Month: March 2019

One thing I kind of liked from class last night was the chance to practice working on our lesson plans in class. However, I think it might have gone better if we were given the chance to do a workshop of sorts instead of a prescribed lesson plan. If we were given time to work on our own biography lesson plan and the opportunity to discuss ideas with you guys and our neighbors, I feel like the session would have been much more productive and relatable. That way we could have concrete guidance on something that is actually going to be turned in and we would still get the support of our peers for that time frame. I would personally like to bounce ideas specific to my lesson plan off of my tablemates without feeling like I’m distracting them from what we’re assigned to be working on. It seemed like a lot of our discussion time was discussing what we wanted to do for our lesson plans anyway, which took time away from the prescribed lesson plan.

I really enjoyed looking at the John Smith map in class last night. I was really surprised by how much I had never noticed in the map. I have a copy hanging up at home and I’ve looked at it fairly often, but there were a lot of things I had never noticed. This reminded me that I’ll probably find something new every time I look at the map, much like whenever you find new details in a book you’ve read a hundred times before. I was also really excited to see what my students will find that I haven’t seen yet in the map. I would definitely like to use this with my students, at any grade level. To modify it for the younger students I might have them draw their own version of the map and write down or turn and talk with a partner any questions they have while drawing their own maps to get them to notice and explore as many details as possible. There’s a lot to be learned from this map that I think the younger students can also pick up on.

The questions that everyone came up with based on the map were also really interesting. I found myself coming up with questions I had never thought of while looking at it before, because I was trying to think about what my students might wonder about it. For example, where is Richmond on the map? Henrico County? I think I’d like to give students two copies of this map. Starting with the original, and then create a copy to give them after they’ve noticed and wondered for a while with some of their favorite landmarks such as Richmond, Henrico, Busch Gardens, Kings Dominion, etc. so that they can see how their world fits into John Smiths world. That could lead to a great discussion on change over time and how the people and terrain have changed from the time John Smith drew his map to the present.

I really enjoyed getting to practice using the VA Quality Criteria Review tool for performance assessments in class. Being able to discuss ideas with my group helped me to see things in the performance assessment that I hadn’t noticed at a first glance or added an interpretation that made me view it in a way different from the way I originally viewed it. Our group only made it through the first 4 criteria, but I think that discussing ratings with the group changed the rating I initially wanted to give each piece. For example, for 1B I initially gave it a rating of 2. I did not see a lot of cross-disciplinary concepts or analysis, but after discussing it with my group, they were obvious. Writing a children’s book based off of several sources is cross-disciplinary and highly analytical. Getting a chance to work through this tool and work with it in class with support will be MUCH easier to evaluate the other assessment due in a few weeks.