Jessica Steffel ~ Instructional Dream I am always the teacher that is looking to improve. To teach something this year exactly as I taught it last year is not stimulating. When I first started teaching, I tried to always create files that I could use next year, only to discover I didn’t like it anymore or wanted to tweak it the next year anyway. If I see a problem area in the classroom, I always look for resources or people to help me improve. Constantly striving to improve keeps my life and my job interesting! I also am motivated to improve my teaching to give students the skills they will need to succeed in life. Problem solving, creative thinking, and adaptability are so important. As we have read in The World is Flat, The World is Open, and Blogs Wikis, and Podcasts (and also heard from Ken Robinson in his talk about Changing Educational Paradigms) our school system is designed for an archaic, static environment. The world around us is changing, yet schools struggle with these changes. If our students will exit our school system with the best chance of success, they must be ready to participate in the culture and economic environment. Our goals should be worded like this: use, analyze, interpret, and create. These are a far cry from memorization and multiple choice. If our students are going to compete in the new global economy, they will be strong in these higher-level thinking skills. Consider the top of this pyramid that depicts the Digital Bloom’s taxonomy. To be successful in the ever-changing flat and open global economy, educators much realize that as much as possible, students should be spending time in the higher parts of the pyramid and using the tools that help them achieve that type of learning.
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As we read this semester, schools do not need to worry so much about memorizing, and we are even moving beyond simply posting content online. In fact, we even have teachers doing “antiteaching” and (gasp) requiring students to process their learning in interesting ways such as creating videos. This takes an entirely different approach to planning a unit. It also takes an entirely different approach to organizing the curriculum. Why does one class have to be only one content area? I took a class this summer that was the amalgamation of three classes, with projects that hit content from one or more classes as we went. Finding the connections between content areas and using multimedia projects that serve more than one purpose (such as literacy and science) is key to using our time and our students’ time in the best manner. I think that the changes in education must start early, that academic ability must be redefined so that we find less value in straight As and more value in encouraging great thinkers and problem solvers. I am passionate about integrating these changes as best as I am able, and I am committed to changing as long as I see that it is necessary. Some of my current goals as I try to make adjustments to my teaching include: (I) Create, Collaborate, and Communicate: These three pillars of the MI educational technology standards become my focus. Rather than always thinking “how do I include science and writing?” I am thinking “What are they creating? Who are they working with? How are they sharing these ideas with the world?” (II) Assignments with a higher purpose than test scores and skill and drill. I don’t have to forego a creative assignment so we can do our spelling test. I’ve read Research Without Copying by Nancy Polette and found ways to tweak the assignments for students that give them a higher level thinking skill requirement. (III) Time to think, talk and reflect. We don’t have to end a great discussion about severe weather to make it to music on time. We talk to the class, we talk to partners and groups, and we talk to other people around the world. And then... (IV) Making connections and learning about the world. All of our learning opportunities connect to each other. We have time to discover how life cycles work and how is this like other cycles? (V) Leading my students to learning opportunities rather than controlling those opportunities. We begin units with finding out what it is we want to find out. We plan together how to learn the answers to our questions. The teacher stimulates the opportunity rather than designing all of the activities.
(VI) Inspiring their sense of inquiry rather than squashing it. We aren’t limited by the excessive number of standards in a grade level; rather they are numerous enough to guide us to exciting explorations without cramming too much and limiting the scope of our inquiry. No more “sorry, kids, we have to be done with weather because we have to ‘cover’ plants. I am excited about the Common Core Content Standards that are coming because they are in line with this idea of deep understanding rather than just simple coverage! With all of these qualities in mind, here is how I am planning a restructuring of my states of matter unit for January. Please keep in mind that this will be considered a class research project, introducing many of the foundations required for students to do exploration on their own. Students will contribute individual elements, but since my students are in Kindergarten and 1st grade, their background knowledge of the topic of matter and of the research / inquiry process is virtually nonexistent. They haven’t experienced research before! Throughout this process, I will be doing lots of modeling of things like determining important information for note-taking, drawing and labeling illustrations, sorting our information into categories (i.e. finding connections), and more. Even the process of recording something you read is labor intensive at this age, but I am a firm believer that with the right guidance they will come up with a pretty amazing project that reflects their thinking across the content areas. At the end of each section of this unit, I have indicated the roman numerals and short descriptors associated with my goals for my teaching above so you can see how I am integrating them into the unit.
Solids and Liquids - Kindergarten / 1st Grade
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I introduce the topic of matter with a demonstration that illustrates the concepts and vocabulary of solid and liquid. M&Ms melt in your hand is a good one to start us off in our thinking about solids. (IV) Making connections and learning about the world. (V) Leading my students to learning opportunities rather than controlling those opportunities. (VI) Inspiring their sense of inquiry rather than squashing it.
Students hold a class discussion about what they know about matter and discuss what they would like to find out. They brainstorm a list of ways we can learn about matter. Knowing my class (because we have done this before), they will list books, videos on Internet and DVD, websites, ask an expert, and complete experiments. (III) Time to think, talk and reflect. (V) Leading my students to learning opportunities rather than controlling those opportunities. As a class, we will go through the Matter Webquest (http://k1matter.weebly.com) that I built in a previous class. I will use the WebQuest to teach how to take information from a source and record important details in a science journal. The webquest asks them to create a final product at certain stages. We will do that together as a class on the Smartboard, with students doing as much of it as possible so everyone sees how it works. (I) Create, Collaborate, and Communicate (II) Assignments with a higher purpose than test scores and skill and drill. (III) Time to think, talk and reflect.
We will follow that with a day or two of research stations based on their list. With student assistance to use the search engine in the library for matter books, I will prepare the materials and set up the stations based on their ideas above. As they travel through the stations, they will record important information in a science journal. Watch Full video
Students will also create a blog entry on the class blog to record their information. They
will create a one-page document with images and text, then screen capture it using Jing to post online. We will invite parents to come to the blog and make comments. Curriculum Integration: During writers workshop, students will be asked to write “all about” or “question and answer” books about matter. They will also be invited to try writing poetry that reflects their knowledge of matter. (I) Create, Collaborate, and Communicate (II) Assignments with a higher purpose than test scores and skill and drill. (III) Time to think, talk and reflect. (IV) Making connections and learning about the world. (V) Leading my students to learning opportunities rather than controlling those opportunities. (VI) Inspiring their sense of inquiry rather than squashing it. As a group and using the Smartboard, we will discuss all of the information we learned and how we might connect the ideas and organize them into categories. (III) Time to think, talk and reflect. (IV) Making connections and learning about the world.
As Teacher (Organizer) of the class wiki, I will add pages to the wiki that fit these categories. Fortunately, Wikispaces allows me to create student accounts without email addresses, which our students aren’t given until 3rd grade. Students will create an illustration and
writing sample to fit the page they choose to contribute to. I have found they are always more excited about submitting screenshot work rather than just text, so we will continue that tradition. Students will also be allowed to contribute their writing from writer’s workshop on one of the pages, as a Yodio or a flip video. As a class, we will create presentations on Animoto or Slide (or any web 2.0 photo show) to add to each of the pages. Students will do as much as possible of this, although it will probably still be as a class done together on the Smartboard. This will be more time for guided practice with these tools. (I) Create, Collaborate, and Communicate (II) Assignments with a higher purpose than test scores and skill and drill. Since this is the first time I am having students create a wiki, I am going to keep it just to our class. Ideally, in the future, we will connect with another class somewhere to build the wiki together and chat about our findings. I am unsure about whether I would have the next class simply refine what we create the first year, or start from scratch and see what their approach would be. I will consider this when I have the final results, and when I see what new tools are available in the next year before I teach it again. When I think about implementing this unit, I am excited, yet apprehensive. It takes a lot of time to teach this way, to allow time for exploration, and to create their products. Completing this unit will cause some disruptions in our schedule, but I’m prepared to deal with that. I am confident that I can find the time to make this work, and my students will be all the better for it!