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Here is the very first lesson plan I completed for this class. It's pretty bad, but that's okay because I was just starting out. In this lesson plan I didn't consider students needs, didn't include all accommodations, and didn't fully think through what I wanted my lesson to accomplish. I was so worried with trying to understand all the different parts of a lesson plan, something I had zero experience with, and I got caught up in the little details. Compare this to a more recent lesson plan, and you can clearly see my growth and how my inclusion of digital tools and social media becomes meaningful to the classroom, rather than an afterthought.

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As a reader:
I have been reading books for pleasure since the day I learned to read. I was that kid who went to the library twice a week to get a new book. Somewhere along the way, school became too much for me and I no longer felt that reading could be fun. I am still slowly trying to regain my love of reading, and modelling reading during independent reading time in my classroom is really helping with this.
As a writer: I have never considered myself a writer, but from my time at UGA I have learned that I have the capability to be a great writer. I think it's hard for me to feel confident enough to share my writing with other people, but one day I hope to get there, and maybe even write a book!

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here's an assignment I did a couple weeks ago that also shows my philosophy and reflections

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here's some background music while you browse!

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here's some background music while you browse!

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Rainy NYC Coffee Shop Ambience with Relaxing Jazz

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Listen to this episode from Coffee Shop Vibes on Spotify. Relaxing Meditation Music for sleep and relaxation: https://open.spotify.com/show/0Z6KKxBLl5nggt38p1r0g9 8 hours at a New York City coffee shop on a rainy afternoon. #coffeeshopvibes #coffeeshopambience #coffeeshopmusic #coffeeshop Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

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You might be wondering: why did I choose Padlet for this project? I know the majority of us decided to use google sites, and I cannot deny how professional that looks. But Padlet is easily my favourite digital tool so far. I think it’s incredibly user-friendly, and has so many modalities within one platform. There’s no need to go to another site to record an audio to post here, you can record audio directly on Padlet. You can also include pictures, taken directly on Padlet or not. You can record video, but only short ones. You can add links, drawings, screen record, search images, include a location, connect to Spotify. The options are seemingly endless. As a student I was often overwhelmed when projects had to include multiple parts from different sites, and it was hard for me to feel organised instead of disjointed. I’m a strong believer in trying NOT to stress students out more than they already are. Padlet is an amazing choice for me and my classroom, and I love having all of these features in one place. I also love that it can be collaborative, posts can be connected, color coded, resized, and so much more. Especially for someone like me who is a beginner to all things digital, Padlet is easy to use and nice to look at. I feel like it sums up where I am at right now in my development as a teacher and a digital tools user, and it eliminates the need to click through tons of pages to access content. Everything is all in one place and easy to see, the perfect layout for students, especially those who get distracted or are forgetful.

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I won't link it here because I have never actually posted anything and my account is private, but I also use a facebook page. This may seem a little old-fashioned, but it's not something I use to connect with students, but rather other teachers. Facebook has a really awesome group feature, and there are groups for pretty much everything you could possibly imagine. A couple groups I am in are Teaching on Days After: Dialogue & Resources for Educating Towards Justice and Notice and Note for Educators. These are great ways to get connected with other teachers and bounce your ideas, give and receive feedback, and find new resources and techniques. I know a lot of people use Twitter for this same purpose, but I find twitter a little harder to access a community, whereas on facebook you are pretty much guaranteed to be noticed when posting ina group. I also don't like the lack of privacy on Twitter.

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Ana B. (2015, August 4). Read&Write review for teachers. Common Sense Education. https://www.commonsense.org/education/reviews/readwrite

Blackburn, M., Clark, C. T., & Schey, R. (2018). Stepping up!: Teachers advocating for sexual and gender diversity in schools. Routledge.

Nearpod Helpdesk. (n.d.). Accessibility With Nearpod. Nearpod. Retrieved October 25, 2022, from https://nearpod.zendesk.com/hc/en-us/sections/360009895572-Understanding-tech-specifications

The Nearpod Team. (2015, December 15). Using Nearpod to Support Students With Autism. Nearpod: You'll wonder how you taught without it. https://nearpod.com/blog/using-nearpod-to-support-students-with-autism/

Quill. (n.d.). Writing instruction research. Quill.org | Interactive Writing and Grammar. https://www.quill.org/teacher-center/topic/writing-instruction-research

StoryBoardThat. (n.d.). Help center. Storyboard That Help Center. https://help.storyboardthat.com/

Watts-Taffe, Susan. (2022). Multimodal Literacies: Fertile Ground for Equity, Inclusion, and Connection. International Literacy Association. Retrieved 25 October 2022.

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Ms. Boardman, Ms. Kiefer, Mrs. Bunch, and I did a presentation just a couple weeks ago for LLED 4461 in which we taught Stepping Up! Teachers Advocating for Sexual and Gender Diversity in Schools, a practitioner text co-authored by one of our professors, Dr. Schey. This presentation was designed to be a brief overview of how to teach a unit with this text. In this presentation we used two digital tools, the first being a digital word cloud activity to have students respond to an identity question from their devices. The reason we chose this activity was because students were ale to input whatever responses they choose, and those responses show up on the board in real time. This allowed us to see which responses were most common, as that word would increase in size with each time it was input. These responses are also anonymous, which gives students a sense of privacy and opens up the activity for students to mention parts of their identity that might not be public, such as sexuality. Inappropriate responses can be removed instantly and there is a filtering option. For the second, we also go over a book trailer assignment that would fit for the planned unit. We showed an example of a student made book trailer, and explained how this assignment benefits students- providing them a visual understanding of the story and allowing them to show their own comprehension. This assignment also allows students to put themselves into the characters shoes, and gives them room for creativity with video-making and script writing. Of course, this is missing the audio component as we gave the presentation in person, but it is for the most part self-explanatory. Here is the link!

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This is the assessment that came from my HLP. Students created a moodboard draft of what their short story was going to be about using padlet. They had a set of requirements for this, and I am really impressed with how good they all came out. I think this really helped them to organize their stories, and reflect on the setting before they started writing. It also really got them excited and brought out their creativity. I definitely plan to use more digital tools like this to create authentic assessments that allow for creativity. They also had each other as an authentic audience. Most of them only know one of two people in the class, but they posted these padlets to a class discussion board and were able to engage with each others work and see other's stories. I think they really enjoyed this. This was more of a creative assignment, so if they met the requirements they received full credit. All the padlet examples below are student work.

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Here you can see me giving instructions to my class about what they will be doing (receiving a prompt and creating a padlet moodboard based off of this prompt and the requirements). I did have an example up on the board but my camera angle must have slipped at some point. I will attach my example here:

I was really really happy to see how this worked out. Students got out their chromebooks right away and were sharing with each other the prompts they had received. I have been really struggling with getting this class excited and engaged, and this activity was the first time that I felt they were actually all interested in what we were doing. In the past I have consistently tried and failed to get them to engage in call and response, and my peers and US have given me ways to try to get them engaged that are non-verbal. I think this was a huge lesson that I had to learn- not all participation needs to be verbal. This is where digital tools could really help me with this class. There’s so many different resources that allow for students to response non-verbally- such as wakelet, nearpod, peardeck, or jamboard. Even in classes where some students do answer, I need to remember there are always going to be students that are not comfortable talking in front of the class, and this isn’t something I can or need to change about them. Just another example of how digital tools can be used as accommodations for all students. This was actually part of my 3-day HLP for the Planning and Instruction class, so a lot of this reflection is taken from the class discussion we had I presented parts of this video

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Here is an example of one of my l esson plans. I chose to include this one because I spent a lot of time and effort on it and I think it's very thorough. It's 10 pages, so a bit of a read, but I go very in depth in 4 resources for reading and writing and all the students they could be helpful to. I also give tips on how to use them. I have also gone back to this lesson plan and revised any issues with it after receiving feedback- such as the confusing grade level/book pairing. I think this assignment really helped it click for me the ways in which digital tools are and can be essential to equal access to classwork as well as providing students with scaffolding that will truly help them to learn instead of just making the content or assignments "easier", which is unfortunately how many accomodation situations seem to go. This is when my experiences in the classroom connected to what I was learning in classes, and I felt so much more capable of making decisions that would be for the benefit of the class.

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And this is my goodreads account. I created it this summer, but unlike my instagram, I keep up with this one. I try to leave written reviews when I can, but every book I read gets rated at some point.

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This is my teacher instagram created for last summer’s YA lit class. As you can see, it is pretty lackluster. I never even added a bio or a profile picture. I also only posted the two assignments we were required to on here, and then stopped. I see other people like Odaly that post regularly on their teacher instagram and it just looks so cool and involved. Honestly I am kind of embarrassed to share this instagram, but it definitely does show a time I used a digital tool and it just wasn’t for me. I do think that at the time I made this I was struggling to see myself as a teacher, and now that I have actually been in the classroom I can see spaces where I could use this. I was also trying to juggle family issues, working full time, and summer classes, so it was hard to have anything left over to put into this. It just felt like a chore. I do like the idea of having a resource out of whatever the school's learning platform is to share information and student work, and it seems like a great way to connect with other teachers as well. I am in a couple teacher facebook groups, and it’s really cool to see the ways they support and uplift each other. I think a teacher instagram has the potential to do something like that, and I might give it another shot. It is also a way to track your progress as a teacher, make note of things that really worked for your classroom, and model digital citizenship and appropriate online behavior to your students.
Giving students access to a class instagram also promotes more self reflection in work. If they know they are only doing the work for a grade, why would they give it their all? When they have an authentic audience through social media, they will be more inclined to try to impress, and assignments might garner some healthy competition.

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View this post on Instagram

A post shared by liz r (@reading.reflections11)

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Outside of that, I am a current senior at UGA, about to start my spring student teaching experience. I have a cat and a dog, and I am from Gwinnett County. I knew I wanted to go to UGA when I toured my sophomore year of high school, and here I am! I have always had a passion for english, and now I have a passion for teaching. People always ask me “why highschool?”. The answer is because they have such a bad rep. Most of the time, the response to my teaching plans is negative, or a sarcastic “good luck”. I want to teach high schoolers because I know people don’t want to give them a chance. I know they are growing up, which is one of the hardest things to do. I want to be that teacher that they can come to and know I won’t judge them for who they are. I had some bad experiences of my own with teachers when I was in school, and I still remember what it’s like. Anyways, Go Dawgs!!

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(here is my multimodal narrative, because I am proud of it and I feel like it gives a sense of who I am)

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MML pres - Google Slides - 5 September 2022