6. Submit a Log

Overall, I think my students liked the Concept Mastery Routine because it allowed them to revisit and review the topic of intellectual disability that I had been covering for most of a three hour class that night.  I think the most beneficial piece for them was distinguishing the always present characteristics and the never present characteristics as this really solidified their understanding of what defines an intellectual disability.  A challenge in regards to the concept diagram was co-constructing the key words list to be used in the diagram.  I always find that I want to just provide this piece, but it is more effective when the students are generating their own list with me.  Something I might do differently the next time I use this with a class is have them break into groups and come up with some ideas for the key words, then brainstorm as a class the ideas they generated in their groups. 

I love using content enhancement routines to engage learning in the classroom.  I believe that any of these routines provides a student with another tool to organize information in a more efficient manner that may support/impact learning.  I have taught in the elementary, middle, high, and now the college level.  I can say that all learners can benefit from the Concept Mastery Routine.  

The University 100 course transitions students into college life; academically and socially.  My job is to teach them how to be successful.  Using the Concept Mastery Routine supported my efforts to express the importance of good study habits to their overall college experience.

I did learn that, as a special education teacher by design, I am used to motivating learners and now I am in a community at the university level of motivated learners that 20 minutes is still not enough time to get it all done.  I had a practice piece for them to complete, but we did not get to it during my time that I was being recorded.  I wanted to get to the definition since that was more important.  My point is, as teachers, we are always adapting, always tweaking, making changes on the fly.  Overall, the Concept Mastery Routine is beneficial to students of all ages. 

There were some things that went well for the students and myself and there were also many challenges. The things that went well were all four students were proficient with the functions concept and prepared for the test later that week. Also, the students were actively engaged and it was not difficult to pull information or vocabulary from their individual memory banks. The challenges faced were I had to repeat the concept diagram three times because of distractions coming into the room, technology, and messing up individually myself at first. Next time I will make sure my door is locked and no one is able to come in to distract myself or the other students during the concept review. I also would like to have more time to implement the diagram. I think it would be beneficial to generate one over a few days and add as we go rather than all at once. I think it could be utilized to learn a new concept rather than review.

At first, students were reluctant to respond to the teacher prompts; however, once we supplied them with examples of items to place in the diagram, they caught on and succeeded with supplying information that defined the reading concept of text organization patterns.  Next time, I might have a warm-up that will introduce the idea to review their background knowledge so they aren't "stumped" in the beginning.

Overall, the concept mastery routine has been successful in our classroom.  Our students were able to review and generate ideas regarding organizational text patterns.  I liked that this shifted more of the conversation to the students and required more active participation.  I think this particular organizer is not as well suited to English as it is to content classes, however we have still found ways to incorporate it into our classroom.  I hope to gain additional badges in the future to use with my students, such as Lincing and Frame.

The students understand the process of completing a concept diagram.  The hardest part for the children is the non-examples, but as we practice they get better.  We are also learning to chunk information to put it in the diagram.