Personalized Learning?

After reading the three articles for class this week, I found myself puzzled and suffering from headache (not sure if this was from the reading or lack of sleep). The idea of giving that much freedom of learning style to students and having less control can be scary. I also find it scary to give students more access to the internet to do their work in different styles in school.

One of the most basic things I’ve learned through all my classes is that all students learn differently. Because of this, personalized learning gives students new options for learning other than sitting and listening to a teacher for an hour. Roberts-Mohoney compares personalized learning to a Netflix profile very cleverly. When you use Netflix so many times, it starts to learn the types of movies and shows you like to watch. After learning more about you, Netflix makes a personalized list of movies that you would enjoy watching. This is what teachers need to do in the classroom. We need to learn more about our students and adapt our lessons and create a “playlist” based on what they like. If we adapt lessons to the student’s interests and their learning ability, then they may be more productive and interested in the work.

After reading Coiro’s passage, I find that he touches on a topic I often think about. We are teaching students so they can advance in the future, however not all students have the same future. Coiro’s first point under “Where do we go from here?” states that we should adapt the lessons and learning to the interests and needs of the students. If a student is looking to become an engineer in the future, their lesson will and should be different from that of a student who aims to be a cook. I also like that he points out that students should be pushed to think on their own and create original works. Students should work to produce original and creative works that demonstrate their knowledge on a topic rather than have exams or essays to test their knowledge.

I thought that Couros was clever for pointing out the use of different internet platforms to engage students in learning. I wouldn’t have thought that you could have a good lesson that incorporates Twitter or Skype, but it would be interesting to see how it works. I like the idea of using Blogger in class to teach lessons and have students engage in writing. I’ve done it in many classes before and greatly enjoyed it, but considering the dangers of the internet, using the internet in personalized learning can be daunting. I think it was key also inform students on internet safety.

One of my favorite poems

A Whole New World

After reading the first chapter in Christensen book and the blog post by Macaluso, I noticed a theme between them that I not only loved, but find very important today.

Macaluso talks about how she went went to the store and saw the world a new way when she wrote the poem about the old woman and her husband. Until that time she never thought of the supermarket in a way that may seem scary, but meeting this old woman who fears her husband may forget her there changed her view point. Christensen also mentioned this when she had her students write poems about who raised them. When the students shared their ideas and their poems, they began to see each other differently and realized that some of them had more in common than they thought. This also opened up for more opportunities to have students grow and be more accepting of each other.

When the students were told to think about who raised them, the learned to think outside the box, reflect on their lives, and realize that there are more influences on them then just people. One student wrote that music raised them. They saw the world from a new perspective and realized that they are so surrounded by music at all times, the music started to shape them as a person. This is also done when one student wrote about how they were raised by video games and how they changed their personality.

When I write poetry I notice I begin to look at many things in a new way. I am writing a poem for my RAFT project and found I was trying to look at the common core standards from the perspective of students of different races, classes, and interests levels. I tried to imagine how the standards would apply to a student wanting to be a mechanic, a profession where essay writing may not be needed as often. I never thought of it that way until I chose to write a poem on the topic, rather I thought of the standards in a singular way that is expected.

On a random note, I love how both writers gave examples of poems on their topics. Macaluso wrote such a good poem but it was also so sad. I also liked seeing the work by different students in Christensen's class. I think writing poems on who raised you would be an amazing lesson and project to do one day with students.

Freedom to Write

Gallagher spoke about how students need to be given freedom on writing assignments. He noted that students will not only produce better work, but it will be more passionate and doing tasks like revising will be done well due to their interest level. I fully agree with this and experienced it here at RIC. When I took my senior seminar for English, I took a Victorian Literature class with Russell Potter. When we did our final paper, which had to be between 15 and 20 pages long, he gave us freedom to write about anything dealing with the Victorian Era. Because I was also getting a degree in film studies, I wrote my paper on the rise of the film industry. Many don’t realize that short films were starting to be filmed in the later years of the Victorian Era, so I thought it would be interesting to write about. In my time at RIC I thought it was the best and most passionate paper I wrote.

Another time I loved writing and had freedom was in high school when we studied narrative writing. Christensen talked a lot about how students seemed to enjoy narrative writing and telling their own stories. It feels like a more open form of expression that is also personal. One of my favorite assignments for narrative writing was when we all took an item to school that had a story attached to it, put it in a brown bag, and then we randomly picked items from another student. We then wrote a story about the item and the real story about the item we brought in. My item was the gold ring I wear with five small diamonds on it. It was my grandmother’s engagement ring that my father gave to me after she passed away. Though the classmate who got the ring knew nothing about it, their version of the story was fairly close to mine.

The coteaching article made me think back on my time as a long term substitute for a fifth grade ELA teacher. The teacher taught three ELA classes each day and one Social Studies class. Because the students had fallen behind, the team of teachers and I met and thought about doing a jig-saw activity where the students helped to teach the two chapters we needed to cover. During this time I did little in terms of “teaching” and more helped the teachers with their “lesson plans” and understanding the topic they were going to teach the class. At first I was worried about how it would work, but students were greatly interested in the idea and they were able to present all the ideas well.

Of the Three readings I enjoyed Gallagher the most because I can’t help but agree whole-heartedly. The best papers I’ve ever written where the ones I had the most freedom with. I just wish more teachers would understand this and give students more freedom.

How Can We Make Standardized Testing and Standards Better?

After reading “Rhode Island Teachers Respond to PARCC: A White Paper”, I found myself reflecting back on my time in school and how much I related to this. When I was in school I had trouble learning to read. Though I was not on an IEP (I went to a Catholic school that didn’t really offer IEP programs) I needed a great deal of help with reading assignments. Without that help during standardized tests, I was set up to fail. I am part of a minority group, but I don’t feel it had a great impact on my learning, but to a certain extent, I feel like I understand the “consequence gap” and how it can affect students.

When testing time came around, I would get anxious and even when I learned to read well, I’d always manage to choke when the test came. This carried over until I took the SATs and more. My scores were low, but my grades were the opposite. This doesn’t just apply to me though, I’ve had many friends that do well in school. They meat the standards that are set and pass with flying colors, but when a standardized test comes, they choke.

This also somehow guided me into another question that may seem complex and has a few parts. Considering the idea of “consequence gap” and that the groups in this category seem to struggle more, does this mean we should consider changing the standards in an area based on the needs of the school district?

After looking at the different standards from NCTE and the Common Core website, I noticed that they seem specific and general at they same time. They are specific in the sense that it may say something such as “CCSS.ELA-LITERACY.W.11-12.1.E Provide a concluding statement or section that follows from and supports the argument presented.” (Common Core) where it states the work needed to be done, however it does not say how to grade or judge the mastery of this standard, but it also doesn’t say how it needs to be taught. This can leave a lot of freedom for teachers so they can adjust the standard and how it is met depending on the district and socioeconomics of an area. This seems to be a common theme for NCTE as well, so do we just rely on that general idea or do we try and change the standard to fit the needs of students in a specific school.

If the standards are change depending on the socioeconomics of an area and the needs of the students, then they may be able to have better progression in school. If standardized testing is also selected on the needs of the students and given more freedom to adapt to students, then we could possibly get a more accurate idea of what students really know and what they can do.