After reading Baggio and Clark I have a clearer vision of how to deliver new content to my students. The SITE model is a great reminder that students need to be connected to the material that is being delivered. It is important to think about the learner as a whole. What are their interest, family background and community influences? When designing a poster, a PowerPoint presentation or just the standup delivery of a lesson, having mastery of a prerequisite skill is important. While analyzing the ‘Technical’ part of SITE, I realized how important it is to collaborate with the grade level below and above the grade that you are teaching. This type collaboration will be helpful to designing a lesson that flows, uses prior knowledge and allows for chunking of new (grade level) material.
Baggio reminded me of how important it is to design a layout with minimal text, flowing from left to right and top to bottom. I feel that this is starting to come more natural to me as I design slides to deliver new content. I know that just in my last presentation, I feel that the slides looked cleaner and more visually pleasing. The hardest part about this design method is trying to find the right image and that supports the message that you are trying to deliver. Someday that too will become more natural and less time consuming.
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I chose three completely different types of Google forms for this assignment. The first one was a simple four question math quiz. I used 4 questions from the district assessment and found similar graphics to go with each question. Using Google forms as a formative or summative assessment is something that I have not done before. I am looking forward to quick results to guide my next day’s lesson.
The next form that I created was a book sign out/sign in sheet using the Checkitout add-on. I always have students who want to take chapter books home to read, but I have never really found the right way to keep track. I have tried a paper sign out sheet and names on the board but neither are a systematic and simple way to keep track until now. I have posted this Google Form in the ‘About’ section in my Google Classroom for easy access for student use all year long. This add-on will forever change my organization in the classroom. I can see using this feature a lot. The last form that I created used the elimination add-on. We are reading a story called Stone Soup, so my student came up with a list of items that they wanted to bring to make our own Stone Soup this week. I can see how using this add-on is a great way to have students sign up for things in a timely and organized manner. I see how using Google forms can help organize data and get feedback from students. As I start to use different technology tools to help with reading comprehension I might consider asking my students what technology tool they believe helps them to learn the best. This will help to determine my next steps in my action research that might provide me with significant gains in my test results. It will also provide a list of different technology tools to use as resources for my project. I feel torn as to who my audience is for my research project. I feel that my end user profile should be geared towards students so that I can figure out how to best serve them. On the other hand, my final results will help guide teachers that have students who are not at grade level in reading and continue to struggle year after year. I have been so focused on the action research and what I can do to help them that I lost sight of my end goal. Yes, I want to see progress in student reading comprehension, but that will only happen if I can figure out how to show significant gain in my test results. Then and only then will I be able to share this information with others and have a continuing impact in education.
Just as Baggio references her yoga teacher, I too need visuals. I keep reading and reading this portion of the assignment and I am really struggling with what to write. I don’t understand what the final product of a resource page looks like. I tried looking up Touro’s capstones online so I could get a visual and I wasn’t able to find any. I also looked in the class folders and I couldn’t anything about Capstones. I know that we were briefly shown one, but I can’t recall the details or how to get back to the completed capstone projects. My project is all about how technology impacts reading comprehension, so I would imagine that it might be a list of different technology tools that aid in reading comprehension. I would use the use of heading, visuals (icons), hyperlinks and chunking of text to show several different technology tools, not just the one that was used in the study. Social media can be used on a professional level if you keep it strictly professional and don’t allow your personal business to intertwine. It seems that a lot of good collaboration can take place in the comfort of your own home. As a primary teacher, I see social media more as a tool for the teacher, not the student. I think it would be neat to reach out to authors and allow the students to communicate with people that they would never have met in person, but posting about assignments on Twitter or Facebook don’t seem to be the best for third graders. I have been using Remind to communicate with parents and Classroom to communicate with students. Remind is now linked to classroom, so as I get more comfortable with Classroom and I can share assignments with parents through remind. This seems to be the best way to provide a smaller version of social media that is safe for all students to use.
If I came across something inappropriate that a student wrote, I would not address the post directly. I would take a picture of the post and contact their parent/s and my administrators. Depending on the post, I might be able to address the problem in a general way to the class by teaching a lesson about digital footprints and/or digital citizenship. It would be a good reminder to all students that what they say and do is out there for everyone to see. At the time is might seem cool, but later on there could be consequences. |
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July 2018
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