Micro v. Macro (I guess)

The readings this week vacillated between being very interesting and just appearing to be a jumble of strung together words, with key quotes I liked.  The Parson’s article discussed macro vs. micro differentiation in a somewhat veiled way. A question I came away from this article with is what is the difference between micro differentiation and “reactive teaching”? Isn’t micro differentiation small changes you make while teaching? Not necessarily planned as your macro differentiated lesson is. I thought this quote really summed up differentiated instruction, but also makes you realize how massive of a task it is:

“Therefore, teachers who effectively differentiate their instruction not only carefully plan instruction to differentiate for the variety of learners in their classrooms but also provide moment- by-moment adaptations to meet specific needs that become clear during instruction — needs that were not or could not be anticipated”(Parsons, 2013).

I find it interesting that the Duffy & Hoffman article is from 14 years ago but we are still having the same whole language vs. phonics debate even if it is just on a minor level. I found this quote to be interesting:

“Most U.S. elementary students are learning to read better than they ever have in the past (Berliner & Biddle, 1996), are competitive with students in other developed nations of the world (Bracey, 1997)”(Duffy & Hoffman, 1999).

Is that still true? We did an exercise in one of my undergraduate classes ranking different countries in different subject areas. The U.S. normally faired in the mid-to lower half of the bunch when the statistics came out. Though when I discussed this assignment with my brother, who has a master’s degree in Political Science and is just a fountain of random knowledge otherwise, he questioned the validity of the information since often the countries that came out on top were much smaller than the U.S, (Finland, Norway, etc.), so of course it would be easier to have a higher literacy rate in a country with a population one-fifth the size of Texas.

Another quote I took away from this article was one of my favorite from the readings this week:

“Such excellent teachers do not rely on a single program or method because they know that good teaching requires "doing the right thing in the right way and at the right time in response to problems posed by particular people in particular places on particular occasions”(Duffy & Hoffman, 1999).

I did not relate to the Tomlinson article very much. While it has good general ideas, middle school is just not my game.

Finally the big article. The Shulman. I immediately identified with a point he made, “Teachers themselves have difficulty in articulating what they know and how they know it.” This reminded me of my student teaching observations and the conversations I had with my supervisor afterwards. He would ask me how it went and they ask me how I knew. This was extremely hard for me to answer at first. The first observations always warranted answers like the students were engaged, they asked questions etc. Which his response to was always “and what else?” I think it would still be hard for me to articulate an answer to that question now, but the practice of it made me better.

Shulman (1987) articulated all of the plates teachers have in the air at any given time, “the subject matter being taught, the classroom context, the physical and psychological characteristics of the students, or the accomplishment of purposes not readily assessed on standardized tests, are typically ignored in the quest for general principles of effective teaching.”

Another point he made that stood out to me is that teaching is a learned profession. A teacher should never stop learning or believe they have all the answers. I think that is often a sign of a teacher who has given up or is bored with teaching or the school system. There are too many teachers who get far into their career and then never change their methods or point of view and it’s their students that suffer. I can only hope when I am at that point in my career I will still be open to new ideas. That’s part of the reason I think having student teachers is so important because it often shakes up what tenured teachers have concretely set up in their classroom.

On a final note I would like to discuss tailoring in class. I don’t think there was enough in the articles about it besides:

“Adaptation and Tailoring to Student Characteristics: consideration of conceptions, preconceptions, misconceptions, and difficulties, language, culture, and motivations, social class, gender, age, ability, aptitude, interests, self-concepts, and attention”(Shulman, 1987).

The term tailoring reminds me of this video from one of my favorite Disney movies.

English Language Learners

The video was hard to get through. Is it being read by a computer? The narrator’s voice has a very choppy, Siri-like quality at times but seemed totally normal at other points. 

While fractions is a little high for my target age group, I think this idea in general is great. I know in my student teaching class my master teacher had students work on the ipad with our 8^th grade “helpers” to play math games. I know they really enjoyed it. (On a side note if anyone knows of math apps, sites or games that target 1^st or 2^nd graders let me know! I’m looking for games for my new job!)

Finally an article that feels more in my wheelhouse! This is probably because it has a bilingual/ELL focus, but it was so much easier for me to read than a lot of our past articles. An issue this article brought up right away is the viewpoints of native language as a deficit vs. native language as a resource. “Viewing heritage language as a resource encouraged us to design an instructional approach that valued and leveraged cultural practices and linguistic knowledge”(Puzio, Keyes, Cole & Jiménez,, 2013).Depending on your viewpoint on ELL education and your own level of education about ELL education and second language acquisition, there is a large divide. On a side note, when public education began in this country some of it was what we now consider to be dual language in English and German.

I think the idea of collaborative translation is a great way to involve a student’s native language in the classroom, particularly if you have a large about of students with the same native language. I like that this also gives students a level of independence they may not have doing work only in English, if they are at a proficiency level where they must depend somewhat on the teacher. As a substitute in bilingual classrooms I didn’t see a whole lot of translation work but I did see students who would complete assignments in a mix of Spanish and English. Often times if they were prompted to complete an assignment solely in English, if they weren’t sure of a word they would write that particular word in Spanish. The difference there being that all of their teachers were bilingual.

There are a lot of misconceptions about English Language Learners and how they learn. Many of the “facts” that are out there are really chalked up to be folk linguistics perpetuated for certain peoples political gain. I included a little snippet of an assignment from my T&L 510 class that just ended that was about disputing folk linguistics:

I disagree that the more time students spend in a second language context the quicker they learn the language. A child being put in a poor quality immersion or submersion program is not going to help them learn L2 as quickly as a high quality transitional or development bilingual program. As Crawford (2004) states, “What counts most is the quality of second-language exposure, not the quantity,”(Crawford, p. 189). I also disagree that children acquire an L2 once they can speak it. According to linguistics expert Stephen Krashen, “We acquire language when we understand it,”(Crawford, p. 189). We acquire a language through comprehensible input, or being able to understand what others are saying in L2. “Speaking per se does not cause language acquisition,’ Krashen argues, but follows from it as a ‘result of obtaining comprehensible input,’”(Crawford, p. 189). Students also often experience a silent period where they choose not to speak English, no matter the amount they are able to speak or understand.

The most preposterous of all the statements from the focus reflection is that all children learn L2 in the same way. Many factors affect how a student learns L2. Including negative influences that may change their affective filter such as “anxiety, lack of self-confidence and inadequate motivation to speak the second language,”(Crawford, p. 191). All of these factors can make acquiring L2 more difficult for students. There are also positive influences they can affect how students feel while at school and may affect their attitude towards L2 such as a bilingual-bicultural curriculum and a classroom that recognizes the value of their L1 and native culture. Implying that all students acquire L2 the same is the same as implying that all students learn to read or learn early math skills in the exact same way.

Many of the proponents of English-Only education are politicians or public figures with absolutely no background in education or any kind of scientific research. In fact the man behind getting ELL programs taken out of California schools (where there are more students who speak a native language other than English, than those whose native language IS English) is Ron Unz, a “businessman” with a Harvard physics degree. While he may be highly educated about physics, that doesn’t give any background in SLA or teaching 6 year olds who speak zero English. His movement was/is called English-Only. An interesting fact is that his supporters included Arnold Schwarznegger, which I find ironic. Not because of the picture seen below but because part of his original fame coming from his imperfect ability to speak English.

I included another section of a past assignment about the English Only movement and Proposition 227 in California:

Bilingual education is dismissed by this movement as failing students with ineffective instruction to help them learn English. However this movement is built by politicians looking to capitalize on semantics through deceivingly worded catchphrases such as English Language Empowerment Act, English for the Children and Yes on English (Crawford, 2004). This movement and Proposition 227 is built mainly on public misconceptions such as language is easier to learn the younger you are, immersion is the easiest method for children to learn English and bilingual support from classroom teachers acts as a crutch. Unz was not quick to point out that “because of teacher shortages, fully 70 percent of California’s LEP students were not enrolled in bilingual classrooms,”(Crawford, p. 324). Bilingual education with a gradual transition to a traditional English classroom is a strong and effective option that school districts should be able to consider and/or implement based on their own needs. I believe that bilingual education should be an equal effort on the part of the school, school board, teachers and school support staff as well as parents of students.

Crawford, James. Educating English Learners. 5^th ed. 2004. Los Angeles, CA: Bilingual Education Services.

Puzio, K., Keyes, C., Cole , M., & Jiménez,, R. (2013). Language differentiation: Collaborative translation to support bilingual reading. Bilingual Research Journal.

D'Oh! Thoughts on the videos from Walden Pond

Apparently I had a blonde moment last class. I thought we weren't doing blogs for multiple weeks, not just last week. 

To be fair, this is what I looked like the day I graduated from college:

Here are my notes from the videos. I wrote down information I found important from the video or that I really related to.

Video 1: Supporting all learners

- Essence of differentiation: Where are we trying to go? Who’s with us? When you find out who is ahead or behind, what will do about that?

- Is it just me or does Jay seem a little bitter to be playing second fiddle in the video?

- I like that Carol Tomlinson makes the point of studying students to understand how their lives are affecting their learning.

Common misconceptions of differentiation

-          Not differentiation: Giving struggling students less work and high achieving students more work.

-          Not helpful for struggling student to do less and not useful for advanced learner to do twice as much of the same thing

Make understanding for advanced learners

-          More complex

-          More abstract

-          More multi-faceted

-          More connective

Make understanding for struggling learners

-          More scaffolded

-          More concrete

-          More guided

Video 2: Authentic Learning and Assessment

- First thought, why are these videos filmed in stone cottage in the middle of no where? What is this Walden Pond?

- Carol looks equally bored while Jay is talking.

- Examining what a discipline is. Science is a discipline because it evokes an entirely different way of thinking.

- Coaching analogy – I never thought of coaches as differentiating. Playing team sports as a child, I don’t really see the connection but I can compare this to swimming in high school. We were divided in lanes by our ability/times or by what stroke we were practicing and often we all had different individual goals.

- Conceptual Velcro – Big ideas help the little ideas adhere

- Carol referring to someones work as “interesting plowing”, what a great way to say long and hard to read. Who knew we could have something so simple in common with Carol Tomlinson?

Carol’s point that some teachers believe only a few students can use knowledge. Differentiation is broken up between smart and not smart students. This is terribly sad, but I think it is all too common in classrooms.

Video 3: A Change of Mindset

To me this was by far the most boring of the videos. It had almost a Charlie Brown teacher way of coming through to me. Wahhh Wahhh Wahhh standardized tests Wahhh Wahhh Wahh.

- Jay often hears the phrase: I’d like to teach to understanding,I’d like to but… - misconception

- Most missed items on state tests are not skill based questions but understanding based questions. This seems particularly interesting to me since as they say in the video, we often assume standardized tests are all fact based. 

- “I don’t think too many of us signed on for test prep as a career” Amen sister!

Carol's tips for high test scores

1.  understanding, 
2. confidence 
3. competence

- Assessment as a photo album, not a snap shot. Standardized testing gives us just one look into learning. - - - Standardized testing is like taking a picture with a wide angle lens, it only shows the students understanding from a far away view.

- The teacher from a small school in Idaho: 8 ways to teach reading? That is impressive!

Video 4: Teaching, the Ever-Evolving Profession

- AMT – Acquisiton Meaning Transfer

Can often tell which classes are advanced vs. remedial by looking at students.

Advanced – higher income, more opportunity, often cacasioon

Remedial – low income, students of color

Pedagogy of Poverty

Do you start with the curriculum then differentiate or do you start with differentiation and then tie it to the curriculum? Where does assessment come in? Start with it? Or include it later on?

- Parts of a classroom are inter-related, hard to pick which to start with?

Steps of Backward Design

1.       Identifying desired result – standards, essential knowledge, skills

2.       Think about assessment evidence, particularly summative assessment, connect goals to the evidence of learning

3.       Plan instruction, develop lessons

- You can kind of hear the camera man or someone coughing in the background!

- 21^st century skills or learning – aligns with UBD, need to be able to apply what you learn, not static but adapting.

My most burning questions from the videos are:

1. What would you consider 21st century skills?

2. What is UBD? I don't remember them ever saying the whole acronym. I'm guessing it has something to do with backward design.

3. Do you start with the curriculum then differentiate or do you start with differentiation and then tie it to the curriculum? Where does assessment come in? Start with it? Or include it later on?

I find the third question to be the most pressing on my mind.