Zygouris-Coe Ch.8
What are some ideas of "Academic Language" Zygouris-Coe provides?
- language used by teachers and students for the purpose of acquiring new knowledge and skills
- word knowledge that makes it possible for students to engage with, produce, and talk about texts that are valued at schools
- set of words, grammar, and organizational strategies used to describe complex ideas, higher-order thinking processes, and abstract concepts
page 288
How does Zygouris-Coe propose we best get high school students ready for college writing?
We need to provide them with a vast amount of different ways of writing that allow them to connect to the "real" world through "targeted instruction [...] to express themselves about what they are learning in logical, detailed, complex, and creative ways." (pg. 334).
What is Authentic Assessment?
In authentic assessment, teachers play a key role instead of the test itself. The teacher knows where students are in terms of their learning and the progress they've made from where they began; thus, this form can occur in naturalistic situations either formally or informally. One example is asking students to read real texts and use the skills they learned to approach/interpret/respond to the text.
This section is based on the Classroom Management policy example and my ideal hope for a classroom policy procedure
Absences
Students will be granted 2 unexcused absences per semester/term in my classroom. All excused absences will not count towards them. For every absence beyond the granted 2, students will be required to serve 1 lunch period with me, equal to their excused absence.
ie. If a student has 4 unexcused absences, I will subtract the 2 granted, so they will have to serve 2 lunches with me, then on their 5th, they will have to serve an additional 3 lunches.
Discussion #1 Question 2:
Did you relate/find yourself committing many of the attention distractors mentioned from chapter 4?
Most of my group agreed. Personally, I found myself doing the exact ones Johann Hari was mentioning as he was mentioning them, like checking my phone because it buzzed, or skimming a dense paragraph.
How do we develop academic language?
- maintaining a respectful, motivating, challenging, and supportive classroom environment
- Planning time for AUTHENTIC STUDENT-LED DISCOURSE, so vital and one of your core values to education, never lose sight of this, Chris
- provide feedback to students that will challenge their ideas and to force them to approach the topic again from a different angle/lens
What are Characteristics of a Good Writer?
Zygouris claims that a "proficient writer balances thinking about a subject, thinks about purpose, audience, and word choice, looks for multiple meanings, is aware of their own biases and influence of others, and is willing to make their thoughts available to others for feedback" (page 334). Zygouris also suggests that we can develop these proficient writers by approaching writing as a process rather than a singular act.
How does Zygouris-Coe suggest to implement effective Informal Assessment Systems?
Even informally, teachers need to be able to reflect on the assessments and develop, implement further lessons from these assessments.
- Use data to place students in appropriate groups
- Use portfolios to monitor progress and learning over time, to celebrate student accomplishments.
- Make self-assessments of academic, social, collaborative, and other class goals an integral part of instruction because they all promote higher-order thinking skills and student accountability in the learning process.
Culture
In my meeting with Dr. Alan Waterman, I mentioned to him that I wanted to spend the first week of my class establishing a firm classroom culture with my students so that I could get his advice on this idea. He had said it is one of the key issues teachers do not address, and recommended First Days of School by Harry Wong. Wong suggests spending AT LEAST 2 weeks to establish a classroom culture, which will payoff in the long run over the course of the school year.
With this affirmation and new source, I will be aiming to spend at least the first week of school creating personalized classroom cultures/environments/agreements with my students to set us all up for success throughout the term.
Are the complaints that Johann is making in the text pointless, even if they are valid? Meaning, are there achievable solutions to the attention issues he is raising?
To some extent, yes, our group found Johann's complaints to feel similar to what we had already felt about our society and classrooms: We can't focus, need breaks, and students like to read less and less. We have been aware of these issues and have always felt there needed to be self-control that---even with his extensive resources---Johann couldn't maintain himself. However, Johann does raise later achievable (although some radical) changes that can address the attention deficit we are facing.
- What do you mean to say when you say?
- Explain more why these significant events are worth noting/remembering from the text.
- What caused/What were the motives of [blank] in the story?
- How can you prove that...?
- Let me see if I understand what you're saying. Are you saying that ...?
What were the characteristics of schools that "beat the odds" in high-performing schools that were learning about language and its function? List 3.
- systematic use of separated, simulated, and integrated skills instruction
- Test prep integrated into ongoing goals, curriculum, and regular lessons
- Explicit teaching of strategies for planning, organizing, completing, and reflecting on content activities
What are the 5 types of Portfolios?
Showcase Portfolio - Displays a student's best works over a period of time
Growth Portfolio - Showcases growth by having work from early-, mid-, and end-term assignments. Not necessarily of the same work, but work can be related, like in a Process Portfolio.
Process Portfolio - Concentrate on the journey of learning rather than the success/destination. For instance, it could have the first draft, proposal, second draft, and final draft, as well as resources from the same paper that had been developed over time.
Composite Portfolio - Contains multiple students' work to showcase the impact a program has on students or the effectiveness of certain lessons/instruction
Evaluation portfolio - a series of evaluations, observations, and other assessment artifacts over a course highlighting a student's success in terms of their growth in predetermined goals/criteria
Daily Activities
I am so deeply passionate about stories and storytelling. So for a warm-up activity and activating background knowledge, I always want to incorporate some sense of personal storytelling/relating for students. This, A) helps create student engagement and investment in the lesson, B) teaches a vital life skill to students that I think so many of my peers struggle with, and that's the ability to tell a good story. It's a great way to improve our sociability, confidence, and how we learn to realize that we all live interesting lives; we just have to know how to make it sound as interesting as it is.
Discussion #2 Question 3:
How can we integrate our classrooms to regain sustained student attention?
This question did puzzle my lit circle for a second because they were unsure how to not rely on technology in their modern classrooms. Julie mentioned how a simple wifi issue or "downed" projector can derail an entire class period. Because I haven't been in a classroom, one of my idealized hopes for my classroom culture is to have a minimum, to no-tech classroom to create more in-the-moment learning for my students.
What are potential Collaboration Barriers in High School?
- Some students find group work to be more work than individual assignments
- Many higher acquisition level students feel as though they end up having to do the whole assignment, and stress relying on others for their grade
- Some students often lack any experience in academic collaboration
What is the importance of On-Demand writing?
On demand writing is often timed, and challenges students more than process writing which allows them to take home and revise. On-demand writing is a much more common expectation in the real world, both in career and college, so we need to provide students a fundamental approach to understanding: what is they're being asked to do, what the purpose is, brainstorm possible solutions, and arrange the order of their responses while being more conscious of errors before submitting.
Describe Tier 2 intervention and how many students receive it.
Roughly about 15% of students (3-5 in each class) require Tier 2 intervention, which is more or less supplemental instruction that is in addition to the Tier 1 general classroom instruction taught. This is not necessarily an IEP, for this supplemental instruction does not need personalization to each student, but another general instruction that further aids their understanding.
Collecting Assignments
I will always try to make all of my assignments done by hand, and so students will submit them on their due dates to the corresponding box of their period. Students will also be encouraged through competition with other periods to all turn in the assignments because the class with the highest success rate will receive an agreed upon prize.
Discussion #2 Future Question:
If our attention is being stolen and capitalized by technology, food, and "cruel optimism," is our fight for our focus officially an institutionalized oppression?
Overwhelmingly, our lit circle agreed that this fight has become an issue to the size of institutionalized oppression. We revisited the point to whether Johann's complaints were pointless and felt that in order to combat/fight against an issue, we have to be able to define it, and what Johann is doing with terms like "surveillance capitalism" and "Cruel Capitalism," we can now firmly address the defined issue.
Why is it important to celebrate Student Success, and how should we celebrate?
It has been proven that students tend to improve more effectively when praised for their work and persistence. We can do this by offering feedback on their effort and areas of controllable (thus achievable) improvements. When students have shown specific areas of improvement, make sure to include that in your feedback rather than only providing "areas for improvement."
How can we improve student writing?
Most importantly, we need to shift our priority of the importance of writing to be less on test success and imprinting the value of the process of writing onto students, so that they must feel like it is important, rather than just another task they have to complete. Students often enjoy writing; it is the environment or demands of expectations that ruin the experience for them.
What is the importance of students being in their zone of Proximal Development (ZPD)?
ZPD is where students are at their optimal achievement. Similar to the n+1 approach, ZPD is a differentiated instruction that is relative to their level of readiness, learning rate and interests.
Discussion #3 Question 3:
After reading the text and Johann's conclusion that we require radical change in order to hopefully create change for future generations, do you feel hopeful about society or anxious?
Julie is our optimist of the group and firmly stood by her hope for our society to begin pushing back against our attention deficit by starting with individual steps that can shift our mindset to prioritizing our ability to focus and mental flow states, or mind wandering. Charlie and Gwyneth feel that we may be a little too early in the fight for our society to take any notice yet, that it might get worse before we create a cultural shift. My concern is that I am hopeful for our future generations but less so for current ones, because Radical change like the Civil Rights Movement (which Hari compares this issue to) was great for our generation today, but took a lot of struggling for the contemporary generation to fight for.