Meet Me in the Middle: Chapter 15

Chapter 15: This chapter seems to build off of the chapter that we read in TP2000. Communication with parents is very important as a teacher especially in the middle grades. It is important to communicate how their child is doing in school, not only the bad but also the good. It might even be helpful to just let parents know what the homework for the day is. By doing this and keeping parents in the loop you will be able to build better relationships with students parents. In the book, there are several techniques to keeping parents in the loop. Now-a-days, online is always an option and probably the most likely to be used. Other ways suggested were a newsletters, surveys, postcards, etc.

Turning Point: Chapter 9

Chpater 9: In this chapter, the involvement of parents and the community was the main focus. Involving the parents is a great way to strengthen your teacher to student relationship and is a great way to start a parent to teacher relationship. I think that it is very important to incorporate parents in a childs education as sometimes they are just as much the teacher as we are. I also think that it is important to gauge how much support a student recieves from their home and parents. This could be a good indicator of problems that may arise in school. It is important to involve the community as well as this is where students will end up. They can show their work and this will help students develop into good citizens.

Boys and Girls Learen Differently

The two activities that we did in the beginning of the presentation were really cool. I liked how each activity demonstrated to some degree the differences between the thought process and problem solving processes between boys and girls. The rest of the presentation went really well although I did not see the connection between some of the topics and the activities that we did at the beginning. It was also a little hard to get a good idea of what each station had to present as the noise level was a little high for some and others the time was cut short. Overall I think that they did a good job presenting and I enjoyed most of it.

Student Oriented Curriculum

From what I gather, this book fosuced on assessment and curriculum. There were some really neat ideas about having students create portfolios and have student lead conferences. I like this idea a lot and I think that it is important that students are able to take on more of this responsibility as they grow and mature into young adults. I know that in higher grade levels of my education students started to maek their own portfolios. It was cool as students would know as soon as they got a piece of work back whether they were going to use it in their portfolios or not. It was also a really good way for us to gauge our understanding and mastery of material.

A Whole New Mind

I really enjoyed this book presentation. I thought that all the presentors did an excellent job finding and presenting resources that were relevant to their sections. One of the things that I enjoyed was that even though we were learning about the book we were also learning about ourselves and what our strengths and weaknesses were. For example, I found it very interesting how I was extremely right brained. I mean it made a lot of sense and helped explain why I learn the way the I do. I also really liked the empathy test. I found it very interesting to see not omly my outcome but the outcome of others in my group.

Turning Point: Chapter 8

Chapter 8: Creating a healthy and safe learning environment for your students is one of the most important things a that a teacher can do to me. In the book, it talks about the importance and role of rules in the classroom. Not only do they help set guidelines for appropriate behavior but they are also a way to ensure student safety. The importance of health and physical education in schools is also brought up. I completely agree and think that every student should be able to have at least 30 minutes a day to get some sort of exercise. Not only to help them stay physically fit but to help them de-stress and to improve academically.

Turning Point: Chapter 4

Chapter 4: In this chapter the importance of differentiated instruction was talked about. Something that goes right along with differentiated instruction is teh idea of tracking, which is also mentioned in the chapter. In many of my other education classes we have been discussing the concept of tracking and whether or not it is still beneficial to the public school system anymore. This was also talked about in the film "Waiting For Superman." I feel that differentiated instruction is designed to teach speciffically to those who are not in a tracking system. Yes you could use the differentiated instruction in a tracked classroom but I think that it would be most effective in a non-tracked system. The use of differentiated instruction in a non-tracked classroom will help your students reach their full potential and will help you as a teacher reach your full potential.

Meet Me in the Middle: Chapter 8

Chapter 8: Assessments in the classroom should promote learning rather than using assessments as a way of measuring learning. I agree with this statement. I think that it is important to check for student understanding but to do it in a variety of ways. Effective assessments should be motivating and have clear goals. By giving students the test to a unit or lesson before you even start is one way to help students know exactly what they need and are expected to know. The chapter also mentions that it is important to not only assess students via testing. I completely agree with this. I think that you can and should assess students through group activities, individual activities, projects, etc. I hope to incorporate these ideas into my classroom.

Meet Me in the Middle: Chapter 7

Chapter 7: This chapter focuses on differentiated instruction and how it is useful in the classroom. Differentiated instruction can be viewed differently depending on the educator. I think that it is important to use differentiated instruction as best as you can to fit your lesson or unit. There is also a list of characteristices of successful teachers who use differentiated instruction. I am glad that I can use this list of characteristices on myself in my own classroom. I also think that this would be a good place to start if I need to review my teaching strategy and I can use this as a checklist to hold myself accountable.

Meet Me in the Middle: Chapter 6

Chapter 6: This chapter focuses on three major parts; holding students accounatble, holding ourselves responsible and responding to the standards. There are many suggestions in the book of ways to have students be accountable for their work. One way to help students take pride and interest in their work is to display it in the school. Holding our selves accountable is probably the harder of the two. Usually when things go wrong teachers blame everything else when in reality we need to take a step back and examine our lessons, units, skills, activities, etc. It is also important that, even if you personally do not agree with the standards, we as teachers try our best to work positively with them. This will help us reach common goals nation wide and eventually world wide.