Wednesday, October 29, 2014

Blog Post #11

What can we learn about teaching and learning from these teachers?

After watching Back to the Future I was shocked to see how many 4th graders did not know simple questions such as their home phone number; the country, city, and state they lived in; and other questions like this. This is something that needs to be worked on with teachers and parents at lower grades. I did like how Ted let his class do hands on activities to help them learn instead of just lecturing. He also has a class blog where all of his students write about everything they learned. I think this is a good idea to see what information the students retained after learning about that particular curriculum.

After watching Blended Learning Cycle I learned about the blended learning cycle and what it is. This is when the 5 E's which are engage, explore, experiment, explain, and evaluate are combined with the ways of learning which are online, mobile, and classroom. It is so important to get the kids hooked on something and then let them go through the process of trying to figure it out. It is also cool to see what all they come up with.

I could not find the video of Making Thinking Visible but after reading some of it I thought it was interesting to think about how we as people come up with the answers that we do. Some people get things so easily while others have to think long and hard to get the same answer or maybe even a different one. Everyone's brain is different and we as teachers need to remember that when teaching and listening to others.

After watching Sam Pane 4th Grade I thought this would be a great activity to do at the beginning of the year with your class if it was a grade level high enough to know what was going on. This teaches students how to be a good digital citizen. One of the kid's did a digital comic saying her digital super hero stopped gossip online and another student's would stop you from putting personal info in to win something. After all the students were done they would walk around and look at the other students work. This is also good because you never know what some students will learn that they didn't know before.

After watching Project Based Learning I thought it was interesting that they combined History, English, and Information Processing into one long class but the same amount of credit hours if they were all separate. I have never really thought about doing something like this because starting in intermediate and middle school you start switching teachers for certain subjects. I feel like making one long class like they did you can accomplish more because you have more time then you would if you had to split your time into three different classes. It will be interesting to see in the future if this develops more.

After watching Roosevelt Elementary's PBL Program I learned that PBL is a great way for kids to think for themselves. It lets us know as teacher that the students really understand what we are learning about. PBL also helps students with public speaking which is a big fear in many people as they grow up. It also helps kids understand what adults go through everyday. I feel learning this way will help students more in the future then the way I was taught.

Project Based Learning






2 comments:

  1. "I could not find the video of Making Thinking Visible but after reading some of it ..." You never found the video? The link in the Blogpost Assignments works. i just tried it!

    Thoughtful. Interesting.

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  2. I also enjoyed the Roosevelt elemntary PBL video . The excitement in which the students, teachers and parents displayed was incredible. Very well written blog post.

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