Analyzing My Own Intelligence

After completing the pretest for Cluster 4, one of the activities it suggested I complete was on thinking styles. The activity presented a situation in which I had a student, Rupali, who analyzed her own thinking and I was to describe her personality and chose a career that was best suited for her. Rupali's answers to the self-assessment show that she is autonomous and free-thinking, this suggests that she would be best suited in an artistic career or somewhere where she can be her own boss.

This activity made me think about what my own responses would be to a similar assessment. If I am answering honestly and truly considering how I think and learn, I would say I am a structured thinker; I like to keep my thought process in order. I tend to make charts and organize my learning so each new topic flows together and build on each other. I am autonomous and a self-starter. I like to make my own decisions, and have the confidence to do so. When needed, I can take my learning into my own hands. I would say, much Rupali, my need for complexity varies by situation. For instance, when I am solving a math equation, I most enjoy problems that are layered and require multiple skills and steps to solve.

But here's the catch... If I was younger, even just a few years younger as a high school student, I don't think I would make this honest assessment. How I think and learn, and how I wanted to do these were two very different things. I always wanted to be a creative person; I took a variety of art, photography, and creative writing class through high school and undergrad because, that was the person I wanted to be. In elementary school I was in band and chorus, I "sketched" fashion designs, and I started an all girls pop group with my best friends. We were going to be famous! I didn't think about the fact that I was completely tone deaf, couldn't draw, and had a terrible singing voice (I can prove it).

I should mention now that I was a math major, something very analytical and certain, not at all creative. I was always a strong math student, even in elementary school. I appreciated that there was one right answer and a specific chain of events that you needed to follow to get there. I could remember the steps needed to solve complicated algebra problems and I would do it quickly. Even when I started college, I was on the fence about being an English major. I wanted that creative lifestyle.

So where am I going with all of this?... It took me until I was 20 years old to accept that I was a very analytical thinker and learner. As a future elementary school teacher, I will be working with students from ages 5 to 12. There is such a slim chance that these students will be able to honestly tell me how they think and learn. Thus, it is nearly impossible to get an authentic self-assessment from them. I think a large percent of the students will be like me and answer the questions based on what kind of minds they want to have, not how their minds really process information. I am not complete discarding the validity of an activity like this. In fact, I do think it would be interesting to do maybe halfway through the year when I have had a chance to work with students and see how they learn best. I would already have an idea of the group going into the assessment and could see how accurately students perceive their learning.

Here is a quick quiz you can take to see what learning style you fall under. Answer honestly! And if you complete it, please comment and let me know what style you got and how accurate you think it is.

Assessment Anxiety

When I think about my career as a student, I remember a lot of conventional testing. At the end of every unit we faced multiple choice and short answer questions from third grade right through high school. I like to think I was a good student, my grades were always good, but no matter how confident I was in the material, when test time rolled around, I would get nervous and stressed.

Conventional assessment tends to create a high stress level in students because they are more aware of what is expected of them. Consider a multiple choice question... Your student, Gabby, knows there is only one right answer and will spend more time reading and rereading the answers to make sure she has selected the correct one. By the time Gabby makes it through five questions, she is out of time and didn't finish the test. What if Gabby has to complete short response questions? She will spend so much time contemplating her responses and choosing words she thinks are just right, and again, she will run out of time.

A way to avoid this kind of situation is offering authentic assessments throughout the year as a more comfortable way to gauge student understanding. Let's use Gabby again; she has demonstrated that is a very careful and analytical thinker. Instead of making her sit for a multiple choice math test on measurement, have Gabby help measure a poster that needs to be framed and hung in class. If she can measure the dimensions of the poster accurately, you know that she mastered the skill. Creative students may be better off building a diorama, for example tell students that have to create a model of a park but it can only fit within certain dimensions. The students' grade would be heavily based on whether or not they measured their model correctly. You could also go a step further and say each area in their park had to fit within certain dimensions. Students would then be using spacial reasoning skills as well as simple measurement to make sure their park fit together perfectly.

There are many ways authentic assessment can play a role in the classroom, but unfortunately for teachers, they are time consuming. Consider assignment the model park diorama to your fourth grade class. You then have to take time to create a rubric and explain the project clearly with set expectations. A chunk of class time may be devoted to presenting the dioramas. Finally, countless will be spent grading them. For a teacher, it may seem overwhelming, but the pay off for your students in the end is what makes a project like this seem worthwhile. Easier forms of authentic assessment, like journaling, can be used every day and may not require grading. A teacher can give students thirty minutes to an hour of free write time every day. Then at the teacher's convenience, he or she can read the journals to see how the students are progressing.

I think if I was given more authentic assessment opportunities I would have enjoyed school more than I did. Especially as I got older and was capable of more complex thinking, simple multiple choice and true/false questions didn't seem to really determine whether or not I understood what I learned in US History that month. 

My first attempt at testing

Well, I attempted, and somewhat conquered, the Cluster 1 pre-test and post-test. I decided for this one that I wanted to keep my pre-test results to see what kind of growth occurred I read. I realized after, that the whole three questions they asked probably wouldn't be a good way to reflect on my growth... but I made a decision and I stuck to it! I did attempt the post-test a few times until I got it correct. Any questions I struggled with I went back into the text and reread the content to make sure I understood the material. Here are screenshots of my pre- and post-test results.

My brain does this!?

Any time I learn more about how the human brain works, I am truly amazed. To think about how hard my brain is working right now just to be able to type this blog post is astounding.

One of the things I enjoyed learning about was how the brain develops as we age. The brain is composed of neurons and synapses that allows it to process and hold information. These are the pieces that process everything we are taking in (like sight and sound) and what put information out (like making my fingers type this sentence). One of these neurons has the information processing capacity of a small computer. When we're born, our brain has 100 to 200 billion neurons, and 2,500 synapses. By age 2 or 3, we have 15,000 synapses.

As we get older, our brain begins to prune away synapses and neurons that we aren't using. There are two different versions of pruning: experience-expectant and experience-dependent, Experience-expectant pruning occurs when our brain produces neurons because they expect to use them, then as we age realizes we are not using them at all and prunes them away. An example of this occurs in Japanese infants. They are born with the ability to differentiate between the letters r and l, but because this isn't necessary in their language, they lose this ability. Experience-dependent pruning happens when connections are made based on an individual's experiences. Suppose a child is born without the ability to hear - the brain already has the neurons and synapses needed to decode sound, but because the child isn't using them, the pruning occurs. In place of these, the brain will produce more synapses and neurons needed for vision.

This is an interesting video that shows how neurons and synapses work to understand a new idea, as well as prune what is no longer needed.

I think what I find most interesting is how our brain does this all on its own. Our brain is able to adapt and change based on what it realizes we need.

Here is a link to the slides I created for the Cluter 2 PowerPoint.

Our first virtual class...

I am now a few days out of our first virtual class, and I can honestly say I hadn't fully decided if I liked it util now. I think it is much more convenient then having to drive to campus to meet, plus I can do it in my pajamas from my bed if I decide to.

My biggest concern was whether or not I would be able to keep focused or retain any information from, essentially, a video chat. The way it was organized (presenting an idea and then going round robin to talk about it) definitely helped solve that problem. I was interested in hearing what everyone had to say about Cluster 1. I think using the Google doc PowerPoint is a great way to share and present information. I am able to see what was important or exciting for my peers, as well as describe why something was important to me.

All in all, I am excited to see how next week's session pans out. By then we will be fully immersed in the class and the information.

The craziness begins...

My first blog post; learning how to do this successfully.

Here is a link to a great website for elementary school learning.