Running Head: GRADUATED DIFFICULTY STRATEGY

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Course 6630: Instructional Models and Strategies,

Week Two Application: New American Lecture Strategy and Graduated Difficulty Strategy

APP2MScally (50 points)

Michael Patrick Scally

http://www.M_Scally@Hotmail.com

March 12, 2006

Dr. Trudy Driskell

 

Week 2:  New American Lecture Strategy and Graduated Difficulty Strategy - Application 

 

 

Help icon

 Help

 

 

 

JavaScript is required for your course. Please ensure JavaScript is enabled in your browser preferences.


Application: Mastery Model Lesson Planning

Step One: Introduction

For this Application Assignment, you will have the option of developing a lesson using either the New American Lecture strategy or the Graduated Difficulty strategy.

First, identify one specific content area of your curriculum that lends itself to planning a lesson that will result in mastery learning. Then, consider what you want to achieve with this lesson. The New American Lecture strategy stimulates students’ thinking and makes learning meaningful and memorable by engaging students in the processes of connecting, organizing, developing images, and elaboration. It is also a teacher-focused approach. The Graduated Difficulty strategy is a practice strategy designed to help students practice at an appropriate level, develop decision-making skills, and develop actions for carrying out their decisions.

Step Two: Individual Response

With this in mind, select either Option A (New American Lecture strategy) or Option B (Graduated Difficulty strategy) to complete your Application Assignment.

Option A: New American Lecture Strategy

The New American Lecture strategy is an appropriate choice when your goal is for students to learn and remember important information.

Design a lesson using the New American Lecture strategy. Develop your lesson as follows:

  • Identify the content knowledge to be mastered.
  • Describe the hook, kindling, and bridge for the lesson.
  • Include a visual organizer and briefly explain the effectiveness of its design.
  • Explain how information will be chunked and made vivid for students.
  • Indicate one question in each of the four models that will be posed to students.
  • Briefly explain how the four principles of the Mastery model are embedded within the lesson.

Option B: Graduated Difficulty Strategy

When planning to use the Graduated Difficulty strategy, you must prepare suitable content and establish three to five levels of difficulty. Once the students are engaged in their tasks, your responsibility is to monitor progress and be available to assist students in moving through their tasks.

Design a lesson using the Graduated Difficulty strategy. Develop your lesson as follows:

  • Identify the area of academic content and learning objectives that you will be targeting.

9th Grade Geography – 1. Given a choice of geographic coordinates, students will demonstrate understanding of coordinates by selecting the most appropriate ones. Answers will be recorded on an online quiz.

2. Given a world map, students will deduce the locations of places (cities and countries) by applying their knowledge of geographic coordinates throughout the world. Answers will be recorded on an online quiz.

  • Describe at least three tasks of increasing levels of difficulty that will be provided for students and the activities within those tasks. Indicate what distinguishes one task from another.

1.       By reading clues to places and matching that knowledge with coordinates, students will select appropriate geographic locations. Basic Knowledge quiz.

2.       By reading clues to places and matching that knowledge with coordinates, students will select appropriate geographic locations when supplied with maps. Intermediate Knowledge Quiz.

3.       By reading clues to places and matching that knowledge with coordinates, students will select appropriate geographic locations when supplied with maps and researching databases to ascertain additional historical hints. Advanced Knowledge Quiz.

  • Explain what your role will be once your students are engaged in their tasks.

The students will be assigned this assignment the first day of the week. Each student will be allotted a specific time period to read and ascertain the answers to five online quiz questions. Students will select one quiz from among three quizzes developed in three separate difficulty levels: Basic, Intermediate, and Advanced.

  • Indicate how students will self-evaluate their performance and make decisions about progressing to subsequent tasks.

Students will self-evaluate their performance by reading correct and incorrect answers for each of the five questions in each quiz for each specific difficulty level. Students will complete the assignment by completing a Quiz Evaluation Form that describes their metacognition during and after the quiz is taken.  Post-completion interviews with the teacher will also discuss student quiz-taking strategy.

  • Explain how the lesson is an effective alternative to traditional methods of drill and practice.

            This lesson will enable students to choice their own abilities levels, apply their own knowledge,   and to help them discover new thinking strategies. By implementing this activity in a learning    center the students will not miss class time on other activities. Students will also gain more time to understand how and why they think the way they do as well as build confidence by quickly seeing success in their choices.

At the mercy of appearing to ingratiate myself or sounding like an advertisement for Walden University, I want to preface this assignment by once again stating how much I like this master of education program, Integrating Technology in the Classroom. In many of my previous assignments I have used the same platitudes I once again find myself using for this activity: topical, logical, interesting, and needed. In fact I very definitely liked both teaching strategies highlighted this week – the New American Lecture (Silver, et al, 1996) and the Graduated Difficulty strategies (Pages 35-60). Both exemplify the aforementioned attributes, and it was difficult for me to select only one upon which to develop a lesson. I am positive I will use each strategy a great deal in the future, but for the purposes of this assignment I will employ the Graduated Difficulty Strategy.

A Graduated Difficulty Strategy Lesson

I chose the graduated difficulty strategy (GDS) activity for two main reasons: 1. I want to implement a basic online geography activity for students so they may “refresh their memories” about geography before they do a Great Falls High School (GFHS) Library Research Scavenger Hunt, and 2. I want to do it soon so I can make sure the GDS is implemented by the library staff before the end of the year. I will not be working at GFHS next year, so I want to leave something behind that will make the library’s scavenger hunts less daunting for ninth grade students. As with all activities I devise, I began by determining which social studies content standard (Montana social studies content standards, 2000)  I should use (CS 3). Content standard #3 reads: Students apply geographic knowledge and skills (e.g., location, place, human/environment, interactions, movement, and regions). The rationale further reads: Students gain geographical perspectives on Montana and the world by studying the Earth and how people interact with places. Knowledge of geography helps students address cultural, economic, social, and civic implications of living in various environments. More specifically benchmark 12.1 is most appropriate. It reads: interpret, use, and synthesize information from various representations of the Earth (e.g., maps, globes, satellite images, geographic information systems, three-dimensional models).

My next step was to set my learning objectives (Lamb, 2000)  (Pages 23 – 30). I felt that the learning objectives listed above (Page 3) would help the students reinforce material that they were previously taught in middle school while improving those skills. The learning objectives also help each student to understand why he or she thinks they way they do and helps each student feel more comfortable by selecting the difficulty level at which they feel they will be most successful. This is another way to motivate the students in the library computer lab besides simply having them use the computers. Previous library scavenger hunts, in my estimation, have taught many students to give up or face certain failure. Those were not, of course, the main objectives of the previous scavenger hunt activities, but they have been constructed so that only the most elite students might be successful. In fact, the originator of these scavenger hunts often prefaces her activity introduction by stating, “This will be the most difficult assignment you will face at Great Falls High. If you are unable to proficiently use the library computers and databases to research information, you will not graduate from Great Falls High School.” As I mentioned previously in another application paper, I very much disagree with this teaching tactic. I am of the belief that teachers are supposed to teach all the students, not just the advanced students. I have explained and proposed this type of activity to our head librarian (the originator of the scavenger hunts), and have gotten the okay to implement these GDS quizzes. She gave her permission with the understanding that the ninth grade students would score higher on her scavenger hunts if they first underwent some “remedial” training in geography.

While students are taking these quizzes, I will facilitate the activity by being available to answer quiz-taking student questions (although assignment directions will be available to the students at the learning center site). I have devised and uploaded the three aforementioned multiple difficulty geography quizzes (World History, 2006) to my personal web site (Social studies page). My site is located @ <http://www.oocities.org/mkscally/SocialStudies.html>). They are located in the lower right-hand corner of the page. While constructing these three quizzes I made sure to follow the phases of graduated difficulty (Canter & Associates, Inc. 1996) such as helping them form and make good decisions, being able to change their choices if desired, and being able to correct their work (Program Four). In the same place as the quizzes I have also post the URL addresses for the school library’s databases, maps, and Post Quiz Evaluation form. Directions for proper completion of the quizzes and the Post Quiz Evaluation form will be found on my Social Studies page as well as at the learning center.

While contemplating this week’s activities I utilized Google.com to find what I feel is the perfect quiz generator ((Half Baked Software, 2006) for this GDS activity, Hot Potato. Teachers may use Hot Potato to not only generate increasing difficulty multiple-choice quizzes, they may also devise crossword puzzles, short answer, fill-in-the-blank, and word jumbles. Each question may also be accompanied by hints, the questions themselves may be scrambled in order to keep plagiarism to a minimum, and the quizzes may be written in fifteen major languages besides English. Best yet, Hot Potato is completely free and was devised to be used by teachers on the Internet.

I believe a logical sequel technology assignment to this one, besides the library scavenger hunts, would be to use GoogleEarth to further hone student geography skills and knowledge.

I am convinced GFHS freshmen will enjoy taking geography quizzes in the graduated difficulty manner. Such quizzes will help them receive the necessary practice of geography skills they need. Although this application seemed to me to be pretty complicated, I have enjoyed doing it. In my mind that should be one of the aspects of any assignment, whether for teachers or for students. I am hoping this assignment will enable the freshmen students of GFHS to like learning and to become life-long learners. Teachers need to encourage students to embrace learning rather than dislike or even, despise it. I believe student use of technology can help students make this transition.

References

Bison Library databases @ Great falls high school bison Library retrieved March 9, 2006 @ http://www.gfps.k12.mt.us/Schools/GreatFallsHigh/web/library/bisonlibrary/bisonlibrary.html?ABCDEFGH

Canter and Associates, Inc.  (Executive Producer). (1996). Building your repertoire of teaching strategies. Los Angeles: Author.

Half-Baked Software Inc. (2005, February 5). Retrieved March 9, 2006 from http://www.google.com> @ <http://hotpot.uvic.ca/

Lamb, A. (2002). Building treehouses for learning: Technology in today's classrooms (3rd Ed.). Emporia, KS: Vision to Action.

Montana Social Studies Content Standards.2000. Retrieved March 9, 2006 from  http://www.oocities.org/mkscally/SSConStandards.pdf

Silver, H. F., Hanson, J. R., Strong, R. W., & Schwartz, P. B. (1996). Teaching styles & strategies. Trenton, NJ: The Thoughtful Education Press.

Social Studies (2006): World history: geography quizzes found @ http://www.oocities.org/mkscally/SocialStudies.html