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M6U4A3 - Teacher Evaluation

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I’d like to contrast my current experience of teacher evaluations here in Asia with some the IMPACT system of teacher evaluations was introduced into the Washington D.C public school system a few years ago. I thought that because we are studying for a D.C license it would make sense to get an idea of what is going on in that state. My first job in Asia was working at a big ESL academy for adults in Seoul, South Korea. We were evaluated once a week for the first month by the head teacher who sat in on a one hour class and then after that pretty much left to our own devices. The standards for the evaluation were never explained to us and the feedback was minimal – not surprising given that the head teacher wasn’t himself a qualified teacher. The aim seemed to be to make sure that we weren’t completely hopeless in the classroom. My second job was at another big ESL academy in Seoul, but this time was for kids. The classrooms all had CCTV and the head teacher would watch a couple of o...
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M6U2A3: Pre-Assessment for Differentiation

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My unit plan from Module 5 was based around an introduction to economics unit that every 11 th and 12 th grade AP Economics student would have to study. The standard was taken from the District of Columbia Social Studies Standards: Pre-K to Grade 12. Standard E1: Students understand common economic terms and concepts and economic reasoning. Learning Objectives: 1.    By the end of the unit students will be able to evaluate the relationship between scarcity and the need for choices and provide solutions to problems based on these concepts. 2.    By the end of the unit students will be able to make and justify economic decisions based on the concepts of marginal benefit and marginal cost. 3.    By the end of the unit students will be able to identify the difference between monetary and non-monetary incentives, and will be able to apply those concepts to realistic economic simulations. As this is the first unit in the en...
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M6 U1 A3 - High Stakes Testing

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I work for a Korean international school in Qingdao, China. We use a mash-up of the American high stakes tests such as AP and SAT for students who are hoping to attend US colleges, but we also focus on preparing students for the brutal Korean university entrance exam. Around 30% of our students will go abroad to study, with the remainder attending Korean colleges.   The academic expectations of parents in Korea are sky-high and this in turn fuels high expectations in schools and amongst teachers. The score on the university entrance exam is of paramount importance and parents put a great deal of pressure on teachers to ensure that their children are not being left behind. At my current school there is an unwritten rule that the minimum grade that any high school student will receive is a B. Even if they make no effort in class and fail the final exams miserably they must be given opportunities to do extra work for additional credits to drag their grade up to a B. Thi...
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M5 U5 A2 - Multicultural Content and Multiple Perspectives

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How can lessons in your subject field reflect diversity?  Bringing cultural diversity into the classroom can be done more easily in some subjects rather than others. If you’re teaching English or history then there are a million different ways to make your lessons multicultural. Economics is a little trickier, as economic themes tend to be reasonably universal. For example every country has to deal with scarce resources and the need to make choices. People in every country go to work because of a monetary incentive. You can however take these broad economic themes and zoom in to make them country specific. I did this in my multicultural lesson plan when I took the broad theme of scarcity and choices and looked at how Korean students have to choose between playing computer games or studying, while children in parts of Africa might have to make very different choices. Why is it important to introduce students to multicultural content and multiple perspectives? I teach a...
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Module 5 Unit 3 Activity 2 - Differentiating for and Anticipating Student Needs

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Students for whom differentiated instruction would be appropriate  All my students are English language learners (ELL) in my economics classes. These students range in ability from close to native speaker to just above beginner level, which can make lesson planning interesting. It is very important, therefore, that I differentiate instruction to ensure that none of them get left behind. To this end I remove all ‘fluff’ from the curriculum. Any non-essential vocabulary, or material that would distract from the key objectives, is removed in order to focus the students’ attention on the key points. I also have one student who suffers from a mild visual impairment and another who suffers from mild dyslexia. I will be focusing on the student with dyslexia in this blog. Modifications for different levels of readiness After the first formative assessment I am usually able to divide the class into two groups: those who are picking up the material more slowly, and those who are...
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Module 5 Unit 2 Activity 2 - Thinking Like an Assessor

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With backwards mapping we learned to start with the end in mind. We began by focusing on the standard and learning objectives, and then worked backwards to consider which assessments would be most appropriate to accurately measure the students’ understanding. The standard I chose, and the SMART learning objectives I created, are as follows: Standard E1: Students understand common economic terms and concepts and economic reasoning.  1. By the end of the unit students will be able to evaluate the relationship between scarcity and the need for choices and provide solutions to problems based on these concepts.  2. By the end of the unit students will be able to make and justify economic decisions based on the concepts of marginal benefit and marginal cost. 3. By the end of the unit students will be able to identify the difference between monetary and non-monetary incentives and will be able to apply those concepts to realistic economic simulations.  With the lear...
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Module 5 Unit 1 Activity 3 - Reflection

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My current school doesn’t use any kind of standards. We use a mishmash of AP and SAT courses and parts of the Korean curriculum, and I hadn’t realised until we started this module just what a mistake that was. As a teacher it’s easy to look at the Common Core standards and think, ‘well of course I do all that in class anyway.’ But when you get down to brass tacks and are shown how to actually unpack a standard, then you begin to realise just how much there is to the process. The thought that my fellow social studies teachers are all doing their own thing in their classrooms, just as I was doing in mine, is now faintly horrifying as opposed kind of liberating, as I previously believed. How can you ensure a high standard of tuition without any standard to aim for? You can’t, really. The actual standard itself is just the tip of the iceberg. This needs to be broken down into its constituent parts – the main ideas or concepts, and the skills that will need to be developed to meet the...
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