As a student, I feel that standards can be helpful as they are meant to guide how teachers construct their curriculum and set goals that students should meet in the classroom. At the same time, I feel that standards can present challenges for students because not every K-12 aged student in the same class learns the same way. If a standard is presented to a teacher and they know that they need to lead their students to this certain goal, the way they go about teaching the lessons for the goal may not be beneficial for every student. Learning styles come into play here as a huge part of how every student understands the concepts that make up the standards.
As a future teacher, I know that the common core standards will affect the material that I teach in my classroom. Knowing this, I will have to make it a priority to make my lesson plans very diverse to ensure that my students who have different learning styles can connect to the material. My goal will be to help every student achieve a proficient understanding in the content areas through classroom activities and a mixture of formative and summative assessments. It is very important to me that every student reaches a comfortable understanding in the common core areas of my subject, and to ensure this I plan to evaluate who all my students are as learners and create lesson plans that all my students can connect with.
Deconstructing standards means breaking down a large common core standard into smaller learning targets that can be translated into more manageable, daily lesson plans that work for the pacing of your class and students. To me, this means maybe two weeks worth of daily lessons and activities that build up to quizzes or assessments that reflect the common core standards and goals the students are meant to meet. I feel very confident that I will be able to deconstruct standards in my future teaching career because I plan to motivate my students to dive deep into thinking about what their ideal learning environment is and sharing their answers openly. With that information I can sit down as an educator and think to myself, "If this is how my students learn best, how can I create an environment where they can thrive and reach these certain goals?" and go from there to create my lesson plans.
Hi Kyla, one of the things I'm not sure how to do and want to learn more about is how to teach standards when your students have different learning styles. This is something I want to focus on as a teacher because I know that not all students learn the same and require certain techniques to make them the most successful. I think it's important to give all students an equal chance of succeeding which means to teach using a variety of all the learning styles instead of only focusing on one or two of the learning styles for the majority of the school year. I like that you added that you think it's important for every student to reach a comfortable in the common core areas of your subject because that starts with finding out your students learning styles. Thanks for sharing!
ReplyDeleteKyla, you made some awesome points in this blog post! I love your confidence of how you're going to teach lesson plans in your future classrooms that work for every student, with every ability level. This is something I question as a future teacher, I know to scaffold is a huge part of teaching kids with varying abilities. But scaffolding often requires more than just one person, and theres only one teacher! Your blog post helped to clarify this for me!
ReplyDeleteI admire your confidence! One thing I absolutely agree in your post is on how the standards can present challenges for students since not all of the students learn in the same way. By learning styles, we're looking at auditory learner, kinesthetic learner, visual learner, etc. While we want all the children to ultimately reach the goal in the end, we have to consider their learning styles and really plan the lesson plans down to its finest details. Thanks for sharing!
ReplyDeleteHi Kyla,
ReplyDeleteYou have such a confident tone when you write that is almost contagious. I love how you really drew attention to the various learning styles that are out there. Standards are the goal we are expected to reach, but they don't determine how we get there. I love that you're already thinking of ways to teach your standards to students that learn in every type of manner. I personally am a little nervous on ensuring I implement teaching styles that benefit EVERY student in my classroom. I feel like sticking the the standards is only a tidbit of the uphill battle that teachers face when obtaining classroom wide continuous progress. Awesome job!
Hi Kyla! I admire your confidence you have, and I know you will be an excellent teacher. I agree with you that these standards are helping us get to where we need to be, but they don't determine how we need to get there with our students, because each student will learn the material differently and at a different pace. It will also be very important that students understand the standards that they will have to meet. I don't remember ever being old what standards I was being held to while in elementary school. Thanks for sharing!
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