I love that every time I leave class, I leave with so much more knowledge than when I went in with. This week in social studies methods we have learned about a lot of important aspects in writing our unit. The focus of this week is dealing with performance tasks in our units. We have learned that performance tasks are types of assessments that we want our students to create for summative assessments. Giving a performance task to your students will help the students dive deeper into their knowledge, because they will not all have the same answers. There are different options on how to complete performance tasks. Therefore, each student will not be limited in that area. This gives the student more room to tell you what they know and what skills they have developed from the unit. Another really cool thing we learned about today was what DOK is, and that stands for, Depth of Knowledge. This is kind of like the Revised Bloom's Taxonomy, and shows different levels of thinking, but is very helpful when planning your performance tasks. On this website, it gives you a little more about DOK, and I think that this website is on BlackBoard also under course materials. http://blog.performancetask.com/how-can-educators-design-authentic-performance-tasks/.
For my research for the week, I read an article from neaToday, titled, "How High-Performing Nations Treat Educators as Professionals". This article grabbed my attention, because the title is so intriguing. This article talks about teachers from different countries, and how they are treated and the different professional development that is required of them. As teacher in the United States, we are required to go to some meetings, but not as many as people in other countries. At one point in the article it talks says that since their math and reading test scores are so high, the teachers actually have required time during the day to go to a professional development meeting. The teacher's will leave their classrooms and meet with the other teachers and talk about ways to improve their teaching. Every. Single. Day. That is a crazy amount of time being spent with your fellow educators and talking about how to make students better. However...this is obviously working very well for them! Teachers are much more respected in other countries, and seen as some of the greatest mentors. They also have the highest test scores among students. I think that we should have more professional development opportunities as teachers, because they will better us and our students in the long run. After we graduate, we should not just stop learning more, we need to have a hunger to keep on learning for the sake of our students. If you get a chance, read the rest of this awesome article, an tell me some of your thoughts on it!
http://neatoday.org/2016/01/20/high-performing-nations-professional-development/
This article ties in with the North Carolina teaching standard 3 and 5. Standard 3, is talking about the teacher knowing their content, and by going to these professional development meetings, you are gaining more content knowledge in different areas. Also, this article ties deeply into standard 5, which is that teachers reflect on their practice. One part of the standard says that teachers link professional growth with professional goals, and that could not be more true for this article.
This class has been very eye opening for me as well, in the fact that we have learned just a whole new perspective on how to teach concepts. I like how you compared the DOK to the Revised Bloom's Taxonomy, and I agree that the different levels kind of coincide. I like how performance tasks allow teachers to be creative and it allows the students to explore and research deeper in the specific content area. I have some really cool ideas about performance tasks for my unit and am eager to see how well they turn out!!
ReplyDeleteAmber,
ReplyDeleteHow funny! We both related the American Education System to other countries this week. My article was about how although Singapore has the highest test scores, their teachers feel as if they are only able to give students the facts to memorize so that they can get the highest score. I do think that it is important that we meet professionally with other teachers within our schools and district though to discuss the needs of our students and to get outside opinions on how to better help our students. Thanks for sharing!
Amber,
ReplyDeleteI have always wondered about the treatment of teachers and if there is a correlation between that and student achievement. There seems to be a vast difference in instructional principles and pedagogical beliefs. We do have an interesting perspective as we progress through Social Studies Methods together. I was wondering when someone would touch on this topic! Do you think that if teachers got to control a bit more of their instruction, the outcome would be different?
Wow. What a powerful article, Amber! This makes me kind of sad for our own country. More so though, it makes me mad. America is so driven and wants to be number one, but I see us slacking in the education department. The thing is, I don't understand why. Why is there so much debate and controversy? We can clearly see what is working and what is not working. We should be doing EVERYTHING we can to give students the best education possible. My brother (who is a cop) made a comment last night during the Super Bowl that really stuck out to me. "Why are those boys getting paid millions of dollars to play one football game, when teachers and cops are struggling to make their house payments?"
ReplyDeleteWhat a thought.
Amber,
ReplyDeleteI am glad this class has been beneficial for you. I enjoy learning with you all. Glad to see you are already creating your own understandings about DOK. The DOK framework is awesome and a great way to approach teaching and learning. Continue to build your own understanding!
JP