Teacher

Learning Without Tests

Some teachers are now choosing to provide a different educational experience for their students – a test free environment. Since there are many children and teenagers who suffer from anxiety related to tests, it makes sense to provide another way to learn for these special circumstances. Teachers can choose from a variety of ways to present the information.

By choosing to ask the students to give a presentation of the information learned, instead of having to answer multiple choice questions or write several essays on the spot, many students feel that the pressure is alleviated so they are able to focus and better understand. If the class is longer, students might be able to complete a project during school hours, instead of going home to work. Some teachers might worry that the assignments will be completed with the assistance of parents, siblings, or even the internet. Having the assignment be completed during the school day will take away any chance for this problem. There was a lot of talk in the news about the “No Child Left Behind Act” and how ineffective standardized testing can be to determine progress and learning.

The curriculum can still be presented effectively, so school administration won’t need to worry about these students not being ready for the next year of school. There are now even some colleges that are offering test-free courses, so removing testing from the classroom won’t take away preparation from the students. Teachers who choose this method might have a bigger job ahead of them, when ensuring all information is presented and understood. For those who test poorly, this is a great option to succeed in school.

Filed Under: Education, General Tagged With: No Child Left Behind Act, Standardized test, Teacher

What is Collaborative Learning?

In a traditional classroom, each student sits alone at their own desk and an instructor lectures and teaches from the front of the room. While in certain circumstances this can be an effective teaching style that children can benefit from, there are far more teaching and learning styles that you can implement in the classroom if you want to turn it into a more effective learning environment. Collaborative learning, for example, teaches more than just the course material, allowing students to learn how to work together effectively while reinforcing classroom material for a power-packed approach to learning in the classroom.

What collaborative learning essentially comes down to is group learning and learning where the students work together in pairs, small groups or large groups, striving to teach not only the material in the lesson, but also concepts of team work, group work, working together, and even themes of tolerance. There are many benefits associated with collaborative learning, so much so that this is becoming one of the most popular forms of teaching in many classrooms. It often leaves students up to their own devices, allowing groups of students to come up with the best course of action for solving a problem or addressing the material, and so you can come up with some pretty interesting interpretations of the classroom material in the process.

If you are teaching in a classroom where learning styles are very different, grouping students together for projects for a collaborative learning approach is often going to prove to be the best course of action.

Filed Under: Education Tagged With: Education, Student, Teacher

Learning Assessment In The Classroom

The assessment of learning in the classroom, allows teachers to understand what their students are learning and the best methods to use to teach them. The information gathered through classroom assessment, can help teachers plan and modify their teaching methods, monitor student progress, and identify strengths and weaknesses. It can also determine whether students are prepared for important placement tests, such as the SAT’s, and help students improve their own performance in the classroom.
Classroom assessments help students realize what is important in the learning process and what is expected of them.
Teachers need to consider several things while planning assessments. They need to determine what their learning goals are, decide what the assessment strategy should be, and take into account what evidence would prove that students were reaching the learning goals of the classroom.
The assessment strategy needs to be planned in the context of classroom instruction and each assessment should be designed around each particular learning experience. Properly chosen, well developed assessments will give teachers the best information on how much their students have learned. Assessments should be designed around what goals and outcomes the teacher has for the students and how to measure those outcomes to determine that they have learned the material. Assessments should be pertinent to what was taught in the classroom and relevant to the student’s real world experiences.
There are multiple ways to assess student learning and using several methods will give the best results. No single assessment will work in all situations. Each has its own strengths and weakness and each will give different evidence of what was learned. Since each student learns and tests differently, using multiple forms of assessment will allow for the best results and give each student a chance to prove what they‘ve learned in the way best suited to their individual learning style.

Filed Under: Education Tagged With: Classroom, Student, Teacher

Help Your Child To Be A Self-Advocate

With budget cuts happening in many of the schools districts around the country, students are in danger of getting lost in the crowd. You can help your child become a better self-advocate in the classroom by teaching him how to communicate his needs, goals, and attributes.
Before children can tell others about what they want and what they have to offer, they have to first understand themselves. They need to discover their own strengths and weaknesses on a physical, social, and academic level and how these things can impact their success in the classroom. This type of self-analysis may be hard for many children, and you may have to look for input from teachers to help with this step. Teachers often comment on how their students are doing on report cards. You can also use the critical analysis on your child’s graded work. Using a teachers input this way may help the child better understand how he is doing in the classroom. Once it is determine where your child might be struggling, you can help him set specific goals to work on those areas. Keep the goals narrow and focused so he doesn’t feel overwhelmed by them. Writing the goals down will keep your child accountable and help him feel that he is in control of the outcome.
Once your child is aware of some of the challenges he is facing concerning his education, you can look for resources to help him overcome them. These could be after school tutoring, peer tutoring, extra library time, or classroom websites that offer additional study aids. Keep your child involved in searching out and taking advantage of these sources. The resources that he is most comfortable with, will be the most beneficial to him. Like the list of goals, keeping your child involved will keep him accountable for his education.

Filed Under: Education, Teachers Tagged With: Classroom, Education, Teacher

Involve Yourself in Your Child’s Education

There are many things you can do to form a positive relationship with the school your child is attending and help him child succeed in the classroom. Probably the most important thing you can do is to get to know your child’s teacher. Set up a one on one meeting with your child’s teacher to discuss what your expectations are from them and for your child. Find out if your child has exhibited any behavioral or learning problems that need to be address, and what you need to do to help him overcome them. Establish an open dialogue between you and the teacher. Let them know what you plan on doing at home to aid in your child’s education and ask what they are going to do to meet the expectations you have for your child’s education at school. Ask for suggestions for activities you can do at home with your child to help them learn. It may be as simple as reading to them at night, helping with homework, or drilling them with flash cards. Just letting your child know that your are interested in what they are learning will go al long way toward helping him succeed at school.
Share your child’s talents, interests, and challenges with his teacher, giving the teacher a better idea on how to approach your child and maximize his learning experience in the classroom. If you have time to volunteer in your child’s classroom, discuss any special skills you may have that you are willing to contribute. In multi-cultural classrooms, it’s important for parents to educate the teachers on the differences in culture, what your values are and how best to communicate across cultural diversity
Joining committees and the Parent Teacher Association, will allow you to influence school policy and make changes that may better benefit your child. The most important thing you can do, however, is stay involved and keep open communication between you and the school.

Filed Under: Education Tagged With: Child Education, Education, Teacher

Fatalism in the Federal Education System

There are few people who would ever argue that education in the United States is exactly as good as it should be. There are fewer still who would say that there is no way to improve the quality of the schools, the classrooms and even the teachers in most areas of the country. Still, the problem lays when you start digging deeper and actually trying to find out where you can improve and how you can go about doing it.

National school testing is one way that has been used for quite some time to at least give our elected officials a way to judge how one area of the country or state is doing compared to all others but when we use that as an end all and a be all we miss valuable data. Having testing requirements and understanding what they mean for each school is not always a cut and dry area of the educational field. It becomes even less cut and dry when you start talking about the numerous different outside influences that can affect everyone who is involved in the educational process. If teachers know there are tests out there which make it virtually impossible to score high on these national tests they will either work even harder to meet the standards or simply surrender and pronounce it a futile effort.

When the teachers begin to accept a sense of fatalism, it isn’t long before everyone else involved from the school administrations on down to the school boards and the parents and students themselves decide it is a lost cause. When the educational habitat becomes one that is toxic for all involved no learning and certainly no improving at even the most basic levels is accomplished. Instead you have a system that begins to fold in on itself.

Filed Under: Administration, Education, Teachers Tagged With: Education, Education Bill, Teacher

Rebuilding the Education Habitat

When talking about an educational habitat, it can be important to really take a good long look at that term. When dealing with a habitat we aren’t talking simply about what someone calls their home or their living area. We are talking about a section of the world where people, in this case the students, teachers, school administrators and on down the line feel most comfortable.

Comfort in an educational habitat means learning and learning in a way that includes everyone involved in the educational process to feel as though they have helped in some small way. One way this education habitat can feel like a safe zone for struggling students is for the teachers to take an active role in the success or failure of the child. While some might say that is already being done, there have been studies which show that now more than ever teachers feel as though they are doing too much, not too little when it comes to educating children. The fact that education standards continue to fall shows that there may a disconnect here of epic proportions. Teachers need to realize that when a child is struggling in a subject it does not necessarily mean that the student has no interest in learning. It can mean that in a world that is telling most kids they should already know everything they need; this particular student is out of place.

Staying after school and offering up some of a teacher’s free time can mean the difference between reaching these students and showing them that I don’t know is acceptable to say as long as the following statement is but I want to. Teachers who offer up their free time are more likely to have students come to them looking for help and guidance than those who stop teaching when the day’s final bell rings.

Filed Under: Administration, Education, Teachers Tagged With: Education, Educators, Habitat, Learning, Student, Teacher

Modern Education In A Successful Habitat

: Image via Wikipedia

A new term that has come up in the education circles these days is what is called an education habitat. This means more than just where you go to school or the area of town where your school is located. Rather an education habitat is a place where everyone involved in the educational process feels at home and feels comfortable. Even this does not mean that a successful education habitat is someplace where the student feels they can walk into and put their feet on the desk or talk back to a teacher. And education habitat means that as far as learning standards are concerned, teachers, students, school administrators and parents are all feeling comfortable with the way the school day and year is going.

An effective educational habitat is one where a teacher understands that there are going to be different needs from each one of her students and instead of looking at that as a sign of weakness he or she sees it as their duty to meet those needs. A teacher who may even be able to come up with additional time in their day to stay after school and help a student who is struggling can be one of the most effective forms of keeping their habitat safe.

Teachers who understand that sometimes there needs to be a different study plan laid out for a student are the same ones who have some of the best class test scores in the country. Not everyone learns information the same way. A teacher who approaches their day as if the failure to succeed by some students is nothing more than stubbornness are the ones who will not last all that long in an effective educational habitat. Teachers who can adapt to their surroundings not only survive and flourish but contribute greatly to the construction of their habitats.

Filed Under: Administration, Education, Teachers Tagged With: Education, Educators, Student, Teacher

Educational Habitat and the Quality of Education

Study after study, survey after survey and test after test show that the quality of student’s surroundings directly equate to how much and how well that student will learn. If a school is falling down around the student, in effect the school district is saying they don’t really care what sort of state the buildings are in, the students will be far behind their age level peers in schools that have better upkeep. Teachers that are scraping the bottom of the barrel for text books and supplies will find students who are either barely attending classes, not attending at all or when they do attend could care less about the subject that is being taught.

Not surprisingly, most of the educational habitats that are negative for both the student and the teacher are occurring more and more in urban areas with high population base and a high poverty rate. Even public schools that have higher donations by student families as well as better funding from the city, county and state in urban areas do quite a bit better that schools that may be located just a few miles away but is suddenly located in the magical bad part of town.

Students can tell when they are being ignored or not cared about and most of those students will respond by not caring about their school or their own academic achievements. Educational habitat means more than just where they go to school, it means the feeling they get when they enter that school or the classroom. If a feeling of apathy surrounds the school, it should not be on the student to break through the torpor. If a school is falling down around a student’s ears it is not something that fools students into thinking the school district cares about them. The apathy is catching and it’s catching quickly.

Filed Under: Administration, Education, Teachers Tagged With: Education, School district, Student, Teacher

A Generation Of Children Left Behind?

Perhaps the biggest debate to hit the United States education system was the passage of the No Child Left Behind Bill. The act, known as NCLB, was designed to improve the educational standing of our students by setting high goals at the state level and testing students. States who wished to continue receiving funding from the federal government were required to participate.

NCLB immediately came under fire. A heated debate between its supporters and those who believed it would do more harm than good ensued. Supporters point to test results that seem to prove that students taught under this system perform better. They also believe that the standards, which were set at the state level, were more ambitious than the standards traditionally set at the local level. In other words, students under NCLB were better prepared and better educated. While the system doesn’t set federal standards, it tests students at regular intervals to access progress and performance.

Opponents of the bill believe it has been a total failure and has forced educators to teach to the test. In other words, teachers focus their education efforts solely on teaching students the material covered in the next standardized test. Other complaints include gaming the system under which administrators reclassify students to produce more favorable statistics and thus generate more federal funding and unrealistic goals.

Because this system is still in place today’s students are effectively caught in the middle. Teachers may feel forced to teach to the test instead of instructing students in real life or inquiry based lessons. Administrators are forced to focus on standardized testing in order to receive adequate funding. Parents have little say in this matter. This environment may very well produce graduates who are ill prepared for either the college world or the work place. Perhaps it is time to leave behind No Child Left Behind.

Filed Under: Administration, Education, Teachers Tagged With: Education, NCLB, Student, Teacher