Setting Objectives
Honestly, this is something I didn’t
give as much thought to earlier in my career.
However, my position in the school library has offered me a chance to
witness great teachers and look at things through a new lens. Through this lens, I know that some of my
favorite classroom activities would not meet the objective I would really want
students to master. My classroom would
look completely different today.
Today’s technology would help with
setting objectives. Teachers can post
student-friendly copies of their lesson plans on the SMARTBoard as students
enter the room that can help students be fully prepared for the class and for
learning. They could project a document
that had materials needed, the plan and objectives for the day, and a
bell-ringer to begin class. I also like
the idea presented in the book to create a class contract for unit learning
objectives, that allows students to personalize the learning objective to meet
their own learning needs and goals.
Providing Feedback
Feedback is going to be an important
discussion in our staff development this next year. We are moving on to creating better
assessments and having been talking a lot about formative vs. summative assessment. Through these discussions I have changed my
curriculum so that everything I do with technology and information literacy in
grade six and seven is formative work that leads to an 8th grade
summative assessment in the form of a research project and presentation. Student success at this summative assessment
will depend on them receiving quality feedback throughout their tech projects throughout
middle school.
Technology can definitely help to
provide this quality feedback. We are just
starting to use Google Docs and Gaggle, and there is a lot of potential for
delivering feedback through Google Docs, Blogger, and Google Forms. Not only will teachers have the opportunity to
use tools such as these to provide feedback to students, but students will be
able to give feedback to one another.
Providing Recognition
Everybody likes to be recognized for
quality work. It is a simple fact of
life. As a teacher, I need to be cognizant of this and make a
concerted effort to make time for recognition.
I also think it is important to remember to provide specific praise on
what students have done well, not just generic “good work” or “great effort” or
“nice essay” comments. Students need to
know specifically what they are doing well so they can replicate it.
Technology can definitely be used to
provide recognition. One way that I will
do this in the very near future is to create a slideshow using Picassa to
showcase the best of the best from our Book Spine Poetry activity in the
library. Students snapped photos of the
poem they created using books/ book titles in the library, and I hope recognize
the most creative examples through a slideshow on the school website.
1 comment:
I wish more of us had time to observe other teachers, but we don't really get to do that after we get our own classroom. I've been able to do that in the year I was a teacher's assistant. I agree with it being be helpful, assuming we look at ourselves and make changes to our teaching.
I love that you gave an example of using technology for providing recognition. I never really thought about how to integrate technology into it. My kindergarten kids and parents loved the presentation I did for their graduation, and asked for copies. I made a PowerPoint show that had pictures taken throughout the year. :)
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