Summative Assignment

Nicholas Andreozzi

Summative Assignment

SED 407 this semester was a whirlwind of information. A lot of the topics had already  been covered in SED 406, and in my MLED courses, but the new perspective and deeper investigation of these ideas made the difference for me. The main focus of this course was investigating the strategies used by effective readers and how educators can teach these to students. I learned that students benefit from reading a variety of topics and genres, and they should be reading on their reading level. I figured they should be reading things that are appropriate to their reading level, but I don’t often see that through observation. We took the time to investigate the effectiveness and inaccuracy of textbooks, which proved to be an eye-opening experience. It turns out that textbooks aren’t as accurate as the cover may lead you to believe. As teachers, we really need to read what we want our students to read, before our students read it. If we don’t know what a text actually says, we may not be prepared to correct misconceptions. It’s not always a bad thing for the textbook to be wrong, either. People wrote it and people can be wrong. So I would like to use some of these moments to investigate whatever topic they are wrong about through an outside article or video. Right now, the most useful part of our textbook was all the strategies in chapter 5. I know that I will need to modify these for my students, but having a template is still very useful. Having these strategies will help me teach literacy to my students. Before you start learning content, you need to learn the vocabulary, and then you need to take part in it somehow. By using strategies like the ones in chapter 5, my students will be able to learn the vocabulary quickly because they will be able to organize these words and meanings effectively, while also giving direct meaning to them. Then, they will have more time for content and higher level Bloom’s activities, like labs to help the information reach their long term memory. It’s safe to say that I learned a lot of meaningful things this year, and in the following I will tell you the three most important learnings.

“Know your students” is a phrase that gets tossed around a lot in education, but I struggled with figuring out how to learn about them. As a future educator, I want to learn about my students so I can create more meaningful instruction, but it was hard for me to figure out ways of asking them questions without being blunt. An interest inventory is a very useful tool to learn about students. In my experience as a student, this typically consisted of a flash card asking for your name, period, and if you like the subject or not (which was just begging me to say it was my least favorite). Now that I know how to properly do an interest inventory, I can ask something like, “If you were to have a sit down dinner with seven family members and/or friends, who would be there?” to learn who each student looks up to and is influenced by. Knowing things like this is useful for the social and emotional needs of students, as well as the level of academic support they might be getting at home. This is valuable information for teachers because it can influence how much attention you give a student, as well as the type of instruction you might choose to use in a lesson. In my future classroom, I want my students to work as a community. I envision using cooperative group work because I know it helps students bond and it reduces anxiety, not to mention it promotes academic growth. Since I will be using cooperative group work, I need to make sure the groups I make can function fairly smoothly. Knowing my students will help me facilitate group formations, member roles, and general instruction.

Another important learning is Understanding by Design (UbD), which is a concept I have learned about before, but now I feel that I really understand it. UbD is useful for organizing lessons with the end result in mind before you write the lesson. So, if you know you want your students to be able to do some conceptual piece of content, you need to plan your lesson to make sure they can achieve that objective or goal. UbD generally helps students see the meaning behind the content, while helping the teacher remember why it is so critical to learn. To assist in identifying meaning, UbD lessons incorporate essential questions and enduring understandings so the lesson can be organized and focus. A great feature is how student centered it is. Everything in UbD is done for the benefit of the student so they can more easily enter the field you are attempting to introduce them to. Even the assignments are student centered. Role Audience Format Topic (RAFT) assignments are great for giving new meaning to topics. A RAFT is a method of assignment that allows students to take on a role and communicate to a given audience through some format such as a letter, map, or speech, on a specific topic. An example might be: Pretend you are a quantum mechanist like Niels Bohr and you are writing a letter to the philosophers of Ancient Greece about your physical discovery of the atom. This allows students to assume a role outside of themselves and communicate to an audience they would not have tried to before.

            My most important learning was from my field work. Through observation, I learned the power and necessity of classroom management and structure. The class did not have structure or management strategies implemented, making it was very chaotic. Three of the observations were student presentations, and the majority of the audience (students that aren’t presenting) would be playing on their phones or whispering to their neighbors, instead of being active in the presentation. They could have had a quick format to fill out like a 3-2-1 Response, but simpler so it won’t take too much time. My two lessons also taught me a lot. I learned that I can manage a class fairly well, but last period is very different than first period. My lessons involved cooperative group work, but I didn’t realize that not every group will stop at the 10 minutes I gave the class to do the assignment. Some groups that were done early became distractions to the other groups. Now I know that I need extensions for groups that are done early and better techniques to motive and help groups that are struggling.

            I learned a lot of new ways to think about literacy, and strategies to use during this semester. I think I understand the concepts much better than I did last semester. As a grade, I think I deserve a B+/A-. My blog could have been better in terms of pictures, links, and aesthetics, but I think the content and responses are what matters most. I had good interactions with the text, and applied it to myself as a teacher candidate, as well as students that I may be teaching in the future. I completed four observations with the same teacher, and taught two lessons. I prepared and reflected for those lessons and taught them to the best of my abilities. In class, I reached out more than I did in MLED 330, and participated more in class discussions, as well as in groups. This class is one that has helped shape me into the teacher candidate I am now. Entering practicum, I will remember the teachings of UbD, to have classroom structure and management, and to take the time to learn about my students so my class can become a professional learning community.