End of Semester Knowledge & Skills Assessment

This has been a whirlwind of a semester. This class was full of useful, beneficial information. I was so interested in this topic for so long, and I'm happy I finally got a chance to study it in depth. There are so many wonderful resources that I will take with me from this class. 

Upon completing the knowledge & skills assessment for the end of the semester, I realize that I have learned so much and have grown immensely as an educator.  

As I finish this course and evaluate how much I have learned in such a short amount of time, I am actually very surprised and pleased at the outcome. However, to be honest, I do wish that this class took place in a classroom. As I feared, I had a bit of a hard time following the textbook and the assignments.

What I did enjoy about this class was that it was not a methods class. As I mentioned above, I am very used to methods classes. I was able to apply what I learned to my pre-k class. I also enjoyed that all of the fieldwork was interviews and observations. Psychology and educational theories gave me a whole new perspective on teaching. I learned that there is so much more that goes into creating a lesson than just the content and material.

I learned about social cognitive theory. I studied that theory extensively, as my theorist was Albert Bandura. Social cognitive theory deals with how people behave after observing specific behaviors. He used the Bobo doll experiment to study learned aggressiveness. I found this theory to be relevant because, so often, we see students behaving in certain ways because they have seen others behave in certain ways.

One thing I really took away from this class is the importance of self-efficacy and self-esteem. I had never heard of self-efficacy before. It is the belief that you can achieve your goals. It goes with motivational theories of learning. Children must be intrinsically motivated in order to have self-efficacy. Children need intrinsic and extrinsic motivation in order to have high self-esteem. One of my biggest goals as a teacher will be to encourage positive views of the self. That is the most important thing my students will need in order to succeed.

Here is my skills assessment from the beginning of the semester: Beginning of the Semester

Here is my skills assessment for the end of the semester: End of Semester

Self-esteem

In my classroom, one of my major goals will be to boost self-esteem and self-efficacy. 

There are so many heartbreaking stories about children with low self-esteem and low sense of self-worth. It is sad to see at, even as young as 5, children begin to feel that they "don't care" because they "are not good enough." 

As educators, our job goes far beyond teaching facts and giving assessments. Our job is to nurture children and adolescents into being proud of who they are, and not afraid to stand up for what they believe in. 

We unfortunately live in a very scary world right now. But I want to mold the generation of people who are going to change all the negative in the world into something more positive. After all, our students are the future of the world. 



This link provides information about self-esteem in kids, how to encourage it, and how to notice when a child has low self-esteem.  
Low self-esteem at a young age can lead to depression, which is incredibly dangerous. 
I think that every parent and teacher should have to look at this website, as well as attend workshops about kids' self-esteem and the importance of discouraging bullies. 

Kid's Health- Self Esteem

Here is another site, talking about self-esteem and self-confidence

The Kid Counselor


emotional intelligence

Extra Credit: Create a Website

I love the idea of creating a website about myself. I realize how selfish/conceited that sounds, but I do not mean it that way. I simply mean that there is so much I want to tell people, especially when I first meet them, that it would be awesome to say "if you want to learn more, visit my website!" 

I tried Google sites for the first time. I have experience with Weebly, which I like, but since I love Google Docs and Google Slides, etc. I wanted to try Google websites. I was quite pleased at how easy it was! 

The website is not done, as I did this at the very end, but I do plan on working on it even after this class is over. 

Here is a link to my (not yet completed) site: 

Kristine's Website

My Ideal Classroom

Our final project was a lot of work, but I also really enjoyed it. The idea was to create a layout of our ideal classroom. We then discussed how educational psychology impacted our decisions for our classroom.  Our project was to create the classroom (I used a website called classroom.4teachers), create a screen cast, and write a paper.
My classroom focuses on students developing a sense of community, and a sense of self. I felt that I took away a great deal about encouraging self-efficacy and fostering high self-esteem in children. As someone who has struggled for a long time with self-esteem issues, I hope that I can take my experiences and turn them into teaching opportunities.  I want my students to leave my classroom in June with a new, positive view of themselves. 
My classroom caters to children being able to let their creativity flow. It is also about comfort- there will be carpets, posters, and comfy things EVERYWHERE. I want my students to feel welcomed in my classroom. I want them to feel like they always have a safe space. 

Here is my project:

Here is an image of my ideal classroom: 

And here is a link to my paper.   :)

Kristine's Classroom

Project Implicit

The most important online Personality Quizzes I have ever taken! 

and I'm not thrilled with the results. . . 

but I will learn from them.

Project Implicit

I took the gender bias quiz first. 
Every day, I am conscious about my thoughts regarding gender. I do not associate blue with boys and pink with girls, trucks with boys and dolls with girls. I am always encouraging my students to play with whatever they want to! I have had my boys say to me "only girls can wear dresses" to which I said "girls and boys can wear whatever they want! If a boy wants to wear a dress, so what??" 

Unfortunately, the quiz results told me that somewhere, deep deep down in my subconscious, my brain still associates boys with science and girls with liberal arts. 
Now, there is the chance that this is because I, personally, am a female who is not very talented in anything to do with math, science, or engineering, but I LOVE the arts and English. However, I would have hoped by now that just because the stereotype applies to me, does not mean I associate it with all males and females. 

I know that society and the media have a lot to do with how I associate things in my subconscious mind. When someone has a baby, if it is a boy everything is blue. If it's a girl, everything is pink. But why?! I'm a girl and I love blue! I HATE pink! 

Society advertises Barbies and makeup and pink sparkly things with female models or actors. Blocks, trucks, tools, etc. are modeled with boys. There are "girl" Legos and then regular Legos.  Why can't all Legos just be for everyone?? 

Society needs to get their act together so that today's children grow up being able to take this quiz with the results that, even subconsciously, there are no gender biases. 

Create, Relate, Explore

When studying a subject such as this one, educational psychology, there is so much information that must learned and understood. This subject in particular has such important real-world application, and I was so afraid to miss something. 
While the CERs could honestly, at times, become a bit tedious, I truly took so much away from each chapter after completing them. 

The assignments were direct, and it was easy to see the reasoning behind each assignment. 

Each CER pulled out the most important pieces of the chapter, and made us truly think about these topics, theories, methods, and issues. Furthermore, we had to conduct research outside of the text. This allowed us the opportunity to explore educational psychology in the real-world, 

Overall, I know that the CERs were a HUGE help to me. 

Here is a link to CER part of my e-folio:

Create, Evaluate, Relate 

The assignment: Create, Evaluate, Relate. 

The CERs were a set of tasks at the end of each chapter that were designed as a check for understanding activity, as well as a way for us to understand the relevance of everything in our textbook. These projects allowed me to take all of the information from the chapter and pick out the most important aspects. The CERs helped me gain a better understanding of each chapter, and showed me how each subject relates to teaching. While completing each CER, I often thought "that makes sense!" or "I definitely see this in my classroom." I particularly liked the CERs in which the tasks were self-reflections. There was one about my learning style, and another about how I am influenced by social media. 

Each sub-tab contains one CER assignment. There is one for each chapter of the book. 

Here is a link to the Google Doc of all of my CER tasks: Kristine's CERs

Pondering Podcasts

I recently finished podcast #10 out of 15 by Anita Woolfolk. I really enjoyed listening to her, for several reasons: 

1. She was engaging

2. Her passion for the material 

3. Her knowledge of educational psychology

4. The way she concisely condensed each chapter 

Anita Woolfolk 

Listening to the podcasts really helped me grasp the material from each chapter. I have a very hard time teaching myself, especially if I only have text available to me.  When I am able to listen to the material I am supposed to learn, it makes it that much easier. Add on the PowerPoints and I had some great resources to lean back on when the textbook stopped making sense to me (which happened quite a few times). 

Because Anita is the author of the textbook, she was able to put her writing into very simple terms to be sure that students gained a true understanding of the material in the text. 

My responses to the podcasts are on my e-folio. Here is a direct link to my responses to 4 of my favorites. I am waiting to listen to the last 5 before I choose a 5th one to add to my e-folio. 

This is the link to all 15 of Anita's podcasts: Anita Woolfolk Podcasts