Greetings,
Wednesday will be the first day of a special two and a half week online discussion, Watching Teaching in Action. Throughout the activity, I am going to guide you through a series of short videos produced by the Teaching Channel. The videos were selected because they demonstrate strategies and practices incorporating standards-based instruction. The videos showcase K-12 instructors and classes but are very appropriate for adult education classes. I will moderate the discussion and am fortunate to be joined by former colleagues from Kentucky each week. The six guest adult educators who will be participating are Cris Crowley, Sherraine Williams, John Greenwell, Jennifer Bruce, Kitty Head and Amy Matthews. They will share their classroom experiences in incorporating the practices and strategies from the videos along with other lessons learned in moving toward standards-based instruction. I hope that you will join the conversation which begins April 9th.
Meryl Becker-Prezocki, SME
Comments
This message is posted on behalf of Meryl Becker-Prezocki, SME College and Career Standards Group.
Welcome to the first day of the Watching Teaching in Action discussion! Join the discussion to discover new instructional strategies! From April 9 – 25, the College and Career Standards group in the LINCS Community is offering a special two and a half-week discussion that will take the group members inside schools to watch how teachers are implementing standards in their classrooms.
Throughout the activity, you will view and have the opportunity to respond to guided questions and discussions on select short instructional videos from the Teaching Channel. These videos are revolutionizing how teachers can learn and improve their instructional methods.
We begin our conversation with two videos this week: My Favorite No: Learning From Mistakes and What’s Your Sign: Integer Addition. I have included some questions that the Teaching Channel suggests to guide your viewing along with the Common Core Standards that the lessons in the video align with. Below are the links to the videos and the questions:
Video 1: My Favorite No: Learning From Mistakes: https://www.teachingchannel.org/videos/class-warm-up-routine
Common Core Standards: Math.MP.6
Attend to precision.
Mathematically proficient students try to communicate precisely to others. They try to use clear definitions in discussion with others and in their own reasoning. They state the meaning of the symbols they choose, including using the equal sign consistently and appropriately. They are careful about specifying units of measure, and labeling axes to clarify the correspondence with quantities in a problem. They calculate accurately and efficiently, express numerical answers with a degree of precision appropriate for the problem context. In the elementary grades, students give carefully formulated explanations to each other. By the time they reach high school they have learned to examine claims and make explicit use of definitions. (Source: http://www.corestandards.org/Math/Practice/)
Questions to consider and respond to as you watch the video:
Video 2: What’s Your Sign: Integer Addition: https://www.teachingchannel.org/videos/adding-integers-lesson-idea
Common Core Standards: Math.7.NS.A.1b, Math.7.NS.A.1d
Apply and extend previous understandings of operations with functions
CCSS.MATH.CONTENT.7.NS.A.1.B
Understand p + q as the number located a distance |q| from p, in the positive or negative direction depending on whether q is positive or negative. Show that a number and its opposite have a sum of 0 (are additive inverses). Interpret sums of rational numbers by describing real-world contexts.
CCSS.MATH.CONTENT.7.NS.A.1.D
Apply properties of operations as strategies to add and subtract rational numbers.
(Source: http://www.corestandards.org/Math/Content/7/NS/)
Questions to consider and respond to as you watch the video:
Watching Teaching in Action is a way for instructors to engage in professional learning and view good instructional strategies!
I hope that you enjoy the richness of this activity, and share your thoughts regarding the guided questions, ideas for how these strategies can be adapted for use in your adult education classrooms, and experiences in experimenting with some of these strategies.
Meryl Becker-Prezocki, SME
This message is posted on behalf of Meryl Becker-Prezocki, SME College and Career Standards Group.
We will be joined this week by two adult educators from Kentucky who have participated in the Kentucky Adult Education Common Core Standards Professional Development.
Cris Crowley has been the Adult Education Director for Madisonville Community College in Kentucky since 2000. She currently oversees 2 county programs (Hopkins and Muhlenberg) with a combined annual enrollment goal of over 1000 students. The full-time instructors of the programs participated in the Standards in Action pilot, beginning in 2010.
Sherraine Williams has been the lead English Language Arts (ELA) instructor for Madisonville Community College's ACE2 Muhlenberg County Adult Education program in Central City, Kentucky since 2005. She currently teaches classes in both reading and language skills to students who test below NRS level four. For her students who test at NRS level four and higher, she has also created a new standards-based GED English course which blends reading, writing, and student writing-based language skills in order to prepare them for the new challenges they will face on the 2014 GED exam.
Cris and Sherraine, welcome to the discussion!
Meryl Becker-Prezocki, SME
Greetings from Kentucky! We apologize for our delay but hope it has given you the opportunity to watch the videos. "My Favorite No" is one of our favorite videos. It is a required "watch" for all of our instructors. We have used this technique and found it to be very valuable not only for student learning, but also for the ideas and rich discussion it prompts among instructors. To move the discussion forward, would this technique be something you would be willing to try? What outcomes and values would you expect to see? Are you already doing something similar? Better? Please share with the group.
Welcome to all,
Thank you Cris for your post. Today is the second day of Watching Teaching in Action activity.
I hope that some of the College and Career Standards Community members have been able to watch at least one of the videos. I am looking forward to hearing from you. Please share your thoughts with us.
Meryl Becker-Prezocki, SME
In using my "My Favorite No" in math classes, we found that it is also a great teaching tool for writing and language. It can be used for language mechanics, grammar, usage, and sequencing. I'm sure with some creative thinking it could be used in multiple subjects in multiple ways.
As we continue to move to Standards Based Instruction and refine our lessons, the ability to incorporate learning activities that require students to think about the material in a critical way and analyze what is correct, what is incorrect and why, helps our students start to prepare and think about the content differently.
I'm also thinking about using this technique in ESOL classes. I can identify the most common mistakes in grammar or writing and we can work on them the same way. That also helps for assessment purposes.
Using the "My Favorite No" technique gives instructors the ability to provide immediate feedback without singling out those students who answered correctly and those that did not. You begin the discussion with what is correct and why; then move to what is incorrect and why. The entire class learns from the activity. It creates dialog and discussion among students.
One of my lead ELA instructors, Sherraine Williams, had these comments:
I found Ms. Alcala's use of informal assessment and the criteria she used to pick her favorite "no" interesting in terms of how this teaching tool could be used in a variety of classroom activities. In all content areas, our students very rarely understand the concepts the first time they are introduced to them, but each student generally picks up something of value from the information presented. This activity not only allows for an immediate repetition, a "mulling over" or rehashing of what they've just been introduced to, but the whole class is allowed to analyze and self-correct, a key to getting student to think critically. This type of activity also fosters a sense of teamwork, a feeling that "we" (instructor included) are all in this together. As Ms. Alcala notes, it also allows students to view the classroom as a safety zone where even their mistakes nurture the learning process, instead of it being an environment where the errors they make only prove that they are "wrong" once again and don't serve any purpose except to give them a negative feeling about themselves and the content they are trying to learn.
Cris:
I can see why you have your instructors watch “My Favorite No.” This activity engages most students in analyzing both correct procedure as well as common mistakes in a safe, non-threatening environment. It is often observed that we learn from our mistakes (as long as we take the time to find out where we went wrong and find out how to do it right the next time).
This approach also reinforces math practice 6 – attend to precision – by helping learners identify procedural errors and talk about this using precise math terms (for example, students in the video acknowledged where the individual “distributed” properly). I can also see where this approach has the potential to support other math practices such as “construct viable arguments and critique the reasoning of others (MP.3).”
I’m also impressed with how quickly a teacher would be able to identify the math concepts students do not understand. By asking students to talk about what went wrong, she is able to re-teach the concept. Ms. Alcala observed that her lower-level students seemed to be engaged – and not alienated – by the process.
Mary
One thing many adult educators and I have in common is a fear of teaching higher level math. I confess, my math skills are rusty because I do not use these skills everyday on paper as a task. I do use these math skills frequently in my thinking automatically, but, not explaining the process on paper or on a board. For years, I have shared the Teaching Channel to our administrators and teachers because the videos helps teachers explain to students. So many great ideas have been in these videos! The two videos on math were no exception. I think the warm-up activity and the color coded intergers could be used with adults. I am looking forward to hearing how adult students responded to the activities.
Greetings,
Has anyone used the number line that was modeled by the instructor in What's Your Sign: Integer Addition at https://www.teachingchannel.org/videos/adding-integers-lesson-idea? How did that work for adult learners?
Meryl Becker-Prezocki, SME
Hi to all,
The activity Watching Teaching in Action that took group members inside schools to watch how teachers are implementing standards in their classroom has ended. I hope that you have had the opportunity to follow the discussion.
The purpose of the conversation was to share with the College and Career Standards Community the Teaching Channel videos. I believe that viewing the videos can provide us with a way to promote our professional learning. The clips that were selected showcased inspiring and effective instructional practices in order to demonstrate techniques for using standards in the classrooms.
I wish to offer my thanks to the six guest adult educators from Kentucky who have enthusiastically participated: Cris Crowley, Sherraine Williams, Jennifer Bruce, Kitty Head, John Greenwell, and Amy Matthews. Their insight and wisdom have been very valuable.
Even though we are ending Watching Teaching in Action, our discussion can continue. I encourage you to browse through the comments, and I would love to hear your thoughts or questions.
Meryl Becker-Prezocki, SME