Lacey Shewchuk

Motivating High School Students

Lacey Shewchuk — Mon, 31 Mar 2008 00:01:49 +0000

For my pre- internship, I taught mainly in a grade 9 mathematics classroom and in a few grade 10 classrooms at a high school in Regina. One issue major issue that I saw in my classrooms was there was a vast amount of students who just did not care about school. This was demonstrated by the students when they would show up at whatever time they pleased for class, they would consistently not complete their homework, would not take notes or they would take advantage of opportunities that I gave them to improve in the class.

I saw that this issue was not only hurting the student involved but also causing grief on the teachers trying to work around these poor attitude students. It was interfering with other students in the classroom. We know that not all of the students were being trapped by this issue however, those other students who do care where being hurt by having less time for them to learn or being distracted by off task behaviour.

By biggest questions, that I have walking away from my pre-internship are, how do we catch those students who are falling away from the school system? How do you engage all of your students in the classroom and at the same time offer a high quality education to everyone? Can your really get all your students to want to learn?

Assessment In My Field Experience

Lacey Shewchuk — Thu, 27 Mar 2008 22:39:48 +0000

In my pre-internship experience at Campbell Collegiate, I was in a grade 9 mathematics classroom and during our block, I taught the grade 9’s a geometry and measurement unit. My co-operating teaching had previously begun creating portfolios for the students so I was able to continue this form of assessment into the unit that I was teaching. I also had a couple quizzes throughout and a final unit exam.

When creating my different portfolio entries I wanted to assess my students on pre-requisite knowledge, application knowledge, new knowledge and understanding of the new knowledge. I know that if I were to walk around and take a look at their note books it would not take me long to see who knows the process of the content by their homework but I wanted to take a deeper look into what and how well they can communicate with me. Thus, to incorporate all of the topics that I wanted to assess my students on I developed open-ended questions for their portfolio entries.

On the first day before our class begun, I handed out the entries on each of the students desks. It was interesting to see the student’s reactions when they walked into the classroom that morning because almost all of them said the same thing, “Do we have a quiz today?” I quickly learnt that the co-operating teaching had not worked on their portfolios to religiously and the students had not completed a variety of assessments for their portfolio like the ones I created previously in the class.

When I would give a portfolio entry, I would have them ready on the student’s desks for the beginning of class and give them the first 5 or 10 minutes to complete the entries. In my experience I came across a couple of shortcomings, one was that that many of the students did not put much effort into the entries. They would put down short brief answers, almost as if they were tying to please me and then use the rest of the time to quickly get off task. This problem is something that I will have to ponder with over my teaching experience and try to engage and interest more students. Another problem that I had was that for this first period class there was numerous students who would show up late each morning. The students would be late ranging from 2 minutes to 30 minutes and since I had the students complete the entry at the beginning of class some were missing out on that time to complete the entry. This means that they were either not completing the entry at all or ran out of time to complete it. This is something that next time I will have to decide at the beginning my expectations and decide if they are able to make the entry up on their own time for full marks or if they will have to do it in class and lose marks.

On the other side of the spectrum, I was able to find the strengths of the portfolio entries. When I compared the results of days that the majority of the students gave me, half answers to days that they actually tried. I was able to see that it was over time that they began to try a little bit harder and everyone was able to settle down a little bit faster that I was able to see the better results in the entries. This may have been because they grew accustomed to my expectations and that they realized that they did not have all class and would have to hand in the entry into me shortly. It was nice to see the students getting to work and getting to their desks quickly. Another strength that the entries had was that it got them thinking on their own about math promptly at the beginning of the class. This time gave me a chance to walk around and have a peek at their homework from the day before or catch anyone up who was missing.

In the end, I found that the entries served my initial purpose effectively. I was able to take a look at the entries and see what previous knowledge the students had on concepts such as perimeter and circumference or who knew what about area and volume from previous classes. When looking at the students answers I saw a wide variety when it came to pre-requisite knowledge, some students had seen almost everything before from a previously teacher who went past the required objectives and some who thought they had never seen much of any of it before. This really gave me a chance to give students help in places where they really need it in hopes to fill gaps for them.

What I learnt from this assessment activity was that portfolio entries allow me to learn more about my students. Before using the assessment strategy on my students, I thought that it would just get them thinking in a different context outside of questions that they see in a textbook. Even though this did happen and the students were given the chance to state their opinions and observations in a mathematical setting. However, the entries also taught me about my learners which was something that I did not anticipate. For example, I asked them to name an occupation where they utilize area and volume and I could see what context of applications they were familiar with and be able to use those in my teaching in a later class. In questions like this you could see some creativity in the students answers which was something that I had never thought about before. What this taught me about my self was that I did not always have the right answers and that I to can learn from my students if I give them a chance to explore on their own.

One thing that I would change about my assessment activity before using it again I would be to make clearer explanations and expectation for the students to follow on each of the entries. Creating these would give me a starting point or a foundation in my thinking of what I want from the students. As for the benefits for the students, I hope that having these expectations on the portfolios that it would allow them to have a clearer idea of what I am looking for. I would hope that this would motivate the students to the increase the quality of their answers.

Following are some examples of the entries that I used and some of my students work.

Porfolio Entry #1
Portfolio Entry #2

Project-based Learning

Lacey Shewchuk — Sat, 23 Feb 2008 23:58:55 +0000

I feel that making classroom content relevant and interesting to the students is very important. In some subject areas this can be easier then others, however there is always an opportunity to bring in real life situations and examples. In specifically my major area, students can not always see how math apples to their life and may wonder where are they ever going to use some function y=x^2 or what use it does to them trying to solve the inverse. However, if given the opportunity you can see the applications for these functions when looking at decibel levels or the Richter scale and using these real life applications can really grab a student’s attention.

Making these connections to the student’s life can be tied into each individual lesson or over a span of lessons in something called project-based learning. I feel that either way is effective for grabbing student’s attention and creating a deeper understanding. In our EPS class we took a look at project-based learning. Like any style of teaching there are some positive sides to project-based learning styles and some negatives and to make sure that the positives out way the negatives our instructor presented us with five questions to pose before designing a project style assignment.
            (1) Is it relevant to my students?
            (2) Is it appropriate for my school and community?
            (3) Does it grow to support the curriculum?
            (4) Are there adequate resources?
            (5) Will it be worth the effort?

I look forward to gaining student interest in the subject area that I teach. I know that I will definitely be trying project-based learning as a method to achieving this goal. Click here to see an example of a project-based learning assignment for mathematics.

Setting a Foundation

Lacey Shewchuk — Mon, 18 Feb 2008 18:02:00 +0000

One of my fears as a beginning teacher is classroom management. During discussion with my fellow colleagues I have come to realize that this is a common theme amongst most. You could have an endless amount of content knowledge or spent hours on pre paring the perfect lesson, however if you are unable to manage the class you are not going to get anywhere with that lesson.
Within our discussions I began to think of ways that I will help to gain classroom management. One way that I have thought about is developing classroom guidelines. I do not believe is giving the students a long list of “rules” but believe that they are almost adults who should be able to follow simple guide lines that would fit almost any social environment. For example, respect for teachers and classmates which can encompass such things as showing up on time, not talking when someone else is or not disrupting someone in the class.
When it comes to determining these guidelines I believe that it is best to give your students some ownership and work together in establishing the classroom. When giving students this power I hope that it will help them realize what they want from the class and be able to realize how we are going to get there on there own instead of being forced “rules” that they have to follow.
An interesting technique that was brought to our attention by our instructor was reality and choice theory. She showed us a guided way to go through making these guide lines with your class in a way that gets them thinking about what is to be happening in the classroom. This can be done by completing a chart with that class that has four sections, My Job Is.., Your Job Is.., My Job Is Not.., Your Job Is Not.. You can fill out these sections with your students and aid them into deeper responses. This would be something that I would post in my classroom to remind the students about what each other what we are all to be here doing. This is something that I would be interested adapting and trying in my classroom one day.

Introduction

Lacey Shewchuk — Mon, 18 Feb 2008 17:16:51 +0000

For my educational professional studies class we are to compile a reflective piece of our pre-internship semester. Throughout the semester I have been compiling my personal reflections on certain assignments, class discussions and assigned articles. At first I was un sure on how to collaborate these thoughts but after some thought I began to realize that a section in my working portfolio is a great way to show my growth. So through out the EPS 350 category you can learn about my professional growth.

Creating Relationships

Lacey Shewchuk — Mon, 18 Feb 2008 20:21:20 +0000

According to William Glasser humans have five basic needs:
     (1) Power
     (2) Freedom
     (3) Fun
     (4) Love and Belonging
     (5) Survival
These five needs seem to fit in with any situation that I have come across in the past. I have seen a variety of ways that people use to try to meet those needs where some are productive while others are not. Nonetheless, you are going to have an entire class at the same time trying to have the same basic needs met. As a teacher you are going to have to be there to aid your students in meeting these needs in a way that is caring yet constructive.
The way to achieve all this that I find most productive is by building relationships with your students. If the students are able to trust you, receive empathy from you and see that you really do care working with on another can become easier. Of course through out building these relationships things aren’t always going to go smoothly. This is where William Glasser applies his choice theory. He suggests that when a student is reaching out by acting out you can follow the following, find out what the student wants, find out what the student is doing to get what he/she wants, find out is what the student is doing is working, and find out what the student’s plan is to get what he/she wants. I think that this is a good foundation in dealing with the students in your classroom who may be causing disturbances while trying to reach their basic needs. It really is about creating that open and trustful relationship in which together you both can work together to solve current situations.

Diversity

Lacey Shewchuk — Mon, 18 Feb 2008 19:45:45 +0000

After reading the article, White Privilege: Unpacking the Invisible Knapsack by Peggy Mc Intosh I started questioning myself about my privileges. No matter who you are there are things is life that are always there for you and always have been and you tend to take them for granted. These things might be as simple as having meals on the table each night or as big as having freedom in the country that you live in. As for privileges all around us everyone is privileged in different ways. You may have a student who is privileged with money and has numerous gadgets, however another student may no have the money for all of the latest technology but may be privileged to have a very close knit family. I believe that there is no one who has no privileges within there life and to see this you need to appreciate what you do have and not take anything for granted.
I know this all seems to fluffy and society is not always set up to back this up. Personally as a teacher there is not much that I can do to affect the government, however I do have some influence on my students in my classroom. This means that if I can bring into the classroom awarness of diversity, if I can be inclusive, model openness and simple awareness of one another I believe I can make a start at creating a more diversely accepting future.

A Connected Community

Lacey Shewchuk — Mon, 18 Feb 2008 19:15:52 +0000

A community does not always refer to the place that you live, I believe that it refers to a group of people working together. So when you look at a community outside of its normal context you can see that a school is filled with and surrounded by numerous communities. These communities can include the staff, the parents, different grades or most specifically a classroom. Within any of these communities you are going to have a variety of people working together.
The community within a classroom has really caught my interest because with out a doubt it will directly influence me. I believe that a classroom in a community of connected learners. As we all know everyone is different and each student has unique qualities that seperates them from each other. For example someone could be very creative, organized and insightful where the person next to them might be very knowledgeable, determined and assertive. These two people are very different but neither of them is to be classified as a better student instead each student should be recognized for these strengths.
If the students are able to recognize there own personal strengths they could use them to help them self become successful. This could mean that a determined person may be better at compiling a paper in an argumentative way, where as an imaginative person may be more successful at creating a narrative. Once you are able to help your students realize their strengths you can build a every stronger classroom by connecting everyone’s individuals strengths and that will create a connected community in the classroom.

Final Project

Lacey Shewchuk — Mon, 03 Dec 2007 21:09:29 +0000

For my final project Heidi and myself created a webpage for a grade 2 & 3 classroom. We created this page on wikispaces.com which can be made for educational use so that others can view it and only the administrator can edit it. This particular program I found to be very easy to use but did not allow for much creativity.

I think that having a classroom webpage is a great tool to have. It can create a home center that connects the teacher, students and the students home. This way to communicate is fun for the readers and allows the information to be spread quickly and widely. Starting up such a webpage can be very time consuming at first but once it is created it can easily be updated and maintained for years to come. I am continuously increasing my knowledge towards different types of technology and hope to create a webpage for my own classroom one day.

My ECMP Experience

Lacey Shewchuk — Thu, 29 Nov 2007 19:54:47 +0000

The year is coming to a close and I have been thinking about all of the things that I have learnt in this class. There has been an extraordinary amount of new things that I have taken away from this class. It is amazing how many useful and fun tools out there that you can use in a classroom. I know that I will definitely try and use as many of the things that I have learnt that I can once I am in the classroom. I do realize that not all classrooms are equipted for a full use of technology even though I wish they were. For example, Heidi and I are completing for our final project a webpage for a classroom at Rosemont Elementary School. Today we went to the classroom to complete a voice thread with them to “Twas the Night Before Christmas” and this is when I realized that lessons are not always going to go the way it is planned. I am pretty sure that everything that could possibly go wrong did for us. This ranged from wireless Internet be blocked, unfamiliarity with Mac’s to not having enough time. But I was able to learn from the situation and practice adapting my lessons. Mu goal for the future is that when I am in a classroom teaching the I will try to bring in technology into my classroom as much as I can.