525 Week 4

I am happy to report that I am back in the United States. Mexico was great and I really enjoyed my classes but it feels really good to be home. This week I really enjoyed the two TED talks videos. I actually subscribe to their pod-casts but I had not heard these talks before. I also enjoyed the topics on cooperative learning and reinforcing student effort. I copied the comments I made on our wiki to this site.

I am a strong believer in using cooperative learning in the classroom. I truly believe that working in groups is a valuable life skill, in almost any career our students will probably have to work with others at one time or another. I also think that cooperative learning makes learning and projects more engaging and interesting for students. I think that cooperative learning can be very successful if the teacher uses it correctly. It is very important for the students to have a clear understanding of their task and what is to be accomplished. A teacher can convey this using a rubric and modeling examples. I also firmly believe that students will work more efficiently if the each student has a specific role in the group. For example, with my students I have the titles, "Task Master", "Time Keeper", "Note-Taker", and "Organizer". The roles may change depending on the project but before cooperative learning takes place, I make sure that my students clearly understand what these roles mean and what it means to learn as a team or a group.

I use a number of different tools to reinforce my students' effort. I have a participation system in my classroom called "Euros". I chose "euros" because I studied abroad in Spain. My class is very much performance based and when a student is working diligently or answering questions in the target language they earn a "euro". I have 4 different notes with pictures of different teachers and administrators from our school. The students absolutely go crazy over the euros. I have a student who serves as a class accountant for each period who then helps me compile everyone's euro total every 3 weeks and I turn this into a participation grade for each student. I also use little things like stickers and stamps and if I see a truly extraordinary performance or a student that really goes out of their way I will usually write them a note or make a phone call home to their parents. I think a lot of our students are not recognized enough. In my school if the kid isn't an athlete, they really have a hard time earning recognition so I really think it's important for me to do what I can in my classroom to recognize good effort and academic excellence.