(Analytic Essay: Spring)
Having started in a placement with close to absolute freedom in the summer and then student teaching in a first grade class with very little freedom, I was unsure of what to expect for my spring placement. I spent the first few days of my spring semester working with sixth grade students in a math class. After some initial misunderstandings, I finally found my new home with fourth grade students at the same school, Lea Elementary School. Since the switch was unexpected, I spent the first week and a half observing my new classroom mentor from the back of the classroom.
"Voting at Hudson University": Spring Placement
During my period of observation, I thought that the level of choice in this classroom was much closer to my "just right" (quite like Goldilocks and the Three Bears) comfort level. I noticed that my new classroom mentor provided some opportunities for the students to make some choices. The students were encouraged to choose whatever books they wanted to read during class. They were also encouraged to vote on matters such as deciding if the windows should remain open or closed. Once my classroom mentor even allowed the students to vote on which day they would receive their homework- either before or after the weekend.
Although there were many more opportunities for the students to express their opinions compared to my previous classroom, my classroom mentor only employed two areas of choice as identified by Weinstein (2011)- reading materials and procedural choices. (There was only the one occasion of procedural choice that I previously mentioned.) I did not see any student choice when it came to topics of study, methods of assessment, activities, or social arrangements. According to Schlemmer & Schlemmer (2008), my classroom mentor provided choice, but not necessarily in the way of content, process, or product.
As time went on, I realized that while the students were given some choices, the classroom was very teacher-centered and my classroom mentor was always in control. Kohn (1993) talks about how "the traditional instructional model sees the teacher as the king or queen of the classroom, and the fact is that monarchs do not always abdicate gracefully" (p. 18). Ms. Hudson was very much the queen of 208 and everyone knew it. I was slowly able to take on more responsibilities, but it seemed if my classroom mentor did not want to give up any control to a student teacher, it would be highly unlikely that she would give up the control to her students. I decided that I wanted to start moving toward trying to make 208 a more student-centered classroom, but I knew that I would have to take things slowly.
(Attempts to) Change SeatS
Artifact 6: Student surveys for sociogram and grouping purposes (February 3, 2015)
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Some of the students were having issues sitting next to each other. I spoke to my classroom mentor about it and asked if it would be possible to change their seats around. She said that she had been thinking about doing that since the students had been sitting in the same spot since the beginning of school in September. I thought that it would be a good opportunity to start giving the students some say in their social arrangements (5th type of choice according to Weinstein, 2011, p. 236). I wrote up a survey that could be used both for sociogram and grouping/seating purposes (Artifact 6). I was surprised at the level of honesty and self-awareness that the survey results revealed in my students. The student who filled out the survey to the left wrote his own name down under "List 3 Classmates that might make you off task".
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I spent a couple of hours making seating arrangements so that almost every person was sitting next to someone that they felt comfortable going to for help, but not next to someone who might make them off task. I asked my classroom mentor if we could discuss changes to the seating chart on multiple occasions, but we were never able to. I left my proposed seating arrangements and the data from my survey with her. Finally, about three weeks later, my classroom mentor changed some of the seats. She kept a large number of students in the same spot for whatever reason. I am fairly certain that she never looked at my proposed seating chart, but I wanted to keep the survey data so that I could create student groups based on their wishes. Creating groups based on student desires would be a way for me to ease into providing students with absolute choice for their social arrangements.
Ms. Anna Leads Goal-Setting
After my Penn Mentor made multiple comments about how great and unique she thought it was that I included weekly goals for myself in my reflections, I thought to myself, "If goal-setting is so important to me, why not share that with my students and encourage them to set goals for themselves too?" I designed a simple card for the students to write their weekly goal and then give themselves a rating. I assured them that the goal was for them and they would be the only ones assessing how well they accomplished their goal each day. I taped the cards to one of the corners of their desk so that they wouldn't lose them. I told them a couple of examples of goals, but explained that they were free to set any goal that was important to them. I did not want to follow my previous classroom mentor's lead of giving students the illusion of being able to choose their own goal. I thought that they would get more enjoyment and have more pride in their goals if they chose them themselves (Denton, 2005, p. 207).
The types of goals that the students set themselves ranged from: "earn a Lea Buck" (positive behavior incentive system), "get better at kickball", "to not get smart with the teacher or walk out of class and read more", "to get a blue for the whole week" (color management system), "to get a Pure war Dragon City on level 50", to "be in school". I did not evaluate the students on their goals, but I did give them a sticker at the beginning of the next week if they gave themselves a "3" on any given day.
Artifact 7: Elise's Goal-Setting Progression (February 23, 2015- March 10, 2015)
As you can see in Elise's Goal-setting cards (Artifact 7), this activity seemed to be meaningful to some of the students. Both my classroom mentor and I noticed a change in Elise's behavior. When I first became a part of the classroom, Elise rarely raised her hand and, as you can probably guess from her goal-setting cards, she often fell asleep during class. By the time it was my takeover, Elise was a frequent volunteer and she even explained some ideas standing in front of the whole class. The week before PSSAs, I had to remove all of the goal cards from the desks. Elise was upset by this and asked if she could continue setting goals. I cannot prove it, but I believe that the goal-setting was meaningful to her because she was the one identifying the goals she had for herself and tracking her own progress.
I think the progression and increased complexity of her goals and the fact that she seems to understand when she has met certain goals and can proceed to challenge herself with the next step, suggests to me that she has a high intrapersonal intelligence. Chapman (1993) describes students with high intrapersonal intelligence as someone who "knows herself, recognizes her own strengths and limits, and holds high expectations to improve and challenge herself" (p. 175). She also says "this intelligence requires that students have the time to think, reflect, and complete self-assessments that will help them take control and be responsible for their learning choices" (p. 173).
I think the progression and increased complexity of her goals and the fact that she seems to understand when she has met certain goals and can proceed to challenge herself with the next step, suggests to me that she has a high intrapersonal intelligence. Chapman (1993) describes students with high intrapersonal intelligence as someone who "knows herself, recognizes her own strengths and limits, and holds high expectations to improve and challenge herself" (p. 175). She also says "this intelligence requires that students have the time to think, reflect, and complete self-assessments that will help them take control and be responsible for their learning choices" (p. 173).
Two-Week Takeover and other Initiatives:
I knew that I wasn't going to be able to be able to completely shift the balance of power for my two weeks or select content that strayed from our Quarter 3 Common Core standards, but I brainstormed different ways that would enable the students to make some choices. Kohn (1993) talks about how "classroom teachers frequently protest that they would love to open up the decision-making process but for the fact that significant number of decisions are not theirs to give away or even make themselves" (p. 17-18). This rang particularly true for me given my role as a student teacher in a classroom where I did not feel completely comfortable making all of the changes that I had wanted. However, I still came up with some opportunities to introduce choice:
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Artifact 8: Poster with cohort feedback on my inquiry question (March 10, 2015)
Both of my primary lessons that incorporated student choice (Point of View Fairytale Presentation and the Symmetry Centers) were similar to the suggestions that my cohort mates made regarding my inquiry question (Artifact 8).
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Who Wrote That?: Letters from an ObjectOne of the first activities that I had the students work on was writing a letter to themselves from the point of view of an object that they use or own. I told the students that they were free to choose whatever object they wanted for this project. Although the students were given unlimited options to choose from (as opposed to starting with two different options like Schlemmer & Schlemmer (2008) and Erwin (2004) suggested), I felt like this was still a fairly safe place to start in terms of giving students choice. Enabling the students to pick their object was a low risk for me since their choice would not affect my planning or instruction since the choice involved the product rather than the process or content. It was also a low risk choice for the students.
I felt like this was a successful introductory choice because it provided the students with a space to think outside the box and get creative. I thought that Tayshaun's Point of View Letter from an Object was particularly clever (Artifact 9). |
Artifact 9: Point of View Letters from an Object
"I thought that's what you Wanted"
The next type of "choice" that I integrated into one of my lessons was a choice of social arrangement. Although my students did not get to select their groups on the day of the activity, I used my sociogram data (Artifact 6) to sort the class into four groups. This lesson was slightly riskier than my previous ones because I tried to put students together based on their interest in working together rather than by students that I knew worked well together. What I had not anticipated was all of the groaning and complaining that I heard after I announced the groups. I told the students who were complaining that I based the groups on the survey data that they filled out the previous month and they informed me that they changed their minds about who they wanted to work with,
Since the groups were instructed to work together and one requirement was that every person had to contribute one fact and one opinion to the poster, I think that it gave students who have a higher interpersonal intelligence an opportunity to be a leader and to help members of the group who may otherwise struggle to accomplish this objective.. |
Artifact 10: Voices in the Park Group Fact vs. Opinion Posters
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Fairytale Point of View Presentations
One of the culminating projects of my takeover unit entailed having the students use what they learned about looking at things from different perspectives to retell a traditional fairytale from a different point of view. I learned the importance of introducing every role and showing some type of model or graphic organizer from my Term III Literacy lesson. For this lesson, I introduced five different choices that the students could pick:
- Write a short story
- Write and act out a skit
- Write and sing a song
- Draw a comic strip
- Write a poetry book
I introduced the project on the Monday of the second PSSA week. I hoped that the students would enjoy working on this project because 1.) they could choose how they wanted to express their understanding of point of view, 2.) they could choose who to work with, 3.) they could choose the story that they were interested in and 4,) choose the point of view from which their new story was being told. I did not expect the response to be so positive. When I arrived in the afternoon on Tuesday, three students came up to me and asked if they could work on their projects right away. One of the students who asked about the project was Jahniyus. I had hoped that this project might appeal to him because I knew that he watched the show, Once Upon a Time and consequently, I thought he might enjoy doing a project with fairytales.
Unfortunately, the plan for the afternoons during PSSA week changed. We were no longer allowed to stay in our classroom because Ms. Hudson had to stay in our room and proctor the afternoon PSSAs. Our class re-located to another classroom where the students were expected to watch movies for the rest of the afternoon. To my surprise, many of my students asked if they could work on their projects instead of watching the movie. I think this speaks to their level of enjoyment of the project. I set the groups up in the back of the classroom and just out of curiosity, I recorded their conversations while they worked on their scripts. As you will hear in the audio clips below (Artifact 11A and Artifact 11B), the students were engaged in on-task discussions about their stories. The group of girls who worked on Cinderella Mix Maleficent also worked to resolve conflicts ranging from who would get to be which character, what words they would use in their scripts, and how they wanted to portray their characters. The group of boys thought through the logistics and details of their skits by engaging in discussions about when the beans were planted and when they grew. As you can hear at the end of the Jack and the Beanstalk Skit Writing Conversation, the boys really wanted to continue working on their script. You can hear one boy's reaction when I told them that they could keep writing at the end of the audio clip (Artifact 11B).
Artifact 11A: Cinderella Mix Maleficent Skit Writing Conversation
Artifact 11B: Jack and the Beanstalk Skit Writing Conversation
As you will see in their presentations (Artifact 12) and their self-assessments (Artifact 13A, 13B, & 13C), I believe their level of enjoyment and pride in their work was high. Calmiyah pointed out the value of being able to work on her acting skills (Artifact 13A). As I mentioned before, I struggled with trying to find ways to engage Jahniyus in lessons. However, as you can see in his self-assessment, he said, "The last fue day was fun and I liked it and I can't wait to act it out." (Artifact 13B) Elise chose to mention that she felt that she did a good job because "I did the work, I helped out, we worked together" (Artifact 13C). Ms. Hudson and I were very impressed with the students' level of dedication to their performances. I also want to point out that one of my students chose to use her musical intelligence to write a song. She performed it in front of the entire class!
Artifact 12: Fairytale Point of View Presentations
Artifact 13A, 13B, & 13C: Fairytale Point of View Self-Assessments
Symmetry Centers
The last lesson that I did with my students was a lesson on symmetry that concluded with them choosing one of four different centers. The options for the centers were:
I was surprised to see that all of the girls picked center 2 (Artifact 14A and 14B) and all of the boys picked center 4 (Artifact 14C). I will admit that I felt a little bit apprehensive about this lesson for the following reasons:
- Identify symmetrical objects around the room and draw them.
- Identify symmetrical objects in magazines and cut them out.
- Design/draw things that have lines of symmetry (statue or design, etc)
- Use cubes to build something symmetrical.
I was surprised to see that all of the girls picked center 2 (Artifact 14A and 14B) and all of the boys picked center 4 (Artifact 14C). I will admit that I felt a little bit apprehensive about this lesson for the following reasons:
- I wanted to accept each student's choice, but that meant not knowing how many students would be at each center until the lesson was taking place.
- I was worried about providing them with so many choices that were new and unfamiliar to them. However, I was only able to teach one lesson due to scheduling conflicts, which meant that I did not have time to dedicate four lessons to introducing each of the centers. I know that Denton (2005) believes that academic choice should happen AFTER all of the students learn all of the options.
- Although I firmly believe that classrooms do NOT have to be silent for learning to take place (in fact, many times noisy classrooms means a lot of learning is occurring!), but I will admit that I was getting a bit self-conscious about our noise level. Since I allowed each student to go to their center of choice, I ended up having two very large groups which meant there would be a lot of interacting and socializing.
- On this note, Calmiyah's self-assessment (Artifact 15D) which says "I would give myself a 80 because I was talking a little" illustrates how the students have been made to feel about the noise level and acceptability of talking in the classroom.
Artifact 14A, 14B, & 14C: Photographs of students working on their symmetry activities
Artifact 15A, 15B, 15C & 15D: Symmetry Math Lesson Worksheet
Ultimately, I believe that this lesson accomplished the goal of helping the students to see that one concept can be explored in a variety of different ways. The students seemed to feel positive about the experience (Artifact 15A, 15B, 15C & 15D). Tayshaun said that he "felt amazing" (Artifact 15A) while Aboudalahe said one thing he liked about his work was "that you can create things with the blocks + your having fun and sill your learning" (Artifact 15B). My classroom mentor thought that the students were engaged and focused (Artifact 16) and she believes that giving them a choice for their centers made them "more motivated to work on their projects".
Artifact 16: Feedback from Penn Mentor on Symmetry Lesson
Portfolios
In the beginning of my takeover, I gave each student a brand new folder for them to store all of the papers that they worked on while I was teaching them. I wanted the students to assemble a portfolio because I believe that it is a good way to demonstrate growth and to give students a feeling of accomplishment. Hutchings (1990) defined portfolio assessment "as a collection of student work done over time" while Walters and Seidel (1991) defined it as "a record of learning that focuses on students' work and their reflections on that work" (p.1) (as cited in Sewell, DuCette & Shapiro, 1998, p. 327).
Below is a video of one of my students having a portfolio conference (Artifact 17). I asked each student to choose some pieces of student work that they felt proud of, some that were challenging, some that were fun or enjoyable, some that showed how much they learned or improved, and their favorite thing that they did with me. The pieces that the students choose will be placed in the middle three-prong file section of their folder so that they are featured in their portfolio. (The other papers will stay in the folder pockets.)
Below is a video of one of my students having a portfolio conference (Artifact 17). I asked each student to choose some pieces of student work that they felt proud of, some that were challenging, some that were fun or enjoyable, some that showed how much they learned or improved, and their favorite thing that they did with me. The pieces that the students choose will be placed in the middle three-prong file section of their folder so that they are featured in their portfolio. (The other papers will stay in the folder pockets.)
Artifact 17: Student Portfolio Conference #1