Staring at my reflection while doing some research...

                                                    

Who knew it was different student-centered activities out there? You knew? And didn't tell me, I have been bamboozled. Well, better late then never, throughout this Reading. Language. Literacy course we came across three student-centered activities. Those student-centered activities are as follows: text rendering protocol, 
chalk talk, and jigsaw activity. Just to recap what these activities are, the text rendering protocol is a group of three or more that goes in a circle sharing one sentence, one phrase, and one word. This process allowed me to see my classmates biggest takeaways from the chapter. Chalk talk, hey! I know what you are thinking, chalk cannot talk same thing I said the irony is hilarious. However, chalk talk is when you have a facilitator who circle words to indicate when a student needs to elaborate and the facilitator must connect ideas. The words/phrases were main ideas or things from the chapters we read. Shhhh! There is no talking during this activity, there you  have it a contradiction of some sort. Jigsaw is such a creepy word I always think about the "saw" movies, but this activity breaks the class into groups, you have a home group and an expert group.  There is a reading coordinated with your home group that you read individually then come together with your group and discuss the article. Once you have a better understanding then you collaborate with your expert group, educating one another on your home group article. To finish it all off your expert group must create a powerpoint displaying your common themes. Now, let us be realistic there are way more student-centered activities that are out there we have to just search long and hard for them. All of these activities were fun and unique in its own way. The way these activities pulled the material from the assigned chapters together, providing the class with a consensus of what it was about. With all of these activities it gave me insight into how each of my classmates thought and their process on reading and understanding the text.

With that being said I did some research on student-centered learning and I found this interesting article called "The courage To Learn Student-Centered Learning," by Shirley L. Baugher. In this article there was much talk about her experience with online teaching and how there was a engagement in developing tools to exercise student-centered learning. Who could of known that student-centered learning can also be referred to as the flipped classroom? Totally insane, am I right? Encouraging this kind of learning in the classroom shifts away from the teacher and focuses more on the student. Now that student-centered learning is further evolving and becoming apart of the classroom, lecturing is criticized.  This can be understandable because sometimes lecturing is out right boring and should be a crime!!! Just kidding or am I? However, there are  downsides to student-centered learning, which is the act of institutions and teachers claiming to be putting student-centered learning to use when really they are not. So, "check yourself before you wreck yourself," "OH YAHHHHH!" The students ability to learn is not solely relying on student-centered learning, they also rely on teacher-centered learning. Nothing is black and white I guess.  Therefore, student-centered learning is available to help guide the class to develop a better, more fun way of understanding the content. 

Throughout this course we have learned content that relates to different learning strategies and can connect back to this research article. The main themes that were covered in the classroom and reoccurs throughout this article are as follows: collaboration, student learning, accountability, and participation. What is listed above is only a few main themes that I have noticed while taking this course and as I did research. There are plenty of more that can be listed, but I choose these four because they are what best fits with this content.

Follow me into the wonderful world of collaboration, everybody say it with me now “C O L L A B O R A T I O N!” That’s more like it. Back to what I was saying collaboration is one of the main themes that ties this content all together in a pretty little bow.  In the article Baugher explains what student-centered learning is about.  Baugher (2013) states,

I propose that a more useful presentation of student-centered  learning is on of collaborative learning… when she asked teachers to name conditions, they identified trust, a shared vision, and communication as primary (1).

When student-centered learning is being displayed in a classroom one must see the presence of collaboration. With that being said there must be interaction between the students. In this class there were many opportunities where we showcased collaboration. One demonstration would be the jigsaw activity, we each read our assigned articles then came together to discuss our take aways from our home group article, that way we were able to teach others in our expert groups on what the article was about. Once we met with our expert groups we collaborated to pick out key themes that were found in all of our articles and constructed a powerpoint as our ending result.

In between these sentences Baugher starts to question what collaboration actually means and what are the specific conditions. The primary answers she received for her questions were the ability to trust one another, agreeing on the same themes or ideas, and communicating ones thoughts. Well, if one of these three conditions are missing then the activity might be unsuccessful. 

Student learning is huge, well, of course it is this is the main subject. Duhhh! There was always a new student-centered activity presented to us when we came to class. So, student learning was kind of a big deal. We all developed our ideas from one another, making sure to elaborate on our thoughts. For example, the chalk talk activity allowed the facilitator to circle the other students ideas that they wanted them to elaborate on. Although we were not allowed to talk it gave us a chance to actually read the words and absorb what it meant through our classmates thought process. At the end of this activity students had a better understanding of the material and grasped the main ideas in those chapter. 

We needed to make sure that we read those assigned chapters before each class because there would be a student-learning activity. This reflects back to accountability since everyone needed to have those chapter read in order for the activity to run smoothly and efficiently.  Everyone was responsible for themselves and was expected to have the reading done. In this article it states, "Increased responsibility and accountability on the part of the student" (4). Student-learning is a way to develop a students accountability skills to make sure the work gets completed. 

Lastly, with student-centered activities it is expected that there is participation. In this course everyone participated, there was never a free for all which is noticed in teacher-centered learning. During teacher-centered learning students are calling out, not everyone has that chance to speak, or they do not feel comfortable.  There was one activity that was not mentioned earlier and that activity was "save the last word for me." In that activity everyone had the opportunity to speak, we went around in a circle and no one could comment until the speaker was finished. This made everyone feel comfortable about speaking because "everyone is doing it." That was such a cliche thing for me to say, #sorrynotsorry. This activity showed an excellent representation of students jumping out of their comfort zones for the sake of learning.

    
https://youtu.be/vJUJbdiuOlQ

I am glad that I had the chance to share my experience with you and I hope that you too would find it easy to share your experiences. Come on, I know you want to and I am such a good listener I promise. We want to know how do you incorporate student-centered activities in the classroom whether you are a participant or a teacher. These student-centered activities were easy to navigate while dissecting rigorous course content. It helped me develop my thinking process by listening to my classmates thoughts and viewing different perspectives. The way we all interpreted the class content differently engaged me even further into the wonderful world of literacy.

                                                                                                

Through these activities it allowed me to throughly understand the chapters and the content in its entirety.  With student-centered activities there is a collaboration, student learning, accountability, and participation. So, you are basically learning while having fun, it does not get any better then that. 

Have fun, come get you some... KNOWLEDGE!

That is all folks!

Reference:

Baugher, S. L. (2013). The courage to learn student-centered learning. Journal   

       of Family and Consumer Sciences, 105(2), 3.

Stand and deliver-It says, I say, So what?

There are plenty of movies in the world showing the audience their perception on the failing school systems and steps to fixing it. Fixing it means taking it one teacher and one classroom at a time to trigger a ripple affect. Take a look at "freedom writers," where Hilary Swank played an high school English teacher at a poorly; failing school. This school contained troubled students who were participants in gang related activities and they were classified as incapable of learning. Once they got an English teacher who refused to give up on them and showed them that they are capable of learning everything changed for the better. Hilary swank went above and beyond for her students giving them somewhere they can belong too. With all that being said I believe this movie derived from the movie "Stand and deliver," which holds similar attributes. The differences between these two movies are the subject matter that both teachers taught throughout the movie. Edward James olmos whose characters name was Jaime Escalante, taught high school math  to troubled students who hassled him and also had gang affiliations. Once he found a way to control his students and taught them the foundation of math he wanted to teach them higher math. So, he pushed his students to achieve more and gave them self-efficacy.
During the movie we were instructed to take notes on what was stated in the movie that really stood out. As the movie became more in depth there was a point where the character Ana wasn't allowed to return back to school. Once the teacher heard about her situation he immediately took action by showing up to her families business to speak with her father. It said "thanks for your concern, but her mother, brothers, and sisters work here it's a family business she's needed here". During this time period it was expected for all family members to help with the family business, so they can take over once their parents are gone. Perhaps in his case he didn't want her to continue her education because he did not want her to surpass him or even might of thought it would of been a waste of his money and her efforts. Although he may not wanted Ana to return to school he rethinked his decision  based on his visit from Ana's math teacher and decided to send her back to further her education.

In other news, Escalante's students were moving into learning a more rigorous math, calculus is the name. The only way they could move forward was to attend summer school, stay longer hours on school days, and attend Saturday school. This helped them prepare for the AP exam. This refers back to the concept in our previous class, putting an end to the summer slide. Students would be opposed to putting in this extra time to prepare for the AP exam because they rather be out doing other things. However, everyone actually worked hard and attended every session leading up to their AP exam. Their exam scores were astonoshing and reflected what they learned throughout the school year.
                                                 
Escalante students received great scores on their AP exam. Although that was the up side to them taking the exam, it said they must have cheated because of the scores they received and they all had the same wrong answers. The reason their wrong answers were similar was because they had the same math teacher who taught them all the same way. If they were in the same class setting as these students they would of seen that one point in the movie where all the students got the wrong answers. It was harsh to see these students who worked extremely hard being accused of cheating. It's always the question of how would the accusers like it if they were in their shoes?  So, they took the AP exam again to prove them wrong for accusing them of cheating where they received high scores once again.  I'm pretty sure the audience wanted to see the look on their accusers face and to see them reinstate those old test scores. It was from this point in time that those AP scores went up throughout the years.

Online jigsaw collaboration

Doing the jigsaw as an online assignment was very different from a in class learning environment. It gave everyone from our home group to read at their own pace, take notes, and then collaborate. What made it easier was that we discussed our articles through text, so it gave me the ability to go back reread what was said and grasp the knowledge that I needed in order to discuss it with my expert group (a group who is unfamiliar with your text and you have to tell them what your article was about). Compare this to having to talk in class about what we have read may go in one ear and out the other making it hard to actually learn from others take on the same article. The benefits with this activity is seeing other people's perspective on the same article through text and being able to bounce off of one persons idea. As well as elaborate on their ideas.

The challenge about this assignment may have to be the timing. Not everyone has the same schedule and we all had different openings in our schedule that made us all over the place. It made the assignment hard to get done. My expert group already spoke to their home groups and I had not spoke to my home group. This made my groups over lap in time, which meant we had to rush the PowerPoint. Although my expert group got it done, it was just rushed on my part. However, seeing the themes that my expert group found in their article made me sit back and go "oooooou". I would of never thought of the themes that my other group members thought about. It actually helped me think of my article in a different way just from the themes that was sought in my other groups articles.

Lol! This is so creepy, but funny. Not this kind of Jigsaw another kind.

You are going nowhere fast, No that's not it Ohh! Here where go "Race to Nowhere"

In this film it was many moments where I felt for those who were stressed out over school, well, because I have been there and done that. So not cool! Vicki Abeles showed her daughter in the documentary through her stressed out moments and the moments where her stressed turned into illness. That point in the documentary really resonates with me, being as though school has made me stressed out where I couldn't cope and would actually cry like Abeles daughter in the film. It will feel like I was competing to be the best, but I would fall short when it came to testing. However, where I lacked in testing I made up in the homework department. I would be up all night trying to complete my homework, always exhausted with the amount of homework I needed to complete, and I didn't have a life outside of school. This can also be seen in the film with Abeles daughter, so I can really relate to her situation.

In the beginning of the documentary there was a young girl who committed suicide and that right there made me want to take action. No mom should ever have to lose their child because of the stress of school is too much. I just wish that she could of been able to tell her mother the pressure she was under and for her mom to just say, "Honey, you are doing extremely great and if you need help or want help I am here. Many times it does not work like that and their children are actually suffering on the inside and cannot come out to talk about it. We have to change how our school system is conducted because it is one thing to have high expectations for our students, but to make it instilled in them that they have to be perfect in school is outrageous. Lets face it we all know that nobody is perfect and to teach our students that they have to be is not realistic. Also, if they get one bad grade or a low grade that it is not the end of the world, but the start of fixing where they went wrong to strengthening their skills where they failed at.

While the film was playing I jotted down some points that I will like to share with my readers out there. Throughout the documentary all I heard from those students were they wanted to be a doctor or lawyer, but is that what they want or what their families want them to be? What is the underlying reason for students to inspire to be like doctors and lawyers, will they honestly, truly (no pun attended) be happy? Why aren't we trying to expose them to other options that may be healthier for them as well as make the happy. Besides testing their knowledge on subject matters can we also test to see what they are passionate about and help them act on their passions.

Let us take a moment to think about all the non academic activities that can build on a students character and strengthen their real life skills. Work shops that help them identify what success actually is, since we see success as being wealthy, but is that all it is?

So, be all YOU can be and be who YOU want to be!

Ever used chalk to talk? Yeah, me either: Chalk Talk strategy

Today everyone was introduced to a new form of activity that helps break down and further analyze text. This is not the traditional forms of learning that we are all use to. It strays away from the whole idea of learning text traditionally. What I mean by that is instead of reading assigned chapters then the next day coming to class discussing what the reading was about, there was more of an emphasis placed on our knowledge and understanding. When the Professor first introduced "chalk talk" to the class I immediately thought of actual messy screeching chalk on a black board. Many emotions were flushing my body, the cringing of my ears when the chalk would hit the black board and like come on is utilizing chalk in a classroom still a thing? Well, maybe it is still useful to elementary, middle, and high school teachers.

Through the use of the circles and lines connecting to the key ideas or concepts reminded me of how I typically would learn a story or chapter throughout my academic career. It was called "brainstorming web" which is what I seen throughout this activity. This strategy was used to help focus in on the main concepts of what the story, chapter, article etc. is trying to convey to its audience. Then from the key points a circle was drawn around them and was elaborated on to further develope the readers knowledge.



This was my first time ever hearing of something like this, so this process was way different from the learning that I am use to. I found that this way of analyzing and learning helps me better understand what I read previously. Being active with the text and actually doing things hands on allowed me to be better engaged in this courses content. Now if I was limited to just reading and filling in a reciprocal chart I would be super uninterested. Through learning directly makes things to boring to me and hinders my ability to learn or retain the knowledge.

The challenges for this activity is the whole organization aspect, many groups had a page full of words that were all over the place. There was no order to follow students just begun to write until the professor told us to stop. This can be a hard way of learning what the story was about because everything is, so unfocused. However, through being unorganized these student groups were assigned a facilitator that stood back and guided our ideas to connect, making things flow rather smoothly. With being the facilitator it gave me a chance to see
where the two writers started their ideas and what stemmed from those key ideas. With the use of the writers knowledge I got a better understanding for what the chapter was about. Through them it shedder light on ideas or concepts that were unclear for me.

Once students were done jotting down their ideas the professor told us to switch posters in order to see the other groups perspective. What I really liked about the switching was we got to see the similarities as well as the differences. The other groups poster contained the same key concepts (some a little different). Although we notice the similarities with the concepts there were differences in how each student interpreted that concept. Therefore, our ability to recognize what is important is the same, but the way we choose to understand it and deliver it to others is completely different.
https://vimeo.com/101254151

Render up that text

Learning has much to do with who you are as a person, so everyone learns differently.  With the text rendering protocol it was dissecting and pulling apart the text. It was not just based upon what one person felt the text was about, but a collaborative effort. Being able to have the ability to work in a group helped me see different perspectives and not be subjected to my own view of things. This way of learning actually gave me a chance to see how others think and learn from my classmates. Who are we if we do not teach each other, if we do not open each other's minds to a new way of thinking?



 Do not fall victim to staying inside the box, please do not be a mime. SPEAK, LISTEN, and LEARN .  This was actually my first time learning this way I cannot recall a time where I did a text rendering protocol. So this was all news to me. With the text rendering protocol it was different from how I'm use to learning. It showed me to actually think about how I actually retain information from the things I read. Without this protocol I would of never understood if what I read actually stuck in my head and if I caught on to the key concepts of the readings. In other classes you are given something to read and take notes on and that's it...BORINGGGGGGGG!

There are many benefits to learning this way, so you might want to listen to what I have to say. Just kidding, no seriously, listen to me! I got a snippet of who was thinking what and why. It then helped me to get a better understanding of the reading that I did not have before. As I listened to what my classmates had to say, I learned new things about the text that I missed when I initially read these two chapters. It allowed me to recieve different perspectives on the same parts of the reading that my classmates thought was important.

This can hinder ones learning when comparing it to the course material because the meaning of the material might get twisted along the line. So, your understanding may end up getting confused. As far as it helping ones learning by giving everyone a chance to say their ideas and have their comprehension guided in the right direction. This can also help get students to think deeper about the course material if they are close to comparing key points/ideas between the materials.

The way this assignment is setup it forces students to be responsible for having their own part completed that way the discussion part runs smoothly. It paves the way for thinking differently and expands students concepts and understanding. This can help students add on to their peers thinking and expand their own knowledge. Being able to sit in a circle with a small group makes things formal and personal giving everyone a chance to speak. With everyone being able to talk no one is left out. It is also great that no one is able to speak and or share their thoughts during the group discussion which gives people a safe way to talk, so a debate won't break out. It stops from having a friendly competition where everyone is arguing or yelling to get their point across. Basically no one is right or wrong.