EDU 6150 Course Reflection

P1 – Practice intentional inquiry and planning for instruction

Throughout EDU 6150, program standard P1 was highly prevalent. The standard revolves most around the idea of unit and lesson planning and using a variety of tools to create engaging and standard-aligned lessons. We investigated various aspects of effective unit and lesson planning as well as ways to provide accommodations for all students within our lessons.

The assignment that resonated with me the most and gave me a comprehensive look at what we were learning was the mid-quarter lesson plan assignment. I have attached my lesson below. Prior to writing the lesson, I felt overwhelmed at the idea of writing and teaching lesson plans. While teaching my lesson, I gained more confidence in my writing and delivering capabilities. This eased my nerves about writing future lessons as I was able to successfully implement the ideas of pre-assessment, inquiry based learning, informal assessment and incorporating student voice to steer future planning and instruction.

By increasing my experience in lesson planning, I will be able to write and teach effective and interesting lessons to my students as well as be able to conduct assessments for myself in order to gauge how well my lesson worked and how engaging it was for them. Working directly with math standards and creating my own learning targets was a fun way to apply the things we had learned in class so far. The application of learning assignments is the most effective for me, as I am sure they will be for my future students as well.

One aspect of planning that I struggled with was using student voice to assess student learning. After discussion with classmates though, I found new ways to incorporate this skill into my planning such as using exit tickets as a survey as well as to allow more practice of the material. With future lesson plans, I will also be more aware of addressing the importance of each learning target. An easy way to do this would be to include “real world” math problems that pertain to that day’s learning target. I can prepare problems ahead of time as well as have students come up with their own scenarios that we can solve.

Overall, this course was effective and highly applicable for what we will be doing during student teaching and our entire careers.

DGleit Mid_Quarter Lesson

Special Education: Accommodations vs. Special Treatment

H2 – Honor student access to content material.

Special Education and it’s accompanying debate correlates highly with providing the most accessible education for students if they happen to have various impairments or disabilities. Both sides of the “Special Education” debate provide valid evidence for whether separation or inclusion in mainstream education for disabled students is the right way to go. While separation of disabled students may help with their immediate academic performance, in the long run, they may or may not have been provided the resources to succeed in the mainstream society that they live in. Similarly, abandoning students in regular education classes without any resources to accommodate their disability will lead to academic failure. I believe that keeping students in regular ed. classes is valuable for social and academic growth so long as appropriate accommodations are provided for the students who require them.

In reading Evans’ chapter regarding the special education debate, the example of eyeglasses as an accommodation stood out to me (2008). As educators we need to see that accommodations are not “special treatment” for students. They merely serve to improve or change how students access academic material. For special education students the barrier is that they are not able to access information in the same way as many other students. The Individuals with Disabilities Education Improvement Act states that students will receive an education in the “least restrictive environment” (1974). By working to alleviate certain restrictions, we can unleash the full potential of all of our students and provide them the thorough education that they deserve. Teachers need to accommodate this idea and not feel that special education students are a burden or not smart enough to be in their class. In most cases they are smart enough when they are able to access information in a useful way to them.

Evans, D. (2008). Issue 17. Is the Practice of Providing Accommodations to Children in             Special Education a Good Idea? In Taking Sides: Clashing Views in Teaching and             Educational Practice (Third ed.). New York, NY: McGraw-Hill Companies.

Individuals with Disabilities Education Improvement Act. (1974). Scheuerman. R. EDU 6989 Session 3 outline. Retrieved from https://mountainlightschool.files.wordpress.com/2010/05/issues-session-3a-special-ed.pdf

What Makes an Effective Moral Education Program?

H3- Honor the classroom/school community as a milieu for learning

In reading through Taking Sides-issue 18 regarding moral education, I tended to agree with the “yes” side of the argument, which gives eleven principles of an effective moral education approach (Evans, 2008). I feel that moral education in school is important but it needs to be done well. A well-designed moral education is one that is not “in your face”. It is subtle and based more in acting and exemplifying morally sound behavior. It takes a school-wide effort to incorporate this kind of education but in the end, it only serves to produce better-suited members of society.

An important aspect of a strong moral education is being able to define and expect good value traits. Not only does the definition need to be discussed but the traits should also be defined in terms of what they would look like in certain settings. A classroom can define what kind of rules and expectations they want to see but it is not until these broad and abstract traits are incorporated into the specific classroom setting will they take effect. Respect and politeness for example, are valuable traits to expect during a class session. The teacher and students together though, must break down the characteristics into tangible actions that reflect these traits. Respect can involve listening and not speaking when others are speaking, disagreeing with someone’s opinion or thoughts in a polite manner (perhaps give examples of ways to do this), and also politely agreeing with someone’s opinion. Setting these guidelines and providing concrete evidence of them promotes a caring school community, which will radiate throughout the school and further into the community. Students need to be shown and experience empathy, caring relationships and community building in order to be able to act in similar ways (Evans, 2008). Additionally, having these experiences at school is the closest thing to “society” that students may experience therefore creating a realistic environment is necessary.

In my classroom, I intend to have class discussions in order to set what moral expectations will be upheld and I will take it a step further in laying out those concrete examples of what each moral characteristic looks like. This will serve as a solid baseline of what the expectations are and it will also serve as a resource to look back on if someone is not upholding the standards that the class set for themselves. Overall, moral education is a touchy subject with much controversy attached to it, but I feel that we should leave out the politics and focus on creating well suited members of society on an individual basis.

Evans, D. (2008). Issue 18. Are Character/Moral Education Programs Effective? In Taking Sides: Clashing Views in Teaching and Educational Practice (Third ed.). New York, NY: McGraw-Hill Companies.