Carey Bassett EDAT 6115

           A high functioning classroom is like a well-oiled machine. An untold amount of decision-making and planning go into a classroom where expectations are clear, everything has its place, students are self-directed, and instructional time is maximized. These classrooms appear to operate with ease, but every detail is orchestrated and rehearsed, practiced and reinforced throughout the school year.           If I am honest, my first year of teaching was an accidental success. I did not know how I wanted procedures to look or what consequences I was prepared to implement when procedures were not followed. I didn't maintain consistency each and every day because I was just trying to figure it all out myself. My students were cooperative and motivated, so they were patient and receptive to my constant experimentation with how I wanted the classroom to look and run.           My sec...

          Does Ability Grouping Work? Isn't this a question we have been asking ourselves for all the years we have been involved in education?            My intuition and my observations have always leaned toward the side of ability grouping only benefiting gifted and talented learners.            From a personal observation, I know my own daughter benefits greatly from advanced and accelerated curriculum and problem-based learning opportunities that are provided in an advanced content model of gifted education. In the classroom, I have had "high performing" classes who I was able to push harder and to cover content with much faster. I was able to enhance the learning experiences for the higher half and hone in on the needs of the slightly lower performers. Then I have had classes where only one quarter of the students would be considered average performers. Every procedure, every concep...

      There is a time and place for individual practice and direct whole group instruction. It is also important to understand that, as supported by constructivist approaches, cooperative, student-centered learning activities can be inspiring and can improve problem-solving abilities. Student-centered learning requires teachers to plan for many scenarios and guide the learning with clear objectives. Much modeling of behaviors and procedures aids students in being successful and fully, productively engaged which prevents the often dreaded behaviors of group work gone awry.      I have found that cooperative learning activities such as jigsaw and think-pair-share help my students deepen their understandings of concepts beyond basic rote knowledge. My students, over several years, spent most of their time in groups of desks having collaborative conversations except rare occasions that they were required to demonstrate independent proficiency. This ye...

    One of my favorite activities with Pre-k students was our apple week. We sorted apples, tasted apples, diagrammed apple parts, read apple books, graphed favorite apples, and cooked with apples. The experience immersed all the students' senses and built an excitement that I am sure many of them feel each time they smell homemade applesauce. For me, the smell of apples and cinnamon take me back to one brave little boy who was likely to have a spectrum disorder. He told me all week that he did not like apples and that, on Friday, he would not try the applesauce. I told him that was fine but always encouraged him to take part in anything he would willingly do. Friday came, and he came over when I was handing out applesauce cups. I asked if he had decided to try it. He said yes but that he wanted me to give him a bite. I got a spoon of applesauce and held it for him to move his mouth to. To both my and his surprise, he actually put the whole bite in his mouth and tried to ...

      In starting year eleven of teaching, one thing I am sure of is that I still have work to do by way of implementing cognitive theories of learning to best meet the needs of every student in my classroom each and every year. If I thought it was challenging to meet the needs of around twenty first graders, I had no idea how tremendous the task would be with sixty-five to one hundred middle schoolers. The last year has shown me that it takes fortitude and resourcefulness to meet the needs of even a large portion of that number of students. Perfection is unattainable and unrealistic, but students, parents, administration, and teammates depend on my continual pursuit to improvement.      Understanding how thinking and learning occur within the brain as well as the differences in ways individuals process information, move items to long term memory, and resist interference are vitally important to choices in metacognition explicitly taught within th...

      No one appreciates fundamental understanding of behavioral and social theories of learning more than a struggling Pre-K teacher! That is where I found myself my second year of teaching. I wish I had read this particular chapter in 2014 when I was searching for behavior interventions for several students. Frustration and ineffectiveness were my middle name.      An understanding of reinforcements and punishments would have helped me in my most challenging year of teaching. My biggest weakness, after years of experience and reflection, was giving up too soon on a reinforcement and not recognizing that removal of the student from the environment was actually a reinforcement. If I had only known how extinction bursts worked, I would have been very successful in overcoming behavioral challenges. As soon as the extinction burst would begin, I would discontinue the reinforcement because the behaviors were so detrimental to the learning environment ...