Pick 4 scenarios and please dont forget that When completing assignments for the next three weeks, please be sure to include an introduction and conclusion prior to your analysis and recommendations for each case study. Thanks

Chapter Three Case Study Scenarios

Each of the following scenarios presents a situation based on a real world teaching situation that you may encounter during your career as an educator. Please respond fully to four of the eight scenarios listed. Responses must be written in APA format, include critical thought, and address all aspects of the chosen scenarios. Students should include direct reference to the week’s chapter as well as relevant personal and professional experiences where appropriate. Your finished paper must include a title page and reference page and should not exceed seven pages.

1. Simon is a Kindergarten teacher in a suburb near San Francisco. His school population straddles the urban outskirts of San Francisco proper and the more socio-economically advantaged population of suburbia. As part of his third unit of the year, Simon decides to concentrate on visual literacy and the students’ ability to recognize state and national symbols. He decides to focus on flags, with the state flag of California and the United States flag as the center pieces. As part of his learning objectives, he wants students to be able to recognize both flags but also to be able, with help, to draw them as well.
   1. Using a behaviorist model that includes all three elements (modeling/shaping/cueing), suggest a lesson sequence that Simon can use to lead his students to his desired outcome.
2. Rebecca is a high school P.E. teacher at a large urban high school near Washington D.C. As part of the physical education standards, Rebecca must time her students periodically in the mile run. Within her classes, she has students of all ability levels and so as she begins to plan out her year she is struck by the challenge of motivating each student to improve in the mile. She does not want any students to feel alienated and instead she wants everyone to feel motivated to improve. The mile run will be tested three times, once at the very beginning of school, again in the middle of the year, and once more just before school lets out for summer.
   1. Using a constructivist model, how can Rebecca structure the year so that her students will be motivated to improve their times when they run?
   2. What can she do to ensure that students at every ability level are challenged at their skill level but also pushed to improve?
3. Shelley teaches a 7th grade Math class at a small 7-12 school in a rural area of Nebraska. The school she teaches at has a total student population of 185 students, and her 7th grade math course includes every 7th grade student. As a result, she has a room filled with various ability levels, from struggling through advanced. Her highest achieving student Nathaniel is routinely bored with the lessons as his skill level is far above the other students in the course. Shelley has tried a variety of techniques to engage Nathaniel, and has spoken on multiple occasions with him about how impressed she is with his abilities. Still, Nathaniel has become withdrawn and lately has even taken to acting out in class, something that he never has done before.
   1. Describe three specific strategies Shelley can use to engage Nathaniel and make use of his strengths in class. For each strategy, describe specifically how she would enact the strategy and a method she could use to assess whether or not the strategy had worked.
4. Suzie teaches 5th grade math at a suburban elementary school. She prides herself on her creativity in the classroom and constantly works to include paired and group activities to keep her students engaged. Still, she has to lecture her students from time to time and lately has found that her students seem bored or distant when she is speaking in front of them. As a student, Suzie was always responsible and attentive so her first reaction is to become frustrated with the work ethic of her students. Ultimately, she realizes that it is her professional responsibility to find ways of engaging her students while also delivering the information she feels they need. On Wednesday, she plans on lecturing her students for 30 minutes about how to calculate the area of shapes. Her worry is that they will tune out again, and she will need to reteach the concepts later.
   1. Describe three specific strategies Suzie can use during her 30 minute lecture to engage her students while she is lecturing. For each strategy, describe specifically how she would enact the strategy in class and a method she could use to assess whether or not it had worked.
5. Dave is a 9th grade English teacher at an urban school near San Diego. His second period class is filled with high achieving, responsible students but one particular student, Michael, has begun to fall behind. Michael is 16 and taking 9th grade English for the second time. The first time around, he became distant and apathetic early in the term and refused to do any work in class. Despite the best efforts of the teacher, Michael never came around and instead ended up failing the course with virtually no work turned in. Knowing this history, at the first sign of apathy Dave has begun to worry. He doesn’t want Michael to fall into the same patterns and fail again, a mistake that would almost certainly have him leaving the school. Although Michael’s reading and writing skills are slightly below those of his peers, he is more than capable of doing the work in class and succeeding.
   1. Suggest a comprehensive individualized plan of attack for dealing with Michael’s apathy.
   2. What resources should Dave consult in figuring out a way to engage Michael?
   3. How can Dave enlist the help of his high achieving, responsible students in leading Michael to success?
   4. What can Dave do to use Michael’s age and previous experience with the class as an advantage and not make him feel like an outcast?
6. Paul is a social studies teacher at a middle school near St. Louis. His first period class has been a challenge all year and as the term gets closer to Christmas break, he finds that things are even worse than usual. Specifically, he has had several run-ins with Kurt, an underachieving student who sits in the front row. As Paul’s Wednesday class period nears an end, he sees Kurt blatantly take his cell phone out and begin to send a text message. Phone use is strictly forbidden according to Paul’s class rules, but when he approaches Kurt to take his phone away, Kurt refuses and says, “Nobody takes my stuff.” Weeks of frustration finally boil over, and Paul responds, “Is that a challenge? We’ll see about that. This is a fight you can’t win.” Before he can say another word, the bell rings and Kurt sprints out of class and down the hall. When Paul races outside, Kurt is already out of sight, lost in a mass of students. One of Paul’s class rules is to always respect others, and he immediately feels as though that rule has been broken, both by Kurt and by himself.
   1. Describe how Paul should handle the incident.
   2. What should Paul’s immediate steps be to make sure the proper discipline is handed out?
   3. Describe how Paul should open class the following day in order to ensure that the rest of his students react appropriately to what happened?
   4. What can Paul do to ensure that Kurt’s behavior does not become a pattern in his classroom?
7. Shannon has been teaching elementary school math for twenty years and, over time, she has developed her own methods of teaching, classroom management, and planning. For the first time in her career, she is switching schools due to a transfer in her husband’s employment and so will be starting fresh with a new group of teachers and a new school. As part of the opening week of school, she will be meeting in a four hour session with the other math teachers to discuss the year. She is anxious about how she will fit in with them, both personally and professionally. As a result, she has been preparing a list of questions that she can ask so as to ease her transition into the group. She has mapped out her own first month of school, but she wants to map the curriculum with her colleagues to make sure that they are unified as the school year begins.
   1. Using the lesson planning models suggested in the text and the information regarding curriculum mapping, suggest three specific strategies that Shannon and her colleagues can use during their time together in order to ensure alignment with the standards and each other as the school year begins. 
8. Mike is a 9th grade English teacher at a city in downtown Phoenix. In his class of 25 students, 22 have lived in Phoenix for their entire lives. As his third unit of the year, Mike decides to read Of Mice and Men by John Steinbeck with his students and begins by teaching his classes about farming and life on early 20th century ranches. He knows that most of his students will not be familiar with the setting of the story: 1930’s rural California farmland. He provides them with relevant vocabulary and prepares a PowerPoint presentation that goes over the basics of John Steinbeck’s life and 1930’s American history. He spends several days ensuring that his students know the meanings of the words and gives them a quiz on the material on the 4th day. Nearly every student fails. Mike is extremely disappointed by the results and decides to look back on his planning to determine what went wrong.
   1. Using a constructivist model, what was missing from Mike’s instruction that resulted in the students’ failure to learn the material?
   2. According to constructivist theory, what could Mike do differently next time in order to better prepare his students for learning?
   3. What methods might Mike employ to better align with a constructivist philosophy of education?

Carefully review the Grading Rubric for the criteria that will be used to evaluate your assignment.

When completing assignments for the next three weeks, please be sure to include an introduction and conclusion prior to your analysis and recommendations for each case study. Please remember you have to pick 4 scenarios. Thank you

Each of the following scenarios presents a situation based on a real world teaching situation that you may encounter during your career as an educator. Please respond fully to four of the eight scenarios listed. Responses must be written in APA format, include critical thought, and address all aspects of the chosen scenarios. Students should include direct reference to the week’s chapter as well as relevant personal and professional experiences where appropriate. Your finished paper must include a title page and reference page and should not exceed seven pages.

1. Joanie is a 12th grade English teacher at Glenbrook South High School outside of Chicago. Her school serves an upper-middle class suburban population and her students are very focused on their studies. As a result, they are also very concerned about individual assignment grades. After three weeks spent reading Shakespeare’s The Tempest, Joanie prepares an exam that will assess students’ understanding of the major themes and literary devices used by Shakespeare throughout the test. She spends a weekend formulating 30 multiple choice questions and four short answer questions that she feels reflect the major focus points of the unit. On Monday, she reviews the information with her students and on Tuesday she gives the exam. Curious to see how her students did, she grades them later in the day and is shocked to find that nearly half of her students failed. Looking more specifically at the questions her students missed, she soon discovers that most students were unable to answer questions related to Shakespeare’s biographical history and that many also misunderstood major parts of the plot. Discouraged, she decides she needs to come up with a plan for how to revisit the information and retest her students.
   1. Suggest a three step plan that Joanie can use to identify the specific information students had trouble with, revisit those topics in class, and retest the information. How can she use the students that performed well on the test to help those who struggled? How can she stop students from being discouraged when they see a failing grade?
2. Andre is a social studies teacher at a high school near Boulder, CO. His students are currently studying the French revolution, and while he feels confident with the amount of time he has spent planning the unit and the progress so far, he finds that he routinely has 5-10 minutes left at the end of class where students are left without an activity. Rather than wasting that time, Andre wants to find and instructionally productive means of using it that will help him gauge student progress as they read through the textbook over the next three weeks. Each daily reading assignment covers five pages of the text book. The end unit assessment is a 50 question test that covers the entirety of the French Revolution.
   1. Suggest an activity that Andre can do with this time that will act as a formative assessment to inform future class periods. Andre spends much of the class period lecturing, suggest a way that these final ten minutes of class can incorporate pairing or group work to engage students with each other.
3. Jeff teaches a middle school art class at Charlottesville Jr. High in Charlottesville, VA. His school serves a diverse population of students, and within his classroom he has students of varied ethnicities and abilities. Over the course of the year, his students will be completing a variety of projects in a number of different artistic disciplines. As the year nears an end, Jeff begins to develop a culminating project. He wants his students to look back on their work from the year and to consider their successes and failures. He also wants them to reflect on how they have grown and to think about how this year’s work will develop them in the future.
   1. Write a 7-10 sentence description of a final project that Jeff could ask his students to create. Write it as an instructor, in language that students would be able to understand. Be sure that the project meets all of Jeff’s requirements.
4. Eileen teaches elementary school math at a small school near Burlington, Vermont. Most of her students come from wealthy families who live in suburban Burlington and who come to class very prepared skill-wise for the teaching that takes place in her classroom. As a final project, she wants each of her students to present one of the concepts from the term to the rest of the students. Within their presentation, she wants each student to define the concept, give an example of it, and present a real world situation where the concept would be useful. She also asks each student to speak for at least two minutes. When she assigns the presentation, she wants to be certain that students understand the requirements of the assignment and how specifically they will be assessed. She also wants parents involved throughout the entire process.
   1. What are three specific resources that she should give to students in order to ensure they are prepared? As they present, how can Eileen be certain she is actually assessing what she claims to be? How can she offer students specific feedback on their presentations?
5. Kate teaches at a Kindergarten near Boston at a school that serves one corner of Boston’s downtown population. Most of the students in her all day class are African-American and the school itself is located downtown and surrounded by the Boston cityscape. With Thanksgiving approaching, Kate wants to devote time in class to the history of Thanksgiving and how the holiday relates to American history. On one specific day of class, she decides to focus on the importance of the first meal. As one element of her instruction, she plans to teach students how to create turkeys using their hands.
   1. Suggest an instructional sequence focused on the creation of hand turkeys that includes :pre-assessment, to gauge students initial knowledge; informal assessment, to check understanding while the work is being completed; and summative assessment, to check for understanding once the work is complete.
6. Megan teaches a sixth grade art class in a small school near Austin, TX. Most of her classes have 15-20 students of varied skill levels, cultures, and socio-economic backgrounds. Some of access to computers and technology, but many live in homes where technology is not readily accessible. She wants to find a way to embrace the varied backgrounds of her students in a project, and begins planning a multimedia project that requires students to share a specific element of their culture with the class in a 2-3 minute presentation. While she wants every student to put in the same amount of work, she also wants to give students a choice of projects. In all cases, she wants all presentations to include a creative visual element of some kind, a short speech that details how this element of each student’s culture has impacted them individually, and a brief history/timeline of the cultural element.
   1. Suggest three specific choices that Megan can offer to the students that would include all three presentation requirements: a creative visual, a discussion of the element’s importance, and a brief history/timeline. Consider options that focus on different skill sets: writing, visual arts, music, etc.
7. Shelby teaches 9th grade Social Studies at a small high school in the rural plains of Kansas. Most of her students are farm kids who will end up working their parents’ farms for the duration of their time in Kansas. In order to make use of the abundant knowledge related to farming and farm equipment, Shelby decides to read Of Mice and Men with her students. Each day in class, she and her students read one chapter of the book and she wants to assign them evening homework that will follow up on the chapter. Once they are finished reading, they will be writing a five paragraph essay that focuses on one character from the book and how they change over the course of the text. For their final essay, students will be required to use quotes from the text as support for their paragraphs
   1. Suggest a nightly assignment that Shelby can give to her students that will reinforce the day’s reading but also help them in preparing for the final essay. What can Shelby do on a daily basis to confirm that all students are keeping up with their homework? How might she enlist the help of parents in keeping students on track?
8. Kevin is a middle school U.S. History teacher in a suburban school near Philadelphia. Many of his students are children of Professors or other employees of nearby Penn University. As a result, many of his students have already been introduced to the many historic sights in and around Philadelphia. As a project to finish the quarter, Kevin wants to have each student visit a local historical landmark and teach the class about it. Before they present to the entire class, he wants to make sure that they are prepared and that they have a chance to practice their presentation. Specifically, he wants to make sure that all students are prepared to talk about the landmark’s history, their experience visiting it, and that they sound professional and prepared. Unfortunately, he does not have class time to listen to every student in class to make sure they are prepared.
   1. Suggest a way that Kevin can use the students in class to preview each speech and to check for the three specific elements he wants included (history, their experience, preparedness). Give detailed instructions for how Kevin can prepare his students and what resources he can use to ensure that all students are prepared before they give their final presentations