Chapter 8

Reinforcing Effort

The instructional strategy of reinforcing effort enhances students' understanding of the relationship between effort and achievement by addressing their attitudes and beliefs about learning.
Some recommendations for classroom practice are:
Explicit teach student about the importance of effort
have students keep track of their effort and achievements

These recommendations are very important to teach students so they can determine the difference of good work. Technology makes it easier for students and teachers to track the effects of effort and facilitates more immediate feedback.

Spreadsheet software

Spreadsheet software is a good tool to help students make the connection between effort and achievement.

A good idea for the students to track their achievement is by creating a spreadsheet of all the activities and have them track their progress
Spreadsheets like Microsoft excel can be used in many different ways and not just for grading. When doing projects, they are very helpful for organizing data as well as making check lists.

Chapter 6 Summarizing and Note Taking

Generalizations
To effectively summarize, students must delete some information, substitute some information, and keep some information.

To effectively delete, substitute, and keep information, students must analyze the information at a fairly deep level.

Be aware of the explicit structure of information is an aid to summarizing information.

Recommendations for classrooms

Word Processing Applications
A word processor is a computer application used to produce printable material.

One recommendation is to use rule based summarizing. This strategy provides students with a process to apply as they summarize and guides them. “Track changes” allow teachers and students to cross out any redundant information in a paragraph.

Organizing and Brainstorming Software
Inspiration

Multimedia
Enhance and present their summaries and notes

Web Resources
Some web resources put summarizing and note taking together

Communication Software
Helps students collaborate as they take notes and summarize
Wikis Blogs-effective way to implement the strategy of reciprocal teaching

Classroom Ideas
I would like to use the word processor in my classroom. This would be a great way to introduce the students on how to “eliminate” information that is not needed while summarizing. This program allows you to cross out information that is not needed.

Also brainstorming as a class is very important. Inspiration or kidspiration are great tools to use. If we were doing a unit on sea life, we could organize different sea animals according to what they eat.

Chapter 7

Cooperative Learning

• Cooperative learning focuses on having students interact with each other in groups in ways that enhance their learning. When they work in cooperative groups, they make sense of and construct meaning for, new knowledge by interacting with others.

Some of the key components should include, but not limited to:

1. Positive interdependence ( sink or swim together)
2. Face to face, promotive interaction ( helping each other learn)
3. Individual and group accountability ( each has to contribute to the group achieving its goal)
4. interpersonal and small group skills ( communication, trust, leadership, decision making, conflict resolution)
5. Group Processing ( reflect on how well the team is functioning and how to function even better)

I think that these are very important to teach students while they are in school because when they get out in the working world, if they don't know how to interact and work with others, they are going to have a rough time in the real world.

Multimedia

Student created multimedia is a natural environment for cooperative learning
Some examples of multimedia to include in the classroom for cooperative learning are:

• Key pals- Communication with students in other cities, states and countries broadens the perspective of students and challenges them to learn about other cultures, languages, and issues throughout the world.

Some websites for key pals to try:
www.epals.com
www.worldkids.net/clubs/kci

Two technologies in the classroom:
I would like to utilize keypals in the class room possibly during a thematic unit or when teaching about diversity and give the students different places around the country. They give you such shorts amount of time to teach in the classroom now that it would be a really simple way for the kids to just resourcing and ask questions I may not even be able to answer. It is a lot easier than penpals and you probably get quicker responses too so the students can communicate more.
The second technology I would use are the blogs. I think it is a great way to store notes for the students or post new assignments and activities especially when programs such as blackboard are not provided for the school.

Chapter 5

NONLINGUISTIC REPRESENTATION

"Nonlinguistic" refers to mental images and physical sensations as opposed to language ("linguistic"). This enhances students' ability to use mental images to represent and elaborate on knowledge.

Word Processing Applications

• Positive with English language learners because clipart and photos can easily be inserted, which helps them to understand the content better. Children also get more out of notes when there are pictures with them.
• Word processing applications put a new twist on note taking and makes it more interactive and interesting for the children. It's also easy to make copies of the final document of notes and give it to the children.

Spreadsheet Software

• These are beneficial to use when you need graphs and charts.
  This might be better for older students for the most part. It would be a really good idea though, for teachers in classrooms with older children to work with graphs and charts with them, transferring data from one form to another and seeing the different ways to view things.

Organizing and Brainstorming Software

• This software gives students and teachers ways to create a variety of description patterns to build an understanding of new words and complex systems. This will favor students who are visual learners.

Data Collection Tools

• Technology provides students opportunities to go beyond traditional ways of collecting data.

Multimedia

• This is one of the most effective forms of non-linguistic representation. Movies and videos help students become engages in contend.
  

CLASSROOM IDEAS:
One good idea would be to use an organizing and brainstorming software like Kidspiration to get younger elementary students started on reports or other assignments. You could get them started by filling in several of the bubbles and leaving some for them to fill in themselves. It would be a good way to give them direction for where they should go with their assignment. It would also help them to get used to the program so that they can do more with it later as opposed to starting from scratch with it.

Another idea would be to have the children make videos about their unit. They could set it up as interviews, skits, news reports, or anything else they can think of (as long as it's ok'd by the teacher) to demonstrate their knowledge on the unit. These could be shared with the class. It would be fun for them to have their classmates watch a video they created, and their learning could be reinforced by watching their peers videos, because it could help them remember the material.

Chapter 4

CUES, QUESTIONS, AND ADVANCE ORGANIZERS

Here is a general idea of what these three instructional strategies are:

• CUES: Explicit reminders or hints about what students are about to experience
• QUESTIONS: Trigger students' memories and help them to access prior knowledge
• ADVANCE ORGANIZERS: Structures provided to help students make sense of new content.

There are several different programs that can be used in order to incorporate these things into your lessons:

Word Processing Applications:

• Great for using expository, narrative or graph organizers. You could have the children make brochures and programs, write stories, articles and artistic works, or create tables and charts. These things will help them to stretch their minds and get a better understanding of the material that you will be covering.
  
  ...[For very lower elementary students, most of this might be a little bit to advanced, and you may
  wish to simplify the assignments for them. Kidspiration might be helpful.]
  ...[These would be good things to use, because they can easily be electronically shared among
  the students so that they can review the information that their peers gathered as well as their own.]

Spreadsheet Software:

• This is good for making rubrics to prepare students to apply their abilities and knowledge. Use the table-making features in order to insert your choice criterion into the rubric so that the students know what you are looking for before they start their assignment.

Organizing and Brainstorming Software:

• When you use cues, they should be very straightforward.
  ...[This is especially important with very young elementary students. If you leave it up to them to pick up on hints, you're not going to get the results you're expecting from them.]
  
  
• There are helpful tools within this software that lets you insert clip art, photographs, and other visual aids to enhance the students' understanding. This software is also extremely helpful for any student, because auditory learners can listen to information, and visual learners can study pictures and videos.

• Programs such as Inspiration and Kidspiration can be used to help the students organize their own information they've found, or else you can start one for them and leave areas blank, so it works as a type of study guide/guided note-taking activity.

Multimedia:

• This helps children to retrieve knowledge they've previously gained on the topic and also develop a mental model to help them understand new information. Studies have shown that when a PowerPoint is utilized in presenting information to students, the students remember more of the information.
  ...[This is something that can used with students at any level, younger or older]

• Another helpful thing to use in lessons is videos. Here are a couple of sites to search them:
  ...United Streaming
  ...Google Video
  One of many good things about using sites like this is that it wouldn't be hard for the students to go home and view the same thing as in class on their own computers.
  

In using these techniques in the classroom, it is important to use Bloom's Taxonomy in mind in order to keep your practices developmentally appropriate and also make sure that you are challenging the children. Here is a good website from the University of Texas that will help you to come up with cues and questions that go with each level of Bloom's Taxonomy.