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Essay Instructions: Discuss an instance in your every-day life where you may have failed to target ones 'zone of proximal development' to scaffold learning, which may have resulted in the person becoming confused and/or frustrated. While it is quite normal to have never heard of the term before, you may now be able to reflect back on one of the many 'lessons' you have given to friends, family or work colleagues and understand why it wasn't a complete success.


Assessment 2, Week 2 Journal Entry

Essay Instructions: Instructions
Reflect on your responses to interview questions 6, 7, and 8. Using the theories of learning and information from Chapters 1, 2, 3, 4 and 5, explain the changes you will make to your responses to interview questions 6, 7, and 8. Each explanation must be 500 to 800 words in length and must use appropriate and relevant evidence from Chapters 1, 2, 3, 4 and 5. You may also cite information from additional articles used in class or referenced in outside reading.

Book: Psychology Applied to Teaching: 12th edition
Author: Snowman, McCown, Biehler

Paper Format
? Number all interview questions.
? The response to each interview question must be typed below the appropriate interview question.
? Your explanation to responses to interview questions 6, 7, and 8 must follow interview question and response.

SAMPLE:
6. How would you accommodate the different learning styles of the students in your secondary school mathematics or science classes?
I will accommodate the different learning styles of the students by …
Reflection and Explanation:
Vygotsky’s theory of cognitive development learning occurs when … . Accordingly, the accommodations I mentioned will need to be modified. I will use different and appropriate scaffolds …

? Font Size 12
? Font Times New Roman, Arial, or Calibri
? Double Spaced
? 1” Margins (top, bottom, right, left)
? Include appropriate in-text citations using APA style
? Include reference list of sources used in APA style
? Include cover sheet (see Paper 1 guidelines)
? Header with Last Name ??" Page # at the top of each page, aligned to the right
Center and double space the following information on the cover sheet:
Clinical Interview Questions Revision
Paper 2
Your Name
EDSE 3500.002
Due Date

My original 6, 7, and 8 questions and answers:

6. How would you accommodate the different learning styles of the students in your secondary school mathematics or science class?

There are three main learning styles that I know of, visual, auditory, and kinesthetic, which is a more hands on learning style. I have a very visual learning style so connecting and helping these kids will not be much of a problem. I think that solving example problems in detail will help the visual learners in my class. To help the auditory learners in my class I will explain the things that I am writing very loud and clear that way these students can understand what I am saying. I plan to ask the students questions frequently to make sure those more hands on learners are being involved, and also have them come to the board often to solve various problems that way I keep them interested.

7. Students will come from diverse backgrounds and have diverse needs. Describe how you plan to create and inclusive and assessable learning environment for students from various backgrounds who have different interests, ability levels, genders, students from whom English is not a first language, or students who legally require accommodations and/or modifications.

The first thing I would do in creating an inclusive and assessable learning environment for all students is first figure out what students legally require accommodations. I would fix my seating charts according to those who needed to be closer to the front to see or hear me better. I obviously could not figure out which students developed at a faster rate than others the first day, but after the first couple of weeks I would know and sit the more gifted students next to those who might not be on the same ability level in hopes that the more gifted could help me in teaching the lower level students. I also think that making the class be as encouraging and uplifting as possible would really help the diverse background problem not be existent. If everybody got along and we eliminated the criticism then the classroom could definitely function a lot better as a whole. The only way I know to really eliminate the criticism would be to discipline the ones criticizing. Making students feel as comfortable as possible no matter what their ethnicity may be would be my main focus when creating an inclusive and assessable learning environment. That way they are not afraid to get an answer wrong or ask questions.

8. A student is doing poorly in your secondary school mathematics or science class: what would you do? Note the tasks, plans, background information, or knowledge you will consider in helping this student.

When I become a teacher I plan to have before and after school tutorials to help those that may be struggling. I will probably work out some type of extra credit for the ones that actually attend the tutorials. So if a student were doing poorly he/she could have the opportunity to have one on one time with me so I could try and explain it a little more clearly. My mathematics teacher in high school used this system and it seemed to work really well from my point of view. The extra credit system really encouraged kids to come before and after school to get that extra help.

Essay Instructions: Sequencing Literacy activities

A description of a unit of work from a junior high school as provided below. However the sequence of the lessons will be jumbled. Your tasks are to recorder the sequence and justify your decisions according to both literacy and ?broader? education principles. Each part will need to be carefully analyzed for the key theoretical concepts that inform literacy-based approaches in secondary contexts. Students will need to apply curriculum planning models such as ERICA and the Teaching /Learning cycle.


Below here is a unit work that jumbled and Your tasks are to recorder the sequence and justify your decisions according to both literacy and ?broader? education principles.

The first thing the teacher does is to inform the students as to what the series of lesson is going to be about by giving the students the program and discussing the relevant syllabus outcomes.

All the different ?experts? are brought together into a home group. This group then has to share their information and complete all sections of the scaffold using full sentences.

As the students offer related words and phrases, she, where appropriate, introduces key technical term as substitutes for the ?commonsense? ones offered by the students and writes them down. Each individual student then records the words and phrases in the form of the semantic map in their workbook.

Next, the teacher, through questioning and eliminating, reduces the categorizes and establishes consensus on the order of information expected to be found. She also gets the students to consider the search terms that might get results. Once this in done a scaffold is constructed using the established order.

The teacher distributes some pollution case studies and proceeds to read them with the students following. Questions and discussion follow.

The teacher then produces a model text on a related but different pollution topic, which incorporates some of the desirable features of technical description.

Each group is to decide on the order that the predicted information would take. Spokespersons from each group then write down their group?s general category areas on the classroom?s whiteboard.

Each student in the group id then given a different category in the scaffold to specialize in or become ?expert? on. These ?expert? are then grouped together where they search for specialized information in their particular category.

She distributes the model, then reads the text and discusses the meanings especially concentrating on the purposes or uses of factual texts, the reasons for their ?objective? registers and their intended audiences.

The teacher then takes the students to the computer room where they search the net for information that pertains to their particular category. They add the additional information that they have found their section of the scaffold.

She doesn?t know how much background they have in the area, so she produces stimulus pictures of polluted environments, dividing the students into small groups and asking them to brainstorm possible words and phrases associated with the stimulus pictures.

The teacher then provides each student with a second, clean typed copy of the original scaffold.

She knows this might be ahead of where the students are ?at? but she is determined to help them acquire the necessary literacy skills for more academically-orientated work.

A teacher is about to start on a unit of work on the environment. Her ultimate aim is for her students to be able to comprehend and produce written factual descriptive texts on the subject using technical vocabulary and a scientific register as described in the syllabus.

She relates these concepts to the students? own writing and the notion of text and context in general.

She then deconstructs the model text highlighting language features that the students should try to emulate like complex naming groups, relational processes, consistent theme patterns and the avoidance of personal reference if they are to achieve the appropriate register.

She then sets another small group task: students are to predict what kinds of general information categories they would expect to find on environmental pollution if they where to research environmental pollution on the World Wide Web.

The teacher then call the class together and begins a large ?semantic map? on the board, introducing the key terms ?pollution? and ?environment?. She explains that semantic maps can be used in other subject areas as well as this one.

These features become the criteria for the written assessment component. Individual students have to take their earlier, scaffolded text and edit it according to the language features that were stressed in the modeling process. The final text is then submitted for assessment.

Students then have to transfer the words and phrases from their semantic map into the appropriate section of the scaffold.

The teacher then outlines the assessment procedures of the whole unit, which incorporate some negotiable aspects like due dates, length and mark weighting.

Essay Instructions: write 2 page essay to explain:

What is comprehensive literacy instruction?

How to scaffold children's literacy development?

Comparing and explain the comprehensive literacy instruction with your current one, have you got some insights for improving your teaching instruction?



Background Reading
Tom D. (1994), Teaching method: Best practice for teachers, Retrieved July 25, 2007 from http://northonline.sccd.ctc.edu/eceprog/bstprac.htm

Saskatoon Public Schools (2004),Balanced Literacy Instruction, Retrieved July 25, 2007 from http://olc.spsd.sk.ca/DE/PD/instr/strats/balancedliteracy/index.html

The TELUS Learning Connection , What is balanced literacy? Retrieved July 25, 2007 from http://www.earlyliterature.ecsd.net/balanced%20literacy.htm

Houghton Mifflin Company (1997), Useful Instructional Strategies for Literature-Based Instruction, Retrieved July 25, 2007 from http://www.eduplace.com/rdg/res/literacy/lit_ins4.html

GREECE School District, Scaffold students' reading and writing, Retrieved July 25, 2007 from http://www.greece.k12.ny.us/instruction/ela/6-12/Reading/Reading%20Strategies/reading%20strategies%20index.htm

Literacy, Information and Technology in Education (LITE) (2000), Exploring Comprehensive Literacy Resources, Retrieved July 25, 2007 from http://www.lite.iwarp.com/complit2.html