Why is Oral Communication so Important?

Retrieved November 28th, 2016 From: Blogger

Why is it so important to teach Oral Communication to our youth? Being well spoken is a talent that requires much time and detail to conquer.  But we ask ourselves, why is it so important that we be well-spoken? Someone who is able to efficiently get their ideas from their head out into the open is someone who will go far in life. However, there is much more to it than simply being able to say what we are thinking, being able to do it in a well put together manner, being respectful of others, making sure our ideas are organized to make sense to others are all things one must learn how to do. 

The Ontario Language Curriculum states that, through talk, students not only communicate information but also explore and come to understand ideas and concepts; identify and solve problems; organize their experience and knowledge; and express and clarify their thoughts, feelings, and opinions. Ontario Language Curriculum Grades 1-8. (2006). 

How do we teach Oral Communication skills? Through modelling, through good listening, through debate and through as many open discussions as possible. Although speeches are less common today than they were when I went to school, I personally still find them to be an effective way to help with student confidence. No matter how front and centre technology becomes, Oral Communication will always be something that we need in life, going for an interview, speaking to a boss, a colleague, even a friend or a family member. It is so easy for us to just want to say whatever comes to mind however we need to take a step back and realize that an educated thought and verbal reaction will most likely have a better result than simply "word-vomiting" whatever comes to mind. 

I believe that many educators are afraid of encouraging Oral Communication in the classroom because it is easy to lose control of the class if you have a larger group. In my placement class, we have thirty one kids so maintaining order to get through the day is one of the toughest battles. Having strategically planned and well thought out classroom discussions is imperative to making sure you will not lose that class' attention. You want your students to be engaged in what they are talking about to promote as much participation related to the subject as possible. 

Listening skills go hand-in-hand with speaking skills...The Ontario Language Curriculum states that "students will: listen in order to understand and respond appropriately in a variety of situations for a variety of purposes".  How do we accomplish this? Having a respectful classroom environment is the starting point of good listening skills, no interrupting others while they are speaking, encouraging students to have silent time every day and having listening activities such as the game "Telephone" or one that we explored in our class last week called "Pass the Buck". These games force students to use their listening skills to be able to continue the story from where it left off. Playing games while learning, why not!? 

Retrieved November 27th, 2016 From: InnovAgility

Blog Post 2-Growing Success and Assessment

Assessment

Growing success the Kindergarten Addendum states that there are seven fundamental principles when it comes to assessment. It stresses that assessment should be fair and equitable for all students, it supports all students including those with special education needs, are carefully planned to relate to curriculum expectations, are communicated to both students and parents, are ongoing and varied in nature and help students develop their self-assessment skills to enable them to assess their own learning. Growing Success the kindergarten addendum and Growing Success have both helped me gain a better understanding of how to be conscious of following all of these criteria.

Evaluation and assessment must be fair and equal for all students so reading these documents has put an emphasis on how to be sure to be fair to all students and treat every student equally. each and every student needs to be asses according to their individual needs and as educators, I feel that it is mandatory to ensure we are putting as much effort into student assessment and evaluation as they are when they are submitting their work.

One thing we have learned over the last 11 weeks is that there are 3 different types of assessment, Assessment As Learning, Assessment For Learning and Assessment Of Learning. These are all different levels in which you will be assessing your students. What are they? Good question...

Assessment As Learning

In assessment as learning, students are active contributors. students are assessing themselves as they are learning. 

Assessment For Learning

This is a formative and diagnostic form of assessment. We are assessing something that can be changed if modifications needs to be made based on students levels of understanding. 

Assessment Of Learning

This form of assessment is summative. It is based on using exit cards from a lesson for example, to gain an understand of what students learned during the lesson. 

Reading the Growing Success documents has helped me become much more confident in my abilities to assess students and to know that there are many documents available to help with guidelines and understanding of certain areas if I am having trouble. 

Retrieved November 24th 2016 From: Pinterest

Week 10 Reflection...Data Management and Probability

Retrieved November 21st 2016 from: Vecteezy

Data Management and probability...Does that make the rest of you as nervous as it makes me? How the heck are we supposed to teach students about probability...I've come to learn after our presentations in class this week that the best way to do that, is by playing games! Who wouldn't have loved to play games in school and learn at the same time? 

Some of the best ways to have students gain a conceptual understanding of a certain concept is by having them experiment with real life activities. Things such as card games, money tossing and rolling a pair of die are great ways to have students become engaged in the lesson without having them "hurt their brains" trying to grasp a concept.

Students need to want to learn something to be able to grasp a concept. We as educators, need to make them want to learn, make it engaging, make it fun and encourage them to want to try new things. How do we do this? By making it encouraging, by providing them with as many opportunities as possible to succeed and to test their abilities.

Empowering students is something that we need to do as educators, making them confident in their abilities to succeed, not only in math, however in all subjects. Math is one of the more tricky ones that students might need a little bit more of a push in. Not every student is obligated to fall in love with math, we will always encounter students who really do struggle with it however we can't simply give up on those students because we think it is too difficult to get them to that next level or to pass that upcoming quiz.

I have yet to see the students in my placement take on the Data Management and Probability strand however I look forward to seeing how they will handle it and I look even more forward to seeing how I will learn through them. I have had the opportunity to see things through their eyes and it has opened my mind up to so many more possibilities in the world of education.

Retrieved November 21st 2016 from: Math 6 

Week 9 Reflection...Let's Learn About Measurement

Retrieved November 15th from: Mr.V's Three's!

This week I got to prepare a presentation for my class. Unfortunately, I was unable to present in front of the class, however I was sort of glad because instead, I presented in front of a smaller group of people so it took some of the intimidation factor away. I got the chance to see first hand what it was like to think of all the elements that need to be considered before presenting it to a class.

Measurement seems like such a complex unit, there are so many different branches of it. Our presentation this week for class (since class was online, lucky us, a Friday off!) talked about what is introduced to students at what age. Grade 3 consists of things as simple as using a ruler and beginning to understand how it works, reading time, recording the mass of objects and using those concepts to compare and order objects.

Grade 4 students start to measure length, introducing the idea of perimeter and the idea of area, time intervals, units of measurement (kg, L) and some more complex concepts. Grade 5 is where it really gets interesting, students will start using formulas to calculate perimeter and area of rectangles, they introduce temperature over time and start considering the volume and space of 3D shapes.


Retrieved November 15th 2016 from: via GIPHY

I won't continue to bore you with these fun facts, I just wanted to give you an idea of the integral introduction to the different elements. It might seem small to us, however when preparing a lesson, making sure you are incorporating all of those things can be quite the task. My presentation this week involved the measurement of area...I know right? where do we begin? It was very hard to come up with a starting point because, as an adult, I know how to measure area, L X W = Area...however students would not know that, miss Bunz stated in her presentation that we must not make assumptions about our students prior knowledge, take the time and go over things. After deciding to give the students the formula, I decided to have them put it into action. A suggestion was made to me that instead of providing the students with the formula, I should have tried to give them prompts to find it on their own, such as having them count the squares on grid paper and seeing if they can make the connection themselves before simply giving them to formula.

Doing this presentation was a huge learning opportunity for me, I need to start considering a mini lesson I will be teaching in my practicum, which will include teaching a twenty minute lesson to a group of about 6 children. How perfect that I got to dip my toes into something like this with my presentation this week? We were given the choice of doing a literacy lesson or a math lesson, who would have ever thought that I would pick math...? not me, that's for sure!

 
Retrieved November 16th from: via GIPHY

Teaching kids to write...how do we do it?

Retrieved November 12th 2016 from: BBC World Service

One of the things I wanted to talk about this week was how unprepared I felt going into high school and university. When I started my Undergraduate program at Brock University, I had only ever written a handful of essay papers in English, let alone ever looked at proper formatting and citing methods. If someone had asked me what APA or MLA or Chicago style formatting were in those first few weeks of school, I would not have known how to answer them. 

Are we setting these kids up for success or failure by teaching them the typical Introduction, three main paragraphs and a Conclusion? Nowhere in the writing strand of the curriculum does it say that this is the required format of writing. The curriculum states that students should "draft and revise their writing, using a variety of informational, literary, and graphic forms and stylistic elements appropriate for the purpose and audience". I personally think that by teaching students they must write using the "Hamburger" method, (your top bun is your introduction, your lettuce, tomato and hamburger patty are your three development paragraphs and your bottom bun is your conclusion) holds children back and doesn't allow creativity. 

Retrieved November 12th 2016 from: Pinterest

In all honesty I think that teachers are set on this style of writing because it is easier to teach and easier to evaluate. We read an article this week that focused on a model that has been introduced to teachers called the IMSCI model, this model focuses on teaching students how to brainstorm and how to get their ideas out. I know personally as a student, being forced to write 3 development paragraphs was always very intimidating because I have never been able to force myself to have more ideas, even when writing exams, I would always race through it, put down my main ideas and forcing me to stare at my paper would not magically make me have more to say.

Students should be given the liberty of writing in a way that they are comfortable, I understand that there must be guidelines that have to be followed for evaluation and assessment purposes, but restricting students to a certain style of writing is not going to allow them to do their best work. As many of my fellow teacher candidates have noticed in their practicum sessions, many of the students simply want to rush through their work and get it done which causes several grammatical and sentence structure errors as opposed to taking the time to focus on those things, they simply want to rush through their three paragraphs and be done with it because that is what they have been taught to do. 

The curriculum states that students should be able to "reflect on and identify their strengths as writers, areas for improvement, and the strategies they found most helpful at different stages in the writing process". In my eyes, this means it is our obligation as teachers to provide students with as many possible opportunities to write as possible in many different ways to help them from a young age learn how to build on the ideas they have rolling around inside their heads. We need to make sure that we are setting these kids up for success and that they are able to brainstorm what is the most important that needs to be said about a topic, find those key elements and be able to elaborate on those key elements instead of trying to pull things from thin air. 

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Retrieved November 12th 2016 from: Twitter

Week 8 Reflection- Geome-whaaaatt?

Retrieved November 7th 2016 from: Crafthubs

This week, our topic of conversation was geometry...what is the first thing you think of when you hear "geometry"? I think of triangles...however this unit is much more complicated than simply identifying triangles. It concerns the properties and relations of points, lines, surfaces, solids and higher dimensional analogs...what the heck does that mean right?

It has been difficult for me up to this point to really try and see anything in action, however this week during my observation day in my placement class, I had the opportunity to see the nitty gritty of a geometry lesson. The students were working on measuring angles, at the start of the lesson, my associate teachers asked the students "why are the angles on the 3rd page surrounded by a circle?" It was very beneficial for me to experience this because nearly every student in the class had a different answer, ranging from:
- Because the teacher wants to tell us the whole angle
- You can put the arrow anywhere you wish to create an angle
- Because a circle is a full 360 degrees and no matter what angle we put into the circle, it will measure somewhere in between 0 and 360.

I found this absolutely incredible, those were only some of the examples and each student that answered this question was able to reasonably justify their answer. Some of the questions that the teacher asked were simply used as a refresher tool for things they had learned the previous day, such as "what do we use to measure an angle?" (a protractor in case anyone forgets...) and "what types of angles are there?" (acute, obtuse, right and straight).

Being a part of this lesson really helped me overcome some of the fears I thought I would have going into a math lesson, many of the students were coming to me with questions and I found myself readily helping them without much hesitation and I enjoyed being able to help them finally understand how to measure and create angles. One thing I found interesting was that when the students were presented with minimal instructions to create an angle, they struggled with it; many of them wanted step by step instructions to facilitate the task. I would be interested to see how we could try and make students feel more confident in their abilities to complete the tasks on their own.

Retrieved November 9th 2016 from Dreambox

One other thing I wanted to talk about was the website the students were using during part of their math period. This website is called Dreambox, and it is used to help students build conception understanding and fluency. I personally am a strong believer of the saying "practice makes perfect" so when I saw how engaged the students were while using Dreambox it amazed me. It gave me so much hope for this younger generation that they can still find it in them to put forth their best effort if provided with the appropriate tools for today's day and age because if education is something that is always evolving, so should the way we teach. 

Would we want to have been taught the way we are teaching? Or would we want our children to be taught that way? That is one question I will ask myself regularly as I work my way into the profession and I think that more educators should consider these types of questions...just a little food for thought! 

Retrieved November 9th 2016 via GIPHY