Final Blog

Barbara Blackburn's work in Chapter 7, entitled "Raise Expectations supports the work done by Dr. Jayson Nave and Danny Hill in their work, "The Power of ICU". Both pieces of literature support the belief that it is the teacher's responsibility to create meaningful, engaging, and challenging assignments. High expectations are the norm forBarbara Blackburn's philosophy. Grades reflect the real capability of the students not just what the students have or have not done. While teachers are responsible for student learning of performance standards, students are held accountable for completing all assigned work. It is the teacher's responsibility to see that students learn the standards that have been handed down in the performance standards issued by the state. It is imperative that the teaching profession move toward an atmosphere and school-wide culture of monitoring students' assignments and expressing the importance of these assignments and expressing the importance to students, parents, and the community. If we value and esteem our assignments both in classwork and homework, our standardized achievement scores will follow. The assignments must exemplify rigor and motivate students to understand the standard tracking progres toward the meeting of that standard. Students once thought of as non-motivated or lazy can perform at accepted, healthy levels when policies of student completion of class work and homework, participation in extra help, and not yet grading policies are established in the classroom.

Three specific strategies that I plan to implement over the next three weeks include: the question matrix utilizing a chunking strategy, complexity with vocabulary, and complexity through projects. The first activity I have completed in class with the novel "Danny, Champion of the World". I was able to chunk this activity which made it much more doable in the classroom. the first chunk of the activity required that students randomly selected six questions from the question matrix. (I used baggies for this). They were to complete this chunk as an individual. The students were to write six questions that reflected anything we had read in the book. In this level I gave them 15 minutes. The next chunk required the students to practice each of the six questions within their groups. Students could then practice and rewrite any questions that may have been unclear. The final chunk required the student to present questions to the class. Each student was required to present at least 3 questions. This activity took about two days to complete. The students just loved this!!! The next strategy I plan to implement is complexity with vocabulary. The next novel my sixth grade class will be reading is "The Devil's Arithmetic". I have decided to have the students build a yiddish word journal. This will include an entry page for each yiddish word or phrase. The entry page will have a place for the definition, a sentence, and related words. Students will make a visit to the computer labe where they can here the terms pronounced. The third strategy will include complexity through projects. This strategy will involve the use of reflection journals the students respond to events of the holocaust. One strategy that I would like to include in the future is the more choices strategy. Students would be provided with different learning opportunities. This concept would reflect more of the knowledge and interest of the individual.