Supporting the Needs og All Learners

PLO 3 : Design learning opportunities that apply technology-enhanced instructional strategies to support the needs of all learners.

Redesigned of Prior Assignment

 Step 1: Identify objectives for online group work.

Learning Objective

·         Student will identify warning signs of bullying behavior.

 Performance Objective

·         By the end of the lesson students will be able to demonstrate the different kinds of bullying and identify ways to personally make a difference in their school.

Step 2: Design an assignment.

During this lesson, students will start to recognize the different types of bullying, causes, and ways of dealing with it. Through literature and Internet, students learn how to handle bullying.  Students will develop presentations to teach others how to handle bullying.

Step 3: Develop assessment strategies for objectives.

Activities

·         Ask students how they define bullying, and write definitions or words on the board addressing the different kinds of bullying (violence, exclusivity, rumors, etc.). Learning Objective (Summative)

·         Students will define and give the characteristics of bullying. ( using computer and Inter) Learning Objective (Summative)

·         Ask students to complete a quiz , individually. Performance Objective  (Formative)

·         Involve students in the follow-up- discussion, using questions (PDF) for reflection.(students are to write a 1 to 2 page reflection paper) Performance Objective (Formative)

As an instructor, I would create and use effectively balance number of assignments, guidelines would be in place for assessing writing skills in online learning. The use of a rubric is very important. A rubric is a type of scoring guide that assesses and articulates specific components and expectations for an assignment.  I would post comments to discussion boards, email messages discussion questions, encourage student’s participation, make known instructor’s expectations and components of an assignment; become more aware of their learning process and progress; approve work through timely and detailed manner with feedback.

The teacher will assess student’s presentations using the attached rubric.

How to Stop the Bullying!.ppt (Power Point)

MultimediaProjectStopBullyingRubric.doc

Step 4: Justify each assessment strategy

          The assessments strategies for the learning objective activities show the learners achievements at the end of the lesson and assess what the learner has mastered.  According to the textbook of Oosterhof & Conrad, 2008 stated the assessment is considered valid if it measures what it claims it supposed to measure. Therefore, the gold standard for assessment effectiveness is validity. But, if objectives and assessments do not match up, validity is compromised because the assessment cannot measure what it is supposed to measure. A lesson learned, I will never forget when doing assessments. Summative assessments are used to check learning achievement at the end of the lesson.

          The performance objective assessments strategies exemplify what the students have learned through their knowledge of learning in the course. The methods used can be in the form of an Exam, mid-term exam, research paper or presentation. According to Jain & Yuan-Cheng, 2013, formative assessments, are continuously embedded in the teaching and learning process of a curriculum, attempts to improve learning achievements by offering feedback in the process. The objective of formative assessment is to provide feedback to students rather than to evaluate them for course grades.  This feedback is used in educational contexts and is generally regarded as crucial for improving learner knowledge and skill acquisition (Pridemore & Klein, 1991). The feedback also, gives learners the opportunity to develop their cognitive strategies and to rectify misconceptions through the training period (Azevedo & Bernard, 1995).  The knowledge gained in this course has enhanced my teaching skills, assessments strategies, objectives, and ways of communicating with learners.

I have gained the understanding of what is expected of learners online. In online learning, it is important to keep learners engaged in the online learning environment. The experience of working in small groups was a great experience.  Jay, 2011, states projects require an extensive amount of effort by students in an online course, general agreement exists among faculty that the team effort should be assed, graded, and with feedback provided. The grading should represent both (1) the quality of the product developed jointly by team, as well as, (2) the degree of participation and quality of construction by each individual student involved in the group process.

Step 5. Create a rubric.

Multimedia Project : Stop the Bullying! Teacher Name: __________________ __________________ Student Name:     ________________________________________

CATEGORY	4	3	2	1
Requirements	All requirements are met and exceeded.	All requirements are met.	One requirement was not completely met.	More than one requirement was not completely met.
Organization	Content is well organized using headings or bulleted lists to group related material.	Uses headings or bulleted lists to organize, but the overall organization of topics appears flawed.	Content is logically organized for the most part.	There was no clear or logical organizational structure, just lots of facts.
Workload	The workload is divided and shared equally by all team members.	The workload is divided and shared fairly by all team members, though workloads may vary from person to person.	The workload was divided, but one person in the group is viewed as not doing his/her fair share of the work.	The workload was not divided OR several people in the group are viewed as not doing their fair share of the work.
Mechanics	No misspellings or grammatical errors.	Three or fewer misspellings and/or mechanical errors.	Four misspellings and/or grammatical errors.	More than 4 errors in spelling or grammar.
Content	Covers topic in-depth with details and examples. Subject knowledge is excellent.	Includes essential knowledge about the topic. Subject knowledge appears to be good.	Includes essential information about the topic but there are 1-2 factual errors.	Content is minimal OR there are several factual errors.

Step 6: Create a 5 item Quiz

There’s a lot to learn about bullying. This is your chance to show what you’ve learned about how, what bullying is and who it affects.

1.      ____What is bullying?

A.    The behavior hurts or harms some physically or emotionally.

B.     There’s an imbalanced of Power between the person bullying and the target.

C.     The target struggles to make the bullying stop.

D.    All of the above

2.      ____ What’s the most common thing students report being bullied about?

A.    Looks

B.     Abilities

C.     Intelligence

D.    Wealth

3.      ____How significant is bullying of students with disabilities?

A.    10 times less than their peers without disabilities

B.     20 time less than their peers without disabilities

C.     2 to 3 times more than their peers without disabilities

D.    The same as their peers without disabilities

4.      ____Most bullying typically takes place at the following times and places:

A.    After school as the child travels home

B.     In the Morning on the way to school

C.     During school hours while children in unstructured activities (e.g. recess, in the hallway or bathroom etc.)

D.    During school hours and while students are in class

5.      ____Which of the following statements about ways boys and girls bully is true?

A.    Boys tends to bully with physical behavior while girls bully with words.

B.     Girls tends to bully with physical behavior while boys bully with words

C.     Boys and girls tend to bully in essentially the same way

D.    Bothe boys and girls use a combination of physical behaviors and bullying with words

REFERENCE

Jay, H. (2011) Assessment of Individual Student Performance in Online Team Project

            Journal of Asynchronous Learning Networks, Vol 15 (3) p5-20.

Jian-Wei, L., & Yuan-Cheng, L. (2013). Harnessing Collaborative Annotations on Online

            Formative Assessments. Journal Of Educational Technology & Society, 16(1), 263-274.

Oosterhof, A., Conrad, R. M., & Ely, D. (2008). Assessing learners online. Upper Saddle

            River, NJ: Pearson.

www.teachingtolerance.org Teaching Tolerance.

Original 

Supporting the Needs of All Learners

According to Richard M. Felder and Rebecca Brent (2005), students have different levels of motivation, different attitudes about teaching and learning, and different responses to specific classroom environments and instructional practices. When instructors thoroughly understand the differences, they will have a better chance of meeting the diverse learning needs of all their students. Therefore, three categories of diversity that have been shown to have important implications for teaching and learning are differences in students’ learning styles (characteristic ways of taking in and processing information); approaches to learning (surface, deep, and strategic); and intellectual development levels (attitude about the nature of knowledge and how it should be acquired and evaluated).

First, personal experiences and learning in prior courses have enhanced my knowledge in understanding the importance of designing, in order to, to support the needs of all students. As educators, it is important to understand that not all students learn on the same level, nor do all students have the same learning styles. They have different backgrounds, strengths, weaknesses, interests, levels of motivation, and approaches to the learning environment.  However, teaching methods vary. Some teachers mainly lecture, while others model instruction or activities using a variety of tools to meet the needs of all learners. Students may be auditory leaners, visual leaners, and kinesthetic learners, therefore, learning styles are definitely different since students are diverse learners in the learning environment.  As an educator I learned to incorporate the use of differentiated instruction in the learning environment to provide opportunities for all learners. For instance, in my place of employment, we review test scores, observations and assessments to assess students’ progress on an academic task and we are able to pin- point the student’s strength and weaknesses.

Second, we, as educators, have utilized a variety of teaching tools and instructional strategies which can be used for delivering learning experiences. Some of these include, the Internet, Computers, videos, Power Points, blogs, and Smart Boards in the classroom environment. The results from those observations, assessments and feedbacks, in the classroom, have aided in improving our performances, skills, and behavioral issues. In addition, students and teachers were both beneficial in the end results of data collected. Likewise, there is a great appreciation for the feedback received in these situations. As an educator, it helps to build on the classroom instructional strategies, as well as, help students improve their academic process. This method, not only, improves my way of bringing the lesson to my students, but it helps me to be able to do interventions to make sure all of my students’ needs are being met.

The main challenge I faced with this assignment is the fear and uncertainty.  As a student, I can truly understand how my students feel when there is that burden of not knowing or do not get the correct understanding of an assignment. Since my course of study, I have gained a lot of knowledge and understanding of using educational technology for the learning environment. I love working with my hands, and redesigning one of my prior assignments.

This sounds wonderful and would be absolutely grand if there were no doubts. However, I chose to make a Power Point on a lesson at my place of employment, where I work with Pre-K students. In this lesson, we are teaching them about the plant life cycle, which happens to be pumpkins. It’s that time of the year when our students get excited about Halloween. Based on this, I read back over my principles and theories to see if they were in line with the activity that I chose for this assignment. I could clearly see the connection with the assignment and the redesigned Power Point of the Connect Dot Activity that I used with the students.  I, also, was able to discover the need to keep students more engaged in the activity for learning purposes rather than allowing them to think it was for pleasure or fun. The lesson was all about the students understanding of how plants grow.

In conclusion, the personal experiences and learning in prior courses have given me more knowledge and understanding of the importance of designing instructional strategies to support the needs of all students. I am coming away from this course of study with an understanding that not all students learn the same way nor do they share the same learning styles. I am leaving this course with an understanding that instructional strategies must meet the needs of all learners regardless of their ethnicity. As an educator I gained a broader knowledge of incorporating different instructional strategies in the learning environment to provide opportunities for all learners.
                                           REFERENCE

Richard M. Felder & Rebecca Brent (2005). Understanding Student Differences. Journal of Engineering Education, 94(1), 57-72.