Standardized test....

Standardized test: is a test administered and scored in a consistent manner. The tests are designed in such a way that the "questions, conditions for administering, scoring procedures, and interpretations are consistent” and are "administered and scored in a predetermined, standard manner."
Tests such as the ACT and SAT that provide college admission officers with a comparative standard for evaluating a student’s academic aptitude and likelihood of successes in college.

Can a test really tell if a person is going to be successful in college? In life? Should we measure the future of a person with a test?

Let me start by saying that as a student I hated standardized tests, they didn’t have anything to do with the curriculum. Most of the things we learned in class were useless when it was time to take these exams; teachers take weeks of important learning to get us in the mood of standardized tests like HSPA and others. These tests only measure the ability to answer multiple choice tests quickly.

Students get stressed out thinking that if they don’t pass this tests they wont graduate, they wont get accepted in college, so what’s the point of years of hard work doing homework, studying for tests, doing extra credit, asking for help if at the end everything its going to come down to a test? It won’t matter how good a person did throughout the school years because if they fell these tests they won’t be accepted to the college of their dreams.


As a future teacher I believe they are not fair, I have to be honest and say that I don’t think these exams help students. If we really think about it these tests do not measure how much a student knows, they don’t measure creativity, or ability to think. The only thing these tests measure is ability to choose what we believe is the right answer, in a timely manner.

Observing and learning from others

One of the most important things from teaching is being able to relate whatever we are teaching to modern things so the students can feel familiar with the lesson. Just like a few people in the class did when trying to relate the lesson to modern singers and music that young people like.

Another important thing is to have a good sense of humor, students will always try to be funny, we’ll also have students who want to make us feel uncomfortable, but if we have a good sense of humor they will stop, because that’s basically showing them that it doesn’t really bother us and we have the control, or course there is a limit for everything but having a good sense of humor will help decrease the brainless jokes.

an additional thing I have learned is, if we tell the students that we are going to do something if they continue their behavior we must do it, otherwise they wont take us seriously; for example John is throwing paper across the classroom I tell him to stop or I’ll send him to the principal’s office next time I see him doing the same action I must send him to the principal’s office. It can also be a positive action like; John if you write your paper you will receive a prize, so when he writes his paper I have to give him his prize. This will help us teach the students who is in control in the classroom.

Energy, Energy, Energy.... we need to have energy to teach, make the lessons fun and interesting.

Micro-teaching Spanish

I decided to teach basic Spanish greetings because I knew that most of my classmates didn’t speak or understand much Spanish, so teaching literature would be too hard. My classmates were supposed to behave badly while I was teaching but since I had them engaged in the classroom there was no time for them to misbehave.

After I finished the lesson someone mentioned that it was hard to misbehave because I had them moving and talking to each other, and then in a circle, so what I learned from my lesson was that I need to try to keep the students active and engage in the lesson in order to avoid problems like kids talking on the side, others throwing paper, passing notes or texting.

Another thing that I noticed was that even though I thought I didn’t have enough material to cover, it was actually enough, because I had them practice around the class with each other. I think I did well, I was able to have them talking and greeting each other in Spanish.

Getting ready to teach...

First I have to start by saying that writing lesson plans is not easy. It is a hard task since we have to think about what we are going to do in class, but we also need a backup plan just in case the original lesson plan doesn’t work. Another thing that I found difficult was to know what the right amount of work to cover in a lesson is. In some of my lessons I wanted to cover a lot of things and in other lessons I just had two things to cover. The set is also a little difficult, given that we can not use the same set within the same unit, so even though we are covering the same topic for a few days we have to come up with different sets to get students’ attention.

However lesson plans are of great help especially when we are new teachers because it makes our lives easier when in class, since its our guide to follow.

My access

My access can be a great tool to use in English and composition classes, even at the college level. It is a great thing for teachers because it saves time for the teachers and it gives a quick score to the student, which can motivate students to redo it if they don’t get the grade they want.
It has most of the popular topics used in standardized exams which can be of great help to get students ready for the tests.
What I liked the most were the sheets that my access provides the students for the pre-writing. The only bad thing is that is mostly useful for English and composition classes. It would be great if they could expand it to other subject areas and languages.

11 year old girl teaches teachers

Adora Svitak an 11 year old girl who teaches teachers. She teaches them how to teach children, how to make classes more interesting for the students; she also gives workshops where she uses technology like cell phones to give the class. She likes involving a lot of creativity and technology since she feels that’s what kids like. Adora gives teachers advices on how to get student’s attention and how to make classes easier for students. She wants teachers to work more on creativity, she gives new techniques to teachers like having the students write the end of a story first and then write the rest of the story. She loves to read and write, she has written a few books. Her website is
http://www.adorasvitak.com/Main.html

If my school district offered a workshop with Adora I would definitely take it, I am sure she has some great ideas.
Even though she seems to be a genius I am sure a lot of teachers wouldn’t like taking her workshops since they will feel there’s not much that an eleven year old girl can teach them. In my opinion there’s definitely a lot that we can learn from kids, but the key to be great teachers is to remember that at some point we were kids, that we also went to classes and got bored, it doesnt matter what we are teaching we have to try our best to be creative and energetic in order to make students love the class.

Do we have to pay attention in class?

I found a website where college students can upload their lecture notes and get monetary rewards (Gift Cards), while other students get the benefit of getting the lecture notes for free. This website is for college students, but I am pretty sure it will be available for high school students soon.
Is this a good idea? As a future teacher I think this is not helpful. It is really hard to get students to pay attention in class as it is, imagine now that they have access to this. With this website teachers will have 8 out of 20 students paying attention.
If we see it from the students’ point of view this is good, we don’t really need to pay attention in class, and maybe we don’t even need to go to class, we can just go to the website and get the lecture notes for free. The other possible outcome could be to take it as a way to make money, which could be good, because students would be learning and making money to help themselves.


http://www.isleptthroughclass.com/