Barb Rentenbach

After an introduction from her "smiling shrink", Barb Rentenbach began her presentation by typing "dear utk autism is my prism, not my prison." I thought these were such powerful words that really summed up Barb's overall message. After hearing her deep thoughts verbalized by friends on her video and students in the auditorium, it was so hard for me to grasp the idea of being trapped inside your own body.  Her ideas were so thought provoking and profound.  I can't even imagine the frustration of not being able to express herself freely without her technological aids.

Barb's presentation was an eye opening experience.  So often we assume that people who are handicapped are unintelligent.  Barb proved that wrong. After almost 20 years of being considered mentally retarded, Barb was able to reveal her intelligence.

Barb also enlightened me to the world of Autism.  I knew the basic facts from special ed, but hearing a first person account is an entirely different experience.  I love that she speaks out directly to children or 'friends' with autism in her book, giving guidance, encouragement, and support.  She turned Autism on its head- what most people think of as a negative thing, Barb expressed Autism as a special quality, a gift that some people were born with.

With Autism becoming more frequently diagnosed in children, I'm sure I will have students with Autism in my class.  Barb's story made me realize that I need to appreciate the skills and special abilities of these students, not see them as a burden or extra challenge.

group differences forum

Tuesday we had our group differences forum.  To be honest, I wasn't really sure what it would be like, or how much I would get out of it. However, once the conversations began I quickly changed my mind.  There are some topics that people just try to avoid- things that get people riled up and defensive.  This class discussion provided an opportunity to talk about these sensitive yet important topics in a conductive, positive way.  I think that a big part of this was that the conversation was focused on teaching instead of just personal experiences and beliefs. I was impressed by how well the discussion flowed.  No questions were left unanswered and people were willing to talk.  I also appreciated the courtesy our classmates showed each other.  People were nodding in agreement, asking questions for clarification, and being respectful if they happened to disagree.  

The fact that we were in school helped this professional, mature behavior, but I think we have also gained a lot of insight from conversations with each other over the semester.  I think that the group differences forum was a great way to wrap up our year because we all interacted and talked about serious aspects of our future career. We all share the common goal that we want to be great teachers, and I think that allowed us to really learn from each other in this conversation, as well as throughout the semester. 

10: language

Prompt: Theories in educational psychology promote the idea that language plays a critical role in cognitive development. Examine table 2.2 (page 51), paying particular attention to the age range that you are interested in teaching.  Consider how you might incorporate or adapt the strategies presented with your own students.

I would love to work with first or second graders, so I will focus on that portion of Ormrod's table of linguistic characteristics and abilities.

• Strategy: read age-appropriate storybooks to enhance vocabulary
• This is something I will definitely do in my classroom!  Since reading is such an important skill in all subjects of school, I plan to devote lots of class time to literacy.  With younger students this will include guided reading, read-alouds, independent reading, and also cross-curricular reading. The more students read, the more words they know, and the deeper their understanding and comprehension can become. I really prefer this way of increasing vocabulary  to the old-school memorization methods.
• Strategy: work on listening skills
• At this age, Ormrod explains that many children consider a good listener as someone who simply sits quietly. It is important for me to teach my students that listening requires more than silence.  I will teach them about the other parts of being a good listener, like paying attention to who is speaking, asking questions when confused, and retaining information.  I will stress that the most important thing is that they are learning and understanding, not just being quiet.
• Strategy: ask students to construct narratives about recent events
• Ormrod explains that these young students are increasing their ability to tell a story.  To foster and encourage this skill, I will provide multiple opportunities for my students to practice story telling.  One way I can do this is by having students write a paragraph about what they did over the weekend, make an illustration of it, then share orally with the class. 
• Ask follow-up questions to check for accurate understanding
• This age group typically interprets things literally, so it will be important for me to ensure that my students have a clear understanding of class material.  Whether it is an idiom or expression I use or something more ambiguous they read, it will be imperative for me to correct any misunderstandings students have.  To know when this is necessary, I will use follow-up questions to gauge their understanding and comprehension. Even beyond misinterpretations, this will help students summarize information they have learned and let me know where they need more help.

9: self-efficacy and self-regulation

Prompt: How might self-efficacy and self-regulation contribute to the intervention plans you use in your case study.


Identifying with the social cognitive theory, self-efficacy and self-regulation are huge factors of my learning theory.

The article I found defines self-efficacy as "the belief in one's capabilities to achieve a goal or an outcome." Obviously when a student's self-efficacy is higher, he or she is more likely to learn better and achieve more. It would be really beneficial to keep that idea in mind when planning interventions with Lisa. I assume that Lisa's self-efficacy is not too high in most areas of school. I would work to build it up by using some of the ideas below:

• Tailor tasks to Lisa's current self-efficacy level. Since students base self-efficacy on past successes and failures, I would want to provide her with a base of confidence, then build from there. This could start with providing some scaffolding earlier on, then gradually removing support as she grows. 
• Give Lisa reason to believe she can be successful. This would help her to gain confidence about her abilities and provide her with the support she needs. I might do this by pointing out her previous successes or just by affirming my confidence in her.
• Provide a way for Lisa to experience collective self-efficacy. Failure to perform well with her group could be damaging Lisa's self-efficacy even more, creating a cycle that continues her bad behavior. I would place her in a new group with a better group dynamic. Hopefully if it works well, Lisa would gain a greater self-efficacy when working with others.

In addition to self-efficacy, self-regulation would be important to keep in mind when dealing with intervention plans for Lisa. I think that this aspect of SCT would be the most effective in changing Lisa's behavior problems if well-implemented. Below I've listed a few strategies that could help turn things around.

• Let Lisa help set her own goals for how she should behave during cooperative learning. The book explains that students tend to be more motivated to work toward goals when they set them for themselves, instead of having goals imposed upon them. Letting Lisa create self-determined standards could give her some ownership over herself and her behavior.
• Provide a way for Lisa to control her emotions that could lead to poor behavior. This is the biggest problem area in the case study. Lisa gets very angry at her classmates when she doesn't get her way. In turn her behavior spirals out of control and she refuses to participate or pay attention. I would help Lisa find a strategy to calm her down before she reacts in such a way. It might also help to have a regular job rotation chart so that Lisa knows what job is hers that week.
• Have Lisa observe and record her behavior. The book explains that this can largely affect students' behavior. To implement this I could have Lisa mark every time she interrupts a classmate or displays a negative behavior. At the end Lisa could write a sentence about how she felt she did during the activity and what she could have done better. This would help by bringing awareness to the frequency of negative behaviors, and encompasses aspects of self-monitoring and self-evaluation.

This is a great page about self-efficacy in the classroom!
http://serc.carleton.edu/NAGTWorkshops/affective/efficacy.html

8: behaviorist tools

Part 1: Consider your CSEL intervention case study.  Are there tools from a behaviorist view for either encouraging productive behaviors or discouraging undesirable behaviors that you could apply to the case? What are they?

In my CSEL case study a student named Lisa is having difficulties behaving in her group during cooperative learning activities. Chapter 9 of our textbook discusses many behaviorist tools for shaping student behavior. First the chapter explains ways to use reinforcement effectively. Reinforcement is used to increase a behavior. In Lisa's situation, I would try to reduce her undesirable behavior. In behaviorism, the strategies for discouraging these behaviors are extinction, cueing, reinforcement of incompatible behaviors, and punishment.

• Extinction: this approach would be to reduce Lisa's negative behavior by never reinforcing it.  While it could be easier for me as a teacher to just let Lisa get the job she wants to avoid disrupting the class any further, that would only encourage her to act out more. Initially this could cause an increase in behavior, but hopefully would eventually help reduce it.
• Cueing: the book suggests using body language or physical proximity to remind students what they should not be doing. If that doesn't work, you could go a step further and use a verbal cue. After a conversation about her behavior, I could apply this strategy by making eye contact with Lisa when she falls off track. This would have to be a later step in the process to adjust her behavior, but a good way to monitor her progress.
• Reinforcement of incompatible behaviors: this approach works by rewarding a positive behavior that cannot be performed at the same time as the negative behavior.  In the case study, I could use this by reinforcing Lisa's positive behaviors like working well with her group or paying attention.
• Punishment: there are several guidelines provided for administering punishment. One that I think would work well in the case study would be to simultaneously teach and reinforce desirable alternative behaviors. I would do this by explaining the alternate behavior that I would prefer Lisa to enact instead. This would hopefully help keep her motivated and avoid discouraging her too much. 

Part 2: Now compare the interventions that you have identified above with what you think might work from a cognitive or constructivist viewpoint. How do they compare to behaviorist tools? What are the benefits of each theory, and what are the deficits? Which theory might play a larger role in how you determine classroom management?

7: metacognition

Prompt: Consider a lesson plan you might use. Which metacognitive skills/abilities are involved as students gain facility/knowledge in this domain?

This week in my school rotation, I read a story to a class of 20 kindergartners. Once we were all in a circle on the rug I slightly panicked. In my head I was thinking, "What in the world am I supposed to be doing?!? They're all staring at me!" Luckily for me, my Reading Ed 430 skills came back to me and I remembered the process of a read aloud.

Before I began reading the book, I used the poster the teacher made to explain the schedule for the next hour.
"Our objective today is to identify fantasy and reality. First I'm going to read our book Bear Snores On. Then we are going to make a chart about things that are fantasy and things that are reality from the book. Next you will draw something from the book that was fantasy and something that was reality on your own paper and write a sentence. After that, we will meet back together and 'turn and talk' with our neighbors about what we did."  
I think that this layout helped begin the process of metacognitive thinking for the students because it made them aware of what was coming up. This agenda prepared their minds and gave them a preview of what we were learning and what we would be doing with that information. This shows the use of the covert strategy of identifying important information, especially highlighting the focus on fantasy and reality (which could have been missed since it wasn't included in the book's story line explicitly.)

Then I asked the students if they knew what the words fantasy and reality meant. No one did, so I explained that fantasy is something that is not real/cannot happen, like make believe. Reality is something that can happen in real life.

After that I moved on to the book. First I asked the kids what they predicted the book was going to be about. When they gave an answer, I asked them why they thought that. For example, one girl guessed the book was about a bear's friends. When I asked her why, she said because there was a bear with other animals on the cover. This questioning required the students to explain their reasoning, which is reflective of metacognition.

Next we took a 'picture walk'. As I flipped through the pages I asked the students what they thought was happening. One boy explained that something was sad, when I asked him why, he explained that he thought that because the bear was crying. In the same way as the cover prediction, these questions got the students thinking deeper about what they thought. Throughout the pages I asked the students to look for things that were fantasy or reality to warm up their minds for the activity later.

After the picture walk I began the story. While I read, students would share if they noticed something was fantasy or reality. When they did I would ask them why they thought so, and they would explain something like 'bunnies can't cook' or 'bears don't cry'. Other times I would use the covert strategy of comprehension monitoring by asking the students if what they saw was fantasy or reality. This let me know if I needed to explain further or if the students were understanding the topic.

After the students finished their illustrations and sentences on their own, they came back to the rug. I paired them up and asked them to share what they drew with their partner. This portion of the activity shows a variety of metacognitive skills. One is summarizing their work, providing a deeper understanding. Another is that in explaining their work to a partner, the students had to look back over their thinking to give an appropriate answer.

Big surprise, my article is from education.com! I appreciate the clearness of this article and how it provides multiple options for developing metacognitive skills in the classroom.
http://www.education.com/reference/article/Ref_Dev_Metacognition/

6: knowledge construction

Prompt: Make a list of the sequence of skills necessary for ultimate mastery of the content of your lesson through a constructivist approach. Which of these learning activities/skills lend themselves to students' individual or group construction? How might you structure learning activities that lead students to discover these skills/principles?

For this PLE, I am going to use a lesson plan I created for my Ed 422 class. For that lesson plan, I used the direct teaching method, so I am going to modify it to fit the constructive approach. The plan is for 2nd grade math over comparing numbers using the greater than, less than, and equal to symbols. Students will show mastery of the content by using the greater than, less than, and equal to symbols to compare 3-digit numbers.

• First I would activate prior knowledge. 
• I would draw the symbols < > = on the board and ask the class what they represent. 
• Next I would write out the words 'greater than', 'less than', and 'equal to' on the board and ask the class what those words actually mean. "What does it mean if I say that something is greater than something else?"
• I would remind the class that it we use these terms and symbols in math when we compare two numbers. 
• I would go over the steps used to compare 3-digit numbers, beginning by comparing the hundreds place, then the tens, then the ones. I would model several examples of this (modeling and scaffolding are aspects of constructivism).
• This time together is representative of social construction.
• Next I would address misconceptions.
• Many students get confused about the direction of the direction of the greater than and less than symbols. I would show a picture of an alligator opening its mouth to the greater number, and remind students that the 'alligator' is greedy, so its 'mouth' is always open to the biggest number.
• From there I would allow students to practice.
• I would let students get together in groups of 2 or 3, one being the 'teacher', setting up the problem, and the others being the 'student', writing the correct symbol on their white boards. 
• This is mostly social construction but also some individual.
• Later I would ask students to explore the concept.
• I would ask my class to come up with real life situations where they might need to compare numbers to see which is greater. (Examples: money, students in 4th grade vs students in 3rd grade, etc).
• This hopefully adds relevance and interest to the topic, and also lets kids explore the idea more deeply.
• This is representative of individual construction.
• Next I would allow the students to participate in authentic activities.
• I would relate the content to real world situations. 
• One example I thought of is if our class could set up a little bowling alley outside. 
• We could use chalk to write out our scores, then use the greater than, less than, and equal to symbols to see which team/person is ahead. 
• This would give the students motivation to understand the concept and add interest since those little boogers are competitive!

This is a link to a website that really explains what constructivism is and how it can work in the classroom in great detail! 

http://www.thirteen.org/edonline/concept2class/constructivism/index.html