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For my Gluten free cooking I wanted to try out an easy to modify recipe and see what I could learn from doing it. I decided upon Coconut Macaroons. They require flour to make so I wanted to see what it would taste like if I substituted coconut flour for the gluten flour. I unfortunately did not take a picture of the finished project, but I can assure you they looked very good! I learned that for next time I cook with coconut flour I need to add more liquid to the recipe or they will come out dry.
Next time for my 20% Project I will be trying to make a great Creamy Pesto Sauce! I agree with Wagner's 7 survival skills for school. I agree that Problem Solving and Critical thinking are very important. To me this means the ability to think beyond the surface of a situation, to be able to analyze the information and come to a conclusion about it. This is a very important skill for life that will allow students to become the leaders of the future. The second survival skill is collaboration. This skill is extremely important. The ability to work with others to further a goal and to be a productive member of the collaboration is very important as it is what a lot of businesses are looking for in their employees. This will also allow them to be good citizens who can contribute to society as a whole. Another survival sill is the ability to adapt. This is very important as it will help the students to be able to face any kind of situation that they may encounter in the future by being able to adapt to it. Students also need to be able to have initiative. They need to be able to figure out what is needed before it is needed so that employers' will see them as valuable employees. We need to help students to develop their written and oral communication skills so that they will be able to be coherent when they are talking to others. This will allow them to get any ideas they have to other people and to be able to collaborate with others effectively. Students also need to be able to access and analyze information. This means that they need to be able to understand and interpret any information they are given and be able to utilize the information where it is needed. The final survival skills are curiosity and Imagination. These I would say are the two most important survival skills that Wagner talks about. Curiosity is very important as it will make students be incredibly motivated to learn on their own. Imagination is important as it will allow students to think of their own ideas and to be able to innovate and become leaders in their fields. I think that these survival skills are sufficient. I would work with my students by giving them multiple activities over time to allow them to develop these skills. I would start off by scaffolding the activities then as time went on I would remove the scaffolds so that they develop their skills even more. I would like to especially make sure that I develop my students Creativity and Imagination because I believe that students need these skills the most.
Wagner talks about how the students of this generation are experiencing things that none have experienced before and we therefore should adapt our strategies to the new things that our students are experiencing. Students are now experiencing multimedia in pretty much every single part of their lives. As Wagner talks about: "students refuse to read large amounts of text, whether it involves a long reading assignment or lengthy instructions" (Wagner 178). We need to keep this kind of information in mind to make sure that we are giving assignments that students will get the most benefit from and that they will actually do. We also need to try to give them assignments that coincide more with what they are already doing, as Wagner talks about we need to communicate with them using things that they are using things like MySpace. There are some things that students are doing such as multitasking which they may think makes them more productive, but as Wagner talks about, this does not actually work, they will get less out of it than if they were not multitasking. We need to make sure that we are using tasks that will get students engaged by giving them assignments that utilize things such as social media and make sure that we are using tasks that apply to their lives.
Week 2 Research on Recipes and the Gluten Free Diet.See the below link to find some research I have done on eating Gluten Free, making Gluten Free Pasta, and making Creamy Pesto Sauce.
https://groups.diigo.com/group/gluten-free-reasearch Update: I have done some research on how to do Gluten free cooking.
Firstly: What is Gluten and Why Gluten Free? Gluten is a protein found in wheat that gives dough its' elasticity. Gluten allows dough to rise and to keep its' shape. Gluten free is designed to prevent the symptoms of Celiac's disease. Wagner generally does not like tests. This is mostly because tests generally do not actually measure what they are supposed to be measuring and are too high stakes. Wagner does mention that if a test is well designed and well executed then the test is a viable test that will be useful, however this generally does not happen. He does talk about how high school exit exams are too high stakes and how if students do not pass the test then they will not be able to graduate from high school. Wagner thinks that this is wrong and that if a student has met the requirements then the student should be able to graduate from high school. Wagner brings up the point that students spend four years learning what they need to know to be able to pass the high school exit exams which likely makes them feel fatigued about learning. I definitely agree that this is a very good point; we spend most of a students four years in high school preparing them to take one or two tests where if they pass it they graduate and if they do not pass it they have to try again. I agree that the students likely feel very fatigued with learning by that point and have very little motivation to put forth the effort to really learn material if they only need it so that they can pass a test. He also talks about how the tests do not really reflect what is important and how many times they give definitions or things that are not the ones that are truly representative of a poem. I think that this is one of the major problems with tests, that they generally are designed to trick students it seems rather than actually test them on their knowledge and abilities. A problem that Wagner points out is that "37 percent of those students lacked the skills and knowledge needed for college" (Wagner 89). This is a major problem and I would agree with Wagner that one of the problems seems to be the test and how for the test, since it is so major, so much time is devoted towards preparing for it that the truly important skills are left out. I 100 percent agree with Wagner when he talks about how the accountability on schools from the tests is outrageous. I do think that it is very important to be holding our schools accountable for the tests, but the degree which the schools are held accountable for the tests is ridiculous. Having little to no support for schools who are falling behind while still expecting improvement from them is ludicrous. I think it is a very big problem when we as teachers are almost req
Throughout this chapter Wagner discusses his own experience with his credential program and professional development and a professional development that he has run in the past. One thing that he talks about with his own professional development that he has run is that a list of ten priorities is basically equivalent to having a list of no priorities as it is too unfocused to be able to really be accomplished. I think that this is a very important point, that we need to ensure that we are focused in the way that we are trying to improve our schools and that we make sure that that goal is the most important one that we can think of. This also holds very true with our individual teaching practices, if we try to take on too much at once we will never be able to truly improve, whereas if we are focusing on smaller parts of our teaching practice we will be able to improve our teaching practices a whole lot more; this is something that we have discussed multiple times in the program. Another thing that he discussed throughout this chapter is that there seems to be a general taboo of sorts against collaboration with other teachers. We do not go and observe other teachers' classes, nor do we have others observe our classes. This means that it is difficult for us to be able to improve as the best way to improve our teaching practices would be to work together since we are all already probably facing similar problems, or we have faced similar problems in the past. Fortunately we have been able to talk with the professors, our colleges, and our master teachers to figure out solutions to problems that we hav encountered in our practices. I cannot remember many times when either I have gone to my colleges or others have come to me with problems we have experienced and we have worked together to be able to
http://www.nytimes.com/2014/02/23/opinion/sunday/friedman-how-to-get-a-job-at-google.html?_r=2
The executive in charge of personel at Google talks about what they look for when hiring employees. One of the very first things that he mentions is that a person's GPA is worthless and test scores are worthless for deciding whether or not to hire someone. I think that this is a very powerfull note, and I would have to agree with it in many situations. I especially agree with test scores because I have found that in general they rarely measure a persons ability and are generally testing whether or not someone can be tricked or not. There are of course exceptions, but I believe that in general tests are not the best way to see someone's ability. The probem with GPAs is that it is hard to tell what that GPA actually means, even if you know the specific classes that went into that GPA you cannot know whether or not that person was truly demonstratign their knowledge. This is not haowever to say that GPAs and tests do ot help to assess someone's ability, but they are not as important as they are made out to be. The executive talks about the most important skills for one to have when Google is looking to hire them. The first is cognitive ability by which he means the ability to learn and to adapt to new situations. I think that this is a very valuable skill that we as educators should be promoting. To do this we can give our students more independent learning projects and to help them be more driven to do discoveries of their own. The next thing he says is very important is the ability to lead by which he means the ability to step up and the ability to step down at the appropriate times. We need to help our students cultivate this by giving them more group projects and by scaffolding leadership skills for them. To do this we should first have a rotation so that all students get the opportunity to try leading, we should also set it up so that our students can try to lead at first with guidelines so that they know what to do to lead. We should then take away supports gradually so that in the end they are leading correctly. The next attributes are that students should have humility and the ability to take ownership. This means that they should have the passion to be able to defend their ideas with some amount of fervor, but if someone brings up a valid point be able to reevaluate their stance and make any correct adjustments needed. This is something that can be cultivated pretty easily in math classes by making sure students have the neccessary tools to be able to make arguemtns and to be able to adjust their arguements. |
Andrew PrimesMath Student Teacher working at Rancho Buena Vista High School Archives
May 2015
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