- Description of the levels of classroom discussions.
·
Teacher to teacher: This discussion
is obviously between to teachers and can range from the plan for the next day
to testing or even about collaborating on lesson plans.
·
Student to student: This type of
conversation really builds good communication skills and effective teamwork abilities.
This gives the students the ability to learn from each other and help make
their projects more well rounded
·
Teacher to students: This is what
most classrooms are made of. It can be talking to whole group or talking to
individual students. You can use this to use higher-ordered thinking questions
and also probing questions to check student’s understandings.
- Discussion on the questions for “checking in” on students during a project.
There are
many types of questions you can use to check in with students. The first one is
procedural questions. So like “Do we have the right materials available” “When’s
the best time to schedule a field trip?” It is essentially is asking about the
time line of the group work. The next question asks about the teamwork.
Observing while asking probing questions is also a part of checking in. The final
group of questions is having the students evaluate themselves.
- Discussion on the benefits to students when optimizing the use of technology.
You want
to make sure that the technology you choose to use in the classroom is actually
helping the students reach learning goals. The technology also needs to help
the students stay organized, and expanding their horizons by connecting with
the outside world/community. The final and most important is that is the
technology accessible to all students?
- Discussion on the 21st-century skills that can make or break a project.
Teamwork.
Teamwork dynamics is something that the teacher needs to focus on. Is the group
working? Or should you work with the group to help them get over conflict and
get back to work? Self and peer evaluation can really help a group figure out what needs
to be fixed or what they need to work on.
- Discussion on how concepts in this chapter relate to your topic/project.
Even in college,
we are self and peer evaluating all the time. We are growing and learning in
groups and individually. Since we are in groups, we need to have that student
to student communication to make our group as effective as possible.
I really like how when you talk about the classroom discussions they are very specific and precise! These are also great ways to make sure you have a very distinct project based learning classroom ! I think its important as a teacher to make sure that you use all the different ways to communicate not just one. I agree that evaluations of progress and how the group worked in a project is extremely important. Also as teachers probing questions is what will help guide the students as well as check in to where they are at. From what I remember teamwork was one of the 21st century skills mentioned as well as one more that is not listed here but I can't remember off the top of my head!All I agree that self and peer evaluating is extremely important in any project!
ReplyDeleteyou had some really good ideas about how to optimize technology. It is very important to make sure that the technology you are using is actually beneficial to the students learning. If it isn't going to benefit the learning objectives then you probably shouldn't be using it. Aslo using technology to expand horizons is a great way to get students more involved outside of the classroom. One of the most important factors that you hit on was that you need to make sure that the technology is accessible to all your students. For example if you make a blog to communicate with students outside of the classroom it is important to know that all your students re able to access a computer.
ReplyDeleteI like your relation to the topic about student to student communication and your discussion on how the technology used should keep students organized and help them reach learning goals. The checking in questions could have been explained a little more but it gave good ideas on questions that could be asked.
ReplyDeleteShane, I really enjoyed your reflection and thought it was very well written with important key points. I like how you explained how the technology a teacher picks for the classroom is something that is useful towards the learning goals. I have noticed in many classrooms that use technology that it often just becomes a distraction, so it will be interesting to see in the future how this is managed. Also i liked your answer about "checking in", I find this topic really important because i know as a student even when I was in grade school that I often needed teachers to do this to keep me on track.
ReplyDelete