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Showcase of Work

 

Students today must learn 21st century skills. This includes learning how to become real-world problem solvers and they must be digitally literate. Being an educator no longer just requires teaching students literacy, math, science, and social studies. An educator now must teach their students inquiry and technology skills in every core content area. The following links below showcase examples of my work integrating these critical thinking skills into my students' lives.

Science

I have never thought to ask myself what it truly means to understand science. In order to be the best educator for my students, I needed to compile my own thoughts about what it means to understand science. Incorporating ideas such as scientific content, science practices, Next Generation Science Standards (NGSS), and becoming scientifically literate, the above Prezi summarizes my thoughts about what it means to understand science in the 21st century. This was my first experience with Prezi, a technology that I now frequently integrate into my classroom. Not only does this display my thoughts about science, it gives me a tool that allows my students to communicate information in a new way. This Prezi was not a lesson for my students, but helped me identify the what it means to understand science to better teach science to my students.

Reflection Essay and Lesson Plan

After creating my own vision about what it meant to understand science, I wanted to see my students' perspectives on science understanding. To do so, I conducted a toy car experiement in which my students made and explained predictions. After assessing my students during the toy car experiment, I reflected on what my students did well and what they needed to work on (above document). Using this information, I created a week long unit that allowed my students to build on the scientific practices of making predictions and supporting claims. This unit was designed directly based on student need. Creating units uniquely designed to better fit student need, gave my students the opportunity to deepen their understanding. This essay truly demonstrates my mastery of creating lessons specifically for my students.

PowToon Reflection

With the creation of the NGSS, science education is on the cusp of a major shift. I created the above Powtoon to not only review the book The Sixth Extinction by Elizabeth Kolbert, but to also demonstrate how science is not the linear process once taught. Science is not thought to be is an ongoing cycle. This video reintegrates the importance of science and how it relates to our everyday lives. Completing this Powtoon provided me with another tool for my students to communicate information. Exploring new technology myself introduces me to new ways for my students to become digitally literate.

The above lesson plan sequence is my first true experience with the NGSS in my classroom. I created a unit based on what I had learned from student interviews about how to obtain reliable information and share it with others. Although my students knew how to obtain information, they were unclear about how to locate reliable sources and share what they had learned. Through discussion, collaboration, and research on the relationship between humans and the earth my students were then able to create PSAs, using iMovie, to share with their peers. This unit combines inquiry and technology skills. Creating student-led units allows my students to take accountability for their learning.

Technology

Reflection Essay

In order to fully understand educational inquiry, I had to reflect on my past experiences with inquiry in my own education. This reflection essay discusses my personal history with technology in my own education and my hesitation with utilizing technology in the classroom. I feel as if I am part of an "in-between" generation, not quite a digital native nor a digital immigrant. After my reflection, I came to the conclusion that students today must learn differently than they once did. Through completion of this essay, I mastered the ability to reflect on past experiences to better help my students.

Another student-led unit, my fifth graders researched colonists who were some of the very first people to arrive to the New World. Given a name and list of reliable sources in which to research from, students gathered information about their selected colonist. From here, students "became" their colonist by creating a Schoology page as the colonist. On the profile page, students had to list the name, age, gender, occupation, and location where the colonist where the colonist settled. They also had the opporunity to blog and chat with other classmates as the colonist. This lesson plan sequence displays my mastery of how to take a technology and re-purpose it to fit a lesson plan.

iMovie/PowerPoint

One of my first attempts at a Flipped Classroom, I created the vodcast to the left in order to teach my students how to add fractions with unlike denominators. My students watched the video at home and then came to school the next day with any questions that they had about the video. Although not perfect, my students enjoyed the vodcast experience and since I have made other vodcasts to strengthen my Flipped Classroom skills.

Motivation to Learn

I chose a student in my class that seemed to lack motivation to learn. After learning about and researching different causes of motivational problems, I collected data about my student to better understand his unique motivational struggle. I then developed a plan to help him gain self-confidence in all aspects of his learning, first focusing on writing. The above PowerPoint presentation summarizes the findings of my work. This artifact demonstrates how I look at each student as an individual and that motivation to learn is unique to everyone.

Every classroom is filled with unique students. All students learn differently. In this above case study, I selected a student from my class that was struggling with motivation to read. I researched and selected reading assessments that would fit my student's reading needs. I then used the data to help guide my instruction in order to help him grow as a learner. This final report discusses why I chose this particular student, the assessments I chose and why, the strategies I used while working with the student, and the growth results of the student after individual instruction.

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