Teachscape- Cassi Musta

I chose to view the Teachscape video about Cooperative Learning Strategies, because that is a teaching method I utilize a lot in my classroom and is built into the curriculum in many areas. However, I feel that cooperative learning in my classes is not always as successful as it could be in my class due to issues such as students not wanting to work with other students in particular or preferring to work independently, too much socializing (not about the lesson topic), or one or two students end up doing a majority of the work and critical thinking, while the other students are not engaged or off-task. I think the checklist provided with questions for teachers to ask themselves before planning a cooperative learning lesson is useful, because this strategy may not work for certain lessons or in certain environments. Also, the video states the 5 elements of cooperative learning: Positive Interdependence, Face to Face Interaction, Individual/Group Accountability, Interpersonal and Small Group Skills, and Group Processing, and that all 5 elements should be included. The woman in the video also talks about how the grouping of students should change at different times, such as grouping at random or assigning groups. I often have trouble deciding how to group students, and have been surprised when the groups work out better than expected or worse than expected. One of my problems of practice was managing student behavior, and one of the ways I’ve been dealing with that is through assigned seats/groups. There are some students who will continually talk to whoever is around them and others that won’t socialize with students they don’t know. I do like to vary the groups and change every few weeks, but the problem I have is there is only so many tables in my room and so many ways to arrange the groups so that some students remain separated, because otherwise it will lead to off-task behavior. The video also talks about how students need to reflect on how they functioned as a group. My students complete a foods lab evaluation after the completion of each lab, and there is a self-assessment section where the students rate themselves and their group. Many students are honest, but there are still some who either just complain about their group and don’t explain how they could improve cooperation, or they just say everything is fine all the time (when I know they are not cooperating through observation). So, I’m continuing to think about ways to not only improve the cooperation of students within the groups, but also how I can have students reflect more on their cooperation and why something might not be working and also how to improve for next time.

Teachscape Learn Pohland

I feel like something that is really important to me and many teachers, is to develop good questions. That being said, I reviewed the course on asking effective questions. I feel like it can really help students better understand what they are learning if they are asked good questions. I think we have all struggled with developing good questions for discussion, within our classrooms. It is a skill that takes practice to develop, so I felt this class would help me better my questioning skills. When looking at the training the first thing that it addresses, is looking at the purpose for the question and the form of the question. It is important for us as teachers, to plan with the end in mind. As I went through the training, it showed many different types of questions to use. For example you have clarifying questions, these are used to help student better understand something they recently learned. Another example is cueing, this lets the students reflect on their answers and helps them discover the right answer on their own instead being handed the answer. Lastly another effective questioning technique is conceptual facilitation; this allows you to correct a student by asking questions instead of telling them they are wrong. I try to implement some of these techniques already but it is nice to see these in action by veteran teachers. I feeling good questioning techniques can help students discover answers on their own. Students discovering answers on their own in my opinion could help them develop confidence as a student and push them to strive for more. This training also helps you to better understand which types of questions to use in which situation. It also shows good ways to measure the effectiveness of your questions based on student responses. Lastly, the video stresses that teachers use highly cognitive questions. I agree with that, simple recall questions will not help you build students academic strength. I think this video was very helpful for me. I want to work on the discussions in my classroom; this is a very important part of any Social Studies classroom. I really like how the training had tips to implement these questioning techniques into your lesson planning and understanding what you want to get from the questions you ask. Brian Pohland