Well...I did good for a while...but myself slip and I stopped updating. I'm back and motivated to try again. I wasn't sure where to start up again since its been so long. I doubt any one is interested in a long drawn out saga about everything I've done this year. Instead I'll just give you a few highlights and successes, a few ways I want to improve, and some ideas for next year.
The big push in my district this year has been of course technology, but also something called Project Based Learning. Some teachers are balking at this...and the big question is how can we still hit the content with projects and ensure the students learn the required material? For me, I think it will be challenging but I am excited! PBL fits my teaching style and I think I can blend the lecture/content within the projects. At least that's my goal! I tried one PBL unit in Earth Science this year and I think that although it was not exactly as cool as I thought it would be, I learned a lot about what not to do when setting up my project. All PBL's center on an essential question. For this one, my big question was "To what extent do humans own natural resources?" The students picked an issue to look at and examined the question through their group's issue. For example I had a group look at deforestation. They investigated how the ways in which humans use trees for economic gain and the impacts this has. Another group focused on the use of plastic and the effects. The students created videos that included written text, interviews, video clips, etc. My biggest success was that student engagement was awesome! Every day almost all students were working and focused during class. The students did the research and I think they had good information....the part that didn't go so well was the transition of the research and knowledge they gained to the video. The content of the actual videos themselves was low. The students could talk to me about the issue and had some great insight into the essential question but the video's didn't showcase that knowledge. Part of a good PBL is the publishing component. Originally I wanted the students to have a product that they would show to others outside of the classroom. This part got pushed to the side toward the end. I think if I had focused on the public presentation they may have been more focused on getting the content into the videos.
Other positives from the year are just that I think I am continually gaining more and more activities for my "toolbox". I can take any content and then in my head I can go through different strategies and its easy for me to pull out a strategy that I think will fit for the activity. I think my big goal for next year and this seems big but I'm going to try to do it in baby steps. I tend to try to jump all in so I plan to slow down and do one thing at a time. That said...my goal is to come up with an essential question and a project for all my units. And then embed all my strategies into the unit so that the students are still getting content. For example, the students seem to really seem to do well with foldable activities where they take notes in some sort of foldable and keep everything today. So maybe I can still do that...but online...and then they use that as a journal for their project. This is all very preliminary and I'm just getting my ideas together. As I finish up the year I need something to get excited about,,.so this is me brainstorming to get myself motivated. I still want to keep a heavy focus on literacy and do a lot of reading and writing. Not sure what that will look like but I'll update as I figure it out!
This entry has turned into a ramble and I'm not sure that I made any concrete points! So I'll leave it here with the idea that I will add and post as I figure out more firm plans to incorporate project based learning and technology into my classroom next year!
