In the article, “The Teacher’s Guide to Keeping Students Safe Online,” found on the Edudemic website give teachers advise on how to keep students safe on the web. It starts out by stating that the students have grown up with technology and they use it constantly. It is extremely easy for students to send inappropriate comments or sext. However, there is only so much that a teacher can do. The school can block some websites that the students use in school, but they can not do much else.
This article states that the first thing that we can do as teachers to protect our students is to set boundaries. Teachers can help students set their own personal boundaries for internet use. One good way to do this is by sharing your boundaries and share concerns with the students. Also, have a “no-judgment policy.” The next thing to beaware that students sext. Pay attention to the conversations and report if you hear students talking about sexts. Warn students of the danger of sexting. Having your picture out their can be used as a weapon if the relationship ends bad. The other tip with sexting is to teach students how to text. Knowing how texts are sent, received, and stored can help student realize that even after that picture is deleted, it still can be accessed. Share with your students the laws regarding sexting. Then help them come up with better ways to communicate to people. Also encourage the parents to be involved. It thought that this article was extremely useful. It gave out a lot of tips and suggestions on keeping students safe online. There is even more information that the article gives that i did not summarize. I think that the most important thing is to teach students what is considered appropriate and useful to a class and what things can end up harming them in the end. I really liked the idea of showing them the laws. The Teacher's Guide To Keeping Students Safe Online. (n.d.). Retrieved March 16, 2018, from http://www.edudemic.com/guides/the-teachers-guide-to-keeping-students-safe-online/
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The article, “Creating a WebQuest It’s Easier Than You Think,” gives teachers great advice about creating web quests. It starts out by defining what a web quest is. “”A WebQuest,” according to Bernie Dodge, the originator of the WebQuest concept, “is an inquiry-oriented activity in which most or all of the information used cy learners is drawn from the Web”” (Creating a WebQuest para. 3). Web quests are great for getting students involved in their own learning. The student takes charge and finds information for themselves. It also gives students opportunities to work in groups or by themselves based on how the teacher wants to run the quest. Web quests also allow teachers to adapt their lessons to fit the needs of the students.
There is a formula for good web quests. It is, to have an introduction that engages the students, followed by a task that you want the students to complete. Next the teacher explains the process that explains to the students how it should be done. Evaluation, to see how successful the activity is, is the next thing to do. The last is a conclusion that sums up what the students learned and reflects on how the students got their answers and what they learned. To start, you need to have an outline of what you want the students to do and a question or questions you want them to answer. Once you have the outline, then you can start planning the rest of the quest starting with the topic and going down then list of steps. I thought that this article was very helpful. I did not really do any web quest myself while in high school because we did not have many computers yet. The web quest that I have seen tended to be more of a time waster near holidays than useful for the students. After reading this article, I see how beneficial web quests can be. However, I do not think that they are for everyone. I do like how web quest give students more of a say in what they are learning and leaves the learning up to them. It is better than giving the students a worksheet but not as good as project base learning. Although you can have your students do the web quests in groups so they can work on group cooperation. Creating a WebQuest | It's Easier Than You Think. (n.d.). Retrieved March 13, 2018, from http://www.educationworld.com/a_tech/tech/tech011.shtml “Ideas for effective small-group learning and teaching,” a hand out from Learning and Teaching at UNSW, give out a lot of good tips on working with small groups and teaching small groups. It starts out by setting ground rules. Some of these rules include, preparing for class, arriving on time, participating, and more. Then it goes over what should happen in the first meeting. Ask the students what experience they have with small groups and playing an icebreaker game are just two examples of things to do in the first meeting. The hand out also suggest to try different structures for groups and activities. Also, ask the students how the project is going throughout the projects and how their group is working together. At the end of each class, there should be a teaching session. This is for the students to report what they had worked on during the class and what they had learned.
The environment should be one that does not keep students behind as desk. With that being said, the teacher should not sit behind a desk as well. Keep moving and sitting in different locations everyday. Encourage the students to do the same. When groups seem to big, it is possible to break them down. The teacher should not fill every silent moment with sound. It is okay for students to work in silence every now and again. Emphasize the importance of good communication and teach good communication. When responding to questions, make sure you answer the question for the situation. Avoid loaded questions that make it look like you are favoring your opinion. Open-ended questions should be used to get students to think. Respond positively when students answer your questions. Even though this was not technically an article, I thought that it was a very good article. I do think that the advice that it gave would be helpful for any group and not just small groups. I really liked how it told the teachers that they should be moving around just as much as the students. It also seemed more like the teacher was guiding more than teaching. Another part of the hand out that I liked was giving students time to report back to you what they learned and ask questions. Ideas for Small-Group Teaching. (n.d.). Retrieved March 09, 2018, from https://teaching.unsw.edu.au/small-group-ideas https://teaching.unsw.edu.au/sites/default/files/upload-files/small_group_ideas.pdf Jane Shimon, wrote an article titled, “Effective Strategies to Group Students in Physical Education Classes,” where she gave out good tips on how to group students. Grouping students is something that is done quickly as to not lose instructional time, however it is important to know how to group the students before the class. Numbering the students works to a point, but students can rig the system by placing themselves so that they are with their friends. It is also possible for students to forget their number. The first grouping strategy that is listed is to preassigned the groups. This way the teacher can decide if they want friends to work together or if the students need to work together based on their abilities. To make it easier for the students to know what group they are in, the teacher might post the grouping on the wall for students to check as they are entering the room. The second way to group students is to let the students chose. This has the tendency to improve motivation. When the teacher tells the students to get into groups of two or three, it allows room for the students that could not find a partner to join a group. If students are told just to get in even groups, it allows for the students that have a harder time to finding friends to feel left out. When giving students the chose, it is also a good idea to give them a time limit to get in their groups and start working. Objects can also be used to put students into groups. Teachers can use a deck of cards. They can also have the student pick something out of a basket. There is a great many objects that a teacher can use to group students. The last technique for grouping is random characteristic. This is when the teacher decides to group the students by something they are wearing, or hair color. It could be just about anything. It is random. I know that this article is talking about P.E. classes specifically, but I think that the information applies to all and any teacher. In fact some of these methods were used while I was in school. I like the idea of posting the groups in the classroom for the students to look at themselves. However, that would have to be set up in your policies at the beginning of the course/semester. I like the idea of the cards because it is really random and there are many different ways that you can split of the class if you need to quickly arrange things differently. I also like the tip about giving the students the opportunity to be in groups of three instead of partnerships. I was always the student that had a hard time finding a partner so being able to join a group was nice for me. Shimon, J. (n.d.). Effective strategies to group students in physical education classes. Retrieved March 06, 2018, from http://www.humankinetics.com/excerpts/excerpts/Effective-strategies-to-group-students-in-physical-education-classes http://www.humankinetics.com/excerpts/excerpts/Effective-strategies-to-group-students-in-physical-education-classes This is a link to another article about improving group work. https://www.facultyfocus.com/articles/effective-teaching-strategies/10-recommendations-improving-group-work/ “Teaching Students to Work Well in Groups,” is an article written by Krista D. Forrest that gives out tips on how to great groups that are called effective groups. There are three types of groups. The first is called pseudogroups. Pseudogroups are groups that are doing a project that the teacher assigns and the students have no interest in. The second group is the traditional work group. Traditional work groups are groups that are doing something that the students want to do. They are more motivated in the project. The last group is the effective group. This is where the group focuses more on learning. Teachers are to help all their students get into the category of effective groups. However, very few groups start out in the effective group category.
There are some things that a teacher can do to help groups go from being in pseudogroups and traditional group into effective groups. The first tip is to reduce social loafing. This basically means that you are trying to prevent students from slacking off or taking a free grade from their groupmates that have been working hard. The second tip to effective groups is to improve the Social skills. Most of the problems that groups have deal with communication. The next tip, and last tip, is to give out clear guidelines for all aspects of the project. This allows students to know exactly what is expected of them. One thing that was suggested in the article was to give out anonymous example of both good and bad student work. I learned from reading this article that it is not easy to have effective groups, but that the students learn more and have fewer issues with the project if they are working in effective groups. It takes a lot of work on the part of the teacher to get all students into effective groups. One of the best tips, that I think was in there, was for the teacher to check in on the students at every stage of the project. By doing this the students feel that the teacher cares about their projects and they are more likely to come to the teacher if they need help or there are problems in the group. It also allows the teacher to know what is going on in each group and find the students that are not pulling their own weight. Forrest, K. D. (2008, February). Teaching Students to Wrok Well in Groups. Retrieved March 4, 2018, from https://www.psychologicalscience.org/observer/teaching-students-to-work-well-in-groups https://www.psychologicalscience.org/observer/teaching-students-to-work-well-in-groups This week’s article was written by Wendy Yost, a professor at California State University, Northridge. The article, “Before You Assign Another Group Project . . . Six Keys to Creating Effective Group and Team Projects,” tells of how Wendy does her group projects to make them fun and engaging for all students. The article starts out by stating a couple of statistics about group projects. One such statistic is that, “73% of students felt group work was negative because of: Lack of participation, slackers, Flakes, Unequal Work” (CSUN Teaching Strategies, para 5).
Wendy thought that there was a better way to make group projects better for everyone. She came up with six ways to help group projects become less stressful. The first step was to create a conductive Environment that encourages positive participation. She did this by first taking the time to go over classroom etiquette. With this students learned how to make attacking statements into constructive feedback. She also made a point to get to know each student’s name by the third week. Wendy encouraged all of her students to do the same. Ice breaker questions were big in her class as well. The second thing that Wendy did was acknowledge the realities of the students. In college, many of the students have responsibilities outside of class. Some may be taking care of family members, or working multiple jobs to make ends meet. To accommodate this, class time was made so that groups could work on their projects. She would also place the students in groups as soon as the add/drop period was over. This allowed the students time to get to know one another. Third, the expectations for the class were clearly stated at the beginning. The students were asked to keep an open mind on the new way of doing group projects and all the students knew that there was going to be a group project. Next thing that Wendy did was grade the group projects individually. This was done so that if one person slacks, the rest of the group does not go down with them or have to work harder to make up for the difference. Each student also was able to do a peer review on their group mates. Another thing is to provide the correct tools, resources, and support. Wendy let the students know that she was there for them. She also had them all get up in front of the class early in the semester so that everyone had an opportunity to be upfront before they had to present their big group project. The first time in front of the whole class the students were to just have fun. The last thing that she did was allow the students to reflect on the experience throughout the project. This allowed the students to give out any concerns that they might have had, or tell the teacher of any problem group mates that they might have had. She would also ask each group throughout the semester how they were doing and how the project was going. I think that Wendy made a lot of really good points. I know that when I was in high school, I disliked group projects unless I was able to pick my group. I did not like it when my group mated dragged me down. Regarding the peer review at the end, I like it, but if the grade of the person is docked because the peers are forced to list each member in order, I do not think is fair. I took a class where at the end we had to list all of our group mates in order from whom did the most amount of work and who did the least. The person who did the least automatically was docked points. However, sometimes that person was just written on the reviews last because the group members did not like that group mate. If you are truly going to grade individually, do not have the group rate each other. Go based off their answers in the peer review and the work shown. Do not go just based on what number the members were given. At least that is my opinion on the matter. Yost, W. (2013, March 6). Before You Assign Another Group Project . . . . Six Keys to Creating Effective Group Assignments and Team Projects. Retrieved March 1, 2018, from www.csun.edu/afye/Six-Keys-to-Creating-Effective-Group-Assignments-and-Team-Projects.htm www.csun.edu/afye/Six-Keys-to-Creating-Effective-Group-Assignments-and-Team-Projects.htm “Putting Learning into Service,” an article by Jim Paterson tells of the importance of learning through projects. The article starts out by reminding us that service projects are not a new thing to school. They have been done for a long time. However, there has been an increase of service project. It is said to be at the highest it has been since WWII.
These service projects give students an opportunity to apply what they learn. The students also get more involved in the community. The students look for opportunities in the community, and as a class figure out a project that they can do. Then the students apply what they have been learning in class to carry out the project. When students are allowed to pick the project, they enjoy it a lot more. They do not even seem to realize that they are learning. These service projects are often the highlight of the students school year. The article also goes into tips on how to pick good service projects. The projects should be something that the students can buy into. The students also need time to pick the topic of the project. Let the students run the project, the teacher should just be there to guide the students and prevent them from causing harm of any kind. The project should also apply to what is being learning in the class and realistic. This put project learning into a different light for me. I thought for the most part that project learning was just so the teacher did something else but teach and the students get to do something fun. But taking the project learning, projects and turn them into service projects for the community is a great idea. It is easy to do with family consumer sciences. So much of what we do is to help families and help others in general. We can teach our students how to sew and them make pillow cases for a homeless shelter. We can teach the kids how to cook and then cater a luncheon for veterans. There is so much that we can do. I do think that the article is right. The students should run the project. The students are learning and they will learn more if you assist than if you were running the show. Paterson, J. (2006, 05). Putting learning into service. Leadership for Student Activities, 34, 12-16. Retrieved from https://search-proquest-com.byui.idm.oclc.org/docview/234975342?accountid=9817 “Put FCCLA into Your FCS Program” by an anonymous author gives out great advise on how to incorporate FCCLA into your classroom. As many teachers do, the Jessica Pool struggled on how to incorporate FCCLA into her classroom. Eventually, she figured out how to connect, Families First, Financial Fitness, Student Body, and her own program. FCCLA projects connect all the programs together. FCCLA has recently updated their resources making it even easier to bring FCCLA into classrooms. When bringing FCCLA into the FCS classrooms, it takes your class beyond worksheets and program related activities. FCCLA helps students connect to the FCS content, it helps them build personal responsibility, build leadership, and increase their understanding of academic concepts.
A teacher in Georgia discovered this first hand when she used an FCCLA project in her child development class. For this project, the students were to plan and conduct a project related to different types of domestic violence. Each group picked a different type of domestic violence. The different groups, after finishing their project reported on what they had found and how it can help the community and Families First. The class picked what project they should do and then the whole class went out in the community to complete that project. The project did more for the students than the teacher expected it to. They learned more than she thought they would. The students also wanted to continue to doing projects just like this one. At times the teacher felt like they were not learning or being productive, however, it ended up being a lot better than she expected. After reading this, I do not know why a teacher would not want to do an FCCLA project in their classroom. It makes coming up with a project easier. It also helps the teacher know what to look for in grading because there are already rubrics created for the projects. Also, the students that are participating in FCCLA are also able to use these projects in competition. On top of all of this, the students are learning for themselves which means that they will retain more of that information than if you just lectured about that topic. Put FCCLA into your FCS program. (2004). Journal of Family and Consumer Sciences, 96(1), 33-34. Retrieved from https://search-proquest-com.byui.idm.oclc.org/docview/218150433?accountid=9817 https://search-proquest-com.byui.idm.oclc.org/docview/218150433?accountid=9817 The article, “Dimensions of Multicultural Education: Implications for Higher Education,” by Carlos Diaz talks about some misconceptions that people have with multicultural education. The first misconception is that multicultural education will cause a dilution of traditional Western Knowledge. The second is the multicultural education will disunite the United States.
However, both of these statements are not true. The point behind multicultural education is to present information in that reflects different cultures and gender to any topic or subject. However, it is not to take over what is currently being taught. It just changes the way that we teach so that every person gets a say in what and how they learn. It is to help open eyes to see things in a different way to better understand where others are coming from. Also, multicultural education helps us to understand others. When we understand others, we get along with them better. This means that we grow closer together as a people. However, everybody is entitled to their own way of thinking, so viewpoints might clash. These different viewpoints can help others to grow and broaden their perspectives. Teachers need to be aware that favoritism is a real thing. While teaching, most teachers favor men especially in classes where participation is required. Men are more likely to give out information. It is important that teachers avoid this and involve all their students no matter what their race or culture is. Overall, having a class that is multicultural, will help students gain a better understanding of others and help unit each other. This is not what I thought that multicultural education was. I always thought that it was how to teach students from different areas other than the one that you are currently teaching in. I thought it was how you taught students that do not speak the same language as you. I did realize that it had a lot more to do with racism and gender bias. Knowing that, it is some we need to be aware of in FCS classes. I am guilty of thinking that girls are better at sewing and cooking. Men are just as capable as women are to cook and to sew. I need to make sure that when I am teaching, that I teach in a way that involves everyone and expands the knowledge of the students. Diaz, C. F. (1994). Dimensions of multicultural education: Implications for higher education. National Forum, 74(1), 9. Retrieved from https://search-proquest-com.byui.idm.oclc.org/docview/235212349?accountid=9817 In the article, “Students Motivation: An Overlooked piece of School Reform,” by Alexandra Usher and Nancy Kober talks about how motivation is an important part of schooling. Researching is starting to show that students do not seem to be motivated. There are many ways that students are motivated. However, teachers pick up from where parents left off or step in where parents are falling short. The goal of the teacher it to help students stay in school and not drop out. Sometimes this is done by school organizations. Students are put on teams to support each other and if the students fall behind or start to fail, they are not allowed in extracurricular activates. Other schools have individual interventions with the student that seem likely to drop out. In some schools, they have center that they students can go to help them with their course work that they are struggling with. In the end, however, the teacher makes the biggest impact on motivation. Often times this can be done by the teacher sincerely caring about their students. Teacher can help parents get more involved in their students motivation as well. The more time a teacher can spend with a student, the better the teacher gets to know the student and the more effective they are at helping to motivate that student. An other good way that teachers can motivate students is by doing more group related projects and let the students learn more for themselves and from each other. With that comes a stronger focus on learning and not on grades. When students are more focused on learning and not about the grades that they will receive, they are more likely to do more school work. This is because they shift their perspective more from grades to what they are actually learning.
I really enjoyed reading this article. I have come to realize that the teacher plays a bigger part of education than I ever thought that they did. Teacher not only teach, they also motivate, set an example, watch out for those that are struggling, they help prepare students for the next stage of life, and also have to keep up with their personal lives. It really makes me appreciate the teachers that I had in high school and my professors at college. They put so much work and care into what they do and are often underappreciated. As this course had progressed, I see how my teachers have helped me to get where I am with out me even noticing. For example, my Spanish teacher motivated me to never give up and showed me that it is okay to ask for help if I am struggling. I remember one time, I was struggling in class and she came up to me afterwards and asked me if I would like a tutor. Then she had it arranged that some of the students from the local college to come and tutor me and a couple other students that were struggling. Her doing this helped me to stay in Spanish class another year and a half. It is little things like this that I am realizing now that I over looked but I have grown to appreciate. Usher, A., & Kober, N. (2013). Student motivation: An overlooked piece of school reform. The Education Digest, 78(5), 9-16. Retrieved from https://search-proquest-com.byui.idm.oclc.org/docview/1349973400?accountid=9817 . |
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