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Complementary sharing or our MA in SEL class called Cognition and Emotion

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It was a pleasure sharing and learning with you all today. Thanks for a great experience.

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It was a pleasure sharing and learning with you all today. Thanks for a great experience.

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Dimension U - Free if you live in New Jersey

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Dimension U - Free if you live in New Jersey

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DimensionU is esports for education!

Our first-person, multiplayer games focus on core math and literacy skills for grades 3-9 and are aligned to standards to support instruction.

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DimensionU is esports for education!

Our first-person, multiplayer games focus on core math and literacy skills for grades 3-9 and are aligned to standards to support instruction.
Learn More about DimensionU

New Jersey Residents Click Here:

DimensionU offers three exciting multiplayer games playable on the web or mobile devices. Each game allows access to all DimensionU curriculum levels, making it easy for students of varied grade and skill levels to "GET IN THE GAME" with one another. DimensionU provides academic support and promotes critical thinking skills.

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Click to view the MATHEMATICS or LITERACY content included in DimensionU Games.

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DimensionU is esports for education! Our first-person, multiplayer games focus on core math and literacy skills for grades 3-9 and are aligned to standards to support instruction. Learn More about DimensionU New Jersey Residents Click Here: DimensionU offers three exciting multiplayer games playable on the web or mobile devices.

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Have you ever taken a moment to step back and think, "Why did I just do that?" Self-reflection is a simple way to dig deeper into your feelings and find out why you were doing something or feeling a certain way.

With a profession as challenging as teaching, self-reflection offers teachers an opportunity to think about what works and what doesn't in their classroom. We teachers can use reflective teaching as a way to analyze and evaluate our own practices so we can focus on what works.

Why is Self-Reflection So Important?

Effective teachers are first to admit that no matter how good a lesson is, our teaching strategies can always be improved-oftentimes it's why we seek out our colleagues' opinions. However, we run the risk of our audience making snap judgments about our instruction without truly having the context to support it. Self-reflection is important because it's a process that makes you collect, record, and analyze everything that happened in the lesson so you can make improvements in your teaching strategies where necessary.

The Process of Reflection

Connecting self-reflection to effective teaching is a process. The first step is to figure out what you want to reflect upon-are you looking at a particular feature of your teaching or is this reflection in response to a specific problem in your classroom? Whatever the case may be, you should start by collecting information. Here are a few ways that you can do this:

Self-Reflective Journal

A journal is an easy way to reflect upon what just happened during your instruction. After each lesson, simply jot down a few notes describing your reactions and feelings, and then follow up with any observations you have about your students. If it helps, you can break up your journal into concrete sections, such lesson objectives, materials, classroom management, students, teacher, etc. In this way, you can be consistent with how you measure your assessments time after time. You can find specific questions to ask yourself below.

Video Recording

A video recording of your teaching is valuable because it provides an unaltered and unbiased vantage point for how effective your lesson may be from both a teacher and student perspective. Additionally, a video may act as an additional set of eyes to catch errant behavior that you hadn't spotted at the time. Many colleges actually use this method to teach up-and-coming teachers the value of self-reflection.

Student Observation

Students are very observant and love to give feedback. You can hand out a simple survey or questionnaire after your lesson to get students' perspectives about how the lesson went. Think critically about what questions you'd like to ask, and encourage your children to express their thoughts thoroughly. It'll not only be a learning experience for you, but also an indirect exercise in writing for them.

Peer Observation

Invite a colleague to come into your classroom and observe your teaching. Now this is much different and more relaxed than when you have your principal come in and watch you. As a result, you'll be able to teach more naturally and give your colleague an honest perspective of your instruction methods. To help them frame your lesson critique more clearly, create a questionnaire (you can use some of the questions below) for your colleague to fill out as they observe. Afterward, make some time to sit down with them so they can more accurately convey what they saw.

Questions to Ask Yourself

Whether you're using a self-reflective journal or trying to get feedback from your students and peers, perhaps the hardest part is actually coming up with the right questions to ask. Here are a few suggestions to get you started:

Lesson Objectives

Was the lesson too easy or too difficult for the students?

Did the students understand what was being taught?

What problems arose?

Materials

Did the materials keep the students engaged in the lesson?

What materials did we use that worked in the lesson?

What materials did we use that didn't work in the lesson?

Are there any resources or techniques that you'd like to see used instead?

Students

Were students on task?

With what parts of the lesson did the students seem most engaged?

With what parts of the lesson did students seem least engaged?

Classroom Management

Where my instructions clear?

Was the lesson taught at a reasonable pace?

Did all students participate in the lesson?

Teacher

How effective was the overall lesson?

How can I do it better next time?

Did I meet all of my objectives?

How did I deal with any problems that came up during instruction?

Was I perceptive and sensitive to each student's needs?

How was my overall attitude and delivery throughout class?

Analyze and Implement Effective Techniques

Now that you have collected the information and student data, it's time to analyze it. The first thing you should look for is any recurring patterns. If you video recorded your lesson, did you find anything that kept happening over and over? Look at your student feedback forms. Is there anything that students kept talking about?

Now that you have figured out what needs to be changed, you need to find solutions. There are a few avenues I would encourage you to explore:

Talk to your colleagues about your findings and ask them for advice. They may have the same issue in their classroom and can offer you some ideas on how do things differently.

Go online and read up on effective techniques that can help remedy your situation. As an age-old profession, there are bound to be resources that exist for the problems you're experiencing.

Interact with other teachers on blogs and on social media sites. Posting questions on popular forums and blogs may open up new perspectives and techniques that you hadn't considered before. These avenues may also have insight for any new questions that you should include on future surveys.

The ultimate goal of self-reflection is to improve the way you teach. Through the findings you gather, you may gain the insight you need to take your instruction to the proverbial next level, or you may find that you're already doing a stellar job. In either case, self-reflection is a technique that can gauge your standing honestly and you should strive to implement it throughout the year. By the time the next new class rolls around, you'll have a much better, comprehensive toolkit to pull from when it's time to teach that lesson once again.

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Teaching Strategies: The Value of Self-Reflection - TeachHUB

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Have you ever taken a moment to step back and think, "Why did I just do that?" Self-reflection is a simple way to dig deeper into your feelings and find out why you were doing something or feeling a certain way.

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Exit tickets are great feedback markers

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Write about self - Write an I poem - factual
Food
Greetings in other languages, words and gestures

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Use the standards in your feedback
Modeling
Sentence starters
Rubrics
Peer Feedback
Anchor Charts
Universal Design-Variety of task that is going to capture the student's learning-approach that meet the needs of all.

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Cultural relevance in cognitive teaching

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Cultural relevance in cognitive teaching

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One idea I suggest for behavioral students is assigning a project base learning (PBL) activity and help the students create a rubric or self inventory checklist.  Another  idea is journaling. When students feel frustrated have them write how they feel. One last idea(s) is breathing techniques, yoga, and "would you rather".

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Journal your behavior, connect to feelings, record how things change over time

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Games as incentives and for application of skills/ content

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Games as incentives and for application of skills/ content

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Online games: gimkit, blooket, kahoot, quizlet live, etc.
Hands-on games and manipulatives
Student created games
Challenges and competitions
www.jeopardylabs.com

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https://www.ed.ac.uk/reflection/reflectors-toolkit/reflecting-on-experience/gibbs-reflective-cycle

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One of the most famous cyclical models of reflection leading you through six stages exploring an experience: description, feelings, evaluation, analysis, conclusion and action plan.

Below is further information on:

The model

Gibbs' reflective cycle

This model is a good way to work through an experience. This can be either a stand-alone experience or a situation you go through frequently, for example meetings with a team you have to collaborate with. Gibbs originally advocated its use in repeated situations, but the stages and principles apply equally well for single experiences too. If done with a stand-alone experience, the action plan may become more general and look at how you can apply your conclusions in the future.

For each of the stages of the model a number of helpful questions are outlined below. You don't have to answer all of them but they can guide you about what sort of things make sense to include in that stage. You might have other prompts that work better for you.

Description

Here you have a chance to describe the situation in detail. The main points to include here concern what happened. Your feelings and conclusions will come later.

Helpful questions:

Example of 'Description'

Feelings

Here you can explore any feelings or thoughts that you had during the experience and how they may have impacted the experience.

Helpful questions:

What were you feeling during the situation?

Example of 'Feelings'

Evaluation

Here you have a chance to evaluate what worked and what didn't work in the situation. Try to be as objective and honest as possible. To get the most out of your reflection focus on both the positive and the negative aspects of the situation, even if it was primarily one or the other.

Helpful questions:

What was good and bad about the experience?

Example of 'Evaluation'

Analysis

The analysis step is where you have a chance to make sense of what happened. Up until now you have focused on details around what happened in the situation. Now you have a chance to extract meaning from it. You want to target the different aspects that went well or poorly and ask yourself why. If you are looking to include academic literature, this is the natural place to include it.

Helpful questions:

Example of 'Analysis'

I think the reason that our initial division of work went well was because each person had a say in what part of the assignment they wanted to work on, and we divided according to people's self-identified strengths. I have experienced working this way before and discovered when I'm working by myself I enjoy working in areas that match my strengths. It seems natural to me that this is also the case in groups.

I think we thought that this approach would save us time when piecing together the sections in the end, and therefore we didn't think it through. In reality, it ended up costing us far more time than expected and we also had to stress and rush through the rewrite. I think the fact we hadn't planned how we were writing and structuring the sections led us to this situation.

I searched through some literature on group work and found two things that help me understand the situation. Belbin's (e.g. 2010) team roles suggests that each person has certain strengths and weaknesses they bring to a group. While we didn't think about our team members in the same way Belbin does, effective team work and work delegation seems to come from using people's different strengths, which we did.

Another theory that might help explain why we didn't predict the plan wouldn't work is 'Groupthink' (e.g. Janis, 1991). Groupthink is where people in a group won't raise different opinions to a dominant opinion or decision, because they don't want to seem like an outsider. I think if we had challenged our assumptions about our plan - by actually being critical, we would probably have foreseen that it wouldn't work. Some characteristics of groupthink that were in our group were: 'collective rationalisation' - we kept telling each other that it would work; and probably 'illusion of invulnerability' - we are all good students, so of course we couldn't do anything wrong.

I think being aware of groupthink in the future will be helpful in group work, when trying to make decisions.

Conclusions

In this section you can make conclusions about what happened. This is where you summarise your learning and highlight what changes to your actions could improve the outcome in the future. It should be a natural response to the previous sections.

Helpful questions:

What did I learn from this situation?

Example of a 'Conclusion'

Action plan

At this step you plan for what you would do differently in a similar or related situation in the future. It can also be extremely helpful to think about how you will help yourself to act differently - such that you don't only plan what you will do differently, but also how you will make sure it happens. Sometimes just the realisation is enough, but other times reminders might be helpful.

Helpful questions:

If I had to do the same thing again, what would I do differently?

Example of 'Action Plan'

Different depths of reflection

Depending on the context you are doing the reflection in, you might want use different levels of details. Here is the same scenario, which was used in the example above, however it is presented much more briefly.

Short example of Gibbs' reflective cycle:

Feelings:

Adapted from
Gibbs G (1988). Learning by Doing: A guide to teaching and learning methods. Further Education Unit. Oxford Polytechnic: Oxford.

This article was published on

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One of the most famous cyclical models of reflection leading you through six stages exploring an experience: description, feelings, evaluation, analysis, conclusion and action plan.

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Show them constructive feedback.....pick a way to say it that does not denote negative tone to the student.
Analogy-GPS---you are getting there and keep adding to the destination.
Great analogy!!!!!!

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that build in intentional connection to real life. Example, spreadsheet - learned how to average - assign as assignment in a scenario for how they would need to find an average using a spreadsheet about something at home (how many pairs of tennis shoes on average do I go through each year)

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Journal Writing
Share Personal Experiences
Project based learning, assign roles, student rubrics
Yoga
Breathing
would you rather ....

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Modeling of what work should look like
Student Conferences
Small groups
All students do not have to do everything on the rubric
Cards with feedback on the cards
Is student conferencing essential to the student?
Yes, it is feedback that let them know where they are going.
How can we help others see that feedback is essential?
Share with other teachers and make it a shared experience.
Research says that students know where they are; the student becomes more effective in the learning process.

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Useful tools for learning or a hindrance?
-Set expectations with students and parents right from the start.

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Cite this guide: Armstrong, P. (2010). Bloom's Taxonomy. Vanderbilt University Center for Teaching. Retrieved [todaysdate] from https://cft.vanderbilt.edu/guides-sub-pages/blooms-taxonomy/.

Background Information | The Original Taxonomy | The Revised Taxonomy | Why Use Bloom's Taxonomy? | Further Information

The above graphic is released under a Creative Commons Attribution license. You're free to share, reproduce, or otherwise use it, as long as you attribute it to the Vanderbilt University Center for Teaching. For a higher resolution version, visit our Flickr account and look for the "Download this photo" icon.

Background Information

In 1956, Benjamin Bloom with collaborators Max Englehart, Edward Furst, Walter Hill, and David Krathwohl published a framework for categorizing educational goals: Taxonomy of Educational Objectives. Familiarly known as Bloom's Taxonomy, this framework has been applied by generations of K-12 teachers and college instructors in their teaching.

The framework elaborated by Bloom and his collaborators consisted of six major categories: Knowledge, Comprehension, Application, Analysis, Synthesis, and Evaluation. The categories after Knowledge were presented as "skills and abilities," with the understanding that knowledge was the necessary precondition for putting these skills and abilities into practice.

While each category contained subcategories, all lying along a continuum from simple to complex and concrete to abstract, the taxonomy is popularly remembered according to the six main categories.

The Original Taxonomy (1956)

Here are the authors' brief explanations of these main categories in from the appendix of Taxonomy of Educational Objectives ( Handbook One, pp. 201-207):

Knowledge "involves the recall of specifics and universals, the recall of methods and processes, or the recall of a pattern, structure, or setting."

Comprehension "refers to a type of understanding or apprehension such that the individual knows what is being communicated and can make use of the material or idea being communicated without necessarily relating it to other material or seeing its fullest implications."

Application refers to the "use of abstractions in particular and concrete situations."

Analysis represents the "breakdown of a communication into its constituent elements or parts such that the relative hierarchy of ideas is made clear and/or the relations between ideas expressed are made explicit."

Synthesis involves the "putting together of elements and parts so as to form a whole."

Evaluation engenders "judgments about the value of material and methods for given purposes."

The 1984 edition of Handbook One is available in the CFT Library in Calhoun 116. See its ACORN record for call number and availability.

Barbara Gross Davis, in the "Asking Questions" chapter of Tools for Teaching, also provides examples of questions corresponding to the six categories. This chapter is not available in the online version of the book, but Tools for Teaching is available in the CFT Library. See its ACORN record for call number and availability.

The Revised Taxonomy (2001)

A group of cognitive psychologists, curriculum theorists and instructional researchers, and testing and assessment specialists published in 2001 a revision of Bloom's Taxonomy with the title A Taxonomy for Teaching, Learning, and Assessment. This title draws attention away from the somewhat static notion of "educational objectives" (in Bloom's original title) and points to a more dynamic conception of classification.

The authors of the revised taxonomy underscore this dynamism, using verbs and gerunds to label their categories and subcategories (rather than the nouns of the original taxonomy). These "action words" describe the cognitive processes by which thinkers encounter and work with knowledge:

Remember

Understand

Interpreting

Exemplifying

Classifying

Summarizing

Inferring

Comparing

Explaining

Apply

Analyze

Differentiating

Organizing

Attributing

Evaluate

Create

In the revised taxonomy, knowledge is at the basis of these six cognitive processes, but its authors created a separate taxonomy of the types of knowledge used in cognition:

Factual Knowledge

Knowledge of terminology

Knowledge of specific details and elements

Conceptual Knowledge

Knowledge of classifications and categories

Knowledge of principles and generalizations

Knowledge of theories, models, and structures

Procedural Knowledge

Knowledge of subject-specific skills and algorithms

Knowledge of subject-specific techniques and methods

Knowledge of criteria for determining when to use appropriate procedures

Metacognitive Knowledge

Strategic Knowledge

Knowledge about cognitive tasks, including appropriate contextual and conditional knowledge

Self-knowledge

Mary Forehand from the University of Georgia provides a guide to the revised version giving a brief summary of the revised taxonomy and a helpful table of the six cognitive processes and four types of knowledge.

Why Use Bloom's Taxonomy?

The authors of the revised taxonomy suggest a multi-layered answer to this question, to which the author of this teaching guide has added some clarifying points:

1. Objectives (learning goals) are important to establish in a pedagogical interchange so that teachers and students alike understand the purpose of that interchange.

2. Organizing objectives helps to clarify objectives for themselves and for students.

3. Having an organized set of objectives helps teachers to:

"plan and deliver appropriate instruction";

"design valid assessment tasks and strategies";and

"ensure that instruction and assessment are aligned with the objectives."

Citations are from A Taxonomy for Learning, Teaching, and Assessing: A Revision of Bloom's Taxonomy of Educational Objectives.

Further Information

Section III of A Taxonomy for Learning, Teaching, and Assessing: A Revision of Bloom's Taxonomy of Educational Objectives, entitled "The Taxonomy in Use," provides over 150 pages of examples of applications of the taxonomy. Although these examples are from the K-12 setting, they are easily adaptable to the university setting.

Section IV, "The Taxonomy in Perspective," provides information about 19 alternative frameworks to Bloom's Taxonomy, and discusses the relationship of these alternative frameworks to the revised Bloom's Taxonomy.

This teaching guide is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International License.

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by Patricia Armstrong Print Version Cite this guide: Armstrong, P. (2010). Bloom's Taxonomy. Vanderbilt University Center for Teaching. Retrieved [todaysdate] from https://cft.vanderbilt.edu/guides-sub-pages/blooms-taxonomy/. Background Information | The Original Taxonomy | The Revised Taxonomy | Why Use Bloom's Taxonomy? | Further Information The above graphic is released under a Creative Commons Attribution license.

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Respect, rapport, universal needs, looking at at commonalities rather than differences.

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Resource from Teachthought https://www.teachthought.com/learning/metacognitive-prompts-to-help-students-reflect-on-their-learning/ sorry still not seeing our rooms column on padlet

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https://www.teachthought.com/learning/metacognitive-prompts-to-help-students-reflect-on-their-learning/ sorry still not seeing our rooms column on padlet

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Incredible curriculum and a free magazine..https://www.learningforjustice.or

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Challenge is to create connections - reflection needs to be able to connect to their own words.

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How the brain learns (2011) Sousa, D.
John Medina, Brain Rules

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The new question-of-the-week is:
What is the appropriate role of student memorization in teaching and learning?
What is the role of memorization in teaching and learning today? Do students have to remember as much as they did in a pre-Google world? Is there value to memorizing poems or other works of literature? We'll explore these questions in this two-part series.

Today, Blake Harvard, Donna L Shrum, Keisha Rembert, and Sarah Cooper contribute their responses. You can listen to a 10-minute conversation I had with Donna, Blake, and Keisha on my BAM! Radio Show. You can also find a list of, and links to, previous shows here.
Memorization is key to creativity Blake Harvard is an AP Psychology teacher at James Clemens High School in Madison, Ala. His blog (www.effortfuleducator.com) focuses on the application of cognitive psychology in the classroom. You can find Blake on Twitter at @effortfuleduktr:
While memorization of information is certainly not the goal of education, it is necessary in many instances. I'm sorry if that upsets some, but it is true. In an age where everything can be "Googled," we cannot rely on any search engine for the answers to all questions. Think about it ... can you imagine a world where you have to look up the answers to everything you ask during any given day? Our time would be much less efficient, and we would not be any closer to solving complex problems that rely on memorization and understanding of more simple information. For example, if students do not know their multiplication tables, how can we expect them to complete any math problems requiring that understanding as a base?

In an age where it is much more popular to be flashy and use the new "latest and greatest" piece of technology, we are still in the business of teaching kids stuff, ... and this involves student memorization of material so we can build upon what others have done. Memorization isn't anti-creativity or anti-innovation, it is the foundation of that process. Students cannot be creative or innovative with information they do not have. Knowledge is needed as a base for developing vaccines to combat disease, for discovering more efficient energies, for furthering and bettering our societies. Ignoring this fact may make our classroom look more "engaging and fun," but it is doing our students a disservice.
Memorization provides "scaffolding" After teaching English for over 20 years, Donna L. Shrum is now teaching ancient history to freshmen in the Shenandoah Valley of Virginia. She remains active in the Shenandoah Valley Writing Project and freelance writing for education and history magazines:
Memorization isn't the enemy of education. It does not kill creativity. It is not lazy teaching. It is the fuel that sparks interest and innovation. It is essential for education. It has a place in the classroom and should be incorporated when necessary.

My ancient-history students in 9th grade need to identify Cyrus, Cambyses, Darius, and Xerxes of the Persian Empire and their major contributions. Those very odd names and cultural events made no direct contribution to their rural American lives. With zero background knowledge, the only way to acquaint my teens with these gentlemen starts with memorization.

A psychologist and teacher said, "Memorizing facts can build the foundations for higher thinking and problem solving. ... Memorization, therefore, produces a more efficient memory, taking it beyond its limitations of capacity and duration. ... There exists a considerable body of evidence to suggest that a memory rife with facts learns better than one without" (Smith).

With a high-stakes end-of-course test, my students can't afford confusion about basics. Moving the memorized facts into long-term storage requires next attaching a context-why the events mattered-and later events that compare and contrast. My students won't be able to discuss how Darius's Royal Road contributed to the empire's expansion and later provided Alexander the Great an easy route of conquest if they can't first remember and differentiate names, places, and events.

Thanks to the ubiquity of technology, learners can look up anything, but that consumes time and working memory (not to mention that it isn't allowed during tests). Basic fact memorization makes information readily available for deeper learning and making connections to new material. The storeroom of knowledge packed into memory makes it much more likely a creative connection will occur when the next round of facts come along.

Once the fundamentals are committed to memory, research has shown that retrieval practice will significantly increase learning. Having to pull the information out and make meaning is how learning occurs (www.retrievalpractice.org). At first, the information will be inflexible, like random jigsaw pieces that come together to create one picture, but, with more retrieval practice, what was memorized will become flexible and applied to new situations and problems (Willingham).
Sources:
To compare to Vygotsky's model, memorization is what the learner can easily do alone. The instructor can then lead the student into the challenge of the ZPD (zone of proximal development) with the scaffolding memorization provides.

Roediger, H. L., & Pyc, M. A. (2012). Inexpensive techniques to improve education: Applying Cognitive Psychology to enhance educational practice. Journal of Applied Research in Memory and Cognition, 1, 242-248.

Smith, Marc. Why memorising facts can be a keystone to learning. 21 November 2012. https://www.theguardian.com/teacher-network/teacher-blog/2012/nov/21/memorising-facts-keystone-learning-psychology
"A foundational skill" Keisha Rembert is an 8th grade English and U.S. history teacher at Clifford Crone Middle School in Naperville, Ill. Keisha feeds her love of learning by continually refining her craft and has been the recipient of several grants affording her the opportunity to take courses at some of the world's most renowned universities. She was named Illinois' History Teacher of the Year for 2019:
Willingham, Daniel. Practice, Drill, and Memorization. 17 July 2012. http://www.danielwillingham.com/daniel-willingham-science-and-education-blog/practice-drilling-memorization
"I am forever tormented by this question" Sarah Cooper teaches 8th grade U.S. history and is dean of studies at Flintridge Preparatory School in La Canada, Calif. She is the author of two books, Creating Citizens (Routledge, 2018) and Making History Mine (Stenhouse, 2009). Sarah speaks at conferences and writes for MiddleWeb's Future of History blog, and she lives just outside Los Angeles with her husband and two sons:
Memorization is a foundational skill that can be used to build understanding and then application and creation. Students memorize poems in ELA class for cadence and flow. I want them to hear and practice the language and rhythm of poetry before I can ask them to create their own poems or dissect them. Rhythm is an essential component of poetry. I ask students to memorize portions of self-written speeches. I want them to own their context and understand the nuances of effective speaking, and sometimes memorizing their own words enables us to dig deeper into those nuances.

As a social studies teacher, I am forever tormented by this question.

If we spend a day unpacking the Emancipation Proclamation-worthwhile in so many ways, not least to appreciate Abraham Lincoln's legal and linguistic brilliance-how many details of the Battle of Antietam, of Gettysburg, of the New York City draft riots go undiscussed?
1) Would an educated adult reasonably be expected to remember this?

Pretty much every day's lesson plan offers a similarly wrenching example.
2) What are the benefits of knowing this fact as an adolescent and/or an adult?
Those of us who teach social studies and science, especially, with facts and information coming out of our ears, engage in endless compromises: what to dive into, what to gloss over, and what we hope someone, somewhere, tells our students someday because we certainly won't have time this year.

I do ask students to memorize key dates in history to create a scaffolding, a framework on which to hang future knowledge. If they don't know that the Civil War came in the 1860s and the Vietnam War started in the 1960s, I haven't done my job, because they can't appreciate the scope of history, the interplay between cause and effect.

When determining what else students should memorize, I find some solace in asking two questions:
Just a reminder; you can subscribe and receive updates from this blog via email or RSS Reader. And if you missed any of the highlights from the first eight years of this blog, you can see a categorized list below. The list doesn't include ones from this current year, but you can find those by clicking on the "answers" category found in the sidebar.
I love this question because the answer so often is no! That the Civil War ended at Appomattox Court House with a surrender by Robert E. Lee to Ulysses S. Grant, for sure. The list of Lincoln's revolving door of Union Army commanders leading up to Grant? No way.

Sometimes a fact opens doors to new understandings. For instance, I want my students to know the 1848 Seneca Falls Convention precisely because many people do not know about it. By remembering that the first women's rights gathering in the United States occurred in the mid-19th century, long before the Nineteenth Amendment was passed in 1920, students can remember, as Martin Luther King Jr. famously said, that "the arc of the moral universe is long, but it bends toward justice."

Thanks to Donna, Blake, Keisha, and Sarah for their contributions!

Please feel free to leave a comment with your reactions to the topic or directly to anything that has been said in this post.

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The Roles of Memorization in Teaching & Learning (Opinion)

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The new question-of-the-week is: What is the appropriate role of student memorization in teaching and learning? What is the role of memorization in teaching and learning today? Do students have to remember as much as they did in a pre-Google world? Is there value to memorizing poems or other works of literature?

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Give choices
Post Notes
Gallery Walk
Give feedback as you do the walk
Can do orally or written-different choices

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schema of reactivating engaging learning(balancing working memory and other cognitive load etc...)

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schema of reactivating engaging learning(balancing working memory and other cognitive load etc...)

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Go over rubric with students and expectations
No Red ink.....

How long should feedback be given to a student?
Combination of immediate and consistant

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by TeachThought Staff & Peter Pappas

It's well-established that reflection is critical in the learning process.

While it sounds formal, 'reflection' simply means to 'think again' about something that happened. Reflection is a natural part of learning and in many cases doesn't even need to be 'promoted." Given time and collaboration, students (and adults) tend to talk about experiences and learn from that kind of reflection.

Why this is true is a deeper diver, but it's clear that when the brain 'experiences' something, it doesn't necessarily 'see it' accurately. That is, perspective, mindset, background knowledge, emotional well-being, setting, social context, and more all affect now just 'how' we experience an event but even what parts of the event we even experience-or remember-at all. Consider watching a movie for the first time.

Because you don't know what's going to happen, your brain 'experiences' the story with anticipation and pattern-making, trying to relate to the characters while 'following' what might happen. Watch the movie a second time, however, and you'll 'see it' completely differently.

It's the same story and the same brain experienced in two very different ways.

Metacognition In The Learning Process

How can metacognitive prompts be used to promote reflection in learning?

In the past, we've offered 20 Types Of Journals That Help Students Think, including:

1. Question Journal: This type of journal is focused on inquiry-the asking and refinement of questions. They can be answered or merely 'wondered about.' The big idea here is students asking and improving their own questions. The QFT Strategy could be useful here.

2. Metacognitive Journal: A journal focused on thinking about thinking. In a Metacognitive Journal, students are writing about their thinking-their tendencies, changes in their thinking over time, cognitive blind spots, etc.

In What is Bloom's Taxonomy?, we also explained that "Bloom's Taxonomy is a hierarchical ordering of cognitive skills that can, among countless other uses, help teachers teach and students learn." It doesn't take a huge leap to see how this can be used to promote thinking about past learning experiences (reflection), so we've gathered a small collection of those prompts specifically focused on student thinking and metacognition.

You can read 38 Prompts Merging Reflective Thinking With Bloom's Taxonomy for the full collection of questions and prompts. This post is simply a slightly revised and updated excerpt from that post that focuses on metacognitive prompts based, in large part, on Bloom's Taxonomy.

The hope is that these questions might help students reflect on the learning experience, especially as it relates to their own thinking and cognitive behaviors.

10 Metacognitive Prompts To Help Students Reflect On Their Learning

1. Do I see patterns in what I did?

2. Were the strategies and skills I used effective for this assignment?

3. How did my mindset affect how I approached my work?

4. Did I do an effective job of communicating with others before, during, or after learning?

5. What have I learned about my strengths and my areas in need of improvement?

6. How am I progressing as a learner?

7. What can/should I do next?

8. How can I best use my strengths to learn?

9. What steps should I take or resources should I use to meet my challenges?

10. How can my learning environment be improved?
10 Metacognitive Prompts To Help Students Reflect On Their Learning

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10 Metacognitive Prompts To Help Students Reflect On Their Learning

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by TeachThought Staff & Peter Pappas It's well-established that reflection is critical in the learning process. While it sounds formal, 'reflection' simply means to 'think again' about something that happened. Reflection is a natural part of learning and in many cases doesn't even need to be 'promoted."

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Connect with students on some level is vital

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Train our brains for
Basic mental maneuvers a learner uses for thinking and problem solving to picture the end result
Concept map
brain storm
socratic seminar
mental models
diagrams

John Medina -- BRAIN RULES

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Rewards?  Intrinsic and extrinsic.
-too many and students have unrealistic expectations for school and life.
-rewards can be movement breaks and review games
-rewards are beneficial when chosen by students

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What?  What did you learn (draw it, build a meme about it, write a sentence about it)

So What?  Why did you learn this?  Was it for something content specific (I needed this for _), was it something that is bigger for life(how does this fit beyond school).

Now what? What the the next steps? How are you going to incorporate this?

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Reflective Feedback
Glow and Grow
Relevant Feedback
Specific Feedback to the student
Gold-Positive Feedback
Green-What needs to be improved-share what can be improved
Constructive Feedback
modeling feedback-how it should be given
give feedback for your work

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What are we doing now to build in reflection?

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What are we doing now to build in reflection?

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Exit tickets - ex. design two questions about information that they learned.
Partner share - reflect on a peers ideas

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How to create instruction to make it more manageable, digestible, durable

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How to create instruction to make it more manageable, digestible, durable

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Concern: concerns about working memory capcity

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Concern: concerns about working memory capcity

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Dazzling Discoveries is a STEM Education Center for teens and kids. Shop activities for at home hands-on learning. Featuring virtual classes, camps and project based activities for remote learning.

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CULTURALLY RESPONSIVE TEACHING AND THE BRAIN

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Access the Cards

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Ideas

Resources/Insights

Successes

Challenges

C hallenges and potential solutions related to diversity, equity, and inclusion

Reflections

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Ideas: What are you hoping to learn today?
What are you hoping to share today?

Resources/Insights

Successes: What successes have you and/or your learners had related to this topic?

Challenges: What challenges have you and/or your learners encountered related to this topic?

Equity: What are some challenges and potential solutions related to diversity, equity, and inclusion as it relates to this topic?

Reflections  Is there a new tool or resource you want to explore? Or an idea you want to share with a colleague?

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Make sure all voices are heard in the conversation.

Be mindful of your own unconscious biases in communicating.

Give ample wait time for people to respond to a question or comment.

Remind participants to stay muted when they are not speaking.

Use the chat feature or reactions (like a thumbs up icon) to share quick responses with the group.

The Edcamp Community are dedicated to a harassment-free experience for everyone. The Edcamp Community’s Anti-Harassment Policy can be found below:

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Get the conversation started:

Who’s in the room?
(Ask participants to introduce themselves)

Why did you pick this topic?

What are you hoping to learn/share today?

What are some challenges or successes you have experienced related to this topic?

How does this topic intersect with issues of equity?

What resources, tools, or insight may help others dealing with this topic?

What additional questions do you have about this topic?

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Ideas

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Reflections

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C hallenges and potential solutions related to diversity, equity, and inclusion

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