced to teach to these tests. This is not to say I have not worked in "data driven" schools, I certainly have. At a pervious employment each teachers test results were hung in the main hallway for all to see, and scores were discussed at length at staff meetings. I suppose that I thought the testing of four and five year olds using GRADE and GMADE was so outlandish and ridiculous that I was more then happy to simply not care. I knew my students where learning what they needed to learn, and the testing that I used to show their progress showed just that, continually steady progress for my students. It is definitely a challenge to find well written nonfiction text that is age appropriate, as I mentioned in the past, it is hard to find nonfictional text that is written for our youngest readers. If you establish at a young age that students should be expecting to hear fiction text, then when you introduce nonfiction as they get into older grades, you would see a backlash to this introduction of something “different.” As the book states, it will take time for teachers to develop such expanse libraries of nonfiction text that they can match to students reading ability. I would also feel that students reading ability of a fiction vs nonfiction text may very well be different, requiring that a teacher have additional time to assess and match students. Teachers who have access to technology should have more success in accessing free nonfictional text for their students to read, and in later grades reading the daily newspaper would be a wonderful way to help students in multiple academic areas. Part of what is so interesting, and challenging, about the these new standards is that they are really working at getting to almost an unmeasurable aspect of learning. In a time where politics is controlled by four year election cycles, we have become a society in which we demand immediate data. The fact is that what the common core is really getting at is learning that will take place over decades, not months. However I do not believe that is bad news for the common core or education in general. I have heard many stories of the new millennial generation entering into the workforce and management finding these millennials are difficult to train, have little teamwork skills and lack in other skills that make one a good employee. I do not think that the blame should fall completely on the schools, rather that the function of society to demand accountability and progress based on misguided, misleading short term goals has failed a generation in regards to becoming “college or career ready.”

Week 1 Posting

It is somewhat difficult for me to speculate on what the district does well on or not in regards to CCSS as this is only my second year teaching within my school district. This difficulty is also compounded as I work within the Title 1 Preschool, and currently there is no CCSS for preschool age students. I do feel that the district has taken good steps in regards to educating their staff in CCSS, as we have had both a seminar on the CCSS and received a copy of the book "Pathways To The Common Core." The district also hired a new Title 1 Director who has done a significant amount of work with and research into the implementation of the CCSS. While I am not familiar with the work done in the elementary schools in regards to writing, I have implemented a “weekend” news activity, which encourages students to write or draw about an event that happened over the weekend. I have noticed that Weekend News does appear to have a positive effect on increasing students awareness of print carries meaning, as well the importance of illustrations to gain information to decode and understand text. The concept of emphasizing the critical aspects of the text, such as: understanding main ideas, using evidence from the text, and increased comprehension of text, are all concepts that I would have hoped was already happening in the classroom when students were reading text. If we are not comprehending and able to answer questions based on the text, what have we taken from our reading? One aspect that I am surprised about is the de-emphasis on building personal connections to our text. As a teacher I am often encouraged to help students build personal connections to their learning in order to engaged them. If we are asking students to read for 45 minutes a day, I would assume it would be most successful if they were allowed to choose book that interest them. As an adult I choose books to read that I have either a personal interest in or I have another connection to. For a long period of time it appeared that in grades kindergarten through second, ELA was focused on “learning to read” and then from Third grade onward it was “reading to learn.” The new CCSS emphasis that the focus should always be on “reading to learn” which makes a great deal of sense being that traditional “sound it out” reading curriculum and instruction is actually a very poor method of teaching students how to decode. Part of the most challenging aspects of being a teacher is that no two students are really ever at the same point in their learning at the same time. This is why in my classroom I do as much small group or individual learning opportunities as possible. I have had kindergarteners who enter into my class “reading” books as high as ‘Harry Potter’ however while they are able to read this level of book, they are not actual retaining any information or details. As Pathways to The Common Core states, there are children who will just devour books, which is wonderful of course, but often if you ask them what happened in the book and more detailed questions they don’t have much retention. I believe that by focusing on the actual content of the book, not just reading a book, students will realize that reading is truly to increase our knowledge base and also activate our imagination and critical thinking skills. Having a wide range of books that are leveled to help our most struggling readers to our most advanced readers right at my fingertips has been a huge asset. Also having well written beginner reader books is so important, nothing is more frustrating then have a series of books that are so poorly written or have no plot, that it is actually impossible to ask a reader what was the story about, as those early reader books can truly be about nothing.