Week 8 Reflection

The GAME plan that I developed and followed throughout this course was an important step in growing me as a person and a teacher. It made me not only expand my own thinking and learning, but it expanded my students thinking and learning as well. It has taught me the importance of reflection and setting goals for myself and my teaching. It has challenged me to challenge my students by making them use higher level thinking levels and taking ownership and responsibility for their learning.

This new learning will have a major impact on my instructional practices in the classroom. I will always set my expectations higher then I think I should and then watch my students rise to the occasion and take ownership over the material being presented. I will also allow more opportunities for my students to reflect upon their learning either daily or weekly. I will have my students use the GAME plan to write goals for themselves and have them progress monitor themselves during the school year. If they complete their goal and or need to modified it then they will be allowed to create a new one or modify the old one.

The immediate adjustments that I will make to my instructional practice regarding technology integration in my content areas as a result of my learning from this course would be to include it more. I have just received 4 video ipod nanos for my classroom for next year. I got them so that my students can record themselves, friend, or me signing a story and then be able to replay the video while following along in the book. The students seem to be more engaged in lessons that have more technology integration then those who have none. My goals is to have technology integrated into every lesson next year to some extent.

Game Plan week 7

I will use the GAME plan process with my students to help them develop proficiency in the technology standards and indicators outlined in the NETS-S by first creating a GAME plan on one of the indicators for the class. As a class we will go over the game plan and talk about the different parts of the plan. Once they have a handle on that, we will create a GAME plan as a class to work on for while. These steps will lead up to me pick a couple different ones out and explaining them to the students and then have the students pick one out that they would like to create a GAME plan for. Finally, by the end of the year, the students will be able to look at the standards for themselves and pick a standard and create a GAME plan for it. The students will monitor their progress on their different GAME plans on the class blog site throughout the year and they will be required to read some of their fellow student’s posting and offer praise or encouragement to them.

GAME Plan week 6

• What I have learned from this experience that I can apply in my instructional practice would be to have more patience when it comes to teaching my students new technology skills and encourage the students to do weekly reflections about their learning. I think that it is easy for me to get frustrated when trying to teach 20 first graders a new technology skill, but I need to remember how long it takes me to learn a new technology skill and I am adult with prior experience. I have noticed the benefit of my weekly reflections, and I think it is an important skill for our young students to learn to help them to learn to take ownership of their own learning.
  What goals are you still working toward?
  
• Based on the NETS-T, the new learning goal will I set for myself will be in the area of NETS-T 2, which focuses on design digital-age learning experiences and assessments. I want to have more individualized assessments for my students to help really show their progress on their IEP goals. I think that technology will be the best way to provide the require information and help me become a better teacher.
• The learning approaches that will I try next time to improve my learning will be to go onto blogs for teachers and to see what other people are doing in their classroom and get ideas and strategies from them. I also want to get familiar with more different technology tools that I may not even know exist, by talking with a person from assistive technology that may know of some technologies that some of my students may benefit from.

GAME Plan week 5

My actions were very effective in helping me meet my goals. I find myself reflecting more and making daily reflecting notes instead of waiting to the end of the week. Though I am still doing a overall weekly reflection. My students are really starting to get into the weekly problem/ question. I find that I can give them more of control over the project and I find myself stepping back more and more.

What What I have learned so far that I can apply in my instructional practice is that student are capable of doing so much more then we tend to give them credit for. I think that the hardest part is on our end. It is easy to get frustrated and angry at the students or the lesson when it does not go as plan especially when it deals with technology and teaching them new technology skills and high level of thinking, but the key is to get through it and it does become easier for both us and the students and then it is amazing at what starts to happen. So I think that the important thing is not to just give up, but to stick it out to the end.

I still have to learn to allow the students to made mistake and learn from them without interfering. At times it is easier for me to deal with the problem and fix it then it is to let the students figure out that they made a mistake and how to fix it. The students will learn ten times as much if they catch the mistake themselves and figure out not only how to fix but also the solution. The new question have arisen is How do you encourage a low student to take more control of their own learning during these problem based learning projects, but also not let themselves get so discourage that they stop attempting anything at all? I work with kinder though 2nd graders

I plan on adjusting my plan to fit my current needs by allowing one student to act like the teacher during our class problem/question of the week. This way I can still be very supportive during the process, but at the same time letting the students take ownership of it and feeling more confident about doing their own problem/question of the week by the end of the year.