Web 2.0 Tools

FEED THE FISH!!! CLICK ON THE BOX... THEY ARE HUNGRY AND NEED VIRTUAL FOOD!

Teaching a 1/2 day kindergarten program for the past two years has allowed me little, if any, time to introduce my students to technology. They have never even been into the computer lab at my school. However, the Boulder Valley School District is implementing a new Social Studies curriculum this year and technology is a sizeable piece of the standards.

I will be teaching first graders this coming fall and although they will be going to computer lab once a week, using blogs and powerpoints are just not appropriate tools of technology at this age, in my opinion. What is more appropriate is learning how to navigate the web and getting used to the keyboard and such things.

However, I have been thinking about how I could use a blog to communicate with parents and let them know of the happenings in the classroom now that I know how to set one up. Could be kinda fun... and the parents could post comments/suggestions after reading. Up until this point, I've considered myself to be sort of technologically challenged in the classroom, but I think I'm starting to come around. It's probably going to happen sooner than later, so I might as well get on the techno ball and start goin!

Inspiring and Empowering Students to Envision a Positive Future

Teaching is way harder than I ever thought. I just read another blog of a fellow classmate and she said that she was over tired, overworked, and under appreciated. Ain't it the truth!! Anyone who is or has been a teacher of anything has felt this way at one time or another. It's difficult to be inspiring to a class full of students when you don't feel inspired.

What inspires you to be a better teacher? Or inspires you to be a better person or friend or colleague?

Being a teacher of K and 1st graders, I feel a much more pressing responsibility now that I have taken this class to take the theory I have been learning and apply in into my classroom. This is where it all starts, when kids are 5 and 6 years old and they are beginning to form opinions about themselves and others. Where do I even start?

We have been learning about goals, goal-setting, and self-regulation in our class this week and it's given me much food for thought. It helps me process and understand the subject material when I can make personal connections with what I'm learning. I started thinking about goals I set for myself and how I go about reaching them. I do this in much the same way Alderman talks about, by getting the big picture (distal goal), then breaking it down into smaller or proximal goals.

Two examples illustrate this: The Will Smith video when his Dad knocked down a brick wall and told Will and his brother that they had to rebuild it. The end goal, completing (a big) brick wall was much too overwhelming, so they decided to break it down, focusing on one brick at a time. It took 1 1/2 years, but they did it. Another example is of myself and finishing up my MA. When my advisor emailed me my Comp questions, I started to sweat, get anxious, and let myself get totally overwhelmed in my own head. I had to do a lot of self-talk to get myself to a place where I could deal with this looming thing now hanging over my head. I told myself I would have 3 of my 6 questions done in the first two weeks and spend 1-2 hours a day working on the questions. My next goal is to have them done a week before they are actually due, which is next Friday the 9th. I reached my 1st goal (which felt very good) and now I'm in the process of getting to the distal goal, completion of my MA.

So, goals are important why? For our students, goals let them know how they are doing and give chances to self-evaluate, which is an important aspect of self-regulation. We should never assume that students know how to goal set - they must be explicitly taught how to do this. I'm thinking about having a conversation with my principal to brainstorm how we might address goals with our entire staff and how this could be helpful in motivating students and increasing performance. If teachers are well supported (with administration and parents) and we make it a a school wide effort, would this help close the achievement gap, even just a little? Possibly, but it remains to be seen.

While perusing the readings for this week, I was struck by the idea of possible selves, something I never gave much thought to. I have many students whose futures are unclear, thus affecting their current behavior by what is happening at the moment. One of my goals for the upcoming year is to really work on helping my students to develop adaptive attributions and foster their sense of self-worth and efficacy. This in turn will hopefully reinforce a positive view for the future.

I feel like I did a pretty good job with this last year, but knowing what I know now, I think I'll be trying some different things in the fall to guide my students to a place where things are good at school and they feel good about their efforts in school. Will I be able to do this for all my students? Maybe, maybe not. I would like to close my eyes and wish that I could be that teacher that every one of my students never forgets. That is my goal. If I end the year having helped and touched the life of even one of my students, then I am helping, even if in a very small way, enhance and empower our future generations.

Where do beliefs of ability come from?

An interesting question I've been pondering since reading the chapter on Ability. I started thinking about this because I have worked with 5-6 year olds for the past 3-4 years and I began to wonder how their little minds begin to shape perspectives of ability.

Does it begin in pre-school/kindergarten when first exposed to challenges, both academic and social? When do they begin to compare themselves to others and their previous efforts in these contexts?

What I understand from the book is that the little guys have a tendency to overestimate the likelihood of their success, but this changes as they get older. I had a little boy in my reading group that, when presented with a book, would almost always say, "This book is too easy", or "Since I can read the title, I know it's going to be easy to read". My response was, "Wow Adam, that is wonderful. Let's open it up to the first page so I can listen to you read". He would proceed to stumble when he came across unknown words and he would stop and look at me to tell him the word. Only then would he admit that some of the words were hard to figure out and the book was not as easy as he thought. I think he wanted to me to perceive him as a reader, but he wasn't using the strategies and problem solving we worked on every day. Was he protecting his self-worth or just overconfident because this is what kids do developmentally? By the end of the year, this kid was jamming and looking to me for much less help with decoding. I realize now I must have been doing something right by the feedback I was giving him. I would constantly point out that he was figuring out difficult words by using the strategies (finally!) he had learned. He learned that he wasn't going to just "know" what the word was by looking at it. He figured out that, hey, it really does work to look at the beginning/ending sound, use chunks of the word, and the picture to figure the word out. Attributing his success to effort.. sweet!

Alderman says that the beliefs children have about their ability become more complex as they get older and that "self-perceptions of academic competence decline with age". This is an important statement because I feel that I have a pretty big responsibility to begin to instill positive perceptions of one's self at this early age. The hard part is keeping things positive as tasks and social situations get more difficult from grade to grade. Keeping that motivation going.

I'm feeling that the key to doing this is not only creating the kind of classroom environment that reinforces that it's okay to fail and that you might have to practice something 20 times to have that one success, but also getting parents on board to be fostering this kind of environment at home. Parents can be one of our greatest resources, but we as teachers must explicitly share what we know now and what we are learning about motivation to help them help their child. I work at a very diverse school with kids from all over the world and I know it's not possible to get every parent on board. There have been times when I haven't even met parents until the spring because they are dealing with other priorities that don't include their child and school. So maybe we can make some suggestions in class/school newsletters or have a parent night to at least expose and get to some of our parents. My feeling is that if I can make a difference with one or some of my students, then I'm doing the best I can.

Influence of Attributions

So, do you like my little fish? If you click anywhere in the box, you will see what motivates them! They will also follow the arrow as it moves. Technology can be kinda fun..

My head is full of attributional thoughts and I'm feeling compelled to share a personal story and how it relates to the readings and my thoughts (even though it's non-academic related). First you need some background info... Gabe, my son (13), struggles with low-self esteem and low-self confidence, in academic settings as well as in his life in general. He would be the kid to try something once and if he can't do it well, he assumes he can't do it. Savana, my daughter (10), is quite the opposite. Give her a challenge and in the face of adversity, she will try and try again and has a very optimistic attitude about herself, school, and her life in general.

Now the scenario: Sunday afternoon at the bowling alley. I have bowled maybe 3 times in the last 5 years and never with my children, so I wasn't really sure what to expect. What I found were two very different reactions to the same scenario.

Now comes the illustration of the attribution-motivation process in action as Seifert describes it. So, Savana goes and gutters the ball on the first try, both times. Failure to knock down any pins (outcome), a little disappointed, but still a smile on her face (general emotional reaction), still optimistic (personal characteristic) -(causal antecedant), states she needs to throw the ball a little harder next time, which means put a little more effort into it (attribution), sees that this is controllable or unstable (attribution characteristic), is hopeful she will get a strike on her next turn (behavioral consequence - affect), and finally, proceeds to be persistent throughout the rest of the game, knocking down as many pins as she can (psychological consequence). Savana attributed her failure to internal, controllable unstable causes, in turn creating a feeling of confidence, hopefulness and self-enhancing emotions. She had a great time and scored a 60 something.

Now, in contrast, let's take a look at Gabe. He is up: same thing, gutters the ball, both tries. Failure to knock down any pins (outcome), scowls and mumbles to himself, "I suck, I'm the worst at this game and everyone will probably do better than me", (general emotional reaction), very pessimistic (personal characteristic) - (causal antecedant), states he will probably gutter it next time too, which means to me he thinks he has low bowling ability, (attribution), sees that this is stable/unchanging (attribution characteristic), feelings of hopelessness and low self confidence ensue, (behavioral consequence - affect), and finally sits on the floor in a pool self defeat, ready to quit (psychological consequence). Gabe attributed his failure to internal, uncontrollable stable factors (inablility), in turn creating feelings of inadequacy and hopelessness. He was quite mopey for the remainder of the game and scored a sub 60.

Funny how two kids grow up in the same house and are so different.

So now I'm thinking about how I can use a little effort and ability retraining that Alderman speaks of (p.55), and help Gabe to take responsibility for his failures and attribute them to unstable, controllable factors like effort. Yes, a challenging prospect, but one well worth the "effort". A mother's work is never done! He did, however, finish the game, attributing his one strike and a few spares to "luck".

From a professional perspective, I've come to realize that I need to step back and take a look at my own attributional beliefs and how this affects behavior and motivation in my classroom. I think in the future, after learning about all of this, I'm going to be more thoughtful and careful about how I react to students who are/are not putting in the effort that I think they should. I need to look at the big picture and consider all of the factors (previous learning experiences, ability, behavior, etc.) and really think about what is really going to help motivate individual students and creating that climate in an educational setting in general.

That is all for now.. until next week!

Thanks for reading!!

This is a test.. checking to see if I did this correctly!!