Blog Post #11

What Can We Learn From These Teachers?

      Brian Crosby from Agnes Risley Elementary School is a very up-to-date educator. You can tell he is very proud of his students. I learned a lot from watching his video Back to the Future. In his assignment about balloons, he found a way to incorporate every subject into this lesson plan. It's amazing how involved students will become when you include things like science, creative writing, skyping, and blogging into a lesson. I have always thought that students need to be exposed to "what's out there." Because it is all too normal for people to be unaware of what is happening in the real world. But by having your students skyping with other students from all over the world they really become aware of just how small they are and of things that truly matter. I loved their idea of "High Hopes" and how it connected them to students all over the world and it really gave them a sense of pride when other classrooms got involved. It was very sweet of his class to include the girl who had leukemia into their classroom and to give her a feel for what it is like to be in a real one. From this video I learned that there are simple ways to get students thinking and learning without them even realizing it. I also learned that I need to keep it in mind to find ways for my students to connect with the world.
      In the Blended Learning Cycle, Paul Anderson talks about his innovative process of teaching. Anderson discusses his acronym for teaching which he calls Quivers: QUestion, Investigation, Videos, Elaboration, Review, and Summary quiz. The key part to this process to me is that he didn't allow his students to take the summary quiz until he felt like they had a real grasp on what they had learned. It happens too often that students get left behind in class and then have a test thrown at them that they have no chance of even passing. Even after allowing his students to take the quiz he would send them back to the beginning of "quiver" if they still didn't understand it. This way he is ensuring that the student is actually learning and not just trying to pass a test. A lot of blended learning sounds like Project Based Learning and in a way they're extremely similar. They engage students, they use technology, and the teacher evaluates their "end product" to see if they really understand it. I will definitely incorporate this in my classroom.

      In Mark Church's video Headlines, he has a simple idea that every teacher should use in every lesson plan. Ask your students what they think about a topic that they don't know much about. Later, after you have finished the lesson, ask them again what they think and see how their ideas have changed since the lesson began. By telling his students to create a headline with their initial idea they made something of physical evidence that they can refer back to later so they can see just how much they ideas have changed. This really is a way of making thinking visible. The students are actually presented with their thinking on a paper and they have a way to compare initial thoughts to their ending thoughts. I think this helps students understand the learning process and just how drastic the change in themselves can be. It's a way to spark their interest in learning.

      Super Digital Citizen was probably my favorite video to watch for this blog post. This was a super creative way to implement not only writing skills but technology and real world skills as well. I think it is extremely important to educate our kids to be smart on the internet. This is one of the most pressing matters for our generation of children today. Misusage of the internet is a constant concern for our students and forming a project around it is just genius. These students were so engulfed in the project that they were actually having fun creating their own characters and putting them into a comic book. This is very inspirational for me as a future English teacher because this is a wonderful idea to use for any book we may read in class.

      Project Based Learning was very similar to many videos we have watched in the past about PBL. This just added to our understanding of the difficulties that come with learning how to incorporate PBL into your classroom. This is especially true for veteran teachers who have become adjusted to their teaching styles without it and are now trying to change all of their tactics. I do however think it's rather important to try and include different subjects under a single project. This way the students isn't just learning a subject but instead how it ties into to everything else as well.

      Roosevelt's Elementary PBL was mostly about a small community and the group of kids in this Elementary school and just how project based learning affects them as a whole and individually. It focused less on the actual process of PBL but the outcome of it. Students are becoming more engaged in their community and in their classroom. They're becoming excited about learning and proud to show what they have learned to their community. The best part about PBL in my opinion is how it relates to real world problems. It gets kids active in places like their community, the classroom, and sometimes they even have an affect on students in other parts of the world. Students are taught how to work collaborate together, how to speak in public, and how to research a subject to learn about it on their own. Project Based Learning gives the students self motivation and a sense of ownership in their learning environment. It is empowering for them and I believe this is the best environment we can provide for our students.