Coyote Cry


By: Phillip Hall

Blog Post #6

By: Phillip Hall
The Right Way to Ask Questions in the Classroom.
The big question in this article asked the reader, "What does a teacher asking questions of a class expect the class to learn from the questioning process?" Teachers ask questions to check for understanding, which benefits the teacher just as much as the student. For example, after teaching a concept, the teacher may ask the class, "Does everyone understand?" As a child, I was always hesitant to raise my hand and ask the educator to explain if I couldn't grasp the concept. I felt as if I was the only one who didn't understand, so I wouldn't ask sometimes to save myself from the embarrassment. Asking questions such as the one stated above, is really telling the class it's their last chance if they are having problems. To answer the question, what is the right way to ask questions in the classroom, I believe educators should make sure that our questions are relevant to the subject and every student is given the opportunity to relate and process the question before they answer. We need to be sure all our students are given various ways to show they understand: think-pair share, use of gestures (thumbs up, touching, nose, etc.),use of dry-erase boards, etc.

Asking Questions to Improve Learning
The six general strategies for asking questions are: First, you should avoid asking "leading questions". A leading question is phrased in such a way that it suggests its own answer and therefore discourages students from thinking on their own. Second, follow a yes or no question with an additional question. For example,follow up by asking students to explain why they answered the way they did; this helps to provide evidence or an example, or to respond to a yes-or-no answer given by another student. Third, aim for direct, clear, specific questions. These types of questions can be answered in an essay form or paper assignments. The fourth strategy is not to ask more than one question at once in class discussions. The fifth strategy is to include notes of when you will pause to ask and answer questions during each class session, making classes more interactive. The last strategy is simple, just ask a mix of different types of questions. Asking “closed” questions are designed to test the student's comprehension and retention. These questions have a limited number of correct answers. Asking "managerial" questions, are to ensure that your students understand an assignment or have access to necessary materials. The last type of question is “Open” questions. Open ended questions prompt multiple and sometimes conflicting answers which are the most effective in encouraging discussion and active learning in the classroom.

<Three Ways to Ask Better Questions in the Classroom
The three general ways of asking better questions in the classroom are: prepare questions, play with questions, and preserve good questions.
Prepare Questions. I've never thought of preparing a question until I read this article. However, preparing a question can make a confused question more clear to the students. When preparing a question you could ask yourself, 'is it a question that needs to be asked?' By asking yourself this question, the teacher can prepare better question and teach more meaningful lessons.
Play with Questions. When the question is answered, it loses most of its power to engage students. By playing with the question and leaving it unanswered until the time being, encourages the students to think about it.
Preserve Good Questions. Good questions can be kept and asked in another class. We need to ask good questions so that students see the importance of questions and how they make us think and help us learn. Doing so may encourage students to start asking better questions themselves.

Asking Better Questions in the Classroom: As college students, our professors expect more than a yes-or-no" answer. This video explains the difference between an open-ended question and a closed-ended question. Asking a more detailed question such as an "open ended" questions, gets the students minds engaged to come up with a detailed answer, rather than a yes or no answer. Open ended questions allows the responder to become more enthused about the answer than "closed ended" questions. Closed ended questions can be answered by a "yes or no" answer which gives the responder a 50% chance of guessing the correct answer. This video really intrigued me by asking the question in two different styles. The closed ended questions was, "If Rosa Parks had given up her seat to a white man on the bus in 1955, do you think the history of Civil Rights in this country would be different?" This closed ended question, can be answered by a simple yes or no. The open ended question asked in the video was, "What if Rosa Parks had given her seat to a white man on the bus in 1955, what do you believe the consequences of the implication would have been for our country and to the civil right movement?" This questions leaves the responder able to do more thinking and come up with a variety of responses. Asking open ended questions makes the responder put on their "thinking cap" and think outside the box rather than answering with a yes or no andswer.

Questioning Styles and Strategies
This video was pretty cool, if you've ever read the book or watched the movie Bridge to Terabithia, you would understand why. The teacher gets the student's mind engaged when he asks them for comprehensive questions. The first question he asks his class is in the mastery style of questioning. The teacher asks the class "What would be the first thing you noticed if you came across Terabithia in the woods?" This question was answered in many of the same ways. He then follows up asking a question in the understanding style of questioning, by asking the class "What affect did Terabithia have on their relationship?" This question made the students echo the question. The third question the teacher asks his students was in the self-expressive style of questioning. This question gave each student the opportunity to draw what they thought Terabithia looked like. The next style of question was interpersonal, he asks "What would YOU like about Terabithia?" This gave students an opportunity not to give a wrong answer. The different types of questioning really intrigued me, I never understood how differnet types of questioning could promote different types of answers! As an educator, I plan to incorporate all the types of questioning in my classroom.

Project #7 This is my passion

This is my passion video by: Phillip Hall

Project #7 This is my sentence

This Is My Sentence Video by: Phillip Hall


"Life without knowledge is death in disguise."

Blog Post #5

iCurio/Discovery Education
By: Phillip Hall

Project #3 Presentation

Author: Phillip Hall

Blog Post #4

Author: Phillip Hall

The Purim Story

Wow! is my first reaction after listening to Langwitches Listening-Comprehension-Podcating Post. Children age seven and eight, told the Purim Story. The story was told by the entire class. The beginning of the story was in English and the second part in Hebrew. Even though I do not speak Hebrew, and only know one word (Shalom), the story stayed exciting even when I know longer understood the words. The children made the story flow from one language to another. I enjoyed the tone of the laugh, the party scene and the enthusiasm in the children's voice. No matter what the language, the listener is able to determine that Harmone (?) is a bad guy. The children told a wonderful story together.

The article points out many useful things that will help me with my podcast. After reading this article, and viewing the video, I will be sure to edit my podcast. Editing skills will be in fluency, which will help in how smooth my podcast sounds. The ability to re-listen and play with the mechanics of my podcast, will hopefully make my podcast presentation better.

The Flat Stanley Podcast

Langwitches.org
The Flat Stanley podcast was pretty cool! First, the teacher and students developed a storyline, which was to send each child to any location they chose. The teacher only had a few rules for the podcast. The children had to say their location, how they would get there and how they would get back home. They were also told to make their stories exciting by sound effects and excitement or tones used in their voices. The children were encouraged to use as many senses to help the listeners travel with them to their location. The podcast took the class all around the world and even to outer space.

One student took the class to London, England, where we went to the musical Les Miserable; the student even sang at the musical. Another student took the class to Tuscaloosa, Alabama, where we learned to say "Roll Tide". We then went to otter space! On this trip, the students/listener experienced the blast off of a spacecraft; fantastic sound effects on this trip. We then came back to Earth and traveled to Israel and went to many places. I traveled to the North Pole, where I was chased by a Polar Bear. On our next trip, we traveled back in time to old Chicago. I traveled to several other interesting places with this group of students. The students did a wonderful job presenting this podcast; at times it really was as though we traveled to the locations in the podcast. What I will include in my podcast from viewing this podcast, is remembering to show excitement whenever possible in my podcdast; it makes the presentation more enjoyable. I will also include different sound effects; another item that will make my presentation more exciting. Since this lesson/podcast took us to so many locations, I'm sure the search engine Wolfram Alpha could have been used in this project. Therefore, I'm sure I will use Wolfram Alpha in my podcast for research.

The Benefits of Podcasting in the Classroom

In this podcast, students are practicing project based learning. Students are encouraged to create a topic, research the topic and present their findings in a podcast. The teacher is there to help only if needed. Children work in groups, so they are able to collaborate with each other and be as creative as they want to be. By the use of technology, students are also able to collaborate with students all over the world. Within the research, students are encouraged to use their higher order thinking skills. One of the students in this presentation said that she enjoyed podcasting because it allows her to enjoy her lesson with her family. She stated that they even listen to her podcast on long car rides. As a future teacher, I will use podcasting to keep parents and students aware of what is going on in my class. I can see myself making my podcast and having it on my own created website. My podcast could be to inform parents and students of tests coming up, future meetings, field trips and rules I will have in my class. Podcast's can be used for many things. I think podcast's are definitely more creative than a regular teacher directed lesson and will keep a student's attention a lot better. Just seeing how students used podcasting in this lesson will help me to create a better podcast myself. This is a technique I will definitely use when I become a teacher.

Blog Assignment #3

Paige Ellis' Blog Assignment #12 (Summer 2011)
Paige Ellis' blog focus on Peer Editing. In her blog, she explains that using a peer editor is not an easy task and will take practice to become an effective peer editor. In her blog, she encourages us to perform several tasks: watch the video, What is Peer Editing, view the slideshow Peer Edit With Perfection Tutorial and to watch the video, Writing Peer Review Top 10 Mistakes.

Peer Editing
In the Peer Editing video, I learned the definition of peer editing. According to Paige Ellis, peer editing means making suggestions, comments and compliments to someone, preferably your classmate's paper. I learned there are three steps that peer editors should follow: an editor should compliment the author on what is good about his/her work, an editor should make suggestions on how to make the author's work better and lastly, the editor should make corrections in punctuation, grammar, sentences and spelling. The video also taught me to stay positive and specific when editing my peer's work.

Peer Edit with Perfection Tutorial
The Peer Edit with Perfection Tutorial's slideshow was very similar to the Peer Editing video. The slideshow explains the meaning of peer editing and also listed the three main things editors must do to be effective. The slideshow differs from the video in that it gives an opportunity to view suggested compliments to use when editing peer work. The slideshow also allowed me to practice editing the proper way.

Writing Peer Reviews Top 10 Mistakes
The video Writing Peer Reviews Top 10 Mistakes, was about children sharing different types of poor editing. I learned a lot from this video. I learned that there are definitely 10 ways I should not edit a peer's paper. The video taught me that a person should not be too picky, mean, pushy, loud, too fast or too defensive. An editor should also stay on the topic, not be social with others when editing, should be specific and should care what is happening during editing. This video taught me what not to do when I edit one of my peer's work.

Classmates Critique
My group did pretty well altogether. However, there were a few grammatical errors, but all the blogs met the criteria and were on a 12th grade level of writing. All in all, my group produced very well written blogs. They definitely listened to the videos and read the assignment we were given. The blogs were very easy to read, and also had clarity. After I found grammatical errors, I sent them e-mails on things they should check over. I will respond my positive comments publicly(blog), this in turn may help other readers to look over their blogs to help make them better. I will respond to major errors privately, via e-mail. After completing this assignment, I learned more than anything that an editor should never offend the author. I would not want to embarrass a person, but I would want to make sure they corrected their errors. I think it is my duty as a peer editor to let the author know; this will help their work earn a better grade.

Author: Phillip Hall

C4T Project #4

C4T August Project #5

The blog I read for this month was from Mr. Nathan Horne. Mr. Horne shared with us how to create a personal, social, and physical education program. He stated that at the start of a new school year, having your yearly program set up and having a blueprint for the way you are going to deliver your school's curriculum to your student's is vital. He gave example of what his active living, identity, and interaction programs would look like. He broke the programs down into a more easily read and understood way so that he could meet all requirements. As a Physical Education teacher, collaborating with the students other teachers is a must. Whatever happens in physical education should be aligned with the concepts and ideas that are being discovered in the classrooms.
@Pmh1222Hall

Blog Post #2

Part 1 Group Post (Professor Dancealot)

Mr. Dancealot Phillip Hall

After watching the Professor Dancealot video, it made me ask myself, “What will teaching in the 21st century be like?” In this video the professor didn’t align instruction with assessment . The first thing I noticed was the classroom setting, which was not a dance studio.. It was just a regular classroom. To me, a dance teacher will always be more effective teaching in a dance studio. Not being in the right teaching environment restricted his class from learning the material he was trying to teach. Professor Dancealot taught from behind his desk using a slideshow, which seems ridiculous due to the subject matter. Professor Dancealot should have been modeling strategies he wanted to teach his students; he should have not been behind his desk. Professor Dancealot stressed the burp-back method of teaching. He wanted his students to memorize the slideshow presentation and spit the material back out for the final. To answer the question , “What will teaching in the 21st century be like?” I hope I teach my students meaningful strategies that will be with them for life, not just for a test. I hope the 21st Century method of teaching will be so effective, that twenty years later, information learned will still be used. I truly believe Dr. Strange is using this method in his classes. In this lesson, Dr. Strange is teaching us to get rid of the burp-back method of teaching.

Duane Nelson-In my opinion of the film "Mr. Dancealot", Mr. Dancealot’s technique of teaching was ineffective and confusing for the students ability to learn the different dances. The reason why I believe this is because the teacher preferred to the technique of note taking and lecture instead of allowing the students to participate in hands-on learning. The technique Mr. Dancealot used made the students very bored and the attendance level of the class reduce over time. The students in the class would have performed better on the final if he had the allowed them to practice with one another instead of forcing them to learn by writing it down on paper. This film is a great example of how lecture courses can make students lose interest over time and not retain the information that was taught to them. In Dr. Strange's EDM 310 class forces the students to learn by hands-on activities and projects. In these types of courses it is hard for the students to lose interest in the class because they are constantly participating in hands-on assignments.

Krista- In this film the goals and objective do not match up with the class style. Mr. Dancealot is teaching different dances through a slide show of the different steps. Also, he is demonstrating the steps and positions while behind a huge desk and teachers’ station. None of the students can see what needs to be done or how it should be done. Then for the final Mr. Dancealot expects the students to be able to perform these dances on their own with no prior practice or hands on teaching. I believe that in a classroom the students should be the doers and the teacher walk around and adjust them to the correct method. In this process the students get a chance to try it out on their own and figure it out in their own ways.

Victoria Williams-

After watching the YouTube, video "Mr.Dancealot" I quickly began to ponder on what teaching would be like in the 21st century. Throughout the video, it showed the perception of what most educators consider as the "burp back method.” This method is currently how the majority of our schools are teaching our fellow students. The "burp back method" can easily be described as memorizing something for a test, taking the test, and quickly forgetting it. In the 21st century, educators should be choosing to perform a different teaching method. Many educators are working towards making learning more project - based in order to end the burp back method. "Mr.Dancealot" painted a perfect picture of how most classrooms are ran. This is by not providing the students with a hand- on -experience but rather forcing the students to memorize the necessities for the test and getting the grade to push the student through the course. I have all intentions of ending this method of teaching for my students, and plan to help create ways for other educators to end the boring “burp back method” as well.

Part 2 Dissenting Group Post-None

Part 3 Individual Post-Phillip Hall

Harness Your Students' Digital Smarts
This video is about two teachers, Vicki Davis & Julie Lindsey, who incorporate innovative techniques such as wikis, blog, pod-casts, and virtual worlds to connect their students in rural Georgia to the world. Mrs Davis starts out by saying a very catching statement,"You don't have to know everything before you can teach it." At first, I didn't quite agree with her theory; as the video played out, her statement made more sense to me. Davis and Lindsey founded the Global Collaborative Digi Teen. Digi Teen is a wiki that connects students from around the world. Students study digital citizenship by researching, writing, and posting their work through two digital portals. Digi Teen allows students to collaborate on assigned projects and figure things out on there own, with little help from their teachers. The students basically teach themselves with help from other students around the world; while the teacher is the facilitator

While working in the digital world, the students learn how to change avatars and terraform. It took the students three days to change avatars and terraform. The students did this without being instructed on how to do so. Terraforming is something I've never heard of until I watched the video. The meaning of terraform is to transform a planet to resemble Earth. Without instruction from their teacher, the students taught Mrs Davis to terraform!

Davis and Lindsey also founded the Flat Classroom Conference. The Flat Classroom Conference encourages students to study and experience trends in information technology, by collaboratively writing reports with other students and creating videos. The video and the Edutopia website in this assignment was very insightful. It was also full of modern techniques to help students collaborate and learn without having to burp back the assigned material. This type of learning would definitely be considered meaningful learning.

Part 4 Individual posts by other group members

Flipping the Classroom - 4th Grade STEM (Victoria)

While watching a video on YouTube called "Flipping the Classroom- 4th Grade STEM", I started to take mental notes on what a great tool this could be in my own classroom. "Flipping" the classroom is an innovative approach to classroom instructions. This program is a new tool which some schools have begun to use in mathematics. It also allows students to use technology both at school and at home. Students begin the new math lesson at home, by watching a video of the lesson and attempting a few practice problems. This method gives students the time to come up with questions and concerns regarding the lesson for the next day. This process in return, saves the teacher time and presents the students with a facilitator to help the students understand the lesson more. This is due to the fact that the teacher is now able to help the students more versus spending time in front of the classroom with instructions. This program allows students to expand their knowledge more and it creates a higher level of thinking. I believe this tool is an excellent way to give students an advantage of learning, and also help teachers to have better time management to insure each child's future in learning. I will use this tool in my own classroom. I hope to have the opportunity to engage in this program in not only mathematics but other subjects as well.

(Duane)



After watching the film by Kevin Roberts shows many different opportunities and possibilities of using tools of the internet for future teachers to use for a more productive and educational classroom. To teach in the 21st century Roberts thinks we should use more media devices such as cell phones, IPods, and laptops instead of just lecturing and taking notes. In this style of teaching Roberts believes a student is capable of learning anything, at any time, or anywhere. I agree completely with Roberts position that he expressed in the video of using the countless tools that are available on the internet to better the education in the classroom. By incorporating Roberts’ ideas into my future classroom it would open the door for endless opportunities and for all students to have a better learning experience. These countless tools that I could use my class would be Twitter, Blogs, Facebook, Skype, YouTube, Google, and many more. The only thing that concerns me is that a student could possibly abuse the tools in a negative behavior but the video addressed this concern by stating “Tools provide temptation but are not a source of negative behavior”. Overall I feel like this is a great idea by Roberts and should be incorporated in all future classrooms.

Writing A Quality Blog Post. (Krista)

After watching The Networked Student (5:10) by Wendy Drexler, I found many connection to the current EDM 310 class. Drexier presented the material in an abstract skit manner. The skit was about a student who aided his learning while using social media and internet sites. He had weekly classes but also had class on the computer each week. He used many different social media site to connect to other students and scholars in the field of study. The student also used sites to connect to the best known professors. Skype was used to have a professional on the subject to enter the class and speak on the topic. Drexier used this small video to introduce the viewers to all the different methods a student can gear up his own learning.

I believe this is a fantastic way of teaching and learning. It teaches the students to become independent learners and to find the material for their selves. It also allows the students to connect with their peers to see what problems they may have encountered in the past that can possibly be avoided by talking and learning from them. Drexier’s video is definitely the future to our learning and teaching styles.

This video is a great learning tool for new and old teachers. This can be a building block for teachers to learn from and add to as they become independent learners in the field of teaching. It gives teachers tools they can use for their selves as well as pass down to their students. I absolutely loved this video. I will definitely be revisiting this once i begin my teaching career to share with my students and fellow teachers.