Talk:Diane Hamilton's Portfolio Page

Welcome to my public discussion page.

Please feel free to make comments, but please understand that with all the other monitoring of KF views, it may be difficult to find time to respond to all comments. Please do not be offended. Thanks in advance for your understanding. ~Diane

Comment Space for Week 8

Hi Jianwei,

Thank you for your Week 7 comments. As for the performance objectives that you asked about for Purpose 2, I was not assuming that the teachers have been trained on these aspects or that they have these skills as entry skills. The teachers being able to perform these objectives is critical to utilizing strategies for developing phonemic awareness. These abilities are in fact some of the strategies they will be using to develop phonemic awareness. I was looking at it as they need to be able to do it in order to teach it. I suppose I could look at these as entry skills, but I think if the teachers can indeed perform these tasks, then they probably have already been trained in strategies for developing phonemic awareness. What do you think?

Actually, as I worked through my task analysis this week, I realized that the performance objectives you asked about are actually subordinate to another performance objective and really become objectives for instruction and pre-requisites that may need instruction. I have updated my performance objectives accordingly and posted my task analyses for your review.

~Diane

Re: Comment Space for Week 8 -- Jianwei Zhang 08:12, 17 March 2008 (EDT)

Hi Diane, Nice work in your task analysis! I can almost see an outline of your course from these maps. What is missing from these maps, which present detailed analysis for each separate objectives, is the connections between the different objectives and how the earlier objectives enable/support the later ones. (I guess you must have thought about this issue without mapping the connections out). With these maps and the connections in mind, I think you are ready to decide how to group these objectives and their prerequisites into different units and how to put them into a proper order. Often times, one objective may be addressed through one unit; but if two or three objectives are closely related and are not too complex/difficult, you may want to address them as a whole through one unit. Similarly, if an objective is a grand/central one and involves multiple sub-objectives, you may want to address it through two or three related units. Again, great work!

Comment Space for Week 7

To Jianwei,

I have not yet decided about whether or not to include the cognitive apprenticeship model as indicated in my preliminary thoughts as I am trying to keep the course narrow enough, but I wasn't sure if we were to utilize a new learning approach covered in this class or if we are simply to provide a course that helps others to learn a new approach for them. Is it sufficient to teach about phonemic awareness and how to support its development in kindergarten -children, or should I include teaching on cognitive apprenticeship and then combining it with the phonemic awareness to show how cognitvie apprenticeship can be used for phonemic awareness instruction? ~Diane

To Jianwei,

Given the time constraints of this course, how much of a needs analysis should we expect to be able to complete? (See part 2 in my needs analysis, please.) Thanks. ~Diane

Diane, given our limited time, you may survey or interview 3-4 teachers and check the curriculum documents of NYS for your needs assessment. Real data collection for needs assessment is optional for our course anyway, as many of us don't have easy connection with teachers. --Jianwei, 3/9

• Regarding your list of learning objectives

I like the overall learning objectives you've identified, addressing teachers' needs related to what, how, and why. My only question is about your second objective. Under it, the following five items are about phonemic awareness per se, intead of how to teach/train phonemic awareness.

  1. Discriminates phonemes by sorting pictures according to initial sound.
  2. Identifies distinct phonemes by counting the number of phonemes in spoken words.
  3. Identifies onsets and rimes by sorting spoken word parts.
  4. Demonstrates phonemic segmentation by segmenting spoken words.
  5. Demonstrates phonemic blending by blending sounds into words. 

I assume that the teachers should already be able to do the above, so you don't need to teach them about these. What you want to do through this course is to help them learn instructional strategies for developing students' phonemic awareness. Right? --Jianwei 3/9

Comment Space for Week 6

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