Intro to Teaching – Final Notes

Learning

ZPD – Distance between actual development level as determined by independent problem solving vs. that through problem solving under adult guidance or in collaboration with more levels of competence.

Transfer – learning in ways that allow us to solve novel problems that we may encounter later.

Metacognition – Knowledge about one’s own cognitive processes, aka one’s own abilities to learn and solve problems. Types of cognitive processes include: attention and fluency, short term memory, storage vs. retrieval, comprehension, motivation and transfer.

Expertise – could be a combination of both content-knowledge and organizational skill and ability to implement and expand.

Instructional Planning

“What will I do to develop effective lessons organized into a cohesive unit?” Marzano, 2007

Action steps:

1. Identify the focus of a Unit of Instruction
   1. Focus on knowledge that leads towards the goals
   2. Focus on issues that leads towards the goals
   3. Focus on student exploration
2. Plan for lesson segments that will be routine components of every lesson
   1. Communicate learning goals
   2. Track progress and celebrate success
   3. Establish rules and procedures
3. Lesson design plan:
   1. Anticipatory set
   2. Objective and purpose
   3. Input
   4. Modeling
   5. Checking for understanding
   6. Guided Practice
   7. Independent Practice
4. Plan for content specific lesson segments
   1. Help interact with new knowledge
   2. Help practice on the now knowledge
   3. Help generate and test hypothesis about knowledge
   4. Lesson segments devoted to critical – input experience
   5. Lesson segments devoted to practice and deepening of student’s understanding of content
5. Plan for actions that must be of taken on the spot
   1. Engage students
   2. Rules and procedures – adherence or not
   3. Relationship with students
   4. Communicate with expectations
6. Develop a flexible draft of daily activities for a unit
7. Review the critical aspects of effective teaching daily

Bloom’s Taxonomy

1. Remember – recognizing and recalling facts
2. Understand – understanding what the facts mean
3. Apply – Applying the facts, rules, concepts, and ideas
4. Analyze – Breaking down information into component parts
5. Evaluate – Judging the value of information or ideas
6. Create – Combining parts to make a new whole

Objectives – behavioral and measurable

Goals – longer term and might no be achievable

Content Knowledge and Pedagogical Content Knowledge

Differentiation

• Working with ZPD
• Account for individual differences
• Adjusting scaffolds to the child
• Adjusting scaffolds to the subject
• Using scaffolds to guide students work in classroom
• Capitalizing on student’s developmental interests

Readiness

• No use to step over child’s natural evolutionary steps
• Supporting social and emotional development
• Supporting identity development
• Cultural contexts and development
• Learning diverse cultural contexts
• School as a cultural context

Assessment

• Formative assessment – learn from students and adjust teaching
• Summative assessment – evaluate goals at the end of a teaching
• Learning progression
• Prior knowledge assessments
• K.W.L.
  • What you Know
  • What the Want to understand
  • Later, what you have learned
• Rubrics
• Feedback
• Assessing for transfer
• Student self assessment
• Formal and informal assessment
• Equity concerns
• Grades and motivation
• High and low stakes assessment
• Looking inside the Black Box

Diversity and Funds of Knowledge

• Capitalize on school and community resources
• The culture of power
  • “My kids know how to be Black. You all teach him how to be successful in the White mans’ s world”, Delpit, L., 1995
• “We are currently preparing students for jobs that don’t yet exist, using technologies that haven’t been invented, in order to solve problems we don’t even know are problems yet.” Riley, 2014

Professional Development

• How to teach teachers teach in a new way