Facilitation

Facilitating Learning

There are three key ideas about learning in the article From Speculation to Science. The ideas are that students are not blank slates, teachers need to teach subjects in depth and teaching metacognitive skills.

Winter 2021 - Year 4

Initial Goal:

Growth:

Goal:

Fall 2019 - Year 3

Initial Goal:

My initial goal was to try to use a variety of teaching strategies to engage learners in rich learning experiences (FL2). Within a classroom, there are always going to have diverse learning needs and as a teacher it is your responsibility to facilitate learning for them.

Growth:

I feel that I quickly learned which accommodations were needed for success of each student. I felt that learning goals were engaging for all students. I allowed for each type of diverse need to enjoy the learning goals. I believe that my lesson plans were thoughtful by having each learner in mind when looking at modifications.

Goals:

An area for growth of mine is to continually take cues from my students body language when they are sitting. I am working on giving instructions in steps and then regrouping later at the meeting area to give the next set of instructions. I have tried to be explicit in my instructions which in the end does not work because students lost focus halfway through and were not listening anyways. This also includes the pacing of my lessons (FL9). I feel that I tried too hard to get to all the content in one day or in a certain time period and I just ended up interfering with other learning times. I need to remember that students may need that break after doing a task for too long or they become disengaged. I can always revisit or come back to it the following day. If students are disengaged, they are not truly learning and that is on me because I am the one that has control over the shift in learning goals.

Metre Scavenger

This was a learning goal I planned for my students. The activity allowed them to have choice for which items they measured and chose. It also allowed those students with ADHD to move around and not be stuck learning in their desks. Lastly, it was great for students with anxiety because it allows them to gather their thoughts before joining a large group.

Winter 2019 - Year 2

Growth:

These are excerpts from my ELA connected lessons that uses variations of differentiation strategies in my lesson planning. I had students with ADHD that needed to move around a lot more to engage them. Students need differentiation to be more engaged and teachers need to incorporate differentiation strategies more to create rich learning environments (FL2).

Goals:

My goals are to research more differentiation strategies to engage various students and implement them into my lessons (FL2).

Fall 2018 - Year 2

Growth:

This poster is displayed in my mentor teacher's classroom because the students are learning about reading power and how to connect with texts that they read which is a part of literacy development.

My Calgary Reads Reading Buddy has been a bit of a challenge for me because he is not overly engaged in literacy. However, I have noticed that the more comfortable we are with each other, the more we have succeed together. My growth this semester was being able to help a student with their literacy skills. I learned terms like phonemic awareness, phonological awareness, alphabetic principle, etc. and was able to facilitate my reading buddies literacy skills.

Goals:

My goal for next semester is to try to get my reading buddy to go out of his comfort zone and try some things he has never done before. I want us to develop our lessons together simultaneously to try to engage him more in reading. My hope is that with an increased engagement and interest he will be more successful comfortable with literacy.

Winter 2018 - Year 1

Growth:

My winter 2018 mentor teacher uses this hundreds chart as a way to keep track of how many days the students have been in school. However, she gets the students to do the activity, they have to put in the next number into the chart and then put the correct amount of popsicles in the 100s, 10s, and 1s. The student then questioned the class. I think is is a great technique to range where the students are at as well as identifying their preconceptions. Here my mentor teacher uses this in correlation to the Universal Design for Learning Guideline 1 which states to provide options for perception. She customized the way students are receiving the information which is from their peers.

http://www.udlcenter.org/aboutudl/udlguidelines/downloads

Goals:

My goal for fall 2018 field experience is to try to incorporate more of UDL guidelines into my teaching. I want to create a variety into the classroom which means that students are capable to learn to different models. I also want to incorporate more of technology based learning in lessons. I want to use more technology while teaching but also getting the students practicing with different technologies.

Fall 2017 - Year 1

Growth:

My fall 2017 mentor teacher uses all of these ideas within her classroom. She uses the the fact that students have preconceptions the most and that they did not come into her kindergarten classroom as a blank slate. She always wants to know where their thinking and learning are at. At the beginning of all lessons she asks them many questions to see which students are already exceeding at understanding the knowledge, which ones are somewhat understanding and those who have very little knowledge about the lesson planned. This helps her to see which students need more help to learn this specific topic and which ones can be left to do the task by themselves.

My mentor teacher used the activity to the right as a way to see the students understanding of shapes and numbers. As well, she looked at their motor skills and how well they could colour in the lines. The students loved doing this activity because they thought it was a game. However, my mentor teacher knew that children were not blank slates so she used this as a guideline to see how much they knew. During colour groups, I would ask them questions to help her identify which students understood the concepts and which needed more learning.

Goals:

Metacognition should play a huge role in classrooms. It is important for students to be aware of when they are doing something correctly and understanding if they are on the right path. I want my students to be able to assess themselves more in their mind than on paper so that they are aware of their own understandings. Dependent on the grade I am teaching, I might have them write learning journals to reflect how they learned and what they learned. Also, I would incorporate discussions at the end of lessons for them to touch on what they thought before to their understanding at the ending.

I want to create a learning environment where my students have an understanding not just learning. I want to be able to teach them how to learn effectively. I want my instruction to help students arrive at new understandings on their own. Honestly, I think these key ideas are going to be somewhat difficult to incorporate in a classroom but I also know that it will not be impossible.

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