The assignment was a group project. The goal of the assignment was to encourage and develop the following 21st century workplace skills: teamwork, collaboration and time management. The class was divided into six groups of 5. Each group had to prepare a google slide presentation on "Bodily Systems." Note: This topic was an attempt at cross-curriculum integration. All students had just completed that unit in Science. Existing knowledge is helpful in reducing the amount of time students spend on the internet doing research.
Each team was assigned a team leader. Each student had to record their work on a daily progress report. Each group member had a piece of the assignment but the final project had to be a uniform, cohesive product.
In conclusion, I found that this assignment motivated previously unengaged students.
Wednesday, May 20, 2015
interactive questioning
I learned a great way to create questions that the students can't wait to answer!
https://getkahoot.com/
An interactive way for students to answer questions by using their phone. The teacher creates questions, or a survey and the students answer via cell phone. The quicker they answer, the more points they get so they get excited about answering the questions.
https://getkahoot.com/
An interactive way for students to answer questions by using their phone. The teacher creates questions, or a survey and the students answer via cell phone. The quicker they answer, the more points they get so they get excited about answering the questions.
The Stanford d.school model
Stanford Design Thinking Virtual Crash Course.
I first read about the Stanford School of Design (or d.school) back in 2011 (when this year's seniors were freshmen).
I've tried to slip in some of the d.school's "design thinking" concepts and strategies into the classroom ever since. I especially love their "bias to action" philosophy, being a leap-before-you-look type of guy.
Anyway, the d.school approach is chaotic in the mathematical sense, meaning that there's an underlying set of rules, values and a guiding structure but the goal of each interaction is to unleash creativity which eventually leads to unpredictable results.
Think of a well-paced musical jam session only instead of notes, you're trading ideas on how to build a low cost water filtration system for African villages, say.
This video shows a single crash course. It runs a little over an hour in length, but because they've recorded the full session, you can speed through the static passages.
The main things I think a teacher can borrow from this video are the strategies used to gather everybody's attention and how keep groups moving onto the next task and not be afraid to impose a little time pressure on the participants. It's also interesting to watch how the session leaders behave and keep busy in between the moments of whole group attention.
This particular session starts with a simple set of reciprocal interviews in which two participants ask each other to reflect on the gift-giving experience. The end goal is to generate some ideas on how to make gift-giving more rewarding to both the giver and recipient alike.
I first read about the Stanford School of Design (or d.school) back in 2011 (when this year's seniors were freshmen).
I've tried to slip in some of the d.school's "design thinking" concepts and strategies into the classroom ever since. I especially love their "bias to action" philosophy, being a leap-before-you-look type of guy.
Anyway, the d.school approach is chaotic in the mathematical sense, meaning that there's an underlying set of rules, values and a guiding structure but the goal of each interaction is to unleash creativity which eventually leads to unpredictable results.
Think of a well-paced musical jam session only instead of notes, you're trading ideas on how to build a low cost water filtration system for African villages, say.
This video shows a single crash course. It runs a little over an hour in length, but because they've recorded the full session, you can speed through the static passages.
The main things I think a teacher can borrow from this video are the strategies used to gather everybody's attention and how keep groups moving onto the next task and not be afraid to impose a little time pressure on the participants. It's also interesting to watch how the session leaders behave and keep busy in between the moments of whole group attention.
This particular session starts with a simple set of reciprocal interviews in which two participants ask each other to reflect on the gift-giving experience. The end goal is to generate some ideas on how to make gift-giving more rewarding to both the giver and recipient alike.
Encouraging and cultivating a problem solving mindset in your students
This psychology's research shows that we can change our mindset:
Regents Review Questions and Ideas
Diana Callahan and Anna Shapiro
Questions to ask before structuring Regents Review for Algebra and Geometry classes:
1. How can we keep students interested and motivated?
a) Are games academically beneficial or just entertaining?
b)How can we make review more interactive and get all students involved?
2. What is the best way to structure a review?
We are deciding if it's better to review by topic or just to go through practice questions in the order they were asked on the past exams.
3. What are the best strategies for retention?
a) Does assigning practice questions for homework help?
Idea: Students create index cards by topic to help them retain information. They must complete their own research on each topic. They can use chrome books, notebooks, laptops from classroom, past review sheets, and any other resources they may have. The index cards will be used to help them solve practice Regents problems.
Another Idea: Students will create their own review sheet using methods as described above with the index cards. For this activity, students will be split into groups by topic. They will use laptops to do research and be required to write key ideas, find 3 Regents questions and solve them using the methods described in the review sheet.
Questions to ask before structuring Regents Review for Algebra and Geometry classes:
1. How can we keep students interested and motivated?
a) Are games academically beneficial or just entertaining?
b)How can we make review more interactive and get all students involved?
2. What is the best way to structure a review?
We are deciding if it's better to review by topic or just to go through practice questions in the order they were asked on the past exams.
3. What are the best strategies for retention?
a) Does assigning practice questions for homework help?
Idea: Students create index cards by topic to help them retain information. They must complete their own research on each topic. They can use chrome books, notebooks, laptops from classroom, past review sheets, and any other resources they may have. The index cards will be used to help them solve practice Regents problems.
Another Idea: Students will create their own review sheet using methods as described above with the index cards. For this activity, students will be split into groups by topic. They will use laptops to do research and be required to write key ideas, find 3 Regents questions and solve them using the methods described in the review sheet.
Sam's student-centered classroom!
Great way to incorporate student's voice! Student's have a choice but will they work on the stuff they don't get?
My second half of Week 14 lesson plan.
This comes after a disaster day (May 19, which included a bomb threat evacuation on top of three subpar classes in a row) in which, upon reflection, I felt myself drifting away from fundamental principles from the first professional development session.
Before writing this lesson, I tried to codify those fundamental principles in a single page document I could pass out at the professional development session: Questions to Ask Before Structuring an Assigment.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)