Meet Me in the Middle - Chapter 8: Effective Assessment

I like that the beginning of this chapter states that “assessment should promote learning, not just measure it”. Students should be excited about their assessment, or at the least be interested in it. Students may understand something very well, but may have a hard time conveying their understanding in certain ways. It is mentioned that involving students in their assessment is a good route to take. The chapter then lists the characteristics of good assessment which are: defining clear goals, rigorous and motivating, focusing on essential knowledge, using multiple disciplines, valid indicator of students’ knowledge, source of reliable information,using vigorous formats, and easy to grade. This list of characteristics shows that assessment is all about the specific student and how they learn.

I find this chapter similar to differentiated instruction, and I’m sure that’s why they are situated in the book one after the other. Assessment should reflect the initial instruction. If we are tailor our lessons to meet the needs of all students in our classroom then our assessments need to be tailored in the same manner. I really enjoyed the story at the beginning of this chapter. I think it is really great to see that a student really enjoys creating musics and being able to utilize this talent in music to assess the student. His assessment may have not been as straight forward as everyone else's but he provided all information needed in order to show that he understands the novel and it’s different elements.

Meet Me in the Middle - Chapter 7: Differentiated Instruction - Fitting the Lesson to the Learner

This chapter goes on to explain just how difficult it is to get across to every student in a classroom because students abilities are going to widely range. The beginning of knowing how to alter a curriculum to make every students needs is to get to know them and how they learn. You have to constantly assess and reassess them and observe how they work. Keeping an eye on every student is a difficult task but is very important. Instead of varying the the amount of work for certain students, our lessons should vary in the ways students can find and express their knowledge. Each students needs do not have to be met for every single student during every single lesson, but you can meet different students needs throughout the span of a week or unit. They list the characteristics of successful teachers of differentiated instruction and these characteristics work for what a successful teacher looks like in general.

I know that meeting the needs of every single student in my classroom is going to be a very complex task. First I will need to get to know my students in order to understand how I should tailor specific lessons and assignments for them. Grouping students together based on how they learn could be a good method as long as students do not catch on to this and get offended because they could see it as tracking. I think it is important to meet all students needs and will be willing to tackle this task. I just really think it is a matter of knowing your students well and being able to be versatile. Knowing my students will involve not only knowing and observing what goes on with them at school but even with what goes on with them outside of school.

Meet Me in the Middle - Chapter 6: Acountability for High Standards

This chapter explains how and why setting high standards is important for your students. First of all it explains that if you expect great work then your students need to know what great work looks like, so examples are a great tool for this. Displaying their work is another way to motivate students to do their best. Eliminating extra credit can help students to focus on the work at hand so you will get better quality assignments. The chapter explains you should hold your students accountable for things they may not likely do on their own. In other words you need to push them, I see this pushing as support and guidance. Another important thing the chapter had to offer is that as a teacher we need to show our students we are extending our learning and learning from them, and then they will be more likely to want to extend their learning as well.

Accountability for high standards seems to be all about modeling exactly what you want your results to be. Students are not going to know what you want from them if you cannot create concrete models and examples along with modeling a passion for learning yourself. The one aspect that really caught my attention in this chapter was suggesting not to have extra credit assignments. I really like the way they portrayed extra credit assignments and find it to be too true. Extra credit assignments allow students to slack off on the big assignments because they know they can make it up. I really like the idea of allowing students to edit their work to improve the grade rather than do some extra credit, because in that way they will always be focusing on the most vital parts of the class.

Book Talk Blog: Team 2 - A Whole New Mind

A Whole New Mind first discusses the left brain and right brain where we determined what kind of thinkers we are based on the left and right brain. This then related to the six characteristics that one needs in order to succeed in life according to the book. These six characteristics are design, empathy, symphony, play, story, and meaning. These characteristics can easily relate to the teaching profession. These characteristics are all very different but equally important. Students should be well rounded like these characteristics are.

I really liked how the group presented their information. I liked the activities that we completed for each of the characteristics. I especially liked the fill in the comic bubbles on the comic strips. It was a fun activity to see what everyone would come up with for the same comic strips. I appreciate that they used actual activities from A Whole New Mind. It seems like a good book to read, and I like how they mentioned that it wasn't really in a text book form but in more of a novel form. I think I could enjoy reading a book such as this because I tend to shy away from reading books in text book forms.

Book Talk Blog: Team 1 - Student Oriented Curriculum

I really thought the information from the Student Oriented Curriculum was very useful and provided a lot of different and innovative ideas. I don't know if I would actually want to go along with a integrated unit such as the one described in the book. I would be afraid that what the students should be learning from each class would get too intermingled. I think that it would take a very well structured and collaborative group of teachers to pull off a learning experience such as this one. I liked that the students were offered so much variety through this curriculum, but the variety may allow them to stray away from what they need to be learning as opposed to what is fun and interesting to them. Learning should be fun and interesting but some structure is needed so that learning is not a big mess.

The presentation went really smoothly. The information in the book about how the integrated classes worked was very confusing. I think they did a good job of explaining it to us because it was a very complex and different way to create a unit. I liked how we did a think pair share type of activity. My only critique is that it was a little noisy and hard to hear our instructor in the beginning with others talking. I also really liked the ending activity where we got to respond to a quote that we liked the most pertaining to the book.

Meet Me in the Middle - Chapter 3: Brain Research Applied to Middle School

This chapter brought up a lot of interesting information about teaching while keeping students brains in mind. Our brain is where we store all of our knowledge so it is important for teachers to understand how to utilize students brains. The chapter says that our long term memory stores information based on the interaction with the knowledge. Students need to interact with what they are learning and not have in droned into them through a lecture. Learning needs to be memorable in order for it to be a memory worth storing, it seems they call in memory for a reason. As teachers we shouldn’t call on just one student but turn it into a discussion or interaction among students. Also when asking questions providing wait time can be a very powerful thing.

I really enjoyed this chapter because my group read the brain based teaching book for a our book talk so this tied in really well with it. I was surprised to see logical fallacies in this section. I never thought to teach this to middle school students because I never really learned about them until I took a college class on it. I do think it is something important to learn so that students know how to analyze and perceive information properly so as to avoid misconceptions in the first place. I think it is important as a teacher to make sure that my students do not have any misconceptions on the content that I am teaching them so I need to take time to brush up on my lessons and make sure everyone is on the same page. I also really liked the information on water. I think it is a great idea to have a water cooler in you class. I try to drink a lot of water throughout the day and so should my students so it only makes sense to have it easily accessible in the classroom.

Meet Me in the Middle - Chapter 13: Outdoor Adventures

This chapter is all about taking your students on a trip in the outdoors. They mention camping as the main activity and list numerous activities that can take place during a class camping trip. There really are so many possibilities that I never thought of. As an english teacher I really like the idea of using nature and the wilderness as an inspiration for their writing. Giving students time to sit down outside while camping and write a story while they are immersed in the setting of it can be really fun. I also like all of the activities centered around water because I know students could have a lot of fun with that. Survival skills seems like something all students should learn while camping because a lot of then haven;t even been camping before and don’t really know any of the basic camping information.

The first thing that the chapter mentioned was that outdoors activities with students allows students to see their teacher as a real person. This stuck in my head throughout the whole chapter because I never really thought of my teachers and people, they were just teachers in my mind. I remember I saw some of my teachers at the bowling alley one night having fun and laughing and I was shocked at this scene. Apparently I wasn’t aware that my teachers had lives outside of school and could actually have fun with one another. Now that I am going to be a teacher I look back on that and find it funny, but I also want to find ways for my students to see me in a different light other than a teacher and all the outdoors activities provided in this chapter can really create a strong relationship amongst teachers and students. I would absolutely love to go on a camping trip with my future students someday.