1. CEP 802A Ashley Shahidullah September 23, 2011

2. Observations  How have they been going?  Difficult/ easy  Just case study student?  Interesting findings? Have 1 person from your group bring observation folders to front

3. Plan for today  Instructional practices  C-R-A assessments  Meet TA

4. To gain real success for struggling learners, teachers MUST use instructional practices that are planned and deliberate. 4 instructional practices provide students with powerful opportunities to acquire understanding: 1.Using authentic contexts 2.Building meaningful connections 3.Modeling and scaffolding instruction using (C-R-A) 4.Teaching problem solving strategies

5. Students will: 1.See the value in learning the concept 2.Have greater capacity to remember what they learned 3.Be more likely to have cognitive access to the meaning of the concept Instructional Practice #1: Authentic Context

6. 4 important components: 1.The context must be age appropriate / relevant (cognitive and chronological age should be considered) 2.The context MUST be culturally responsive – should resonate with students’ language, family, and community experiences 3.The context MUST be of interest to students 4.The concept to be learned must be depicted clearly through the context, not hidden

7. Videos  4 th grade  How to make & interpret “bar graphs”  Explicit teaching within authentic/meaningful context

8. Teacher helps students link prior knowledge they have about video games to the concepts of data and graphing.

9. The teacher chooses a meaningful and authentic context –_____ _______– within which to teach bar graphs. ______ _________ certainly have relevance to her fourth grade students and it is something they all can relate to. This teacher ensured that only “appropriate” ____________were used as examples for this learning activity.

10. The teacher uses meaningful ________ objects (real video game boxes) to represent what they will collect data on and then graph. Providing such ________ references for students who have learning problems assists them in making a meaningful connection to an abstract math concept such as “data” or “statistics.”

11. She activates students’ ________ _______ from another subject (science class). It is important that explicit connections be made between subject areas where common concepts and skills are learned.

12. As the teacher refers to the concept of “data,” she not only says the word aloud, but also writes the word on the dry-erase board.

13. Teacher engages student interest for statistics and graphing by having individuals come to the board to count # of students who play each game.

14. The teacher ________codes each column that represents the different video game boxes. Such _________coding can help some students who have learning problems, particularly those who may have auditory processing deficits or those who have visual/spatial orientation problems.

15. The teacher instructs students to represent each frequency count both by drawing __________and by writing the __________ for the frequency value. Reinforces for students the meaning of the abstract number symbol.

16. Subtly providing several students corrective feedback as they are at the board, but doing so in a very positive and non-embarrassing way. Students who have learning difficulties often need such corrective feedback, and how a teacher provides this feedback can make all the difference in how the student receives it and whether they benefit from it.

17. The teacher cues students __________, _________ and kinesthetically by pointing to the tallies as the class counts them aloud and by circling and saying the number value of the tallies. She also reviews the totals for each category after all counts have been completed.

18. She engages the students in the learning activity by keeping them involved throughout the activity. Keeping passive learners actively engaged in the learning process is vital to their learning success!

19. Question prompts to guide her students’ thinking regarding how to represent a category for students who do not own or use any of the video games displayed.

20. Teacher teaches the purpose of data collection.

21. Ask key questions that activate student thinking regarding the connection between data collection and graphing data. Prompting student thinking by asking questions can be an effective way to elicit active thinking with students who have learning difficulties. Teacher has to provide structure as she prompts her students’ thinking. Simply asking questions alone will not “get the job done!” Questions should be specific in nature and should be asked in a way that allows students to relate the question to their prior knowledge.

22. Wait time” is an important technique. For students who have such processing problems, you and the student can agree on a subtle non-verbal cue that let’s them know you will be calling for their response.

23. Teacher describes and models how to draw the graph on which they will plot their data.

24. Explicit directions, using both visual, auditory, and kinesthetic cueing. She models “how” to do the task but also “thinks aloud” as she does this. Placing an “X” at the point where the “x” and “y” axes should be drawn provides students an excellent cue so that they do not get frustrated by the many lines on the graph paper.

25. Links the concept of the “x” and “y” axes to a previous lesson on this concept. Continually providing such explicit “links” to student prior knowledge is a vital teaching technique for students who have learning problems.

26. The teacher actively monitors students as they complete the task after she has described and modeled it. She circulates the room providing corrective feedback, answering questions, and providing positive verbal reinforcement.

27. Teacher describes and models how to label the graph they have just drawn.

28. The teacher does a nice job of cueing students where to write the labels by telling them to count down “3 squares.” She also writes the label on the board, a particularly helpful strategy for students who have spelling difficulties.

29. The teacher models writing the number that represents the total for each video game category, thus relating the abstract numeral “6” to the six tallies drawn on the board.

30. She monitors student work and provides specific feedback as well as specific positive reinforcement (e.g. “Nice block lettering, Matt”). For math skills, which usually have multiple steps, general positive verbal comments such as, “good job,” by the teacher do not let students know what step they performed particularly well. Specific positive reinforcement does provide students such valuable information about their performance.

31. Teacher describes and models how to plot the data the class has collected.

32. The teacher demonstrates a nice cue for gaining her students’ attention. ________________ Providing clear signals for gaining student attention can be very helpful when working with students who have attention problems or cognitive processing problems.

33. The teacher models how to plot the data and how to make a “bar.” She also models how to abbreviate video game titles so that they fit on the graphs.

34. The teacher cues students regarding how many different color pencils they will need to color in the bars on their graph. Explicitly cueing students that they will need a particular number of different colors and that they will need to color each bar on the graph a different color, prevents potential student frustration from coloring the bars the same color. Coloring each bar differently also accentuates that each bar represents a separate value.

35. The teacher circulates the classroom, providing corrective feedback, positive reinforcement, and re- modeling the skill as needed. Notice, especially, how she re-clarifies a confusing point for students regarding keeping the bars proportional in size. As she does this, also notice how she cues a student to listen by calmly walking toward his desk and cueing him to listen in a clear yet non-threatening way.

36. Students plot their bar graphs while the teacher circulates the room and monitors their work.

37. The teacher circulates the class, monitoring student work. Not only does monitoring student work help the teacher __________ evaluate how her students are performing, it also assists in the management of behavior by proximity control.

38. The teacher answers student questions in a positive and non-threatening way. Provides specific corrective feedback by re- modeling how to perform certain skills and then asking her students to perform them independently. She also prompts her students’ thinking with well- placed questions as she does these things.

39. When a student makes a mistake, she quickly explains to him that it is “ok” to make mistakes and that it can be easily corrected by white out. Re-assuring them that mistakes are a natural part of learning and that correcting mistakes is how we all learn can be of great benefit.

40. The teacher uses ample amounts of positive verbal reinforcement.

41. Teacher reviews the learning activity and provides closure.

42. The teacher again provides effective verbal and hand cueing to capture her students’ attention. The teacher does a nice job of prompting student thinking about, “most,” “least,” “how many games in all?”

43. When relating the word problem to the questions, the teacher highlights key words to cue students to important information in the word problem. Notice also that students work the problem at their desks as she has one student come up and calculate the sum. The teacher then states that the sum is “35.”

44. The teacher purposely engages students to extend their thinking about the data they graphed. She does this by asking students to relate the authentic data they graphed back to their lives, like trading video games at certain video game stores.

45. The teacher reinforces the meaning of a “bar graph,” a major concept she taught in this lesson. She does this in a very effective way, pointing out that the plotted data looks like bars. She shows one student’s bar graph as she does this. Explicitly relating abstract concepts to concrete images is an excellent way to help students who have learning problems understand the concept.

46. Research

47. Instructional Practice #2 Building meaningful student connections assists students in making meaningful connections between what they already know and what they are to learn in the present instructional lesson

48. Examples  Place value centers Place value centers  What’s the Price?

49. CRA Assessment  Assess 1 group member  Role-play  Teacher documentation

50. Mnemonic devices…  "Letter"  "Pegword"  "Keyword"

52. “Please excuse my dear aunt sally”

53. Next Week  Bring 3-5 Mnemonic strategies  Course Text – remainder of Chapter 9  Read Zentall article about ADHD