Week 4 ejournal

Angel Martinez

ID Document Rough Draft

February 9, 14

 

Purpose of the instruction:

• Problem: Students are not engaged in cooperative learning groups in my English 1301 classes and often get off topic. My Instructional Design Project is based on how to get the students in my English 1301 classes to be more engaged while in collaborative learning environments. I do a lot of group work and I have noticed that they are not all engaged. The content of what is being taught is related to English and usually involves analyzing an article, current event and or video. The students are struggling with meeting the expectations set my me as the teacher because they don't seem to be able or willing to meet the critical thinking skills level. Some do, don't get me wrong....but some are not and as a result I don't feel I am meeting all of my learners needs as a teacher. The purpose of my instruction is as stated above, to get students more engaged throughout the group lessons in each of my classes.

5 whys:

1. State why: This is a problem because only a select few of each group members are interacting during the group activities. So I will examine ways to get them all engaged & stay on topic.

2. The problem is occurring because some students may not feel they have prior knowledge that would be useful to the groups interaction. The students may also feel that their comments during the group time is not valid or worth sharing. Some of the students don't focus on the task @ hand and may need more direction.

3. Why is this occurring? This is occurring because students are not staying on task or interacting enough that their voices are being heard and their thoughts and level of thinking is becoming a valued part of the group activities.

4. Another why? Another reason this is happening is because the students are grouping into groups with just their friends, not diverse groups where they each would have something different to bring to the group.

5. Another why? Another question of why this is occurring could be to reflect on the content that we are studying and make sure it is not to much over their heads or too much below their critical thinking level.

 

• Description of the Learner – prior knowledge, technology skills and resources, etc.

 

 In looking at the characteristics of the demographics related to what background my students have I found this from the email sent out to us last week by the director of Student Retention;

• Total enrollment for the college for Spring 2014 semester is 3,039 with 1,544 being full time students
• Demographics include; White students: 56.1%, Black students:13.4%, Hispanic students: 24.3%
• Cities Included but not limited to are; Mount Pleasant: 33.8%, Pittsburg: 32.0%, Lone Star: 42%, Ore City: 34%
• Age of students; 18-21: 44.9%, 22-24: 11.8%
• College level of Parents: Father                          Mother
• Did not finish HS:            12.5%                         10.4%
• Graduated HS:                  28.1%                         21.4%
• Some college:                   17.4%                        23.6%
• BA or Higher                    11%                           16%
  Beliefs and attitudes that may impact learning, transfer and motivation in my classroom setting with the students in English 1301 are some of the following but are by no means only limited to this;

• Students may feel that they don't have prior knowledge related to the subject area.
• There is several Hispanics in my 3 classes, out of the total students in all 3 classes (70 total students) 23 are Hispanic. Many of them have been ELL in their school learning and may feel inferior as a result. I have to find a way to meet the ELL's learning needs more than I am doing now. I notice when we do group work in one class in particular, the 5 Hispanic girls all group together.
• Some of the attitudes I have encountered have been that the students do not like working with other students, they would rather do it alone. Yet, I feel collaborative learning is an essential skill that the 21st century learner must be able to do.
• Most are very motivated, they are paying for their education and want to be there. But there are some that do not want to be there, therefore their motivation is lacking. I have to find a way to target these students and make the engagement with them in class a valid part of what their future will be about. Have them see the relevance in what we do on a daily basis.
   

• Mental models that may influence the selection of instruction;

• Models that influence the selection of instruction always involve me as the teaching evaluating what the outcome of the lesson will be and what we need to do to get the content meaning transferred to them as learners. I do this by having the students analyze many different levels of materials such as; current events, newspaper articles, songs & movies and how their content may be relevant to what the lesson is, and the upmost skill I look for in my planning is that I am challenging the students to think on a critical level, that the answer is something they must dig for and come up with their own evaluation of what we are looking at.
   

• Goals and objectives of the instruction – learning outcomes to be measured:

I have been reflecting on how to make the learning groups better in my English 1301 classes for some time now and this project will give me a good chance to do it. In my classes there is a very diverse student population of many different races, and age levels. I have noticed that all the students seem to group their selves into like minded and like nationalities and that may not work the best to have successful groups. The learning content that I will be addressing is how to get the groups to meet a higher level of thinking but still be able to stay on task and meet the requirement's of the assignments at hand. I believe that cooperative learning is a useful tool and the students love it but I have to find the proper way through this project to implement.

 

 

• Plan for assessment of learning – methods for measuring attainment of learning

Outcomes:

               It is during my classes group work that I will measure their engagement and if they are getting the content material presented. If I see that they are not on topic or are not acquiring the knowledge needed for the assignment, I will try to regroup learners in a different sitting, with other students in the class rather than the ones they pick. If at that point there is still evidence of struggling students I will pull them into a group with myself and lead them through the steps of how to critically think about the current event we are discussing.

              

• Scope and sequence of topics to be covered:

               The scope of the learning instruction will be a semester’s time frame in a college setting. The sequence is to be done daily on Tuesday and Thursdays during class times, which are a hour and twenty minutes.

              

• Estimated time for learner to complete the instruction

• Selection of specific instructional strategies or methods and rationale for selection

• Selection of specific media to be developed (video, slideshows, audio narration) and

rationale for selection

• Estimated to time to complete the development process

• Resources required for development of the instruction

• List of team members and primary responsibilities – ID, SME, Media Experts, Graphic

Artists, Editors

• Plan for evaluation, maintenance, and update of the instructional materials

• List of approvals to be acquired before development begins

• Plan for testing and quality assurance

The first 5‐6 items on this list are identified during the Analysis phase