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Allison Reynolds (Abstract and Synthesis)[[image:edu221fall2012class/Screen Shot AR CH2.png width="800" height="522"]]
//Abstract:// The focus in Chapter 2 of Fair Isn’t Always Equal focused on the idea of mastery in schools. Mastery is the idea that the information students learn is truly learned, not memorized. It is the idea that the knowledge taken in is carried outside of the classroom to applied to different situations. Most of the class members recognized this and saw how important it was to education. Students should not simply memorize information to pass the next assessment, but should learn it and apply it. Yet, the idea of mastery does change from person to person, as seen in responses from the group. The group gathered that mastery is becoming more connected with the information, but how the students are connected has varied in the answers. Some responses mentioned being able to apply all of it outside of the class, other mentioned simply being able to use it and not expect them to use this knowledge every day. The chapter does reference that this is acceptable and as teachers we need to come to a consensus before building expectations and assessments. The chapter also discusses what would be evidence of mastery. Whether it would be writing out how a method works, or going into depth about it in a conversation, or creating a visual representation on the subject at hand, the teacher will need to be able to see how a student has mastered the information. This leads to the final concern that most of the responses questioned; how do teachers know what to teach and what needs to be mastered? The book lists ideas about conversing with other teachers, looking at standards, researching resources, and other great ideas to narrow down a very large concept. Most of the responses saw the help that this list could provide, but still was wary about how to apply it.

//Synthesis:// So, how do we address this concern? As new teachers, most brain stormed some ways of creating opportunities to bring information outside of the classroom, but what information do we give? Some students are willing to rely on other teachers and curriculums to help create an idea while others are still concerned with how to create such a wide range of knowledge. The most used solution to this problem is communicating between collogues, administrators, and other people who can help. The idea though is getting together and deciding on what students need to [|master]. The other idea of mastery is how to assess how students are mastering the subject. Many of the responses noted that a student who asks a lot of questions and have large discussions is one way of telling. Others see that projects and in-depth assignments would lead to answer this question. Overall, the book and the class members have agreed that over time assessments and clear, deep answers can lead to knowing if students have mastered a subject. It does not always have to be long assessments either. Sometimes, [|quick assessments] during class can help the teacher and the students address what needs clarification or more time. No matter the method for checking for mastery, teachers need to make sure that they know how to assess it. This is a concern and a new challenge for most of the class members, which motivates them to learn how to assess properly and teach life long knowledge.

Paul Santamore
This chapter covered the idea of mastery of certain material and how a teacher can identify whether or not a student has achieved that mastery. Basically the authors agree that mastery can only come through repetition, but this repetition cannot be dry, boring, or pointless, it must be repetition of spontaneous applications. By constantly applying the desired skills to real life situations the students and teachers will become true masters of the material and that mastery will stick with them for a long time. Mastery is different for each student and educator, but it starts with analysis and evaluation of one’s understandings of the topic and eventually evolves into application of the gained knowledge, that is true mastery of information. In my classroom I vow to give many exercises to help my students master the information. This repetition will come through varied assignments that will ultimately culminate in an application of the information in the end. Although application has a broad definition I would like to see them apply slightly throughout t he unit or lesson and then fully apply at the conclusion. This approach will hopefully create confusion and questioning during the unit or lesson and some sort of mastery by the end. In depth knowledge will be required from me as the educator in order to make the process work and I vow to study and prepare in effective ways that will help to translate my lessons to my students successfully.

Mel Christensen
Determining what qualifies as mastery of a subject for students is a difficult task. Educators need to take into consideration what skills, knowledge, and understandings students should walk away with when they have “mastered” the subject, but also to what degree they need to be knowledgable in the subject. For instance, not all students in my science classes may plan to go on to take AP classes in science, study science in college, or pursue a career in science. Should mastery be specific to the student or should there be a baseline? If there is a baseline are all students expected to achieve the same level of mastery as the students who want to go on to be doctors and engineers or should the baseline be set lower to encourage general understandings? I think that an important part of mastery is being able to recognize situations in which skills and understandings can be applied and applying them. One of my biggest goals for my students is to increase their science literacy and to develop the skills to understand and work through scientific material and problems independently. This is an application that anyone, regardless of whether or not they work in or study science, can use. Proficiency and mastery of a subject should not depend on learning a great deal of content, but should instead be based on understanding how to apply the content and skills learned. Students will often become more interested in learning or mastering a subject if they begin to understand how to apply what they learn to their lives and real situations. Encouraging mastery based on application rather than memorization and test scores may help motivate students more and keep them engaged in learning.

Leigh Welch
Mastery is a topic that is burning in the back of every teachers mind. Is the student just regurgitating this information or do they really know it? This chapter talks about mastery and what defines it. The book says that you cannot tell if a child has mastered either information or concepts just from tests. Answering a single question right on a math quiz is not going to prove that they have mastered how to manipulate the formulas. Likewise, memorizing and spelling ten words that your teacher had told you were going to be on the quiz does not tell you if the student has mastered spelling. Mastery is essentially the ability to go through certain steps with the information. The steps are as follows, Explanation, Interpretation, Application, Perspective, Empathy, and Self-Knowledge. With these six categories in mind you can really determine is a student has mastered the material they have been given. I think this is very fair because I know as a student, I do not really know if I have mastered a skill unless I can do it multiple times. Then I have to do those same skills days later to see if I really do know it, or if it was just still in my brain because I just learned it, at least with math. With English courses it is a little different. I feel as though I have not mastered a skill until I can look at the bigger picture. For example, I do not feel I really know a book until I can write a paper on it and be able to go in great depth, or be able to have a group discussion with specific insight and feed back from my peers. I do not feel like I mastered a topic or skill purely because I aced a test, there needs to be more to it than that alone.

Bianca Stoutamyer
“The complex nature of mastery as more than recitation is true in every subject,” this statement is what teachers strive for with their students every day of the school year (Page15). Teaching students the material so effectively that they can apply the information instead of just reciting it is the goal of any teacher and it is my goal when I enter the school system. The example of spelling tests as students just being able to recite information is something that all students end up doing in school as a student we are given information such as how to spell and word or that words definition but students are rarely asked to use the information for more than just a test and then they move on to the next list. This is not teaching the students mastery it is only teaching them how to store information into their short-term memory long enough to take a test. I do not want to be the type of teacher that teaches to a test and doesn’t challenge her students to think more deeply about a topic or lesson. I want my students to be able to take the information I give them and be able to use it outside of a test and outside of the classroom. The ideas given in this chapter about how the faculty should be on the same page about what mastery means. I agree with this and another statement that without focus on mastery “lesson plans become a series of shots in the dark” (Page 18).

Carinne Haigis
As the title of this chapter suggests, this section of the book pertains to student mastery of the material. On the subject of mastery, Wormeli writes: “Mastery is more than knowing information, of course, but it can even go beyond manipulating and applying that information successfully in other situations” (Wormeli 11). The idea of school should not be to get students to study for and pass tests. This kind of learning does not allow for long term retention of the content matter. Teachers ought to instead aim to help students master the material so that it can be used for both the course and beyond. School is to prepare for life and the skills developed in the classroom ought to be taught in such a way that allows the students to both retain the information and learn how to apply it outside of the classroom. When, in this chapter, Wormeli writes: “…we have to spend time ‘unpacking’ the standard into its benchmarks and component pieces: What specific skills and content will be necessary to teach students in order for them to demonstrate mastery of the standard…” (Wormeli 15), I couldn’t help but think of the lesson plans we are developing in class and how the backward design structure, really helps to “unpack” these standards and make sure each lesson plan has clear objectives. In the beginning I was a bit confused as to how backward design would be an effective way of designing a unit because it was so different from what I was used to. However, after working on stage one of designing the units in class and reading this section, I am starting to see that beginning unit planning by examining standards and objectives is the best way to go about ensuring student mastery of the content matter.

Jason Bragg
Mastery is essential when it comes to learning. If a student does not master the material, then they have not learned it completely. However, the term mastery is often misleading, as some people will claim that memorizing terms and being able to spit them back out with their meanings is mastery. This is not the case though. Mastery involves being able to see and use the material in the real world. Mastery can be shown when the student can apply the material to real situations. For example, let’s say that I wanted to give my students a math test. The math test that I would be giving them would not represent mastery by itself. Yes, the students did apply their knowledge to the problems on the test. However, I want to know if the students can apply the knowledge to the real world. I want to see the students take the knowledge and use it in a life problem. To do this, I would assign a project that gets the students using and applying the knowledge in appropriate situations. When I gave the students the test, they were able to apply the knowledge to problems that were designed to have specific outcomes. When I assigned the project, the students would show me that they were capable of applying the knowledge to get a result that was not designed by the teacher to have a specific outcome. As a teacher, I would be sure to use projects over tests to represent mastery. I may even use both.

Allison Reynolds
This chapter focused on the idea of mastery and what we need to have students master in a year. The biggest part, for me, is figuring out what we need to master. The standards can help with that, but with a subject like mathematics each step can lead to a new unit. Some concepts get carried through years of learning and students fall through the cracks. If one teacher assumes that the student mastered it and passed them, then the next teacher might see that the student has not. Simply by asking them is just a problem. How can a student just know that they mastered it? That is why I am looking forward to assessing those skills. I know that looking at the objective before assessing is necessary, but this book showed why. We can’t just ask questions, we have to have a purpose. So, I need my objectives as a teacher to be clear so when the students are asked to show them, they can in their own way. I am also motivated to make sure students have their own ways of showing mastery. I know that students, especially in math, can arrive at the same conclusion in different methods. Although I want them to know most methods, I think that it is ok for a student to be really comfortable with one or two and use those when they can. I would want to see that by the way the student explains how he got to the answer. I can see myself assessing these students on mastery, as explained above, but I am having difficulty seeing what we should. Everything can seem so important sometimes. Having that bulleted list of ways to see what is important help me. I need to look to other resources to get me started in my classroom.

Kellie Sanborn
This chapter talked mainly about what mastery means, how to know if a student has mastered a concept, and how to figure out what is important to master. I think that working on mastering concepts and finding the ability to apply knowledge to real life is my biggest drive for becoming a teacher. I never really found literature all that interesting until I had a teacher who taught me how literature, writing, and real life all connected and how it is so important to understand universal ideas, and that teacher is the reason that I want to be a teacher. I think that mastery in an English classroom is particularly difficult to define because English is not a collection of small things, but an ever-growing ability that can be enhanced through new knowledge, but never truly perfected. For example, I could assess whether a student had mastered how to use an apostrophe, but I could never assess that a student had mastered writing. There is always room for improvement, and that is what I enjoy so much about my content area. I do think that it is important, though, to keep working toward that “aha!” moment and to continue to build and master smaller, more pin-pointed skills, in order to improve as a writer, reader, and communicator. I also am fascinated by how it is that we decide what is important to master in any subject. I think that working from the standards is a great start, and by using backward design there is a whole array of methods for teaching the same concept to students.

Megan Hoffman
This chapter centers on students’ “mastery” of a particular concept. Mastery is defined in the book by saying “Students have mastered content when they demonstrate a thorough understanding as evidenced by doing something substantive with the content beyond merely echoing it” (page 12). He also references Understanding by Design’s six facets of understanding as a model for mastery of a concept. One of the biggest questions this chapter posed is how do we as teachers determine acceptable evidence of mastery? In the book it is defined in two steps: step one is multiple assignments, and step two is tracking the progress of a few important works over time. I suppose these blog and wiki assignments are examples of evidence of mastery, anyone can regurgitate what the book said, but the ones who master what it is saying are the ones who expand upon its ideas and apply them to their own (hypothetical) method of teaching. In my social studies/history classroom I will track evidence by assigning regular classwork, giving many diversified options of course, and then assign major projects to show me the progress of those few important works. I want them to show me how the events of the past affected the events of the present. I want my students to find historical connections in everything, from their old family photo albums to their favorite book. __The Hunger Games__ is based on Ancient Rome, it took me a while to figure it out but I made the connections through how much I have learned about Ancient Rome, making connections from a textbook to real life is an example of mastery.

Kaite Bukauskas
Everyone has a personal definition of what mastery truly means, and often that definition can vary depending on the subject matter at hand. This chapter explores some of the various meanings of true mastery of a subject and encourages the reader to go into a school and ask various staff what mastery means. The texts suggests that, most likely, each teacher asked would give a slightly different response and that hopefully the teachers from the same subject would have some sort of a common ground understanding of mastery per subject area. In developing a definition or theory about mastery, the text suggests to consider the Six Facets of Understanding, which include explanation, interpretation, application, perspective, empathy, and self-knowledge. Evidence of mastery can be similar to forms of assessment, including multiple assignments and tracking the progress of a few important works over a period of time. During the field experience portion of the course we each got to witness various forms of assessing mastery of different subject areas. Through observing the health classes of the middle and high school I saw multiple strategies to assess mastery and understanding of a subject. The most common form of assessment was class discussion, in which the teacher involved all students in the class. Other strategies included work sheets that were filled out, essays/short answers in which students had an opportunity to explain a concept or response, visual projects, and (on rare occasion) tests or quizzes.

Chris Whitney
Chapter two of FIAE talks about mastery and how teachers can tell when a student has properly mastered a certain idea or concept. There are six facets for true understanding, in no particular order are explanation, interpretation, application perspective, empathy, self-knowledge. Each plays an important role in student learning and education as a whole. According to chapter two, there are two true ways to gain sufficient evidence of mastery. One way is multiple assessments (which is also stressed upon in the Multiple Intelligences book) and tracking the progress of a few important pieces of work over time. It is important to have a clear understanding of what mastery is, as it can vary from subject to subject and is proven differently in the different fields. One of the questions I had during my first in field experience was how to get concrete evidence of student mastery for history, which is a subject that can be hard to gauge as the answer is not always clear. The book provides a “working explanation” of what mastery is : Students have mastered content when they demonstrate a thorough understanding as evidenced by doing something substantive with the content beyond merely echoing it. Anyone can repeat information; it’s the masterful student who can break content into its compoent pieces, explain it and alternative perspectives regarding it cogently to others and use it purposefully in new situations.”

Ashton Carmichael
The author gives us a look at the six facets that Jay McTighe and Grant Wiggins use to explain true understanding: explanation, interpretation, application, perspective, empathy, and self-knowledge. These facets model mastery of a subject. We do not want our students to have a basic understanding of concepts, for the most part. What we want, is for the students to be able to “explain it, interpret it for others or other situations, apply it, acknowledge and explore alternative perspectives on the topic, experience empathy for the topic (or appreciate the experience of others who do), and accurately identify and reflect on their own self-knowledge regarding the topic” (McTighe and Wiggins 2001). What to look for in mastery is a difficult decision. Like the author said, one really good vocabulary test is not proof of mastery in spelling. Projects seems like a good plan, or giving a choice of various projects, but it would be essential to evaluate the objectives of each project we are optioning out because we do not want to short change the students from showing us their full mastery of particular material. One lined responses to questions that we hope will demonstrate mastery would be the students short changing themselves from showing us their full mastery, so accepting these type of responses would be harmful to us and them. Not knowing what is important enough to teach and how much time to spend on material seems daunting. I am glad that there are resources to go to as a first year teacher, and even as a veteran teacher so that I do not miss any critical information. Changes are inevitable, so keeping us with these changes seems like it would be an essential part of the job.