Kseniya

** Title of the activity: “Text Questions”** ** Course: CD/Soc 15 Child, Family and Community** ** Tasks: To reflect on the material being introduced in the weekly chapters by posting two questions for each chapter and 3 answers for classmates’ questions weekly** ** Objectives: To reinforce students’ understanding and memorization of the material being learned within the chapter by creating their own questions, reading and answering the questions being posted by their classmates** ** Instructions: ****Every week your Home Work Assignments will include postings of two questions, regarding your weekly readings ( due each Friday, at 8:00 pm ) and at least three answers on your classmates’ questions ( due each Monday, at 1:00 pm ).** **//Directions://** **Step 1: Read through the whole message first and then start applying all of the steps.** **Step 2: Go to your Black Board Account (Some of you are already logged in, just ignore step one. This is for those of you, who are getting this message via e-mail)** **Step 3: Choose CD Soc 15 Course. Green Buttons should appear on the left hand side. Click on the one that says Discussion Board on it.** **Step 4: Click on the Home Work (Text questions)** **Step 5: Click on the Button which says “Thread” in the top left corner** **Step 6: In the subject field put YOUR NAME.** **Step 7: Write down your questions.** **Step 9: Click submit button.** **You should be able to see your posting now.** **Note: Your questions should not be the basic ones on the material, which can be easily answered by doing a research via internet. Your questions should challenge your ideas and stereotypes which you have in the area of Early Childhood Education. They should force your mind outside the box and be helpful in the process of building your own philosophy as an educator. An example can be: “How do we educate parents that child’s physical development is equally important as his intellectual development (in fact they support each other), if our parent has a completely different stereotype regarding this subject?”** ** Method: Asynchronous** ** Author: Kseniya Orlovska, PhD Developmental Psychology and Pedagogy, Saddleback College, korlovska@saddleback.edu ** ** Notes: In this particular course it is very important for the students to be able to reflect in depth on the material being learned. The text is very approachable and easy to use, so a lot of students tend to fall in cracks by making an assumption that the material is very easy and doesn’t require any extra work. This is very untrue, the implications of the material can be very challenging and that is why “Reflective questions” is a very important activity which provides students not only with extra opportunity to go through the material but with an understanding of the difficulties they might face along their journey as a professionals.** =================
 * __Kseniya Orlovska, Reflective activity: “Text Questions”__ **

** Title of the activity: “Text Questions”** ** Course: CD/Soc 15 Child, Family and Community** ** Tasks: To reflect on the material being introduced in the weekly chapters by posting two questions for each chapter and 3 answers for classmates’ questions weekly** ** Objectives: To reinforce students’ understanding and memorization of the material being learned within the chapter by creating their own questions, reading and answering the questions being posted by their classmates** ** Instructions: ****Every week your Home Work Assignments will include postings of two questions, regarding your weekly readings ( due each Friday, at 8:00 pm ) and at least three answers on your classmates’ questions ( due each Monday, at 1:00 pm ).** **//Directions://** **Step 1: Read through the whole message first and then start applying all of the steps.** **Step 2: Go to your Black Board Account (Some of you are already logged in, just ignore step one. This is for those of you, who are getting this message via e-mail)** **Step 3: Choose CD Soc 15 Course. Green Buttons should appear on the left hand side. Click on the one that says Discussion Board on it.** **Step 4: Click on the Home Work (Text questions)** **Step 5: Click on the Button which says “Thread” in the top left corner** **Step 6: In the subject field put YOUR NAME.** **Step 7: Write down your questions.** **Step 9: Click submit button.** **You should be able to see your posting now.** **Note: Your questions should not be the basic ones on the material, which can be easily answered by doing a research via internet. Your questions should challenge your ideas and stereotypes which you have in the area of Early Childhood Education. They should force your mind outside the box and be helpful in the process of building your own philosophy as an educator. An example can be: “How do we educate parents that child’s physical development is equally important as his intellectual development (in fact they support each other), if our parent has a completely different stereotype regarding this subject?”** ** Method: Asynchronous** ** Author: Kseniya Orlovska, PhD Developmental Psychology and Pedagogy, Saddleback College, korlovska@saddleback.edu ** ** Notes: In this particular course it is very important for the students to be able to reflect in depth on the material being learned. The text is very approachable and easy to use, so a lot of students tend to fall in cracks by making an assumption that the material is very easy and doesn’t require any extra work. This is very untrue, the implications of the material can be very challenging and that is why “Reflective questions” is a very important activity which provides students not only with extra opportunity to go through the material but with an understanding of the difficulties they might face along their journey as a professionals.** =================
 * __Kseniya Orlovska, Reflective activity: “Text Questions”__ **

Dear Kseniya,
 * Critique of Kseniya's reflective activity by Marcelo N. Pires:**

The system you created in this activity would stimulate students to think critically about your course’s content throughout the semester without being too time-consuming, so I think it is a great reflective activity. To create pertinent questions, students need to be able to synthesize some of the information and this is a characteristic of an effective reflective activity (Conrad and Donaldson, 2004, p.75). In addition, asking questions and answering student-generated questions is a nonthreatening and insightful activity. In your instructions, however, I suggest you explicitly suggest students to include personal experiences or examples, whenever appropriate. This would make the activity more “personal”, a key component of effective reflective activities (Conrad and Donaldson, 2004, p.75). Another way to approach this would be by asking students to describe how the topic raised by the other student’s question evokes personal values to them (Conrad and Donaldson, 2004, p.74). By doing this, you will also get a chance to have an idea about your students’ backgrounds and experiences, which could help you in future course activities. On a final note, I suggest you replace green buttons by buttons of another color that would be less likely to be a problem for students who are colorblind. Overall, however, this seems like a very interesting course and a very useful activity.

Kseniya, Good approach to getting students to dig deeper. I would like to see you actually move the notes to the top of the activity—actually ell them what you told us (text accessible, but I don’t want you fooled. Blah, blah…) To clarify the assignment, you might tell them that it’s not content questions that you want them to write, but rather implementational, hypothetical, operational questins that you have related to the reading content.

LeeAnn