Tag: Reflection

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Class 1: Designing a Teacher

human skeleton2
Our new semester kicks off on August 25th.

Class 1 Overview

As an ice breaker, I’ll give students an activity to design a great history teacher-  a variation of “Tool 13: Brainstorm, Group, Label” from my Literacy Strategies Tool Kit (free PDF)

  • Ask them to brainstorm all the words or phrases they can associate with “a great history teacher.”
  • Give them Post-Its and asked them to write one associated word or phrase on each sheet.
  • Put them in groups and ask them to share their Post-its and thinking. Then design an illustration that captured their collective thinking. And be prepared to share that with the class.
  • Working in fours synthesize their individual brainstorming into a collective vision on large paper, then take turns sharing and responding to questions.

I’m giving my students a copy of my 1971 student teaching evaluation (2 page pdf) Quite a relic – I’m surprised I still have it. We’ll examine it as an historic document with a critical eye for answering a number of questions: Who created it and why? Historic context? Point-of-view? What could we learn from it? What other sources might we need to collaborate?

I’ll spend some time introducing the course. Here’s a copy of this semester’s course calendar. (91 kb pdf)

Finally, we’ll log into LearningCatalytics and I’ll give them a series of questions to help me get to know them better. On the tech side I’m interested in their devices, digital skills, social media profile, and some of the programs they’re comfortable using. From an instructional perspective I’ll ask them to describe their goals for the course.

Assigned Readings for Class 2:

  1. Reading: “How to Motivate Students: Researched-Based Strategies” Link
  2. Reading: “A Taxonomy of Reflection: Critical Thinking For Students, Teachers, Principals” Link

Written assignment for Class 2:

Develop an overview of your “digital profile.” It can take any form you choose (it doesn’t even have to be digital). But it  should be something you can share with a classmate that makes sense without you having to explain it. If you look at “Reading 1” above, you’ll see why I have intentionally left the process and product open-ended.  

This profile will become your baseline analysis that you will return to later in the course as you reflect on your accomplishments meeting Course Goal #3: Develop skills for reflection, growth and professional networking. I will be giving you a similar assignment at the end of the course so that you will be able to measure your growth in this area.

Bottom line: Be sure it is useful to you.

Here’s a few prompts to get you started. No need to answer all the questions – they’re just idea starters:

  • Suppose you are interviewing for job – what impression would an employer form about you.
  • What’s your brand?
  • What links, if any, appear if you googled your name? (in quotes).
  • What social networks are you a member of? Are you a member of specific user groups? (Example, Google+ communities)
  • How do you represent yourself in these networks?
  • If you use social media networks, how do you use them? Do you share original content online? Do you curate and share content online with others?
  • If any of your social media provide metrics for number of connections (example, Twitter following, followers) record the number so you can use the metric later. (Please note: I’m not implying more is better.)

 

 

Image Credit : Tyne & Wear Archives & Museums “Human Skeleton”
Blind adults are listening to a short lecture at Sunderland Museum before examining a human skeleton.1913
“To them, their fingers are eyes”
From 1913, John Alfred Charlton Deas, a former curator at Sunderland Museum, organised several handling sessions for the blind, first offering an invitation to the children from the Sunderland Council Blind School, to handle a few of the collections at Sunderland Museum, which was ‘eagerly accepted’.
Ref: TWCMS:K13804(2)

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Women’s Suffrage Reflection Part II

Looking backward -Laura E. FosterWhen we first started working on this DBQ we knew that we wanted to educate students on how to best analyze propaganda, understanding what each piece is trying to say, being able to discover how each piece goes about conveying its message, and what historical events are transpiring to bring about such pieces of work. At the beginning of this DBQ lesson there was talk of only showing pro-women’s suffrage propaganda, but we discovered that if the students had only positive propaganda to view, then the lesson loses some of its strength. As a result we had to make a slight change my overall lesson. Instead of using only pro-suffrage pieces, we would also use anti-suffrage pieces and  the students would compare, contrast, and analyze these pieces as a whole as well instead of independently.

I personally believe that the final project achieved all of my learning goals. My partner had a large amount of excellent material that we used and as a result we were able to created a DBQ that pushes students to both compare and contrast multiple pictures, as well as analyze individual pictures at a deep level.

The biggest lesson that I learned while working on this DBQ is that you have to be careful with what photographic material you use. Pictures are one of the most important parts of a DBQ and if the DBQ has poorly chosen pictures than the overall quality of it will suffer greatly. I also learned that you need to be careful when choosing a topic. While something such as the women’s suffrage movement is well documented through images and propaganda, there are other events that are either lacking sufficient pictures or lack any diversity in their imagery.

This DBQ is part of our class-produced, multi-touch iBook. Available free at iTunes

You can find our DBQ at Learnist

Image credit:  Library of Congress:  LC-DIG-ppmsca-02940
Title: Looking backward / Laura E. Foster.
Creator(s): Foster, Laura E., artist
Date Created/Published: c1912 August 22.

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Class 12: Publishing our DBQs with iBooks Author

Typesetters working linotype machines Waterford NewsOver the next few classes we will devote time to editing / formatting our DBQs for iTunes publication of a class DBQ collection. Peter will provide instruction in using iBooks Author. Students will use  material from their DBQ Design project as the foundation for their contribution to one chapter of the class iBook. Peter will arrange for publication on iTunes with all student work credited. DBQ assignment here.

Project Reflection at Ed Methods
Students willing write a reflection on their DBQ design project. That will be done in the form of a blog post to Ed Methods – due by class time 11/25. Students should be sure to go back and quote their original DBQ post and note how their project evolved over time by answering three questions:

  1. What were the learning goals of this DBQ – what skills or content did you want students to master?
  2. To what extent did your final project achieve those goals?
  3. What did you learn about the DBQ lesson design process? (Note: do not discuss the merits of Learnist. It’s about the teaching not the technology.)

The DBQ design blog post should include an image from their DBQ and a link back to their DBQ on Learnist. This post will introduce their DBQ to the world. Peter will also re-publish their post as a guest blogger at Copy / Paste to broaden the audience for their work.

Class DBQ iBook
As a group, the class will review each other’s work before inclusion in the iBook collection of DBQs. Each student (or team) will contribute one DBQ in the form of a book chapter. It will include the project reflection as a way of introducing the DBQ. Students will collaborate on book design decisions and Peter will include a sample chapter and an introduction to the book.

Technical aspects
The iBooks will be designed using iBooks Author in the Mac lab. Students will bring digital versions of their DBQs to the lab – including all image and sound files, text files, citations and URLs. Note: YouTube videos will be inserted into the iBooks using ibooksgenerator.

For more see:

Image credit: Typesetters working on linotype machines at the Waterford News. Date: Friday, 29 July 1938.
This newspaper was set up in 1848, and is still going strong as the Waterford News and Star in print and online.
National Library of Ireland Ref.: P_WP_4269

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A Reflective Lesson

This week, our class focused on creating a ‘lesson study.’ Each lesson was supposed to relate to a possible topic that we might be teaching in the near future. After meeting with a partner that had a similar topic, we discussed strengths and weaknesses of the potential lessons. Everyone seemed to have put a lot of thought into the general idea of their lesson which spawned a great classroom discussion.

Throughout the discussion process, I took so many notes about awesome future projects that I could tweak to meet my class’s needs. For example, I really like the idea of Levels of Questioning which gets students involved in creating their content objectives. (Level 1- basic content such as who, what, when; Level 2- How or why questions; Level 3- the generative question or “In your opinion…” question that asks students to reason and provide evidence.) Another idea that I want to think more about for American history was the Mock Congress idea. It seems daunting to deal with those logistics but that’s what colleagues are for!

Image

Image from Mr. Volk’s Mad Science Website at Drake Middle School

This class is full of awesome ideas as well as some great future social studies teachers. I feel confident in others’ opinions and advice. Everyone is so willing to listen and contribute to the conversation. In terms of this last assignment, my partner definitely helped me think about some futures issues with my lesson study but, at the same time, delivered constructive criticism.

Overall, this project let me think about the more important components of putting together a lesson. I think this assignment worked well so that the class could generate new thoughts and ideas about what is necessary for student learning. I look forward to doing this when we have actual lesson plans to come up with.