Questions from Chapter 3

1. Which pattern of behavior would you consider this person to be in on his search for his identity? Joe is  person that has a firm commitment to a specific profession, belief, or political view BUT is more influenced by others (such as society or their parents) without exploring other possibilities. (page 74) (Evaluate)

2. How could you create more prosocial behaviors within your classroom? (page 90) (Apply)

Questions from Chapter 2

1. What is it called when a child is in a sort of mental discomfort that encourages them to try to make sense of what they are observing? (Understand, pg. 29)

2. According to Ormrod, what appears to be the most effective approach when working with English language learners in the classroom? (Evaluate, pg. 55)

Questions from chapter 5

1. How could you minimize distractions in the classroom? (Pg.157)

2. Performance on intelligence tests is correlated with what? (Pg. 143)

Post #6

I picked to do service learning. My hypothetical situation would be to get my (lets say 5th grade) students to understand the importance of fire safety in their home. I would start by getting some supplies donated by the local Red Cross. If they could afford to donate 25-30 medium sized boxes, lots of bandaids, lots of gauze, neosporin, medical tape, peroxide, alcohol, and a few more basic supplies that a first aid kit would need. I would set aside a few days for this assignment. I would have them put together their own first aid kit and make a floor plan of their house and make an evacuation plan. After the students finish their assignment, I would also try to bring in a firefighter to inform the students of the importance of fire safety.  I think that the students (especially the boys) would be very excited to see a real firefighter in their classroom. I think all the students would love to do the activities and that alone would hopefully make it stick with them in the future. I think a few obstacles that would come up would be getting the firefighter in the first place. That may become difficult to get one or two firefighters out to a school, but I would hope that they would see the importance in this assignment and help me out. Another obstacle would be if the firefighters showed up in their awesome fire truck and maybe let the kids get inside to see it, I would need a permission slip to send home to their parents beforehand. Or the other students in the school may want to get in the fire truck as well and that may cause a few problems with other classes. Also, if there is a child in a wheelchair, I would find a way to include them too and get them up in the fire truck as well, even if I had to carry them up there myself. Those are just a few obstacles that would maybe come up, but I would hope that this would be a great learning experience for the kids and really help them and maybe even save a life one day in their future (Ormrod 232).

Questions for Travis

1. How would you apply a positive transfer to a Deaf Education setting? (Application)

2. How can you use comprehension learning in your own class in the future? (Application)

Post #5

Defining successful master of a lesson objective from a behavioral view & from a social cognitive view:

I would define successful mastery of a lesson objective from a behavioral view of learning by (obviously) observing my students behavior when given an assignment. I think that the students that understand the material will be the first to start the assignment and will get to work no problem. But the students that do no understand the material may be more prone to appear to be "off task" and trying to do everything BUT the assignment. They may disturb other students doing their work, they may fiddle with something they have in their desk, or they may act out and make a scene all to avoid doing an assignment that they do not understand. I would define successful mastery of a particular lesson by just skimming the class as a whole and viewing their behavior, from a behavioral view, and that would give me an understanding of who successfully mastered the objective and who did not.

I would define successfully mastery of a lesson objective from a social cognitive view of learning by seeing how the students interact with each other. I would see if one student is imitating what another student is doing by going around the room and find out what they are discussing about the assignment. Some of them may be on task and really talking about the assignment while another group may be off task because one person started a conversation or said something funny to distract the other group members and that group would not have mastered a lesson objective from a social cognitive view of learning. But the group that stays on task and does not stray from the topic at hand then that is the group that i would set an example of defining who has successfully mastered a lesson objective from a social cognitive view of learning. Also, by the papers that they turn in and the grade they receive would show who understood the material and who did not (Ormrod 181).

The way I would create an environment that is conducive to learning would be to start off by making the kids feel comfortable to communicate anything with me. Let them know that I care about their success and general well being. I would do journals in my classroom and have them choose to write about a specific topic or I'll ask them a question, have them answer it, and have to ask me a questions too. That way when I grade it i would give them feedback and they would find out something about me too. This, I believe would open like an "open door" policy that lets the students know I care and am willing to help them (whatever the problem may be) (Ormrod 464). I also think it would be nice to let the students take part in choosing classroom activities. I would maybe let them make their own choices on how to complete an assignment and/or how they wanted to spend their class time. This would allow them to explore how to set priorities and feel included in their learning experience (Ormrod 465).
I would try to give my students a sense of school community while trying to work with other teachers in the same grade, but I would definitely want this in my classroom. The book states that "a sense of school community also involves close student-student relationships across various classrooms and grade levels." So, would want to start in the classroom before we go to other classrooms, but from an interpreters point of view I would hope that the teacher would allow the interpreter and the student to get up in front of the class and teach a few basic signs and the alphabet to the whole class like: "hello, my name (insert finger spelled name)," "nice to meet you," and "want to play?" The basics just to start out, but then maybe incorporate it into the lesson like if they are learning animals or something. This would not take up more than 30 minutes of the day and would really make the Deaf child feel included and would improve their learning environment tremendously.

Educational Interpreting Case Study
This is your first week as an educational interpreter at Brown Elementary School. One of your students, Luke, has completely shut down and is not engaged in learning. During instruction, he refuses to look at you for communication. He has not completed any assignments that would help him demonstrate an understanding of material and has, on several occasions, put his head down on his desk and gone to sleep. On the second day of school, you tried to talk to Luke between classes to find out if there was a problem and he walked away from you. Yesterday, when you attempted to facilitate communication with his math teacher, Luke crossed his arms and turned his back toward you. His math teacher got angry and has requested a meeting with his parents, who are both hearing, to discuss Luke’s behavior. Assuming that the teacher teaches from the perspective of your chosen theory(ies) of learning, discuss how might you help facilitate her intervention plan for Luke using the professional language associated with your theory.

I would help the teacher facilitate her intervention plan for Luke by showing an interest in his well-being. Just by simply showing that we care about them may just change their behavior around (Ormrod 163). I would also stay there through the entire meeting to interpret and facilitate the communication between the teacher and the deaf student or (if the teacher approves) just be apart of the conversation to include my opinion and feed back on what could be done to help Luke. Maybe there are other factor involved like nutrition, medical care, relationship with siblings, mom, or dad at home that may be the reason why he is acting out at school (Ormrod 22). I would also start taking notes and documenting EVERYTHING that happens. Each time he acts out or doesn't do what he is supposed to do I would just start and keep a record for my sake and to show the parents or principle.

Post #3

I found out today that I am extrinsically motivated, which could be a bad thing, but at least I can admit that and that is step one in any problem. :-) I am motivated by good grades, money, recognition, extra credit, and (I also found out today) food. I learn better when something is fun. I really enjoyed both of the activities today on motivation and both groups did a very good job of making the activities fun and interesting. But because you can't give kids cupcakes everyday for a motivator I thought you could come up with a way to get them excited and motivated to do better for their own self esteem, not just for the grade. Now that may be hard for me to do because I'm more extrinsically motivated with a good grade or recognition of my accomplishments, but by setting realistic goals for my students and providing encouraging feedback I believe will set them up for success. Also, I believe that if you put some effort into some kids they will want to do better because they know someone believes in them. I would want them to see the relation between working hard and success and that is the main thing . 

Ed psych 401

Formal- If I tell all the students that every Tuesday we will have a spelling test and Tuesday rolls around and all the scores are low, I could assess that what I am doing is not working. Maybe I could move the test to Friday so that the  students would have all week to prepare instead of the weekend and one day because some students might not get to study over the weekend.

Informal-If there was a student in class that wore dirty clothes or the same clothes almost everyday, one might assess that their parents cannot afford newer clothes or they may just not have a washing machine, but you could tell by looking at the whole classroom whose parents care about what their child is wearing to school everyday. Maybe I could schedule a meeting with the parents and ask if there is anything I can help with at home or suggest a program that the family may qualify for that could help with children's clothes. 

Traditional- If the children have been told at the end of each chapter there will be a math quiz, and each quiz has to be passed before you go on to the next chapter. This will measure their knowledge and skills of the material to see if they can move on to the next chapter or not.

Authentic-If I were to come up with an assignment and tell the students that they need to plan a dinner party. They would need to come up with invitations, four recipes for six people with ingredients and directions, recipes for three or twelve people with ingredients, and one recipe with ingredients for 30 people. This could be a nice introduction to fractions, teach the children recipes, and how to plan and invite people to a dinner party. I would grade the student projects on creativity and neatness and make sure that they met all the requirements in the rubric. 

Criterion-referenced- If I were to give my students a quiz on literature about chapters that they were supposed to read in the book I would find out who really read the material and who really did not read the material just by their answers. 

Norm-referenced-If I were to give my students a quiz on literature about chapters that they were supposed to read in the book I would find out who really read the material and who really did not read the material just by their answers. I would now know who the readers in the class were and who did not read at all by comparing all their answers/grades on the quiz with each others.

Paper-pencil-If I were to give my students a vocabulary quiz, I would sound out each word and have them write it down on a piece of paper. Then the students would turn their vocabulary quizzes into me,  I would grade them, then I could assess which children new how to spell which words.

Performance-If I were to assign my students to do a history presentation I would have them pick a person in history, dress up like that person, and explain in great detail their life story and their contributions to society. I could then assess which children worked really hard on the presentation and which children did not do very much research on their person by the quality and creativeness of their presentation.

Standardized- At the end of each year I would have to give my classroom a standardized test called the TCAP. This test would evaluate what each child learned that year in math, science, writing, social studies and english. This test also sometimes determines if the child fails or passes the grade for that year.

Teacher-developed- At the beginning of the year I would give my students a test on math, science, writing, social studies, and english to see what they remember from last year. This will allow me to see where each student is on a scale to see where we may need to do more work for that school year. I would give them the exact same test in the middle of the school year to see their improvements. This will allow me to, again, see exactly where each student is and see what we need to make the most room for before the school year is over. Then I would give them the exact same test one more time before the end of the year and hopefully all the students have made improvements throughout the year if I did my job right.

Post #1

I really enjoyed the first day of class. I liked how the teacher encourages the whole class to participate in class discussions. I am most interested in learning about how people learn and learning how to make learning more fun to kids. I hope by the end of this class I can understand and appreciate the art of teaching. Even though I don't want to be a teacher, I know it is important to learn what the teachers do because I will be beside the teacher to interpret for a child of theirs. I think this class will greatly help me in my future profession by getting a better understanding of how the teachers do things in the classroom. By taking this class I feel that I would have an upper hand on walking into a classroom to interpret for a child rather than if I didn't take the class and didn't know anything about how teachers teach.