Chapter+4+Reflection

__//Using Teachnology with Classroom Instruction That Works//__

Chapter 4 Cues, Questions, and Advance Organizers

Reflection 6/9/08

The chapter starts by talking about the importance of focusing the students on the important concepts not the unusual ones. I believe this is an important part of any lesson. I have been trying to incorporate a version of this in my classroom. I write what the objective and important concepts the students should learn from the day’s lesson. Sometimes the same concept stays on the board for days but it is still what I am focusing on and what I hope the students learn. I believe that if the students understand the concepts that they are suppose to concentrate on, they focus more on it and hopefully gain a better, deeper understanding.

The chapter also speaks of the importance of higher level questions. These questions drive the student learning by forcing or encouraging them to look deeper at the concepts and to apply their own meaning to them.

The chapter goes on to speak about using technology to help students with organizing and cueing them in on the important information and concepts. It sounds great, but how much time is needed to set these different applications up. I can see building up to a more technology based curriculum but it would take years to get there. I currently use a graphic organizer for each state standard from the core. I pass this out to the students as a paper and they can mark whether or not they understand a concept. I think that this would be a good place to start to move it to a file on the computers. This would allow the students to modify and adjust what they know about each objective. They could add things when their knowledge increases and remove misconception when they discover them. I think this would be a great start for the kids. It would direct them in what is important – I could also include pictures and higher-level questions – and help them track their progress.

Once again these ideas sound great but they also sound overwhelming. I don’t know how to use many of the programs talked about in the chapter and I don’t know where I would find the time to learn them all. I would like to incorporate more technology into my classroom and the students’ learning. I believe that over a few years time I will be using more and more different technological applications as I become comfortable with them and as they become more readily available to me in school. Some of the things I would like to do are difficult because I don’t have a computer lab I can use often enough. This class and the technology it gives will eliminate some of those problems.