Reflecting on Identifying, Practicing, and Hypothesizing

Identifying Similarities and Differences:  Identifying similarities and differences involves higher level thinking and can lead to deeper learning for students.  I think it would be a great way to work with vocabulary in the content areas; however, I think it is easy for teachers to overlook this kind of activity because of….you guessed it…TIME.  Technology can definitely be used with this kind of instructional strategy.  This strategy would work perfectly with a SMARTboard, and would. in fact, capitalize on a SMARTboard’s interactive capabilities rather than just using the interactive whiteboard as a glorified projector.  Teachers could create a file where students could move vocab words into certain categories, or teachers could group vocab words together and students could guess the categories the teacher is trying to create.  Whatever the activity, this instructional strategy is very important and can help teachers take their lessons and their students’ learning to the next level.

Homework and Practice: I am interested to see what the future of homework and practice truly looks like. Will classrooms go with the flipped approach?  Will all students get technology tools to take home to even the technological playing field?  Will learning truly become anywhere, anytime learning?  Our school currently issues netbooks to students for the school year at the 6^th and 7^th grade level.  This practice holds a lot of possibility and has been a boon for many students and families.  It has also raised a lot of questions in terms of maintenance and repairs and, more importantly, in terms of what constitutes good homework.  Having this technology should allow teachers to create and assign more meaningful homework and practice.  I also read an article recently denouncing the premise of flipping a classroom, arguing that we really should be questioning if just taking the traditional lecture and homework, lecture and homework approach and flipping it really adds value.  The author argued that simply taking the lecture out of the classroom doesn’t necessarily make more a classroom or teacher any better if the assignment and assessments weren’t meaningful and engaging.

Generating and Testing Hypotheses:  This is probably one of my weakest instructional strategies, but could easily be added to my teaching with a little thought and effort.  Having students generate hypotheses about the unit or the lesson ahead and writing about what they predict and why will help promote student learning.  It will also add purpose to their learning (and perhaps will help them become better hypotheses-makers in the class in which they are most accustomed to making hypotheses, science J).  Technology could easily help play a role in the incorporation of this strategy, through things like blog writing and tools that can be used for bell ringer activities (like Lino.it or Wallwisher).  I will definitely have to make incorporating this instructional strategy more of a goal next year.