Creating High Performance Learning Environments
Video Analysis
In this video, Ms. Migdol used multiple strategies in this lesson. It is a project based lesson and it is highly student-centered learning which the student's involvement dominated the class. The students‘ learning is autonomous and they learn from collaboration. You can tell Ms.Migdal's clear goal is to train the students demonstrating how a real world engineer works.
*Academic expectations -
I think Ms. Migdol build a model that guided the students to meet their high academic expectations through these procedures. At “Chime” time, she clearly set a student-centered learning situation by asking one students in each group to be the Chimer who represents the group to explain their work. They learned autonomously by reviewing peer’s works. The chimer has to be well-understand their work to present and to communicate. At Sketching design time, they had to assess their own idea and then sell it to the group. Then the group has to come up to a consensus for one design in which involves student’s critical thinking and communication skills. They had to make a consensus based on their knowledge from learning. At the computer simulation time, Ms. Migdol incorporated game-based strategy and lead the students to test out their ideas like a real world engineer. The students need to be problem solvers and learn from their mistakes. Ms. Migdol used this opportunity to let them understand the system thinking in this lesson. At the testing time, not only she constrained the materials to push them grow more with problem-solving skills, she gave them limited fonds so the students needed to keep track and budget in which mathematical skills are required. Through autonomous learning, problem-solving and communicating and self-assessment, a high expectation of students’ academic performance is clearly outlined in this video.
*Behavior expectations -
I think Ms. Migdol set a high behavior expectations in the class. She clearly set strict norms and procedures in the lesson plan. The behaviors expectation are also shown during the class when she asked the students to collaborate their ideas. It required a high level of good behavior to perform this activity. Therefore, I think Ms. Migdol holds high expectation on the student's’ behavior as well.
In a conclusion, Ms. Migdol set a high expectations on both academic and behaviors performance through this inquiry-based learning strategy. It requires the students to engage in learning by asking questions, investigating, exploring, reporting what they see and collaborating. Students in the video shown a well used of multiple 21st century essential skills like problem-solving, critical thinking, people management, collaboration, it is very impressive.
In this video, it is clearly a teacher centered learning class. I am seeing my childhood memory from Taiwan reappearing through the video. The teacher is the authority and the center of the class, very little interactions in between the teacher and the students except when the students answering teacher’s questions. The students are chanting the multiplication table in the video, and it is exactly the same with what I learned at school! The teaching strategy is totally the same as well even the clapping, I am shocked that they are still using the same formula for over 30 years! The only things that are different are the students. It was very impressive to see that a group of students from the USA were using Chinese which is a rare choice of second language in the classroom. But is it bizarre for me to see them learning math in Chinese in this traditional Chinese class setting. I have to put away my puzzled mind to look at the expectations for academic and behavior.
*Academic expectations -
I would say for the academic expectation for the students is high but the depth of learning is shallow. The students are learning by rout regardless which language they are using. They might not know the meaning of the content at all but they can memorize the correct results. The academic expectation of this model is high but it is only applicable on a competitive setting which are the test results instead of actual understanding of the content.
*Behavior expectations -
I would say the expectations of behavior is low in the video. The teachers were using hand clapping and mirroring for directing attention. But when the teacher were reviewing subtraction on the board, the students were shouting out answers left and right without any respect. The teacher didn’t redirect or even notice the problem. This might be how they used to do in the class but I would say it is a bit messy for a proper classroom management.
Overall, I would say the academic expectation for the students is high in this video because the goal of this learning model is designed for examination lead education. The students will know the correct answer for a question but they don’t know why. The lack of critical thinking skill is a huge problem in traditional examination-oriented education system. The behavior expectation is a bit questionable in this video but based on what I observed I would say it is low. It needs some norms to help students achieve better behaviors.
This is my first time watching or knowing about Whole Brain Teaching(WBT). My first impression is the high energy and rite like classroom. After learning and reading about WBT, I found it is a strategy based on brain science and it is designed to maximize student engagement in lessons, positive interactions with classmates, and educational fun. WBT instruction includes vocal directions mixed with hand gestures, inflections, full body movement, head motions, and chants. It prompts the students to engage.
*Academic expectations -
I think it is considered high academic expectation for the students in this video. The WBT based instructions that incorporates mirroring directions, assisting hand gestures, body movement everything is designed to maximize the student's learning and engaging. The speed reading shows a clear high expectation for the students’ academic performance. The super improver reward points is a very well designed system to encourage the students to achieve their best possibilities.
*Behavior expectations -
I would say yes for the high behavior expectations in this video and this model. There are scoreboards and points earning system in which encourages students to behave the best they can. There are several virtues are recognized and rewarded.
I think this WBT model is holding high expectations for students’ both academic and behavior achievements. The multisensory learning system helps students in their academic learning, it even helps in differentiate learning when it comes to learning disabilities. When it comes to the norms and procedures, it sets a game-based scoreboard system that encourages the students to perform good behaviors and good virtues. It seems to me it is a highly effective strategy.
Setting high performance expectations among my students
I am currently living in Doha, Qatar. The students that I am going to teach will be multicultural global citizens that came from 70 different countries. I will be teaching art from grade 3 to grade 5. I definitely would like to hold high expectations for the students in both academic and behavioral aspects. I would like to create a learning environment that is similar to the video 1 STEM project based learning. Even in art, I think there are ways to incorporate students-centered learning. I think by letting students engaging in the process of researching, collaborating, problem-solving in a project, the students will grow the ownership of their learning and it helps to maximize their creativity which is one of the academic aspect in art. For the behavior expectations, I would like to incorporate WBT’s game-based reward system to help encouraging good behaviors. I would also use some of the hand gestures and mirroring techniques for classroom management. I do believe by setting reasonable high expectations, we can help the students reaching their highest potential and leaping over the limited beliefs of themselves.
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