October 25, 2013

Reflect on my Questioning techniques. When I am in the classroom I use a lot of questions to aid my instruction. What I have noticed is a change in what I am trying to get out of the students with my questions. At first I would just ask for a basic fact or peice of information, and then I would elaborate on the subject and make it into a concept. This I thought was pretty good until I realized that what I was doing was teaching facts and not applicapble concepts to the students. So what I have done is to modify my questioning techniques for the students. Through this I have changed the types of questions that I am asking. I will ask one student for the fact. Then I will ask another to give me the why for that fact. After that I will ask another student for the what that goes along with the theme. I ask these building questions and then the students build the concpets for themselves. For instance I will ask what a referendum is. One student will tell me that it is a vote on an intiative. Then I will ask another to explain what an initiative is. Then I will ask a student why they are important and another how are they used. This way the students have built the concept themselves and I feel like this is a must more beneficial way of questioning to get the types of learning that I want out of my students.

October 18, 2013

A lesson that went well. A lesson that I taught that I really think went well was when I taught iniatives and womens suffrage. An initiative is a law that is written by citizens and put on the ballot to become law. Women used this to gain suffrage in individual states. First I split the room in two halves. I put the girls on one side and the boys on the other. Then I had the boys vote on things like should the girls take notes today, should we watch a movie today or sports etc. Through this I ignored the girls. Then I explained that this is what it was like for women in the progressive era and why women worked so hard to change it. Then I had the students write a brief reflection on what they thought after the activity. Then I explained how the intitiative was used. After this I put the students in groups and had them write their own laws. After which each law was read, debated by the class, and then voted on. I think this lesson went well because the students talked about it for a long time, and the students can still recall the information presented in it.

October 11, 2013

Questioning Techniques. Since the beginning of the semester I have noticed a change in the type of questions that I ask the students through the course of a class. In the beginning I would ask a lot of who what when where how questions just seeking surface facts. As I have went along though now I find myself asking more critical thought questions. For instance if this happend then what caused it? Why did this effect this? Now that you know this what happens when this occurs. This shows my development as a teacher. I now ask questions that provoke a higher level of thought. I think that this is because I am more confident in myself as a teacher. Before I think I was afraid that the students could outsmart me. Now I am condfident that I can control the classroom and basically that I know my stuff. Because of this I feel that the students are reaching higher levels of learning and I am growing to a new level as a teacher.

October 4, 2013

Student learning styles and multiple intelligences. Through the course of the semester I have learned that I have three very different learning styles. In my m tech class the students are very hands on literal work. They do the best when they have books and worksheets for them to read and complete. Outside of this type of class they struggle greatly. They are not the best in social studies, but they excel in areas that involve logic. In my regular ed classes one is very reading based the other is very hearing based. One class would rather read the book and then discuss what they read. The other would rather listen to me talk and explain the events to them and what they mean. The one common ground is the use of computers excluding the Mtech class. The regular ed classes exceled the greatest when they were able to use the computers on the prezi assignment. The Mtech group struggled the most and did the worst when they were asked to use the technology.