Throughout this course I have been introduced to many new ideas and strategies to use with my own classroom. As an English teacher I often struggle to find “fun” ways to teach such trivial concepts. This course has allowed me to already begin changing my approaches and I anticipate to continue changing next school year.
To begin, I enjoyed learning about summative and formative assessment. My school is strongly enforcing these concepts for next school year. The average classroom consists of a wide variety of students. “Our classrooms today are more diverse than ever, with a wide range of interests, levels of readiness, and learning styles” (Smith & Throne, 2007, 6). Teachers are accountable to reach each and every student as well as reach high level student achievement. The days of simply giving an end of the unit test are long gone. Students need to be accountable for their own learning and involved every step of the way.
Next year, I plan to use contracts with exit slips with my students. Students will be given their weekly assignments and have to complete them all by their due dates. Then in order to leave my classroom, they will have to provide information about one thing they learned during that class period. Also, I plan to incorporate more group projects for students to become more familiar with collaborative work. Jigsaw groups is a wonderful approach to have students working together and then relaying information gathered.
One key element of this course that I found to be most useful is allowing students to have choices at every step of the learning process. Technology is a wonderful approach to providing students with variety. Next year I plan to incorporate computer use even more within my daily instruction and my students will use them at each step of the learning process. Currently I present my students with videos at the start of a lesson to peak interest. Next year, I would like to have students doing their own research to learn a concept individually before consulting with the class or teacher. Students will then have to produce a final product in order to show me that they understand the specific concept. By doing this, students are accountable and responsible for their own learning as well as their own individual product. I have found that PowerPoint, podcasts, and VoiceThread were effective with my fifth graders this school year.
There are so many changes to make in the classroom with the incorporation of technology. This class has allowed me to work with many strategies and approaches in order to make my English class a little more exciting. My ideas for next year are in place and I can only plan to continue changing with the constant changes and advances in technology.
Resources:
Smith, G., & Throne, S. (2007). Differentiating instruction with technology in K-5 classrooms. Belmont, CA: International Society for Technology in Education.
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