This semester, I have been surprised by the literacy levels of my students. They are able participate in social conversations, class demonstrations, follow verbal directions, and show critical thinking during think pair shares. Some of my students are kindergarden and 1st grade so they are unable to read written directions or prompts and understand content specific vocabulary. Many times if verbal directions are too long or complicated, students will not understand how to perform a certain activity.
September 30, 2013
My literacy-rich Physical Education classroom will focus on developing content-specific vocabulary through graphic organizers and visual aids, collaboration that builds social and conversational skills, as well as developing appropriate written responses through reflective journaling.
December 15, 2013
My literacy-rich classroom will transition from learning basic vocabulary to fostering critical thinking. Students will be engaged in performance assessments where students can take ownership of their learning and demonstrate their understanding through creating content-specific Newsletters, performances, and video analysis. Students are reading and following directions through a rubric, as well as expressing their analysis of a skill through a written response.
May 30, 2014
My literacy-rich classroom will focus on having students learn through creativity and teaching their peers. Students will be engaged in activities where they will watch their partner perform a skill and use the rubric to provide positive-corrective feedback to their partner. This way they are capable of independent learning through teaching, analyzing, and providing a correction, while also building literacy through reading and social activities.
This blog will examine different issues and thoughts I have as a teacher candidate.
Monday, November 26, 2012
Monday, November 12, 2012
EDSS 521: Project Tomorrow
I chose to look at the report about defining the emerging
role of social learning tools to connect students, parents and educators, from
the Project Tomorrow website. The report examines how social learning is being
used in the learning process and how to better understand the value of
incorporating technological tools in the classroom. It was not a surprise to me
to see that they discovered that students, teachers, administrators and parents
all increasingly see the value of social learning in both their personal and
professional lives. I did find it interesting that students in particular had a
heightened interest in using social learning tools in order to enhance their engagement
and academic productivity in the classroom. I found this surprising because I just
assumed students wanted to incorporate technology because it more fun and they
can access Facebook more easily, not because they find it relevant for their
personal learning process. This report shed some light into the increasingly level
of support for technology in the classroom which will inform my teaching by
allowing me to take more risks by incorporating new and exciting technological
tools into my curriculum. It also made
me realize that if I incorporate more technology, my expectations for the
students will increase as well. I will have to teach and model appropriate use
of the tools while also creating guidelines to ensure that students are not
misusing the technology and their privileges. If technology in my classroom use
can be implemented, taught and monitored I would definitely buy into the idea
of using more tools to enhance student learning.
The video “Learn to Change, Change to Learn” on the Speak Up
website discusses how technology can influence academic success for students by
allowing students to research, analyze, collaborate, and synthesize learning
through tool using technology. They discussed that their needs to be a shift
from teaching students to standardized tests, to teaching students how to
critically think and solve problems in more authentic settings using technology
as the base. I agree that students need to be taught how to use the advancing
technologies in order for them to compete for jobs that require knowledge from
multiple literacies. I thought that the ideas presented video were idealistic
and focused on how awesome education can be, but it did little to explain HOW
we can create the shift to enhance student success and learning through
technology. I think that there should be more research put into what implementation
strategies are successful and how the use of technology with students can be
monitored. A major concern for me is that I feel like my students would be
easily distracted from learning content, so I would like to see what
preventative measures I could use to help deter this problem. Overall, I
believe that the message to create a student who has multiple literacies and
can critically think and collaborate to solve problems is very important, but
there needs to be some guidance in to how to actually implement and monitor
such changes.
Starting a ‘Future Teachers” type of organization at my
elementary school site could be beneficial in many ways. One advantage to
starting one of these organizations is that the teachers at my school site
would gain new ideas and perspectives when it comes to teaching their students
science and math. Education is advancing all the time so this would provide the
teachers with the opportunity to keep up with new practices that might enhance
their teaching style and student success. Another benefit would be that the
students might be more engaged and motivated to learn science and math. It is
important to get students hooked on math and science early in their academic
years because they will most likely carry that passion for those subjects
throughout their lifetime. I was unable to find any information on how to
specifically start one of these organizations at my school. I would assume that
I could bring it up to the principal or the faculty during a staff meeting and then
make further arrangements after. I think the main concern would be how to fund
such an organization so it would be important to be an advocate to gain support
from the school, parents and the community.
EDSS 511: Unit Plan Blog
I would like to share my thoughts on creating a Pickleball Unit for a 6th grade Physical Education class...
.REFLECTION
Implementing a Pickleball unit allows the students to cover
multiple standards within one content area. I incorporated various informal and
formal assessments throughout the unit monitor student learning towards the
learning objectives. I have used multiple differentiation strategies that not
only meet the needs of specific students, but also that meet the needs of the
general students in my class. I have incorporated demonstrations that benefit my students in need of differentiation specifically based on the learning
profiles and readiness levels. The demonstrations provide a visual depiction of
what is expected, which will reduce confusion. I have incorporated the strategy
of working with partners to allow all of the students practice social skills
while learning content through collaboration. I have differentiated the
Newsletter assessment for the ELs by creating an individual rubric that
outlines their expectations for the assignment.
I believe the one strength that stands out in this unit plan is my
continual use of assessment. I have created informal and formal assessments
that progress monitor and summatively show students’ understanding of the
learning goals. Students are exposed to multiple assessments that allow for
more corrective feedback to enhance the students’ skill performance and learning
of the content. One limitation of this unit plan would definitely be that it is
short in length. Students do not get a lot of time to practice and master the
skills. If I had it my way I would create an 8-10 week unit where I could
create a more in depth task analysis so students could gain more strategies,
tactics and techniques of the game.
To measure the effectiveness of the pickleball unit I would
analyze the students’ work on their Newsletter to see if they demonstrated
knowledge of the learning objectives. If I noticed that students had some
common misconceptions I would go back over the material and re-teach it
differently to ensure student understanding. If the unit were longer in length
I would be able to incorporate more checklist assessments that would allow me
to gain evidence on student skill performance. I would use this assessment as a
means of progress-monitoring to help students build more competencies in their
skills.
Overall the unit planning process was quite tedious and took a lot
of planning and thinking. I learned that if you are new to creating unit plans,
you should start small and then build upon it as time go on. If you try too
many things at once it can be chaotic and students will not get the most out of
the activity. As a new teacher I know I will not be the best at teaching
everything, so it is important that I find content that I am confident in
teaching, and keep expanding my pedagogical content knowledge to that I can
teach more in depth topics to my students. At the beginning of the year I did
not realize how much time and planning went into teaching a full unit. It made
me realize how important it is to be prepared and organized you have to be as a
teacher. Unit plans should definitely be done well in advance, and after each
lesson the teacher should reflect upon what went well and what did not. This
reflective process should be continuous throughout teaching to ensure both
student and instructor growth.
Monday, November 5, 2012
EDSS 521: 21st Century Literacies
Many teachers struggle with implementing and fostering creativity within students and I personally fall into this category. In my own clinical practice classroom students are rarely asked or prompted to use their imagination to critically think. Although the students sparingly engage in creativity, it does take place sometimes during activities where my cooperating teacher allows them to have "free choice." Free choice can range anywhere from performing a unique sequence of patterns on the plyometric ladders or during hoola-hoop activities where students can practice their favorite trick rather than just hoola-hooping around their waists. This allows students to explore different movement concepts while learning about their bodies during physical activity. By allowing students to foster their own creativity it helps them learn critical thinking skills which are essential when understanding the big picture.
Critical thinking and problem solving are essential for scaffolding and gaining true understanding of the content being presented. In my clinical -practice classroom, students engage in critical thinking and problem solving during demonstrations and the closure through checking for understanding. My cooperating teacher usually asks open-ended questions that make students think, rather than asking questions that have a straight yes or no answer. I think a great way to extend critical thinking in my classroom is to have students reflect more on their own learning process which will allow them to make more connections throughout the unit being taught. This can be done with self-assessments or a think/pair/share where students reflect on their performance as well as participation and collaboration within group settings. Students in my class are given several opportunities to collaborate with their peers because almost every lesson is designed for students to be working with a partner. Because my class is already used to working with a partner, I can provide more opportunities to allow them to work on their critical thinking skills collaboratively.
Although my students work mostly with partners and groups, it is also important that I teach students to work independently where they become self-directed learners. In physical education it is hard to observe each student and provide positive-corrective feedback to everyone when there is such a limited amount of time. I have noticed during my teaching that I provide detailed demonstrations and instruction and then my students go out and practice independently. Although I cannot get to every student, it does provide them the opportunity to be self-directed while staying on task and practicing the skill. I initially guide the learning through explanation and demonstration, but the students are responsible for noticing their common errors and trying to correct their skill performance to be more successful. Overall, implementing creativity, critical thinking, and independence can be hard as a teacher, but it is important that we take the extra time to plan in order to give our students the best possible education.
Critical thinking and problem solving are essential for scaffolding and gaining true understanding of the content being presented. In my clinical -practice classroom, students engage in critical thinking and problem solving during demonstrations and the closure through checking for understanding. My cooperating teacher usually asks open-ended questions that make students think, rather than asking questions that have a straight yes or no answer. I think a great way to extend critical thinking in my classroom is to have students reflect more on their own learning process which will allow them to make more connections throughout the unit being taught. This can be done with self-assessments or a think/pair/share where students reflect on their performance as well as participation and collaboration within group settings. Students in my class are given several opportunities to collaborate with their peers because almost every lesson is designed for students to be working with a partner. Because my class is already used to working with a partner, I can provide more opportunities to allow them to work on their critical thinking skills collaboratively.
Although my students work mostly with partners and groups, it is also important that I teach students to work independently where they become self-directed learners. In physical education it is hard to observe each student and provide positive-corrective feedback to everyone when there is such a limited amount of time. I have noticed during my teaching that I provide detailed demonstrations and instruction and then my students go out and practice independently. Although I cannot get to every student, it does provide them the opportunity to be self-directed while staying on task and practicing the skill. I initially guide the learning through explanation and demonstration, but the students are responsible for noticing their common errors and trying to correct their skill performance to be more successful. Overall, implementing creativity, critical thinking, and independence can be hard as a teacher, but it is important that we take the extra time to plan in order to give our students the best possible education.
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