Week 4 Community of Learners - 3 Separate Assignments Education Essay
Assignment #1 "Personalized Learning and Meaningful Connections" (1-2 pages)
Read:
Excellence Through Equity (Blankstein, Noguera, & Kelly, 2016)
Chapter 7: Personalized Learning (Zmuda, 2015, pp. 135-154)
Chapter 8: Who Wants a Standardized Child Anyway? (Littky, pp. 155-162)
Chapter 9: Equitable Ways to Teach Science to Emergent Bilinguals and Immigrant Youth (Olivares-Orellana, 2015, pp. 163-182)
READ: Communication Norms: A Comparison of Cultures (Schmult, n.d.) [PDF]
In chapter 7 of the course text (Blankstein, Noguera, & Kelly, 2016), contributing author Zmuda (2015) expresses the importance of “shifting toward a personalized learning structure: one where students collaborate with teachers as learning partners to have a mutual stake in performance” (p. 135). Zmuda contends that, “while the original idea has become modernized, especially due to the advent of technology, the challenge of doing this in schools remains quite daunting” (p. 136).
Whether daunting or not, with the diverse classrooms teachers face today, personalized learning has become a necessity.
Olivares-Orellana (2015) states, “Meaningful connections with students can take a variety of forms…. Connections with students’ families are of equal importance. Whenever possible, an effort should be made to include the families and the community in the education of their children” (p. 167).
Respond to ONE of the following questions:
For this post, you will explore how to make personalized learning a reality in all classrooms.
How do you ensure the learning needs of every student are being met in your classroom?
In what ways are you able to know that your personalized learning strategies are successful and meet the specific learning needs of your students?
For this post, you will explore what forms of meaningful connections are critical.
How are families included in building an effective relationship between the teacher, student, and family?
How do you reach out to and engage with the parents or caretakers of the students in your classroom? And how do you know those efforts have been successful?
Support your statements with evidence from the required studies and your research. Cite and reference your sources in APA style.
References
Blankstein, A. M., Noguera, P., & Kelly, L. (2016). Excellence through equity: Five principles of courageous leadership to guide achievement for every student. Alexandria, VA: Association for Supervision & Curriculum Development.
Olivares-Orellana, E. (2015). Equitable ways to teach science to emergent bilinguals and immigrant youth. In A. M. Blankstein, P. Noguera, & L. Kelly (Eds.), Excellence through equity: Five principles of courageous leadership to guide achievement for every student (pp. 163-182). Alexandria, VA: Association for Supervision & Curriculum Development.
Zmuda, A. (2015). Personalized learning. In A. M. Blankstein, P. N. Noguera, & L. Kelly (Eds.), Excellence through equity: Five principles of courageous leadership to guide achievement for every student (pp. 135-154). Alexandria, VA: Association for Supervision & Curriculum Development.
ASSIGNMENT # 2- "The Same—Differently" (1-2 pages)
Two quotes frame this week’s second discussion:
“Treat everyone the same—differently.” (Littky, 2015, p. 155)
“Learning is to problem solve and think critically, to analyze and interpret different perspectives, to be creative and use the world as a tool to innovate, to be proficient in reading, writing, and math. Learning is expressing and working with the desire and interest to keep learning.” (Littky, 2015, p. 159)
Identify an idea you have generated based on your reading of this chapter that you believe you could implement in your classroom or professional practice, even in some small way. You might not be able to change the focus of the school; a major paradigm shift might not be in your control, but dream. What could you do that would result in the opportunity for deeper, more engaged learning for at least one of your students?
Reflect upon the quotes above by Littky (2015) and consider what two strategies you could use in your learning environment that would prompt your students to feel more adept at problem solving and critical thinking and enhance their desire to keep learning.
Support your statements with evidence from the required studies and your research. Cite and reference your sources in APA style.
References
Littky, D. (2015). Who wants a standardized child anyway? Treat everyone the same—differently. In A. M. Blankstein, P. Noguera, & L. Kelly (Eds.), Excellence through equity: Five principles of courageous leadership to guide achievement for every student (p. 155-162). Alexandria, VA: Association for Supervision & Curriculum Development.
ASSIGNMENT #3 -" ADVOCACY ACTION PLAN PART 2 ( 3-4 pages)
In Week 5, you will submit a five-part advocacy plan to ensure your community of learners is fully supported and engaged in learning opportunities that meet their diverse, individual needs.
For today’s assignment, you will submit Part 2 of your plan. *** The writer i requested wrote PART ONE last week . I will attach it again as he did it and this is the continuation.
Part 2. Educational Norms/Professional Interactions-
One of the challenges in the classroom/educational setting can be effective communication that works well for a variety of learners and a variety of messages. One strategy to help you ensure that your communication strategies are responsive and supportive is to develop classroom/educational setting norms that can guide your work as a community of learners.
In this section, develop a set of norms for communication that are appropriate for the age/content that you teach or lead ( 9th-12th Grade) . Be sure to identify exactly how you believe these strategies support the context you described in the introduction to your advocacy action plan. Your choices need to be attentive to the cultural dynamics that are present in your classroom/setting.
Support your statements with evidence from the required studies and your research. Cite and reference your sources in APA style.
Week 4: Community of Learners
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Week 4: Community of Learners
Assignment 1: Personalized Learning and Meaningful Connections
Personalized learning has become a necessity in the diverse classroom of today. Personalized learning offers an approach that equitably and broadly supports the efforts of teachers to empower the students as individuals (Blankstein, Noguera & Kelly, 2016). I ensure that the learning needs of every student in the classroom are being met by using a variety of personalized learning strategies. For example, I ensure that I provide a kind of learning that is connected to the experiences, interests, background, and development of each in the classroom. Through the use of personalized learning, I can understand the way individual learners in my classroom learn best and then actively inspire, motivate, and engage them with the right resources in the right medium, at the right time, and at the right pace (Olivares-Orellana, 2015).
The personalized learning strategies that I use move from a teacher-driven approach to a more student-driven approach, taking into consideration the four learning attributes described by Zmuda (2015). These include voice, co-creation, social construction, and self-discovery. Voice: I see every student in the diverse classroom as a valued and respected participant. In essence, the students are stewards of their learning. The empowerment of these students emanates from an environment wherein they know the power of their ideas and know the change that could occur when they are exposed to the ideas of others (Zmuda, 2015).
Co-creation: In my classroom with diverse students, the learners take on a major design role in the development of the problem, challenge, inquiry or idea. I invite them to co-create a personalized plan with the use of backward design principles. As the educator, I work together with them to develop an idea, problem, or challenge, spell out to them what is being measured/ learning goals, envisage the performance or product/assessment, and delineate the action plan to succeed in that performance to attain the desirable result/learning actions. Co-creation is not only restricted to the design of the curriculum. The learners also co-create whenever they help in developing a rubric for evaluating their work, designing the spaces wherein they work, and setting the rules of engagement. Regular student engagement and participation in co-creation performances and actions enable them to flex their creative and innovative muscles (Zmuda, 2015).
Social construction: Learners form ideas using relationships with other people as they develop, investigate, and theorize while pursuing a shared goal (Zmuda, 2015). Social construction takes place as the learners search for perspectives, ideas, and information for guiding task development by seeking advice from peers or professionals with an in-depth understanding of the subject matter and also by using other people as a discussion board for working through obstacles or ideas (Zmuda, 2015). Also, the learners share the outcome of their work, including their conclusions, synthesis, and creations, in order to provide perspectives, illustrate thinking, and guide other people.
Self-discovery: learners should know enough regarding themselves as this would allow them to make prudent and sensible decisions while navigating through the turmoil of a fast-changing environment. To be educated does not just mean to know various subject matters and being fluent in important skills. Being educated also means to have the learners come to recognize themselves as students and know more about what they want to do (Zmuda, 2015). As an educator, my major objective is for the learners to become self-directed students who can effectively manage themselves in various situations. By using these personalized learning strategies, the learning needs of each student in the classroom are adequately met.
Assignment 2: The Same — Differently
Based on the reading of Chapter 8, one idea that I have generated that I believe I could implement in my classroom is to avoid teaching every student the same content, in the comparatively very similar way. What I can do that would result in the opportunity for more engaged and deeper learning for at least one of my classroom students is to teach every single one of the content that is a little different from the content that I teach other learners, and teach them in a moderately different way; that is, not exactly the way I teach others. This is important because every child comes into the classroom with a different attitude, interest, skill set, personality, and background. Each child has different life experiences (Littky, 2015). The interests of every student in the classroom could be founded on what he/she, or his/her family, has experienced thus far in life. As such, teaching each one of them in comparatively the same way, the same content would ultimately produce a standardized child (Littky, 2015). By instructing every student differently, I will help them learn independently and differently. This will result in an opportunity for more engaged and deeper learning for my students.
Reflecting upon the quotes by Littky (2015), two strategies that I could utilize within my learning environment that would prompt my learners to feel more adept at problem solving and critical thinking and enhance their desire to keep learning are as follows: developing a learning plan for every student, and creating a curriculum rooted in the interests and experiences of the students. In essence, I could design a curriculum that instructs each learner the same, but differently. Each child in the classroom requires her/his learning plan (Littky, 2015).
As an educator, I recognize the fact that each learner has to maintain and improve studies in math, writing, as well as reading. I also know that they should learn how to be creative thinkers and solve problems. For instance, all students should recognize how to understand history and science in such ways, to be capable of thinking like historians and scientists. Even so, each learner should do this differently. I could develop a curriculum that does not expect a learner to adopt knowledge, but instead leads them to explore and discover their passions and interests to create their learning platform. I would focus more on inspiring them to want to learn and less on memorizing facts. This will enable the learners to learn how to look f...