Coursework Showcase
Whether it’s in a job interview, a response to intervention (RTI) meeting, or for a formal observation write-up, the question is always the same - how are you best meeting the needs of your students? This is a complex question, and as an elementary educator, it is more than what you see in my classroom on a daily basis. So, how do I best meet the needs of my students? Through being critical of available resources and research, finding technology to support individual learning, and helping my students to see that ALL learners (even teachers!) can grow and develop their thinking and learning over time. Below, you will find my coursework showcase. My showcase is organized around three themes: critiquing, supporting, and growing and developing. It contains eight assignments that I created and believe tie in well to the modeling of behavior I want my students to see from me in regards to keeping their needs in the forefront. Clicking the artifact title will bring you to the assignment described underneath the title. I feel that these three themes strongly support students in the classroom and educators who aspire to be lifelong learners - because after all, isn’t that who we hope our students will become?
Critiquing
In order to best meet the needs of my students, I need to understand where meaning is breaking down. Using technology for the sake of using technology is not what is best for my students. In the paper that follows, I researched dyslexia in order to better understand how to meet the needs of learners who may have it. I then used a critical eye to evaluate Raz-Kids, a technology that I thought could support students with dyslexia. Developing an understanding of dyslexia was key before I was able to critique the technology to best meet the needs of students with dyslexia.
The Universal Design for Learning (UDL) guidelines act as a way to guide planning to ensure that the needs of all students in my classroom are continuously being met. In the attached document, I applied the UDL guidelines to a math game I created with a Squishy Circuits kit for my third graders to help them practice their rounding skills. Critiquing the game I created according to the UDL guidelines allowed me the opportunity to tweak it to best meet the needs of every student in my classroom. I now think of these guidelines whenever planning lessons and activities for my classroom.
Teaching in a technology-rich environment is a dream, but do teachers really feel confident about teaching with the technology they are given? To find out, I surveyed my grade-level team of third grade teachers last year. In the following paper, I examine the survey results and discuss the benefits and implications of our current technology use. Within my paper, there is also a link to an infographic I created of the data collected. Looking over the data with a critical eye led to a better understanding of how to help teachers feel confident and supported when teaching in a technology-filled environment. I learned that the greatest way to support educators is to make sure their voices are heard on issues that matter most to them.
One topic in education that I have always been interested in is school-wide Positive Behavior Interventions and Supports (PBIS). I have worked in schools that use it, and schools that do not. What determines if it will be successful? This topic could go both ways. I decided to research school-wide PBIS. I wanted to discover why some schools implement it and others choose not to. In the document that follows, you will find my research and annotated summary of the results. Educators need to find both sides to hot issues in education. Being critical of school-wide PBIS helped me to dig deeper in discovering situations in which it can help meet the needs of my students. It also has led me to be more consistent with behavior management in the classroom, and helps my students to see the value in being role models for younger students in the building.
Supporting
This is two- to three-day lesson plan that I created for my second graders to present their finished animal reports from Writer’s Workshop. Using Educreations, students would present on their chosen animal, sharing facts and pictures that they included in their written report. While the bulk of the unit is focused on the ability to research and combine facts into paragraphs, Educreations supported their learning in a whole new way. They are able to share their ideas with peers and use the technology as a support for creating a finished piece in which they take more pride and ownership in. Creating a lesson that focused on 21st century technology allowed me to be creative and specific in my planning, and this is something I carry with me each year with my students.
To help my third graders practice their rounding skills, I created a game called “Race to Round” using a pizza box and a Squishy Circuits kit. The Squishy Circuits kit is an example of a maker kit, and maker kits are great ways to support student learning. Though my game calls for most of the kit to already be made/put together, there is potential for students to make the insulating and conducting doughs and completely set up the game themselves. Either way, this is an example of students using technology to not only support their learning, but also to self-assess their understanding of a learning goal (in this case, of rounding to the nearest 10 or 100). This project helped me to see the importance in specific use of technology to assist students in learning and receiving immediate feedback.
Growing and Developing
Developing a fully-online course is not an easy task. I designed a course on solids and liquids that I plan to use with my second graders next year, as it follows with some of our science report card learning goals. It took me an entire course to design, but I am proud of the finished product and see a lot of potential in its use. The thing that I am more proud of, though, is how much I grew and developed my technology and teaching skills and strategies through its creation. You can use this link to view my site, but more importantly, please view my reflection essay to see how my design process grew and developed for the better.
Activating prior knowledge is a strategy many teachers use before starting a new topic or lesson. It can alert educators to misconceptions or give them a gauge for where to begin for a lesson. In this digital story, I discussed how I used my students’ prior knowledge about precise measurement to help them learn how to measure to the nearest ¼ inch. My students’ learning grew and developed over the course of the lesson, growing from experiencing Piaget’s disequilibrium to finding conceptual change in this new learning situation. Identifying a learning theory that my students fit into helped me to keep their needs at the forefront as I taught them preceise measurement.
Image credit: all images on this page free from Wix gallery.