Month: February 2019

After attending the VMFA for class this week I am extremely excited about the possibilities of field trips that they have to offer. While I know they mentioned that these field trips are ones that are currently geared towards older learners the possibility of having younger students who are allowed to attend is exciting. When looking at standards for a third-grade classroom, I know personally it is hard to wrap my head around the time periods that are covered in that content area. Having the option of allowing students to get a taste of what the time period looked like in terms of painting and sculptures would be a great way to spark an interest about the many events that occurred over such a broad amount of time.

One idea that I found to be very resourceful was the virtual field trip. Scheduling can be very hard and if there are not always resources to pay for the busing to the VMFA this is a wonderful option. As Maggie mentioned in her presentation, the use of technology in some cases may even allow the students to get closer with the camera then if there were there in person. This would be a great way for students to dig deeper into their thought processes. Using the kinds of questions that were prompted using the presentation caused me to view the one painting that we did differently. It would be exciting to see the possibilities that this would create in a classroom when there was more time and students were only focused on the painting.

As I begin to think about my teaching career, it is important to remember that there are many places and resources that are in the local area that I can use to further lessons that I am teaching in my own classroom.

In thinking about class this week, I was reminded about my time in school when it came to assessments. As someone who freezes up when given a multiple choice test, it is now very interesting being on other the other side. As I think about the kind of teaching that I hope do in my classroom, it is my hope that my students never think of me as someone who gives hard questions simply because I am mean or out to watch them fail. My goal in looking at assessments, is to test my students in a manner in which is reasonably fair and gives them the best opportunity to show me what they know.

The use of the VDOE website as a great tool is something that I know I will have to revisit when I find myself struggling to create rubrics that do not have my own personal bias at the center. Looking through the many forms of assessment I found it extremely helpful to see the break down of which question will help assess what certain thing in a student. I know personally, how to create an assessment is the portion of the lesson plan that I always find myself struggling with. I know that I want the end goal to be, and I often know the steps on how to get them there, but the assessing portion seems to carry a heavy weight that is intimidating. After last night, I feel like my understanding of the many times is much deeper and I would be more willing to use different means to determine a students understanding of the information that was presented.

Class tonight really helped solidify this idea of front loading. I know that it has been mentioned many times in multiple of my classes and I had always told myself that when I write my lessons I need to consider how important it is foundation of instruction. Between using the rate your knowledge organizer and the tea party activity, taking part in multiple ways that helped to build my knowledge as a student on the topic of Harriet Tubman. From a teaching perspective, I saw how effective this could be in a classroom with students who bring to the table a variety of knowledge on different issues.

One huge take away that I saw from tonight through the video, and then modeled at the end of class was the revisiting of the Hook/attention grabber that was used at the beginning of class. I know from the small amount of lessons that I have written that I often do not think of reusing something that I started a lesson with simply because I had not thought of it. As I begin to write a lesson for this class and in the future this is certainly something that I want to consider using. Personally, it was a great way for me to measure how much I was able to learn form the lesson. As a teacher, it is a great way to encourage students that they really are learning even when they feel that they aren’t!

After tonights class I was able to reflect about the things that were big take aways and the things that I still wonder about. Both of the activities that we did in class tonight seemed like very practical hands on lessons that I would feel extremely comfortable doing in my own class.

The grouping of the documents and having us use our investigative skills to determine the time line of the items that we had, followed by the group discussion was a wonderful way to take information and place it outside of a textbook. As a learner who needs to be activity doing something for it to make sense to me this was a wonderful way for me to see how this can direct a lesson. Taking the information that has previously been taught through text that may have no personal connection, and placing real life items in front of students (myself) made me extremely invested in the activity. I do wonder however, how to gather these kinds of documents? Would I allow students to go home and ask relatives or would I do this activity as an introduction to unit as a way of prompting them to begin thinking about that era? We were able to stay focused on the items in front of us, but should I be worried that I may not have students full attention if they do not have a wide knowledge of the time period?

I know that each student will process through things in different ways and at different speeds, but tonights activities were perfect for my style of learning 🙂