Chapter 15: Parents as Partners in Twenty-First-Century Learning

This chapter was about parents of the students getting connected not just with their kids schooling, but with the school itself. I thought that they key part of this chapter was the section titled "Reach out and Touch". I really liked a couple of the ideas, and really disagreed with others. A couple of the ideas that I really liked was the Postcard idea. I think that sending home good things about the kids is more important than sending home negatives that the students have done. I also really liked that Parents in the Classroom idea. I think that opening up my classroom to the parents gives it an air of confidence and trust that every parent wants to feel when their child is concerned.

The one thing that I really disagreed with however was the Home Visits suggestion. Never in my life would I consider visiting all of my students in their homes. I feel like that is an invasion of their space as well as a vulnerability for myself in that situation. I feel like having a meeting place that isn't the school or the home would work, but I would never go to their house.

Chapter 9: Involving Parents and Communities

This chapter talks about the importance of involving parents and the community within the student's schooling. As it goes on it gives steps to take to get both parties involved. Although I agree that this is a good idea I disagree with the assumptions that the book is making. I know that many students do not have an ideal home life. Sometimes the parents have to work numerous jobs, there are many children that need taking care of, or the students may not be living in an ideal situation. There is even the chance that although the parents are home they may not have the needed knowledge to assist the child in the way that they need it. Personally I feel like the hard part is not making parents who care take part in the child's schooling, but to make the parents that don't care or don't have time care, and make time.

Boys and Girls Learn Differently

Alrighty so this book definitely brought up some really intriguing points that cause great discussion. I loved how you introduced the book by giving us a couple of activities as a warm-up exercise. I am a firm believer in getting the brain thinking about the ideas at hand. I also liked the way that you randomly split us up into groups and I think two out of the four group stations had us doing an activity of some kind. I think that the activities really helped make the ideas more memorable. My one critique of the presentation would be that I didn't feel that there was enough time at each station. I really enjoyed the discussion and wish that we would have had time for a longer one, or even one where the whole class was involved. I know that this book brings up a lot of controversial ideas and I like hearing other peoples opinions.

Chapter 8: A Safe and Healthy School Environment

This chapter was all about the results of safe and healthy students on their grades and test scores. After reading this chapter I thought about the video that one of the students in our class showed about exercising before the hardest classes. I think that if students have an effective way to burn off energy then their brains will be more ready to focus in on the harder things. The chapter and I believe that students feeling safe plays a similar role. This safety aspect is the harder environment to create. This, according to the book, has to be created through the students, teachers, and administration. Without all of these players the safe community that all good teachers want for the students will not happen. It's a struggle that is constant, but attainable. It's worth the effort.

Chapter 4: Designing Instruction to Improve Teaching and Learning

I found the section titled "Instruction's Key Connections" extremely illuminating. They give three parts to to making instruction successful. The first part that they say an educator needs to do is play off the curriculum. They say that the importance of this is that the curriculum is based on the agreed-upon standards. I think it is also important to be firm and to stand by the curriculum even if you don't like it. If the teacher is not behind what they're teaching the students will not want to learn it. Another part is the assessments. This for me would never have fallen into the instructional aspect of teaching, but after reading why they think this I understand that after giving assessment you find out how well you instructed the classes prior to this, and to see how we must instruct them after the assessment. The last part of this section was the students themselves. If we as teachers are not sympathetic and observant to the students needs then no matter how well we plan the instruction and deliver it the students will not understand the concepts.

Becoming a Wiz at Brain-Based Teaching

I really loved the way that you played not only with the title of the book but also with how to make it interesting. Your project really brought the different sections to life, although in a couple of the sections I feel like the actual book message was lost because of the focus on the game. In the sections that the message was successful I really remembered what was being said and the way to remember it.

Your book sounded like it had the general idea of very similar things that we learned about in Practicum, but with more examples and going more in depth. I really liked the different ideas about how changing the room can make learning easier and more fun, and about how using a portfolio to grade is much more of a fair way to go than standardized teaching. I'd always had this idea, but your project was the proof that I needed. I also thought it was awesome for the book to go into detail about memory, and how different ways that we remember things impact what and how much we remember. Good job guys!

Chapter 8: Effective Assessment (Class Abstract and Synthesis)

Abstract:

The introduction of this chapter is a story about a student who was not a very strong writer, but was a really amazing guitar player. The teacher knew that if they gave him a summative test over the book they just finished this student would get an F, so the teacher decided to give the student other options that they could do to prove they know the information. The student ended up making a song and preforming it on his guitar showing full understanding of the information. This is an example of good assessment. The chapter then continues by explaining what makes assessment effective. Some of the things that the chapter suggests are: defining clear goals, make the work motivating, giving students choices for their culminating activity, and using various formats to name a few. The final section of the chapter begins with two sentences that really impact the reader. They are "Good assessment is easy to grade. Complex assessments aren't difficult to track." When making assessment criteria that is what we should keep in mind.

Synthesis:

In the blogs there were some very specific things that a majority of people focused on. One of those things was standardized testing. It became very clear to me as I read the blogs about this that no one is fond of them, and would much rather find some other form of summative assessment to view students understand of information. The other thing that was really popular with the blog postings was appreciating the ideas and options that Wormeli gave for making effective assessment in the chapter. This chapter gave many people really awesome ideas for making their own assessment in their classrooms.

Chapter 8: Effective Assessment

Chapter 8 is all about how different types of assessment can impact a students grade for that assessment piece/class. A quote that I really liked in this section was by Jay McTighe. He said that "assessment should promote learning, not just measure it." I agree with this 100 percent. When I take quizzes I look at them like they are learning experiences, that they shouldn't count too much because I will use them to learn from my mistakes and master the information from there. If there is a lot of pressure on things like quizzes or checkpoints then students will be less likely to want to learn the information. As a teacher I would like to make quizzes not a thing to be feared, but something that the students can rely on to help them completely understand the material before the summative assessment piece happens.

Chapter 7: Differentiated Instruction--Fitting the Lesson to the Learner

I felt that the most important part of this chapter would be the essential features of differentiated instruction. In this there were five parts. Early and Frequent Evaluations of student's was the first one. I completely agreed with what this section was saying with the quizzes and tests and other forms of evaluations being used frequently. The next section, Adjusting the Complexity or Range of Assignments, this again is important because sometimes as teachers we focus in so much on the struggling kids that we forget to alter our assignments for the gifted kids. The last three are self explanatory and with these I also agree. I think that a good key phrase that sums up this chapter would be to vary ones teaching techniques slightly and often. If you do this then you will reach the maximum number of students.

Chapter 6: Accountability for High Standards`

The very first section of chapter 6 was talking about holding students accountable for late work. I very much agree with this. If teachers never have/give consequences for late work then the student will always talk advantage of this policy and turn in things whenever they want. In my middle school experiences if you were the teachers favorite, or one of them, they would let you turn in projects late, or homework late, and I know in one instance a student never turned in a project and got an A anyway because the teacher knew that they understood. This to me sends the wrong message to all of the students. It's kind of like you telling them that if they kiss enough butts they never have to do the work.
There was one thing that I did not agree with in this chapter and that was what they were saying about extra credit. The book suggests that teachers should never use extra credit so that students don't feel like they can slack off sometimes because they know they will be able to make it up. I disagree. If the student is willing to do the extra work that extra credit should require then I don't see the problem in making it available. We all have bad weeks where we simply can't seem to keep up and a test or quiz turns out badly because of it. Extra credit should just be a way to make up that bad week.

A Whole New Mind

I really liked how you split up the sections and the introduction. The way that you split it up really assisted in my making connections between the different sections. As for the book I really like how they are thinking about learners in different ways. Schools have always looked at education in a similar way. By looking at it through the eyes of right brainers is going to make the difference for kids, however it is going to be up to the teachers to completely understand how to incorporate this into our lesson plans all the time. I know that I will need to look further into how to incorporate these ideas into lesson plans. All in all I really liked the new ideas the book had.

The different activities and quizzes that we you had us do in the groups made the ideas really stick with what you were telling us. I enjoyed that you took the time to make the wiki artifact that was so complete so that we can look back at it.

Chapter 3: Brain Research Applied to Middle School

I really liked this chapter because of the different way that Wormeli suggested making connections in more than one way when introducing new ideas. I liked when he wrote "When we make the right kind of connections for students, we can help the content catch a ride on one of the senses as the thoughts enter their brains." I've found that when you make connections between what you're teaching and the things that connected to their likes and passions. I also thought that it was interesting that our memories remain remarkably intact but we have a very hard time retrieving them. Something that I found very neat, and will come in extremely handy in the long run, is the fact that emotional cues help middle school students retain information. The more we know about the way the brain works the easier job we will have as teachers for getting our students to completely learn and remember the information that is important.

Waiting for Superman

I am so glad that we got to watch this movie. I was absolutely amazed and at the same time appalled at the way the education system works in the country right now in regards to firing teachers. I couldn't believe the footage from the student that carried a camcorder around in his backpack. Even worse than seeing teachers do absolutely NOTHING during a class period and even mock the students about it, and seeing other kids physically harassed there was nothing the school could do to change the situation. There is no way to fire a teacher with two year.

Thats another thing that I had no idea about before watching this movie. I had never heard of two year. This is a completely ridiculous contract that ensures that all teachers who have taught past a certain number of year cannot be fired without going through this huge process that costs the schools more money than if they hired another teacher and allowed the terrible one to leave with pay.

I could go on and on about the things that I learned in this movie, lemon dance, lottery, unions..... The one thing that I concluded form the movie is that we need a drastic change in way the education system is run before we can begin expecting our students to improve their scores. We need good teachers to help create great learners.

Chapter 13: Outdoor Adventures

I was so pumped at the idea that this was in a wide spread education book. I think that many teachers leave out the outdoors in their teaching because they believe that the kids are not getting all of the learning if they are outside and distracted. I don't think this is so, and neither did the chapter. This chapter expands on so many benefits from the outdoors. One thing in particular was really powerful. The chapter said "There are two dimensions to substantive outdoor experiences. The first is the focus on our physical, emotional, and intellectual selves...found that outdoor experiences gave students greater peer acceptance and more control of their lives, thereby creating greater confidence and self-esteem." The last few pages of the chapter also give helpful examples of fun games that the students can play while outside that will help them mature or bond or make connections while still being just that, a game.

Chapter 4: Active Learning

I'm really glad that this book went over Active learning. I believe that it is really extremely important to have students move around and have hands on experiences, and I know that almost all people think that the only time this happen is in the Science Labs, but thankfully that is not correct. I really liked the math teacher example. This was the one where the teacher knew that one of the students was not understanding the new material that was being presented. Instead of just letting him slip through the cracks the teacher thought of a new way to present the material. It worked.

The other really helpful part of this chapter was the list of "Additional Ideas for Making Subjects Physically Engaging." This is going to be really helpful for people like me who has always learned the best through reading and plain old discussion. I really lack in ideas to help these learners so anything like this is awesome.

Chapter 3: Curriculum and Assessment to Improve Teaching and Learning

The part of chapter 3 that stood out to me was the part about the different standards. One of the standards that I found intriguing was the Excellence and Equity standard. I never thought that excellence should be looked at as a standard. This is, of course, if excellence was a relative term. I feel like if, as an educator, I am looking at the cumulative grades on the report card looking for high B's and A's then I am failing my students, but if I was to look at excellence as this student was working at level x in the beginning of the year and is now producing work that is much higher then they have achieved working excellence in my opinion.

Chapter 9: Planning for Block Scheduling

Although the title of chapter 9 is "Planning for Block Scheduling" I felt like it could have been better titled Planning for your Lessons. That is what this whole chapter was about. Yes it did have some parts about planning for a larger block then per usual, but it was very brief. Although I disagreed with the title I did like some of the things Wormeli wrote in this chapter. One of the things that I really liked was the idea about taking attendance while the students are doing something so that you don't delay the lesson. I also liked when they wrote "I want to begin with the end in mind, and assessment is incorporated with instruction." I need to permanently get my mind to go into this mindset. Don't base everything around the finished product without knowing where you are beginning. There was one thing about this chapter that really caught my attention. Under the section titled Inviting Thinking Activity the first line is I have to get them engaged within ninety seconds of entering the classroom. I have never heard this before, but I feel like there is some truth in it. Although it will be really tough to do, I feel that if I can get and hold the students attention from the beginning the rest of the lesson will go smoother.

Chapter 6: Organizing Relationships for Learning

In chapter 6, Organizing Relationships for Learning, Jackson and Davis talk about the different ways to organize large schools to create more intimate learning environments for our young adolescents. The authors suggest many different ways of doing this. These include making houses or "schools-within-school", creating teams, different kinds of scheduling, and advisories. I had heard of all of these before, and have even had one on one experiences with some of them, but I have never heard of houses before. I liked these ideas. I believe with Jackson and Davis when they say that no school should exceed 600 students so that they groupings of students and educators is small enough to "stimulate the development of close, supportive relationships. The "small schools movement" is happening now and I like the idea of it. By opting to restructure a large school into two to four separate, autonomous schools-within-schools there will be a better learning environment.

Chapter 12:Teacher Advisories--A Proposal for Change

Chapter 12 was about the different things that we as teachers can do with our students to help make the connections that kids need to succeed. I agree with he Gatewood's criteria for the best advisory programs. The criteria includes making the programs a full-day, make them monthly and include a time where the teachers and the students are eating at the same time, and having teachers talking independently with each student. In one of the schools that I attended, the principle would schedule a lunch with each student every day. This made many of us feel like she cared about each of us as an individual. I also believe that the lists of potential activities was really helpful, however I think that the best possible activity would be one when teachers can combine the three types. If we could make each activity physical with reflections, and have it be a service activity everyone involved would make out better.

Chapter 11: Extending Our Professional Practices Teaming

This chapter was all about the positive impact that team teaching has on your students and the way that they learn. In my own middle school experience my teachers team taught, and not only did they split us up into teams within the grade level, they made units around the learning results. I remember in seventh grade doing our China unit. This was a big deal in our school, we read Chinese imspired books in Language Arts and did a huge project in Social Studies, and was connected through word problems in math and different science concepts. This made the whole unit more powerful to all of us students at the time. We then had "China Connections Night" where we would present the projects that we had worked on in all of the classes. It was really powerful. Another thing that the book points out is that when you teach in teams all the teachers share the core values. This make the teaching setting stronger as well as the message that the students recieve from the school as a whole.

Pages 1-62

Pages 1-26:
In these first few pages there was a lot of information covered. In the very first pages they covered why they believe that middle grades is the key time for kids to be influenced. They discussed young adolescents as a group, the changes they go through and the risks that they are open to trying. It also has a list of what they consider a "fully functioning, self-actualize person" which is what they are trying to make the young adolescents. Through all of that I still found the chart on page 14 was the most illuminating thing in this reading. This chart really broke down their goals in a manageable way even though they have many goals for their middle schoolers. They broke it down really well in the four different sections: Essential Attributes, Curriculum, Leadership, and Culture.
Pages 27-33:
These pages cover a variety of topics. It goes from talking about visions and mission statements, to the type of leaders that are needed in middle schools, to who needs to be involved to make the vision of the school happen, to keeping teachers up-to-date with research and education, to making teams within the schools. This, needless to say, was a very important section in this book. One of the parts that impacted me the most was on page 29 when it said "The entire staff is involved in creating a learning community that places top priority ont he edu. and healthy development of ever students and adult within the community." I've always thought that this was one of the most important thing that a school could do. I do have one issue with how it is written in this book. I beleive that it is just as important to have students involved in this process as the adults. If these changes are going to impact the students then they should also be involved. The other part of this section that made me want to cheer about was when it said that the pricipal needs to advocate for the students. All of us teachers need to advocate for our students because in some cases we are the only ones who are.

Page 33-42

This section was all about how building a community based school helps make the students more likely to believe in education, and stay out of trouble. Almost everything they say in this chapter I agree with. In the very beginning they say "Interactions among staff members and between students reflect fairness and mutual respect." I really believe this and have been told numerous times that I'm dumb for believing this. When you demonstrate what you expect and truly believe that is what you will be shown. This chapter writes this again when it says "The school emphasizes lifelong physical activities such as aerobics, dance...In such schools every student has an increased sense of well-being, which, in turn, increases the likelihood of his or her academic success." Although I agree most defiantly with the previous things the most important thing that they write in the chapter is not about the comfort of the school, but of advocating for your students. This is the most important thing we as teachers can do for our students.

Page 43-62

This last section of the book was completely designated to the research behind This We Believe books. It covered Curriculum, Instruction, and Assessment, Leadership and Organization, and Culture and Community. It also recapped the way that the different changes that are occurring to young adolescents changes their behavior. One thing that I really liked in this section was when it said that all of the dimensions are intertwined, each affecting and being affected by the others. The rest of this section is the specific characteristic of physical development, cognitive-intellectual, moral development, psychological, and social-emotional development.

Final Recap:

Out of all of the education books that I've had to read in my education classes up to this point in my college career this one has been my favorite. I feel like this book has been the most relevant to me, as well as the most accurate. When I was reading this book I didn't feel like it was old retired teachers, or heads of departments writing for the students, I felt like it was an accurate representation of the students. The combination of the science that is behind how young adolescents mature and the research that the This We Believe community has done makes this book ring true. I also very much believe that the way middle schools are being run needs to continue changing to form their own communities based on the needs of the students. The best part of This We Believe is the fact that they continue to do research on young adolescents.

Chapter 17: The Truth About Middle School Students

This chapter beautiful talks about the different things middle school students are, and they were never described as annoying or hormonal. They were described as caring, talented, and brilliant. The quote in this chapter that really said the most to me was "Either they {kids that caused frustration} weren't ready to receive what I had to offer, or I wasn't offering what they needed." Middle school students are so much more than pre-teens who don't know how to control their hormones or how to dress they're new body, they are the next generation of adults and the most we can do is offer them the best we can.

Chapter 2: Motivating Young Adolescents

This chapter is pretty self-explanatory given the chapter name. This is the one thing that is going to be a constant struggle no matter how long I've been teaching, or how confident I am about what education is and what it can do. One of the first thing this chapter says is "Young adolescents are moving through one of the most dynamic stages of development of their lives." This is going to me the main reason that my student didn't do they're homework, forgot they had a test, or show attitude in class in an inappropriate way. Their lives are changing, their physical beings are changing. I think that the biggest thing that we as teachers can do according to the book is to immerse ourselves in finding out what their interests are. When we figure that out we need to keep finding ways to be supportive, not just in our classroom, but also in that interest.

Chapter 1: Creating a Culture of Learning Stoking the Fires Within

What I took out of this chapter was a reminder of how important teachers are to this world. I always hear people say that teachers are overpaid, they get the vacations off with the kids, and they have the whole summer to themselves. Teachers deserve all they're paid and more, and if we were paid less the passionate teachers would still be there to continue to change the world. I really liked the suggestion for clarifying what we stand for. If we identify our hero's and strive to be more like them then we will become better role models for our students. This chapter says that listening well helps clarify messages, diffused anger, and solves problems, but we need to remember that our kids will always look at us for a model/guidelines.

Chapter 2: Turning Points 2000: A Design for Improving Middle Grades Education

Chapter two is completely about the ways that schools should alter their design as well as their mindset about middle schools. There were seven major recommendations for teaching middle schools. They are: Teach a curriculum grounded in rigorous, public academic standards for what students should know and be able to do, relevant to the concerns of adolescents and based on how students learn best, use instructional methods designed to prepare all students to achieve higher standards and become lifelong learners, staff middle grades school with teachers who are expert at teaching young adolescents, and engage teachers in ongoing, targeted profession a development opportunities, organize relationships for learning to create a climate of intellectual development and a caring community of shared educational purpose, govern democratically, through direct or representative participation by all school staff members, the adults who know the students best, provide a safe and health school environment as part of improving academic performance and developing caring and ethical citizens, and involve parents and communities in supporting student learning and healthy development. I think it is really sad that a study had to be done to see that these seven steps should be taken to create a comfortable middle school atmosphere. I feel like this should just be done without question.

Chapter 1: Turning Points: A Decade Later

In chapter was all about why the Turning Points study was originally done as well as the outcome. The chapter then goes on to discuss the outcome of the study, and what to do about the results. From this study Turning Points offered eight essential principles for improving middle grades education. A couple of these are families are allied with school staff through mutual respect, trust, and communication and schools and communities are partners in educating young adolescents. This chapter says "It focuses on the characteristics and needs of young adolescents. It creates a community of adults and young people embedded in networks of support and responsibility..." I liked that this study was done as well as the outcomes of it. The results and the proposed action steps are what we should have been doing the whole time.