Teaching Metaphor Revisited

At the beginning of the semester, I envisioned my role as a teacher similar to that of a personal trainer. Now, after teaching a connected unit, I realize that the comparison is much more complicated. Teachers are responsible not for one client but for an entire classroom of students. I believe that as a teacher, I will still play many of the roles that a personal trainer does. For example, a teacher needs to know her students' strengths and weaknesses to be able to guide them on a track of growth and progress that will be best suited for each individual student. Teacher must be in tune to students' zones of proximal development in order to provide the most effective instruction. Also, a teacher must provide personal support for her students, aiding in their intellectual and affective development. However, teaching a classroom introduces the issues of differentiation that are not present for a personal trainer. A teacher must be able to know and serve all her students as individuals while balancing their needs as a whole classroom. After this semester, I feel more prepared to approach differentiation and classroom management, but these are topics which I will be developing professionally throughout my years of teaching practice.

Teaching Our Unit, Day 5 (3/30/07)

Our LAST day!!! It makes me really sad, actually, to think that today was the last time I'd be working with those kids. Can't lie- I definitely had some favorites who will be hard to forget. First grade is such a fun, energetic age, and those children could entertain us for hours without trying.

Anyway, Kelly taught today, and it was a great lesson. In our lesson yesterday and today, Kelly and I both noticed such a huge change since the first time we've worked with those kids. I think this is a result both of their growing comfort with us and our own growing comfort with the process of teaching (looking back on that first time we taught, when I was probably shaking because I was so nervous, I know I've grown so much). So one big difference in the students was their meaningful participation. The students were almost all raising their hands again and again during Kelly's discussion, and they had great, thoughtful answers to provide. In the past, we've had to drag some answers out of them, much less expect them to be accurate. Looking at the progression just in this unit, I can tell that we really have taught them something about economics.

Speaking of the students' learning the material, we gave the summative assessment today, and I realized that we made some mistakes in the structure. During Kelly's review discussion, she asked students for explanations of goods and services, and buyers and sellers. Instead of definitions, they gave examples of each. They were very distinct examples, and it was clear that the students understoof the concepts. However, on the selected-response portion of our assessment, we gave questions that were aimed towards identifying definitions. Some students had trouble with this even though they were able to give examples during the discussion. This is a valuable discovery in terms of our assessment, showing that students' deminstration of their knowledge differed depending on how the questions were structured. This has also helped me see the value in giving formative assessments rather than placing all responsibility on the summative assessment. I feel confident that we will get a more accurate picture of individual students' achievement through the consideration of their combined work.

An activity Kelly had the children do was to draw an assigned establishment to contribute to a "class town." For example, each student drew a picture to represent one of the following: grocery store, police department, bank, toy store, etc. Afterwards, students got on an "Illustrator's Chair" to share their picture and identify elements such as goods, services, needs, wants, buyers, and sellers. Though this sounds like a simple activity, it was etremely effective. Our students enjoy drawing so they were dedicated to the assignment and no students got off task, drawing something unrelated. They really considered the different elements involved in each picture, both during their drawing and during their evaluation and discussion of others' pictures.

Overall, I was really happen with this last piece of our unit. The students were engaged and proved that they learned something from our lessons. I learned very valuable lessons as well and am excited to approach the mentioned issues in future teaching.

Teaching Our Unit, Day 4 (3/29/07)

Today, I taught our lesson on savings. First, I did an interactive read-aloud of The Berenstain Bears' Trouble With Money, emphasizing the lesson that the bear cubs learned about money by the end of the book. We discussed how needs and wants affect the way people save money and noted the choices that the cubs made in dealing with their money. The students were really interested in the book until the very end when the discussion may have become tedious for them. However, I continue to have the same problem in my teaching over and over agan. I prepare so thoroughly for my lesson and I get so focused on how I am presenting the material that I end up losing track of the students, which is really the most fundamental part of any lesson. What I mean is that I start calling on the same students who always raise their hands while forgetting to bring in the stragglers. In addition, I still struggle with the best way to effectively grab the attention of the students who start to lose interest. I feel a little overwhelmed in balancing my concentration on my own lesson while managing students' participation. I would appreciate any advice on how to handle this...

The rest of the lesson, I felt, was pretty successful. We led students on a "journey" in which they helped me make choices between different objects to purchase while trying to save enough money for a goal object. There were a lot of elements in action but I think everything was tied together pretty well. Each student had a sign that was labeled with "spend" on one side and "save" on the other side, which they used to vote on whether or not to purchase objects along the way. We had tangible objects on display for the students to 'choose' from, such as a basketball, a book, items of food, flowers, candy, etc. In addition, the students had sheets on which they recorded the decisions that were made at each stop so that we could later discuss togetehr what were mart choices and what may have been done differently. I kept a budget recorded on the baord to help us keep track. Also, I used green paper for dolalr bills in an attempt to use as many visuals in order to bring the activity together. The students were very engaged in the activity, excited to vote and to record the choices made along the journey. Compared to our last lesson, I am very happy with the outcome this week because we figured out how to have an interactive learning experience without having total chaos. Because we did this activity as a class but still allowed for individual participation, we were better able to manage the classroom and ensure that students were productive.

Teaching Our Unit, Day 3 (3/22/07)

Today, we taught a very ambitious lesson. Being that our economics objective was for the students to learn that people make choices because they cannot have everything they want, we wanted them to interact with the material. We wanted them to actually make choices in order to learn that they indeed cannot have everything they want. We taught together this time. So we started the lesson off with a discussion about personal experiences, scarcity, wants, needs, and money. We had the students fill out a decision tree in which they listed the pros and cons of a specific choice for their own classroom (if given the opportunity for a new addition to their room, would they rather adopt a class pet or a candy machine?). Based on the list they created, they voted in order to make a cooperative decision (they'd rather have the pet, even if it involves a lot of care and work).

Next came the ambitious part. We set up a game in which 21 children were split between 7 groups. They each had 12 "dollars" to spend on a variety of items (we printed pictures on slips of paper and designated each a certain cost). They would take turns picking items and gluing them and the amount of dollars the item cost onto a prepared sheet of paper. We had a color card system to randomize the order so that students ideally would not argue, though of course they were angry if they were chosen last anyway. We really did try. Also, we had the students glue their items and money down so they would grasp the idea that once a choice was made, it could not be taken back. Through this, they should learn that we must evaluate our choices and make planned decisions.

WELL, it was a bit chaotic. Making seven groups of kids was our first mistake. It was really hard to monitor every group and help when children forgot directions, or had not paid attention in the first place. From my point of view, I saw that about half of the children really understood and benefited from the game. However, a full half did not and this was a problem. But looking back on it, Kelly and I spent a lot of time thinking through the logistics of the game and we thought it sounded pretty solid. Thus, these problems were things that I feel we could not have really learned unless we actually tried a game like this. Even though my initial reaction was disappointment in the chaos, I do not regret doing the activity at all. We are learning as teachers and we have a long way to go. Many things will only come with experience. So following are some things I learned from our lesson today.

First of all, we should have constructed fewer groups. As Jen reminded us in our post-ob, three is a bad number with children because it inevitably singles out one child as an outsider. Also, we as teachers really need to be able to monitor the children for them to get a valuable experience. Perhaps we could have tried with two groups. In that case, we would need to have an activity for the children to be involved in while they were not making a choice from the items. For instance, they could be reflecting in writing about their classmates' choices. Or they could serve as a "discussion panel" to remind classmates of the pros and cons they should be considering in each choice or to offer their own opinions in the choice-making. Another thought for the future would be to elicit help from parent volunteers. If we were as the permanent classroom teachers, we would have the ability to write letters home and explain the activity, asking that some parents come to help. In our classroom observations, we have already seen multiple families come in for visits to do crafts or read-alouds with the children. The parents DO want to be involved and we could have used them to help individual groups.

Another issue was the language we used in our lesson. Because Jen came to observe, we were able to have this outsiders' perspective on our explanation of concepts. For example, Kelly used the phrase "weighing" pros and cons to make decisions. This conception of weight is too advanced for most first graders and therefore not an adequate instructional tool. Also, we were sometimes inconsistent, using "pros and cons" and "good things and bad things." If we were going to introduce the more advanced language, we should have made sure to explain it sufficiently and to be consistent with its use. A suggestion from Jen was to script out our lessons so that we would be made more aware of our audience and the way we need to talk to students.

We also learned a little more about forming groups. Based on our experience with the children, we tried to group them so that there would be one successful student paired with one of our discipline problems in almost each group. In our minds, we were trying to balance students so that they could learn from each other, and our exceptional students could help with clarifying directions. However, I realized that this really puts the more advanced students in a difficult position. It's not necessarily fair to make them almost substitute teachers. We should be thinking about their learning as well. I haven't quite come up with a solution for this yet or decided how I would do it next time. This and the other things I've discussed are topics that may come up again and again, and we need to strive to learn from past experiences. I trust that even though this lesson went a little less well than planned, we will learn to smooth out our lessons over time.

Teaching Our Unit, Day 2 (3/16/07)

On the second day of our unit, I taught while Kelly observed and helped where necessary. In this lesson, we covered the concepts of goods, services, buyers, and sellers. After reviewing the previous day’s lesson, I read a picture book called Rent Party Jazz by William Miller. The book was about a boy whose mom lost her job, but they needed money because the day when they were to pay rent was fast approaching. The boy made friends with a trumpet player who told him about rent parties. In a rent party, the whole neighborhood would gather at one house where there would be some live music and lots of food that was contributed by neighbors. The attending people would drop money into a bucket in appreciation of the party, and this money was given to the host to pay for their rent. The boy in the story put on a rent party with the help of the trumpet player, and he was able to raise enough money for the rent. I thought this was a great book to bring together the concept of need with the idea of providing a service in order to earn money. After the interactive read aloud, I continued a discussion about all these concepts.

The second part of my lesson followed the integrative model. I made a poster with pictorial representations of different goods and services and asked the students to come up with conclusions based on the poster. Through this, we were also able to explore the concept of buyers and sellers, specifically identifying the buyer and seller in the interactions of services. I also had the students fill out their own “dictionaries” of economics terms to use as a reference in later lessons. Our teacher seems to focus a lot on the awareness of important definitions through recitation-type activities, so we thought this would be a good way to incorporate her teaching methods. But first I had the students help me create a definition for each word as a class based on the preceding lesson. Ideally, this participation helped the students by giving more meaning to each concept. Finally, we included a constructed response type of formative assessment in which students gave us examples of goods and services.

The biggest problem with my lesson was its frequent tendency to lose the children’s attention. This particular lesson included the bulk of the unit’s information, much of it that needed to be explicitly taught and explained. We tried our best to come up with activities that would engage the students as much as possible, and we thought the read aloud would be an interesting way to introduce some of the concepts. I was able to elicit participation from the children, but I found that they were simultaneously very fidgety and restless. Teaching kids this young is quite a challenge because they do not appreciate being told to sit still for so many hours. Yet, there are times when the information must be taught before it can be interacted, and these are the times I lost their attention the most. We will really try to have more engagement in future lessons. For example, we plan to have the third lesson involve an instructional game for most of the time that we are teaching. It will be interesting to see how involved the kids will be during that lesson. But the attention span of these children will always be an issue- it is impossible to always have them playing games. There must be some helpful solution to grab their attention at times when the information needs to be explicitly taught.

Teaching Our Unit, Day 1 (3/15/07)

We taught the first part of our economics lesson on wants and needs. We are teaching first grade and the economics SOLs cover the differences between goods and services, buyers and sellers, making choices, and saving money. The topic of needs and wants is actually addressed in kindergarten. However, our preassessment data showed that many of our students could not distinguish between needs and wants. In the questions they were asked, many of them wrote down the same exact item for both wants and needs. Thus, we thought that our students would benefit from a refresher of the subject since it is so connected to the SOLs we would be teaching.

In order to cover wants and needs, we had students sit in a circle and, one at a time, tell the rest of the class one of their needs. When they did this, Kelly (who was teaching this time- I was helping where needed but mostly observing) would discuss the item and classify it as one of the four basic needs: food, water, clothing, or shelter. Once the list was generally exhausted, the students took turns listing a want. The point of this was to show children that needs are limited while the list of wants would continue around the circle perhaps indefinitely unless the activity was forcibly ended. Afterwards, Kelly discussed some of the things the children brought up and extended the idea to conclude that needs, though varying by degree, will be similar no matter where children live. The students returned to their seats for a picture sort activity in which they cut out and arranged by category some pictures of different needs and wants. After discussing the activity, we collected their glued sorts to use as a formative assessment of their understanding of needs and wants.

I think Kelly did a great job teaching the lesson- for the most part, the students grasped the idea, which is an improvement from the preassessment. The difference, however, is that our preassessment consisted of constructed response items while this lesson’s formative assessment consisted of selected response items, and thus may have made it easier for the children to succeed. This is definitely something to take into consideration, both for the unit as a whole as well as for future formative assessments. Next time, we may want to make a formative assessment a constructed response item to see that students can generate the answers on their own. Only when the testing procedures are similar will we be able to really judge how much the students acquired.

One issue I had with the lesson was Kelly’s tendency to acknowledge a student’s remark with a smile and a statement of “good job.” I am not at all trying to criticize Kelly’s teaching methods, but I am bringing this issue up because I also find myself doing this a lot, and I want to ask any readers of this blog if you might have a solution to the problem. Kelly and I both want to make students feel appreciated and we want to encourage their participation in class. However, it is often hard to say more than “good job” to each student. To stop and discuss each response might be too time consuming, but to acknowledge responses with such seemingly casual and insignificant answers might result in a loss of student interest. Of course, for important ideas, we do stop and discuss with students- in this case, I am referring to student responses that are correct but may be redundant or not necessarily significant. Are there any suggestions of more meaningful ways to acknowledge student participation without losing instructional time?

Snow days....

Yesterday, my partner Kelly and I went to our school to observe and to talk to our teacher about our unit. We knew they would have a two-hour delay, so we went at 10:30. Turns out that the kids went straight to their specials, so we missed them altogether...no observation. We did get to talk to our teacher, though, and we decided that we would teach an economics lesson. We are teaching first grade, so this lesson will involve the concepts of goods and services, buyers and sellers, making choices depending on needs and wants, and saving money. We are really excited about this topic because it lends itself to so many activities (versus teaching about a historical figure, etc). We have a very clear idea of the information and ideas we need to teach, but we're not quite sure how we'll do it. We have some ideas: maybe running a mini-store in which the children will have a certain amount of money and will need to make choices about what foods they'll buy for dinner that night. I'm assuming all our first graders will buy cake mix...

Today, we went back for another attempt at an observation. We checked the listings last night, and the school was definitely not closed or delayed. We got there this morning, and they had a two-hour delay that was announced this morning! However, there was one kid who is ALWAYS late to class- today he didn't know about the delay either, so he was the only one there! Anyway, we found out that even when the kids would finally come, they'd go straight to an assembly, then lunch, and they wouldn't be back until 1:00pm, at which time I had to be at work. So, I guess we'll try to observe next week......

Teaching Metaphor

I envision my role of teacher as comparable to that of a personal trainer. A personal trainer tailors an exorcise program to a client’s needs in the same way that I will let my student’s abilities and perceived potential guide my teaching. With any new client, a trainer must first assess their physical strength and capability before deciding on the quality and quantity of the exorcises that he will introduce. Similarly, I will assess my students’ background knowledge, preferred learning techniques, and interests in order to decide exactly what and how to teach.

In considering prospective activities, a trainer must modify his plans to work within a client’s zone of proximal development. For example, if they are working on lifting weights, the trainer will need to choose an appropriate amount of weight so that the trainee is challenged and muscles are strengthened, yet not so much weight that the trainee is frustrated and discouraged from continuing in the program. Likewise, as a teacher, I will give my students problems to solve that will challenge them but that I know they will be able to complete with determination and support. I want students to exorcise their brains in a way that they will feel satisfied with their eventual accomplishments rather than dispirited by certain failure.

Once any program has started, a personal trainer should expect his client to improve in physical ability. He will keep records of their achievements as formative assessment of their developing abilities. This will help the trainer decide which of his techniques are most successful and which muscle groups need more exclusive attention. I will also apply formative assessment to my teaching, periodically testing my students in a variety of ways. Thus, I will be able to decide what information was not fully understood by my students, what types of teaching strategies produced the greatest results, and what direction I should take next in my teaching.

Perhaps most importantly, a personal trainer provides support to his clients. He serves physically to ‘spot’ the participant when lifting weights, and he serves emotionally to encourage and cheer on a client when results are sparsely seen or when exorcise becomes especially difficult. I want my students to feel safe in exploring the content independently, knowing that they will not be left stranded if problems arise. I want to be a teacher who motivates my students when they are having trouble with a concept. Just as a personal trainer would vary exorcises to keep his client from becoming bored, I want to constantly provide my students with new, creative ways to explore the information. I want projects to be exciting so that students will come to associate the learning process with positive images. I want to give them valid reasons for their schoolwork, so that I can remind them of their goals when they do become discouraged. Finally, as my students’ personal trainer, I want to exhaust every possible approach in order to aid in their growth.