Chapter 8

Developing an instructional strategy.
What is an instructional strategy? It is the components in a set of instructional materials and procedures used to enable mastery of learning outcomes.
So basically, it what the instructor does to make sure learning happens. But it is complex!

Table 8.1 Keller's ARCS model of student motivation is really interesting. I have never thought of motivation as having different types- attention, relevance, confidence, and satisfaction. These are things I want to think more about when I'm teaching my 4th graders.  I think a lot of my students that I have currently lack confidence, in particular, and I like that the table addresses what you do with under-confident learners as well as overconfident learners. It also mentions that confidence can inspire them to learn more and that is amazing!
Basically the ARCS model is really, really great!  (see also figure 8.1- I'm in awe!)

I really like these follow-through activities. I think this is something that is commonly overlooked, but transfer is so important!

Table 8.6 is really interesting. I'm definitely gonna use that :)

Chapter 7

Chapter 7 was about Developing Assessment Instruments. This was a really interesting chapter because I deal with this stuff everyday teaching 4th grade, to the point that it's really annoying. Testing is a big deal in public schools, to parents, and to me as a teacher. I liked the table 7.1 on page 141 that breaks down the  different types of assessments and their given objectives. It was nice to see that they all really do have different purposes, I think these ideas have all been in my brain but I've never seen it on paper like that :) . I liked reading about mastery levels and have always wondered how I could teach for mastery in my classroom better. I liked reading about the different test item criteria, and also table 7.2 which shows types of behavior and related test item types. I feel like this whole chapter would be super useful when creating an assessment with varied item types.

chapter 6

Chapter 6 was about writing performance objectives. What stood out to me from this chapter is that there are a lot of things to do to write a good performance objective! What I particularly thought was interesting was when it told about specifying objective conditions. As a teacher, I probably need to think more about the conditions for learning that are taking place in my classroom. In particular, the authenticity of the performance context. Sometimes I think that 4th grade is too basic for the assessments to be authentic, but I want to try harder to think of some assessments that I can make more authentic to real life outside of school.

Analyzing learners/Chapter 5

This chapter was easy to understand for me because these are things that I do all the time as I teach 4th grade, although not as in-depth. I am constantly evaluating what the students do and don't know, and adjusting the instruction to fit needs. One thing that came to mind while reading this is a topic that comes up a lot in our school meetings. It is, focusing on what is within our circle of influence. Our school has a large at-risk population and that is sometimes frustrating. We realized that we can't control things like what the parents do, socioeconomic factors, etc. We also can't control how the media/legislature sees us, new policies that are rolled out, etc. These fall within our circle of concern.  But, we focus on what we can control- such as classroom environment, quality of instruction/instructional strategies, etc., and this is what will help us to reach our goals Really, the whole ID process will help your focus on the circle of influence rather than the circle of concern.