Producing a Productive Learning Environment

#1:        

         I believe that a classroom environment that is conducive to learning is an environment in which 1) students feel comfortable, and 2) students are motivated to do work.  In my class, I want my students to feel as comfortable as possible.  I want to provide “a loving and supportive home environment,” allow students to help make decisions as to what we do, and provide students with the opportunity to work on age appropriate activities either on their own or with a group (Omrod claims that these practices fit into the model of authoritative parenting).  Students can also feel more comfortable in my class if I maintain “good working relationships with students,” create an environment in which students feel they belong, and “set reasonable limits for behavior” (Omrod, 2011).  Omrod (2011) mentions that one general management strategy is to take “student diversity into account in making classroom management decisions” (p.461).  I believe this strategy could also do much to helping create a comfortable, non-threatening classroom environment, especially if a teacher has an English Language Learner as a student.  Often, when ELLs are tossed into an English-speaking classroom they can become highly intimidated and uncomfortable.  To help alleviate this discomfort, if I have an ELL student I will engage in what Almaguer and Esquierdo (2013) call culturally relevant teaching “in which students are able to see their culture in the context of the classroom” (p.8).  In this way, ELL students are better able to connect the English instruction they are receiving in the classroom to the culture they already understand and are comfortable with.  These are all methods I would like to exercise that will make my classroom environment more comfortable for my students.

         I also believe that any classroom environment that is conducive to learning must be one in which students are intrinsically motivated to complete assigned work.  Encouraging students to intrinsically value their instruction can be much more challenging than making a classroom comfortable, but I believe it can be done.  I believe that my students are more likely to be intrinsically motivated if I set realistic goals for them to strive for, offer them frequent encouragement, and somehow find a way to tie classroom material back to their extracurricular interests and any mastery goals they may have.  This latter strategy may be the most important, because I believe that no student will be intrinsically motivated to understand the material presented if they cannot find a way in which the material relates to their personal lives and goals.  It would be extremely difficult to relate all class material to each student’s life and goals, but if it can be done I believe it should be.

#2:

         As I plan to teach high school English, I have used the “High School Case Study” as my study for which I have developed my following responses.

         It is obvious that most of the students in my music class are no longer intrinsically motivated, and I can somehow sympathize with them.  Many seniors develop a case of “senioritis” in their final year and especially during the final weeks; they no longer want to do assigned work in classes, because they cannot see how such work so near the end of their high school careers can negatively affect them and prevent them from graduating.  To make matters worse, my class takes place during fifth period, near the end of the day.  I believe this lack of intrinsic motivation has led to student’s passing notes to one another once my back is turned. 

         I can no longer ignore this misbehavior because it is not a rare occurrence, is has spread to other students, and it is interfering with classroom learning (Omrod, 2011).  Therefore, to target this misbehavior in my students, I have planned the following interventions that may help reestablish a productive learning community in my classroom.

         —1.  First, I will simply engage in conversation with those that are passing the most notes.  If I notice two students passing notes during class time, I may pass by them and tap on their desks without saying anything.  Perhaps this physical cue will let them know that I have noticed their misbehavior, and that they should stop.  If students do not stop passing notes after my tapping on their desk, I will call each student individually to my desk or office so that I can privately discuss their misbehavior with them, and let them know that I will not stand for it.

         —2.  If engaging in conversation with students about their behavior does not work, I may decide to arrange the furniture in ways that encourage certain student interaction while, at the same time, discouraging others (Omrod, 2011).  For example, since I am aware that there are certain various cliques among students, I could divide the room into four or five groups of about four or five students each.  Students will not be arranged into any group with any other student from their clique.  I will assign each group an activity (composing a short musical piece, transcribing music onto sheets, etc.) that they must work together to accomplish.  Hopefully, this will quench students’ desires to interact with others, but they will stay on task as they may not have any real personal topics to discuss with these students they rarely talk to.  With this new desk arrangement, I will display withitness by addressing each group from an angle from which I can see the rest of the class.

         The biggest threats to my productive, comfortable classroom environment are the three boys who continually make fun of the other students and who roughhouse and refuse to follow classroom behavioral procedures.  The reason these three boys are so dangerous to my classroom environment is because they are harming the classroom climate.  A classroom climate is the “general psychological environment that permeates classroom interactions” (Omrod, 2011).  In any good classroom climate students will feel safe and secure from threats (Omrod, 2011).  However, with the three boys frequently making fun of other students, especially the tenors and sopranos, the students in my class cannot feel safe and secure.  Therefore, the misbehavior of these three boys must be handled immediately and effectively.

         —1.  Again, the first step I should take is to converse with these students, first publicly but subtly (perhaps through stern eye contact), and then, if the problem progresses, through private conversations.  In these private conversations, I will try to inform the boys on how their behavior is not only disrespectful to me but, more importantly, it is disrespectful and threatening to the other students.

         —2.  I have a feeling, though, that simply talking to these students will not alleviate the problem.  Therefore, more serious measures may need to be taken.  I liked the idea that Brian presented this week about requiring a student to write ten positive things for each negative thing they say about a student.  I might try to do that with these boys.

         —3.  If that doesn’t work, I would rearrange the seating of these three boys.  I would require that two boys sit on the front row on opposite ends, while the third boy sits in the middle row in the middle seat.  Hopefully, this distance will reduce the amount of talking the boys can engage in with one another.

         —4.  If this does not work, I could require that the boys sit at desks that are completely isolated in each corner of the room.  At their desks, I would require that they complete some rote activity, such as filling an entire music sheet with quarter notes, then half notes, etc.  I would require that each of the three boys turn in a specific amount of filled-in sheets before they leave the class.  If they do not, I would give them detention.

         —5.  If none of these efforts succeed in deterring the misbehavior and reestablishing a productive learning environment in my classroom, I would contact each of the boys’ parents and, if need be, the principal. 

 Almaguer, I., Esquierdo, J. (2013). Cultivating bilingual learners’ language arts knowledge: A framework for successful teaching.  International Journal of Instruction, 6 (2), 3-18.

Motivation

If a teacher wishes to conduct a successful class, he or she must take student motivation into account.  If a student is not motivated to participate in in-class discussions and activities, as well as outside projects, the work will not get done and the classroom environment will suffer for it.  Also, motivation is not only necessary to engage students and to have an enjoyable class time, but it can also play a key role in the efficient assessment of a student’s academic progress; if a student is consistently unmotivated, and either does not complete his or her school work or, if it is completed, does not try their best on an assignment, then an instructor cannot accurately evaluate what a student is and isn’t learning and if the student is showing any real progress.

         

The two theories of motivation that appeal to me are social cognitive theories and cognitive theories.  As Omrod (2011) points out, these two theoretical approaches to the study of motivation “have dominated theory and research in motivation” for the past two or three decades, and for good reason.  Many aspects of social cognitive and cognitive theories Omrod discusses in the text make a lot of sense to me, and explain why a student may or may not be motivated in the class. 

        

There are a few aspects of these theories that I believe could successfully motivate students in the classroom.  One, of course, is extrinsic motivation, the idea that students become motivated if they are promised a reward for carrying out a task or taking part in an in-class activity.  I believe self-handicapping, self-worth, and learned helplessness can also play a significant role in getting students motivated to do assigned work.  In my Education 100 class last fall, I did my service learning in a sophomore English class at Austin-East High School.  When a task was assigned to the class, I witnessed some students reducing their effort on the task as time progressed, procrastinating, and cheating off others, all forms of self-handicapping.  Other students seemed to have little self-worth and a sense of learned helplessness.  When I would try to help some students with a task, they would follow along with me for about half a minute, and then promptly set their pencil down, shrug their shoulders, and say, “I can’t do this.”

         

In my personal belief, the most important factor of motivation is interest.  I think that if a teacher really wants to get his or her students engaged in the material being covered, then that teacher should take the time to learn what each student finds interesting and, somehow, find a way to incorporate these various interests into the classroom. 

         

Here are examples of how I could incorporate my students’ interests into the class: At the beginning of the school year, I could handout a survey to each of my students.  In this survey, the student could describe his or her hobbies, what he or she likes to do after class to unwind, what he or she finds enjoyment in.  I could gather this information, study it, and try to somehow, at least once, adapt a lesson plan to each student’s interest.  For instance, if David writes that he enjoys rap music, I could teach a lesson on the elements of poetry, find an example of a (appropriate and edited) rap song that also incorporates these elements (such as rhythm and rhyme) and play the song for the class or project the lyrics on the board.  If Samantha says she enjoys horseback riding, I could teach a grammar lesson in which all of the incorrect sentences presented deal in some way with horseback riding.  As a general way to garner student interest in my classroom, I will try to assign readings to my students that they are more likely to find interesting and/or relatable.  For example, I think The Hunger Games could be a great book to teach to a high school English class, because many students are already familiar with and like the books and movies, and because I believe the book could still have some literary merits worth discussing (I know, though, that the state sometimes dictates what books teachers can and cannot teach, and that I may only be able to teach only one of these more “fun” texts).  In these ways, I can bring students’ interests into the classroom and get them motivated to do work.

EdPsych Blog Post 2: The Various Forms of Educational Assessment

Informal vs. formal assessment:

Informal assessmentàInformal assessments are assessments that are not formally conducted in the classroom, but that are conducted daily and continually through observances of students regular behaviors.  For example, if I were to assign my high school students vocabulary problems in their vocabulary workbooks, and if I noticed one student sitting quietly at his desk, staring at a section in the workbook, I could discern that he or she may be having trouble understanding the directions for a particular set of problems, and could therefore offer assistance in helping him or her realize exactly what they’re supposed to do.

Formal assessmentàA formal assessment differs from an informal assessment in that it is announced to the class days or even weeks before the assessment is given.  In my class, I could announce that the following week we would be having a short, one-page test over the elements of character, conflict, and plot in fiction.  The students could then study ahead of time, and I would, through the formal assessment, be able to gauge each student’s understanding of the elements of fiction I have taught.

Traditional Asessment vs. Authentic Assessment:

Traditional AssessmentàAny paper-pencil assessment I give in my class could be called a traditional assessment, as the questions addressed and answers are probably questions that the students would not be asked in real-world experiences.  For instance, I could ask my students to answer fill-in-the-blank questions with a correct vocabulary word from that specific week.  Or, I could ask my students, during the first week of class, to write a personal essay that they would turn in to me at the end of class; I could then read these personal essays and determine which students already have a good grasp on grammatical principles and writing and which students do

not, and what specific aspects of writing we should focus on first in the class.

Authentic AssessmentàAn authentic assessment is one that takes what concepts and skills students have learned in class and applies it to real-world situations they may experience outside of class.  As an authentic assessment, I could require my students to each write a faux-newspaper article and compiling it with other students’ articles to form one class newspaper.  This authentic assessment would give the students the opportunity to demonstrate their learned writing skills, and could inspire students to maybe one day pursue writing as a career.

Criterion-referenced assessment vs. Norm-referenced assessment:

Criterion-referenced assessmentàIn a criterion-referenced assessment, students are tested on material and concepts they have learned in class; the point of a criterion-referenced assessment is to see if students have met predetermined standards or criteria, i.e. if they have successfully grasped the taught concepts and material which they should, at this point, be able to understand.  An example of a criterion-referenced assessment I may give in my class is a paper-pencil test regarding books we have read as a class in order to see if the students have fully understood who the main characters and plot of the story are.

Norm-referenced assessmentàIn a norm-referenced assessment, students’ test scores are compared to the test scores of other similarly aged students across the nation.  This sort of test is useful in telling us if a student’s performance is above average, average, or below average than other students.  One example of a norm-referenced assessment that my high school students may have to take would be the TCAP writing assessment.  This test takes students’ writing abilities and, I believe, compares them to how other students their age or in their grade are writing.  This sort of norm-referenced assessment is extremely important to high schoolers because many of them will be writing application essays to colleges they wish to attend, and if they see that their writing abilities are average or below average, then they may be motivated to hone their writing skills in order to better impress college admissions offices and beat out other applicants.

Standardized test vs. Teacher-developed test:

Standardized testàStandardized tests may be the most commonly used tests in classrooms because each test is the same and students are asked the same questions, questions that may effectively measure a student’s performance or ability so far.  I’m sure the vocabulary tests I administer to my students will be standardized, which is fine because vocabulary questions aren’t that abstract and can be reliably assessed and graded.

Teacher-developed testàIn order to assess students’ understanding of specific concepts taught in my class, I would most likely use a teacher-developed test.  A grammar test dealing with dangling modifiers and comma splices (errors many of my students make) would have to be teacher-developed.  A test over The Catcher in the Rye and the meanings of its various symbols, symbols that I may have discussed in-class, may also need to be teacher-developed, because the writer of a standardized test and I may not agree on an interpretation of one of the book’s symbols.

Paper-pencil assessment vs. Performance assessment:

Paper-pencil assessmentàA paper-pencil assessment is simply an assessment that is written on paper, and which students must answer on paper as well.  Many of my assessments will probably be paper-pencil assessments, such as vocabulary quizzes, grammar tests, and tests over assigned readings.  These types of assessments are important in gauging a student’s understanding of the material, but they cannot really be performed and must simply be addressed on paper.

Performance assessmentàIn a performance assessment, a student demonstrates what they have learned through a type of performance.  I could see myself asking my students to memorize a poem and recite it in front of the class.  In this way, I can assess whether or not a student has really gotten engaged with his or her reading, because if not then they will not be able to recite the poem aloud.