Project 15

All About Weather

Duration: 1 Week

Grade: 4th

Subject: Science

Assignment: Each group will be assigned a certain type of weather. They must make a google docs presentation telling all about the different conditions that that weather involves. They must include pictures and video clips of that certain weather type.

Project Calendar

Day One

I will introduce each type of weather. I will show videos and clips of each. I then will split the class up in to 5 groups of 4. Each group will be assigned a kind of weather.

Day Two

I will give the whole class period for the students to begin researching and getting video clips for their presentation.

DAY Three

I will take the student outside (weather permitting) and we will enjoy/discuss the weather for that day. Then we will return to the class room and continue doing research.

Day Four

The students will start making their presentations and putting together all of the material they researched.

Day Five

The students will finish up their presentations and have a chance to run it by me to make sure they have everything. Presentations will begin on the following Monday.

Blog Post #10

I enjoyed watching the Youtube video by Sir Ken Robinson entitled: Bring on the Education Revolution. He explained how people have not identified what their talent is or in some cases, not using it as they should. Instead of schools promoting diversity of talent, the schools are promoting a standardized, mechanical process of learning. He suggests that we change the current model from evolution to revolution.

One thing that I learned from his video is that as teachers, we should create an environment where children will flourish. In a sense, a more personalized approach to learning. As I have learned, there are many different learning styles and techniques and it takes trying new things to see what will be the most effective way to reach students. We need an innovative, creative, think-outside-the-box approach to create a passion for learning.

Blog Post #9

I enjoyed watching the video of Ms. Cassidy's 1st grade class using technology in the classroom. They discussed using blogs, classroom webpage, wikis, video, skype and nintendo DS.

Ms Cassidy began using technology 10 years ago and she has changed her learning style to accomodate the latest technology trend. One thing that she uses in the classroom is the Blog online portfolio. The benefits of using a blog is teaching collaboration, writing, reading and video skills all on one medium. The blog is a very useful tool for teachers and students in the classroom. She said that kids love it for several reasons. The audience is not just paper for only the teacher to see, but it is open for everyone to view and add comments. She has embedded a blog meister which is a tracking tool to see how many page reads the blog has received. The children are so excited to see if people have viewed their site and left comments. She also has a cluster map that shows where the person is located that viewed the blog.

Although this new technology trend sounds like a great way for children to learn, there are some obstacles that you may encounter. One concern that parents have with technology is allowing the children to have free access to all sites. This can be addressed by limiting what a child will see by setting privacy restrictions. Also, you can post educational links that the children can safely access and explain to them that these are the only links approved for access. It is important to establish and communicate up front, consequences if a child does access sites that are not on the approved list.

Another obstacle that you might encounter is limited computer resources. If that is the case, it is important to schedule time for computer lab and have the children that are not able to access a computer, to have other learning activities and then rotate. Like Ms. Cassidy mentioned in her video, is the buy-in from administrators to allow you to teach using PLN's. Not every school has embraced this new technology and may require some convincing and show of success before they allow you to continue teaching these methods.

Project #9

Project #14 PBL #2

The Project/Unit Design Cycle

A planning guide for ACSS based elementary projects/units

Grade Level: 3rd grade

Unit of Study: English Language Arts

Project Title: Around the World Food Choices

Start Date/Duration: 2 class periods a week dedicated to this project Duration 6 week period

Describe the scenario for the project:

Children chose a country they want to study. Research on internet what foods are common in the area. What foods are commonly grown. Connect with children in other countries. Draw pictures, Map out findings and make videos, Summarize the authentic challenge in this project: Connecting with children in other countries to validate information collected online.

Priority Common Core State Standards (3 – 4)

Math: Measurement and Data

Reading: site information when writing to support researched topic

Writing: conduct research project based on questions demonstrating understanding of the topic

Speaking and Listening: Present information to classroom

Social Studies: Learning how to use maps and understanding locations

Draft a Driving Question for the project:

What foods do children in other countries eat?

How will the project involve the community or allow students to interact with other adults outside the classroom?

Ask parents to help them prepare meals from other countries

______________________________________________________ How will students share their products/solutions/ideas with a public audience?

Have a parent meeting where the student prepare foods from different countries and share their findings in slideshow or video.

______________________________________________________ Identify the key 21st century skills to be learned in the project.

❑ Teamwork and collaboration.

❑ Innovation and Creativity

❑ Effective Oral and Written Communication

❑ Accessing and Analyzing Information

❑ Work Ethic

What final products will students produce in the project?

Define countries, Map out their findings, prepare video

Technology-based: Internet, twitter, skype, iEarn

Which research based teaching strategies will be used in the project?

❑ Identifying Similarities and Differences

❑ Summarizing and Note Taking

❑ Reinforcing Effort, Providing Recognition

❑ Homework and Practice

❑ Nonlinguistic Representations

❑ Cooperative Learning

❑ Setting Objectives, Providing Feedback

Enroll and Engage 1. Plan the first two days of the project. Check tools to be used to begin the project. Handouts __x___

Need to know __x___

Review timeline _x__

Form teams __x___

Project #13 PBL #1

Our group decided to do a lesson plan on art, that includes dance. It is called Dance Out Loud. The idea of the project is to introduce the elements of choreography and choreographic form. They will understand the difference between dance as art, and dance as a sport. The students will present their projects in any form of media format.The objective is to identify, define, and practice elements of choreography. To show evidence of success in achieving identified learning target. The teacher will use available texts and other technology resources. Students will create a choreography dictionary in their choice of media format. Students will also demonstarte understanding of terminology through Media Presentation of the dictionary.

Title="Virginia Tech" Alt="five people doing different dance moves"

C4T Summary

I was assigned to the teacher, William Chamberlain. In his blog post "It's Lending Time" he explains how he teaches his students about lending. He tells us that he let the kids vote on people they feel that would most need the loan. The children chose three people from different countries to give to. They gave microloans to each "helping outfit a market stall, expanding a poultry house to meet demand, and to help buy more cows and pigs". In response, I told him how cool I thought the idea of loaning was. Not only are you teaching them about loans and money, but you are teaching them about giving to people in other countries. I also asked how they got the money to loan out.

The next blog post I read was called "Note Taking, Moleskines, and Modeling". In this post Chamberlain tells us about the importance of note taking. He had his students watch two videos about tips and different ways to take notes. He explains that Note taking isn't just for the classroom, but is a life skill. Also, he tells us that note taking is a way of learning. Note taking is also personal. The way you understand and write things down may be completely different from your neighbor. So don't copy notes from others. I responded by telling Chamberlain how helpful his tips and videos he shared were. I told him how after reading and watching I realized how bad of a note taker I was. "I am the student like they mentioned in the first video that tries to write down everything the teacher says. I then miss a lot of words and haven't learned a single thing." I then told him about a teacher I had that made us write down questions for each lecture and turn them in. This really helped us to pay attention and really understand what we were being taught.

Overall, I really enjoyed reading William Chamberlains blogs. If you get the chance you should go and read them for yourself. I plan to continue to read more and more of them. He has wonderful things to say and really great ideas and tips.

Blog Post #8

My favorite learning tool is Discovery Education

The features that I like about this website is they provide lesson plans on the core subjects as well as art and literature, business, technology, and health. They thought of everything as each subject is broken down by the

► Objective which explains what the child will be doing.

► Class materials needed such as overhead projector, white board, calculator.

► Step by step procedures with examples.

► Discussion questions to reinforce what the student just learned

► Evaluation to determine how well the students listened in class, participated in class, and how well they applied what they learned.

For Math, they provide Tips for solving problems, printable worksheets, suggested reading material and vocabulary words with definitions.

They also have a great feature called Virtual Field Trips.

I loved reading through the lesson examples and can't wait to use them in my classroom.

C4K summary

Shamone Morris, a third grader in Ms. Martins class, wrote a blog on what she believes. She wrote about how she was a Christian and loves Christ because he saved her. She wrote all about why she believes and why others should believe. She also included a couple of bible verses to help enforce what she was saying. I can tell she didn't proofread what she wrote because there was a lot of words misspelled, wrote the same word twice, and her punctuation and grammar was poor. For my comment back, I wrote how I thought it was wonderful that she was sharing her belief with others. I said that I was also a Christian and that she inspires me to share my belief with others as well. Last, I told her to make sure she reads what she writes before she posts it.

Blog Post #7

What Can We Learn About Teaching and Learning From Randy Pausch?

The Blog assignment this week was to watch the video Randy Pausch Last Lecture: Achieving Your Childhood Dreams. The Lecture was given by Randy Pausch, Professor at Carnegie Mellon University. Randy started the lecture by telling the audience that he has terminal cancer and according to the doctors, only "3 to 6 months of good life left". The lecture was not at all what you would think coming from someone with his prognosis. He was inspiring, funny, upbeat, and genuinely happy. He took the audience through his childhood dreams. He had a list of dreams or goals that he wanted to achieve in life and he spoke to each item on the list. He later talked about his career and the obstacles that he overcame to achieve his dream. When he was turned down for a job, he said "Brick walls are not there to keep us out but to prove how bad we want something". "The brick walls are there to stop people who do not want it bad enough". Randy had tenacity, whenever he had a closed door, he would treat it as an opportunity.

Randy used an expression throughout his lecture called "head fake". Head fake is where you think you are learning one thing, but you are actually learning something totally different during the process. One example that he used was football. He loved football and realized that while playing his favorite sport, he was learning more than just how to throw the ball or read a play. He was being taught life lessons like teamwork, sportsmanship, perseverance.

He took the "head fake" one step further and helped develop a computer program called ALICE which is where a student thought they were making movies and playing computer games, but were actually learning computer programming. He wanted children to have fun while they were learning something hard.

Throughout the lecture he was giving life lessons such as: show gratitude, be earnest, tell the truth,apologize when you screw up, focus on others not yourself, work hard, find the best in everybody, be prepared, enjoy life, have fun, don't complain, get a feedback loop and listen to it, and never give up.

The lecture was not about how to achieve your dreams as he led the audience to believe, but how to lead your life. The lecture was not for the audience but for his 3 children that in is death, he would leave behind.

This was a wonderful lecture that made such an impression on me. I am happy that our class had this assignment as I feel we are keeping the wisdom of Randy Pausch alive.