The Role of a Teacher
Educational Philosophy Statement |
|
||
 |
|||
| The role of teacher can be hardly underestimated in the process of education. It is obvious that teaches play an important role in the learning process and shaping of students personality and their cultural identity. In fact, teachers possess certain authority and it is extremely important that they used this authority effectively and contributed to the balanced development of students. To achieve this goal teachers need to develop their own educational philosophy that would help them not only to teach but, what is more important, to learn. First of all, it should be pointed out that teachers’ philosophy may be shaped under the impact of different factors but it is possible to distinguish two the most important constituent elements of their philosophy. On the one hand, it is the actions of teachers, their behavior that can really define their philosophy since they have certain models of behavior, habits that they often cannot change but which sometimes they should change in order to develop a really effective educational philosophy. In such situations it is very important to take into consideration another important factor, namely what teachers think about their actions because it is the reflection on their actions can change not only teachers’ behavior but their educational philosophy at large. Obviously, they should be very critical in the analysis of their actions and attempt to assess them as objectively as possible in order to choose the right direction in the development of their educational philosophy. In such a way, teachers, being able to impact on students by their behavior and ideas, should develop their educational philosophy on the basis of these essential elements. Basically, it is necessary to underline that there are two possible ways to the development of educational philosophies. First of all, it is possible to develop the educational philosophy during the action. It means that a teacher can reflect on his/her behavior while he/she is performing some action and analyze it immediately.
For instance, a teacher can scan the situation in the classroom during the lesson by questioning students in order to find out whether the lesson or the problem discussed is interesting for them or not. On analyzing the received information, a teacher can change his/her behavior or continue the lesson if it runs successfully. However, this is rather a short-term approach since it provides an opportunity to learn only the current situation and analyze the current behavior of teachers and assess whether it is effective or not, right or wrong. At the same time, it does not provide the opportunity to analyze the situation in depth and, consequently, it is practically impossible to fully understand the reaction of students on teachers’ behavior and often it is quite difficult to choose the most effective ways of behavior immediately. In such situations, another strategy of the development of educational philosophy may be quite effective. What is meant here is the development of teachers’ educational philosophy on the basis of the analysis of their past actions. Unlike the previous approach, this one implies that teachers do not analyze the present situation in the classroom, for instance, but, instead, attempt to objectively evaluate their past actions and behavior, they take into consideration what they did and whether it was right or not, or probably their could be better ways of acting in the given situation. On analyzing their past behavior, teachers get an excellent opportunity to have a larger view on their work and behavior and objectively and more profoundly analyze it. This will naturally open opportunities for the development of the long-term strategies and the analysis of the general effectiveness of educational philosophy in the long run. Obviously, both approaches could be quite effective in the development of educational philosophy but the real professional teacher would rather apply both of them than focus on one approach only. In fact, such a combination is simply essential since it is important that the teacher could change and improve his/her behavior immediately in the concrete situation depending on the circumstances but he/she also needs to be able to make a profound strategic analysis of his/her actions in order to reveal more profound details that can remain unnoticed on a brief analysis during a lesson, for instance. Nevertheless, it is possible to conclude that, regardless the approaches teachers use in the development of their educational philosophy, it is necessary to remember that they are responsible for their students and not only at the present moment but for their further life as well because consciously or not students learn from teachers and gradually are influenced by their behavior, actions, thoughts, ideas and philosophy at large. Irina Nelson is the author of this article. You can find useful tips for custom essay writing on her website http://www.essay-911.com/ |
|||
Activating Prior Knowledge: Part 1 of 2
By Mimi Rothschild
Are you looking to increase your homeschool child’s level of reading comprehension? If you are then read the first part of this informative article about activating prior knowledge.
What Is It?
Call it schema, relevant background knowledge, prior knowledge, or just plain experience, when students make connections to the text they are reading, their comprehension increases. Good readers constantly try to make sense out of what they read by seeing how it fits with what they already know. When we help students make those connections before, during, and after they read, we are teaching them a critical comprehension strategy that the best readers use almost unconsciously.
Ellin Oliver Keene and Susan Zimmerman in Mosaic of Thought (1997), have identified three main types of connections students make as they read:
Text to self
Text to world
Text to text
Why Is It Important?
Explicitly teaching strategies that proficient readers use when trying to make sense out of text helps to deepen understanding and create independent readers. Activating prior knowledge, or schema, is the first of seven strategies that Keene and Zimmerman identify as key for reading comprehension success.
“Teaching children which thinking strategies are used by proficient readers and helping them use those strategies independently creates the core of teaching reading.” (Keene and Zimmerman, 1997)
These strategies, identified through research based on what good readers do when they are reading, help students become metacognitive. They learn to think about their thinking as they are reading.
When students learn to make connections from their experience to the text they are currently reading, they have a foundation, or scaffolding, upon which they can place new facts, ideas, and concepts. As good readers read, they think about what they are reading and consider how it fits with what they already know. In this way, they build upon the schema that they already have developed.
When Should It Be Taught?
This comprehension strategy should be taught on an ongoing basis so that students learn independently to use it as they are reading. It should be taught explicitly and systematically over an extended period of time, moving from modeling the thinking process out loud by the teacher, to students using the strategy as a natural part of their comprehension process.
Prior knowledge should be discussed before reading the text to help set the stage for what is coming. During reading, students should be encouraged to make connections to the text from their experience and the teacher should model this process using his or her own connections. After reading, the discussion should center on how the connections helped students to better understand the text and how the text helped them to build their foundation of prior knowledge.
What Does It Look Like?
At the early stages of teaching students the strategy of making connections to their prior knowledge, the teacher models “thinking aloud.” The teacher reads a text to the class and talks through his or her thinking process in order to show students how to think about their thinking as they are reading. Slowly, after students have seen and heard the teacher using the strategy, they are given the opportunity to share their experiences and thinking. Finally, students make connections to texts independently. Teachers can check in periodically to have students articulate their thinking, in order to track progress, spot difficulties, and intervene individually or conduct a mini-lesson to reteach or move students forward.
As students are activating their prior knowledge and making connections, they use graphic organizers, such as a concept map, a flow chart, or a , to help map their thinking. Often students keep reflection or response journals where they record thoughts, feelings, insights, and questions about what they read. Students, in large and small groups, discuss and write about the connections they are making to texts. (For examples of these and other graphic organizers, click the link.)
Visualizing: Part 2 of 2
By Mimi Rothschild
Here is part two of the visualizing article I posted yesterday. Let me know what you think! Have you tried a visualizing strategy before with your children? Did it work? If it didn’t then what has worked for your child’s reading comprehension?
Taking Visualizing to the Next Level
Visualization activities lend themselves to follow-up lessons. For example, the few sentences suggested in the “Starting Small” activity lead the way for deeper discussions about making inferences. Students can discuss not only what they visualize when they hear or read given text but also the questions that the text suggests, such as, “Why do you think Joan received all of these gifts?” or “What do you think Joan will do next?” You can take this particular discussion further by allowing students to personalize the experience by answering questions such as, “What would you do if you were Joan?” or “How would you feel if you were in Joan’s place?”
When Can You Use It?
Reading
Students can sharpen their visualizing skills as they read independently, participate in small group reading activities, or listen to a text. To encourage visualizing, turn out the lights and ask students to close their eyes as they listen. Pause frequently to allow students to share their images and mental pictures with the class. The ability to generate visual images from texts becomes increasingly important as students move from richly illustrated storybooks into “chapter books” with relatively few pictures. Ease the transition by explaining that skillful writers use descriptive language designed to generate imagery in their readers’ imaginations. Encourage students to create their own mental images, thereby illustrating the books themselves-filling in the pictures that the author paints using only words.
Writing
Text that is easy to visualize is often filled with vivid descriptions or strong verbs. Watch for sentences or paragraphs in students’ writing that lend themselves to practice with visualization. With students’ permission, share these examples with the class, encouraging discussion not only of the images created by the text but about why the chosen text allows for visualization. And encourage young writers to use language that generates images-this is when writing really sparkles!
Math
Visualization is a helpful skill in mathematics as well. Students often use manipulatives to make math concepts more concrete, and visualization is a way of internalizing the concepts the manipulatives reinforce. For instance, a class that has been studying fractions and using fraction bars can segue into a discussion comparing the sizes of fractions using common images. A question such as, “Would you rather have 1/2 or 1/3 of a pizza?” is more easily answered if students can picture a pizza (or at least a circle) and what 1/2 versus 1/3 looks like. At the beginning of such a conversation, you can draw two pizzas on the board, shading in 1/2 of the first and 1/3 of the second. As the discussion continues, (1/4 versus 1/8, 2/3 versus 3/4, and so on) challenge students to picture the pizzas in their minds or to draw their visual images.
Social Studies
As students study history, they are sometimes presented with a list of dates and names. For students to really visualize historic events, they need sufficient details to create rich pictures. Allow students opportunities to listen to or read personal accounts of an event or time period they are studying. When available, pieces written from a child’s perspective are helpful in forging personal links between students and the time period in question. For instance, Sarah Morton’s Day: A Day In The Life of a Pilgrim Girl and Samuel Eaton’s Day: A Day In The Life of a Pilgrim Boy, both by Kate Waters, provide context to help young children understand colonial life.
Science
Visualizing is sometimes a good challenge with some of the more abstract concepts studied in science. For instance, many classes study plants, and students are told that plants need water to grow. While students can memorize the fact that water travels from a plant’s roots through the stem to its leaves or buds, putting a white carnation in a vase filled with water that has been tinted blue with food coloring provides a vivid example of this process as students witness the flower eventually turn blue.
Lesson Plans
Visualizing: Following the Drinking Gourd
This lesson is designed to establish the skill of visualizing for primary students. In this lesson, students use clues from the text to be able to create their own images and imagine how characters are thinking and feeling.Visualizing: Hill of Fire
This lesson is designed to expand the skill of visualizing for primary students.
Visualizing: Part 1 of 2
By Mimi Rothschild
It is crucial that homeschooling children perceive and understand what they read, no matter if they’re in first grade or twelfth grade. The ability to comprehend text is an absolute necessity for students in the current fast-paced competitive digital world. One way homeschoolers can improve their reading comprehension is by visualizing. Read all about visualizing below in this great article I recently discovered.
What Is It?
Visualizing refers to our ability to create pictures in our heads based on text we read or words we hear. It is one of many skills that makes reading comprehension possible.
Why Is It Important?
Visualizing strengthens reading comprehension skills as students gain a more thorough understanding of the text they are reading by consciously using the words to create mental images. As students gain more deliberate practice with this skill, the act of visualizing text becomes automatic. Students who visualize as they read not only have a richer reading experience but can recall what they have read for longer periods of time. (Harvey & Goudvis 2000)
Visualizing text as it is being read or heard also creates personal links between the readers/listeners and text. Readers who can imagine the characters they read about, for instance, may become more involved with what they are reading. This makes for a more meaningful reading experience and promotes continued reading.
How Can You Make It Happen?
Visualizing is a skill that can be helpful in many domains, and while it is often associated with teaching early readers, even experienced readers can benefit from practice with this skill. When selecting a text for a visualizing activity, start with a piece that contains descriptive language and strong verbs and that lends itself to conjuring vivid images. It is not necessary to start with an entire book-even a well-crafted sentence or short paragraph can provide a rich springboard for a visualizing lesson.
Starting Small
To begin a series of lessons that will focus on improving visualizing skills, you might choose to start with a short passage taken from a text or of your own creation. For instance, the following sentences could be used to spark discussions:
Joan could barely believe her eyes. All these gifts were for her! She had never seen so many packages, not even on all her birthdays combined!
After listening to or reading the sentences once or twice, students can discuss the mental images created by the sentences. Students will likely differ in their descriptions of the scene. For instance, some may picture a small child surrounded by stacks of gifts. Others may imagine an older girl in front of a table piled with presents. There is no single correct answer, and those three simple sentences, though not particularly rich in detail, do offer enough information for the reader or listener to begin to form a mental picture.
Group Activities
Students can work on their visualizing skills as a whole class or in small groups. One way to challenge young students to improve their visualizing is to read a picture book aloud, sharing only portions of the illustrations. Then ask students to create their own illustrations based on the text they heard. More advanced readers might listen to a selection from a novel that the class has been reading and create a picture or written description of a character or setting based on the information in the text.
Independent Reading
Students can also practice their visualization skills as a follow up to independent reading. Ask young students who keep track of their reading in reading logs or journals to respond to prompts regarding the images created by the text they have read: “Does the main character remind you of anyone you know?” “Have you ever been to or seen any place that is like the setting of your book?” Very young students can also draw images in their journals, recording their mental pictures in response to their reading. You can discuss these drawings during one-on-one reading conferences.
Older students who are reading novels can think about questions such as, “If you were going to make a movie based on your book, who would you want to play the main characters?” “What would the scenery look like?” and “Where would you want to do the filming?” These questions get at the imagery created in the mind of the readers and encourage those readers to share their mental pictures in their responses.
Cooperative Learning For Homeschooling Students
By Mimi Rothschild
Are you thinking about creating your own homeschool co-op or are you unfamiliar with what a cooperative is? If so then please read this fantastic article I found while surfing the web this morning. If you are in a co-op let me know how it’s going? What are the benefits and what sort of unique things is your co-op doing this year?
What Is It?
Cooperative Learning, sometimes called small-group learning, is an instructional strategy in which small groups of students work together on a common task. The task can be as simple as solving a multi-step math problem together, or as complex as developing a design for a new kind of school. In some cases, each group member is individually accountable for part of the task; in other cases, group members work together without formal role assignments.
According to David Johnson and Roger Johnson (1999), there are five basic elements that allow successful small-group learning:
Positive interdependence: Students feel responsible for their own and the group’s effort.
Face-to-face interaction: Students encourage and support one another; the environment encourages discussion and eye contact.
Individual and group accountability: Each student is responsible for doing their part; the group is accountable for meeting its goal.
Group behaviors: Group members gain direct instruction in the interpersonal, social, and collaborative skills needed to work with others occurs.
Group processing: Group members analyze their own and the group’s ability to work together.
Cooperative learning changes students’ and teachers’ roles in classrooms. The ownership of teaching and learning is shared by groups of students, and is no longer the sole responsibility of the teacher. The authority of setting goals, assessing learning, and facilitating learning is shared by all. Students have more opportunities to actively participate in their learning, question and challenge each other, share and discuss their ideas, and internalize their learning. Along with improving academic learning, cooperative learning helps students engage in thoughtful discourse and examine different perspectives, and it has been proven to increase students’ self-esteem, motivation, and empathy.
Some challenges of using cooperative learning include releasing the control of learning, managing noise levels, resolving conflicts, and assessing student learning. Carefully structured activities can help students learn the skills to work together successfully, and structured discussion and reflection on group process can help avoid some problems.
Why Is It Important?
The authors of Classroom Instruction that Works cite research showing that organizing students in cooperative learning groups can lead to a gain as high as 28 percentiles in measured student achievement (Marzano, Pickering, and Pollock 2001).
Other researchers report that cooperation typically results in higher group and individual achievement, healthier relationships with peers, more metacognition, and greater psychological health and self-esteem (Johnson and Johnson 1989).
When implemented well, cooperative learning encourages achievement, student discussion, active learning, student confidence, and motivation. The skills students develop while collaborating with others are different from the skills students develop while working independently. As more businesses organize employees into teams and task forces, the skills necessary to be a “team player” (e.g., verbalizing and justifying ideas, handling conflicts, collaborating, building consensus, and disagreeing politely) are becoming more valuable and useful…