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Tara Vatske    Self direction and Self Assessment

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Tara Vatske    Self direction and Self Assessment

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I use self-directions and self-assessment many times in my classroom by utilizing Pixel Art activities and scavenger hunts I created using QR codes.  (Since there was no walking around the room this year for typical “scavenger hunts”, this was a fun alternative.I’ve attached the links for an example of both of these activities below.

In the beginning of class, or the previous day, I share some basic concepts about the lesson and the students will take some notes.  When it comes time to practice, I give them the PDF with QR codes,  they scan the START code, answer the question, find the answer above another QR code, scan it.  Keep repeating the process until you are back at the START HERE box.

Besides allowing the students to practice the material being taught on their own, it enables me to walk around the classroom helping individual students who need more personalized instruction. The self-assessment builds confidence because the students do not have to ASK if their answer is correct. More than likely if they got an answer that is in one of the other boxes, they answered the question correctly.  Since I designed the questions, I make sure to not have very similar answers.  It is NOT my goal to confuse them. On some scavenger hunts that I’ve created, I add an extra twist with a theme.  For example, my “simplifying radicals” scavenger hunt has cool bits of information about J.K. Rowling. When they get the right mathematical answer, they’ll also find the answer to the question.  (Where was she born, what is her given name, how did she come up with the idea of Harry Potter, etc.).   I try to choose topics that are interesting to the students and will engage them WHILE doing math!

The second activity I like to use are the Pixel art ones. With these activities, the students do the problem and enter the answer in the correct place. If the answer is correct, the box will typically change colors , and colored pixels on the artwork will appear.  As the student is answering the questions, the picture comes to life.  The students really enjoy trying to figure out what/who the picture is.   The artwork engages the student to keep working on the problems. The activity is self-correcting, since only correct answers will add colored pixels to the artwork.  They know when they need to call on me for some extra help.  In the meantime, I can focus on whoever does need help on working through the assignment.   There are facebook groups that have pixel art activities that anyone can use.   Additionally, there are some you can get/purchase on Teacherspayteachers.com

Scavenger Hunt QR codes : Scan the START HERE code to bring you to the 1 st question.  When you find the answer to the question, scan the code below the correct answer. This will bring you to the next question!

Pixel Art Activity: Solving Systems of Equations using the Substitution Method

Show all work here.

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As a library media specialist, critical thinking is paramount to what I teach. A large part of our curriculum is focused on digital citizenship and the ability to think critically. We focus on using the lessons created through Common Sense Education, and use the ISTE and AASL standards as a guide. I like to put these lessons into Nearpod so students can either stay on task in a class setting or work at a self paced mode. Using Nearpod for these lessons also allows me to utilize the flipped lesson method. As a middle school librarian, often my time with students is limited and front loading the work is beneficial. One lesson I like to focus on in terms of critical thinking is misinformation and bias in the media. Middle school is an impressionable age and it is critical we impart this knowledge in our classrooms.

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Yili Callahan- Self-Directions/Self-Assessment and Application of Technology to the Work Flow 

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Yili Callahan- Self-Directions/Self-Assessment and Application of Technology to the Work Flow 

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I have been using the app tool Nearpod to have students in K and 1st grade complete their work. Nearpod allows for the work flow to be seamless. Students have the ability to go at their own pace, but also teachers have the ability to control the pace of the studnets flow through out the lesson. Nearpod allows for many different tasks to be imbedded into the lesson such as, FlipGrid, drawing, typing, matching, virtual field trips, polls, multiple choice questions and so on. Nearpod allowed me to have students engage in many tasks that allowed them to be engaged. I would also use a poll to have students self-assess on how they felt when they read a new text in the class. Did they feel frustrated or just right or too easy. This allowed students to reflect on their reading abilities. I was also able to incorporate visuals to help guide studnets in self-assessing. Students were able to then be able to better pick out books when reading.

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Collaboration is an important teaching strategy, especially in a new teaching world where you have students that are working virtually. Through collaboration, students are able to connect with their teacher and/or other students that they may have the opportunity to interact with in-person. Not only this, collaboration between students, either in-person or virtually, also promotes the use of other skills such as communication, problem-solving, adaptability, etc. By implementing collaborative projects and assignments, students use various forms of technology (Zoom Breakout rooms, Google apps, etc.) to work together to share information and to create a finished project. In these projects, each student has a component that they are responsible but is able to seek help and advice from their groupmates, thus promoting collaboration and teamwork.

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It takes teamwork and collaboration among students, staff, teachers, administrators, and community members to ensure that the best education is being provided to students. However, because of COVID, collaboration skills have decreased in my opinion. It shouldn’t be a surprise because students had to maintain a safe distance in person or could only interact virtually from home. I would look for many ways to increase teamwork and collaboration in my library. For example, the American Revolution is a major topic covered in 4th grade. I can introduce students to the multiple databases that will help them research a person or event from that time. I can provide American Revolution books, ebooks, and noteworthy websites to the students. Furthermore, I can have students create a presentation on Google Slides, Canva, or Buncee once they have compiled their research. Perhaps I can introduce students to NoodleTools, so they understand how to give credit to an author and avoid plagiarism. The possibilities are seemingly endless. But all lessons will include teamwork and collaboration to allow the students to question, think, and create. I believe that together we can achieve these goals and teach our students the vital skill of collaboration that they will need in middle school, high school, college, and beyond.

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As an ENL teacher for 6th grade students, I am constantly thinking about how to foster communication skills. During my stand alone class, I use a Bitmoji classroom with the intention of working on speaking, listening, reading and writing skills. The Bitmoji classroom is made on Google Slides so that students can edit the slides directly. I often add videos and audio into the Bitmoji classroom so that students have the opportunity to listen to information more than once before they are expected to communicate information. To help students speak, I provide sentence stems, frames and word banks. This also helps students with written communication as they practice writing in complete sentences. The Bitmoji classroom has been a fun way to streamline the learning process and create structure for my English learners who are learning content as well as trying to communicate with teachers and peers each day. A fun thing that I love to use at the end of my stand alone class comes from Esther Park, @MrsParkShine on Twitter. It is a sign off question that helps communication skills tremendously! The student is given a low stakes question such as, “Which superpower would you choose?” Using visuals and a sentence stem, the student writes their answer and responds orally. Then, they must choose a way to say goodbye such as, Thank you, Goodbye, or See you later.

In addition to using the Bitmoji classroom to help students communicate, I like to use other strategies and technology tools. I often use Flipgrid in my stand alone class and co-taught ELA classrooms. Flipgrid allows students to use all four language modalities and improves communication skills by tasking students with listening and responding to one another. I also like to use QSSSA in the classroom. This stands for Question, Signal, Stem, Share, Assess. Students are able to communicate their thoughts in a complete sentence with the sentence stem provided. Also, by having students in the class share their thoughts aloud, students can hear how proper English is used. I like this strategy because it helps give students the tools to succeed when sharing orally in the whole class setting. Lastly, I like to use strategies such as Turn and Talks and Think, Pair, Shares for oral communication because I feel that they are less anxiety inducing. When possible, I like for students to jot down their thoughts, or a sketch, ahead of time. I have applied this “Stop and Jot” strategy to Jamboard before class discussions and it has helped students communicate their thoughts.

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I think that it is so important to have our students be problem solvers! I try to give my students opportunities to find solutions to classroom problems and to share their ideas. At the beginning of the year, we create a class charter where makes up rules we all have to follow in the Library such as being respectful of each other, returning books so others can use them, treating our materials with respect. It is our first "problem" to solve in the year for all of us to get along and for us all to be respected.  Another example is if students are fighting over different seats in a classroom with flexible seating, we can think of a way to come up with a fair system so everyone gets a chance to enjoy the seat. Students might suggest picking a name out of a hat or keeping a checklist where everyone takes turns. You might also read a book to a student about a problem in the world and the students' can problem solve how they can solve that problem. They might raise money to donate to a charity to help animals or make a poster about a way they can help take care of the Earth. I also feel like using technology and coding is a great way for them to practice problem solving. They really have to think and find a way to get a robot to the correct space, to code a game on Code.org, or to solve a STEAM challenge. This helps them develop their skills for problem solving that they can use to work and interact with others!

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I feel that communication is something our students just fall short in whether it is verbally or written. Students today are so used to communicating in Social media format where they only use a letter to communicate. I have always required my students to answer in complete sentences with complete words.
Another reason communication is important is that students do not know how to respond to each other. During our morning meetings I have students make eye contact and respond and question each other. They further practice through out the day when they come in contact with other students or adults. Many times they are asked how are you and they do not respond in kind or at all. Communication is an art form that is being lost and it is needed for day to day and for their careers.
Communication is something that I have and will continue to foster and develop with my students.

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I think that collaboration is a really important teaching strategy. It helps to promote social skills, communication, and problem solving skills, as well as preparing students for the future. It allows students to express their thoughts, and build upon each other's ideas to solve problems and think critically. It also helps students to see different perspectives, which may help them learn and think in a new light. I think that collaboration also helps to build confidence. Students may be nervous to share with the class as they are unsure if their answer is correct or not. By having students pair share or collaborate first, they may be able to build their confidence and feel more comfortable participating in class. This year I taught both online and in person students, which initially made collaboration more challenging. By utilizing technology, I was able to allow both groups of students to interact and collaborate with each other. With the use of Google Meet breakout rooms, Nearpod, Peardeck, Padelt, and Flipgrid, I was able to provide opportunities for students to collaborate through technology.

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As an ENL teacher, I try to
incorporate many different strategies to assist my students in learning new content, but not overwhelm them with difficult technology or strategies. My favorite tool that I use is Flipgrid. I can use it with any lesson in so many wonderful ways. It has helped my students incorporate, reading, writing, speaking and listening all in one lesson.  The tools they provide, such as the post-it, the responses and of course the video with all of the features to accent their video makes it so engaging for them and entices them to participate as a team or individually.  This year was difficult with participation but Flipgrid made is so much easier. Even the more shy students were creative enough to use tools to hide their face or dress it up, as long as I heard them speak, it was fine with me :). These lessons allowed them to be self-directed, communicate and SWRL, collaborate, problem-solve, be creative and obviously the application of technology!

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I teach ENL at the High School level. The courses I teach are ENL stand alone course for beginners. These courses focus on the acquisition of expressive and receptive English language skills. As with many subjects, language is something that is best acquired through conversation and interactions. During each unit, I aim to provide my students with opportunities to collaborate with one another in order to practice their language skills. For example, I implement the technique of Jigsaw grouping to allow students to work in groups and master an area of discussion. Within this group, each student has a particular role to fulfill. They work collaboratively to reach the end goal. At the end of the jigsaw activity, the groups must teach other group members about their "activity". This activity can also be achieved using digital resources. For example, students can meet with their groups via google meets. Then, students can present their findings to classmates using flipgrid. I find collaboration is a great learning strategy because students are learning and helping one another as oppose to reaching instruction solely from their teacher.

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First, communication begins with setting a nurturing classroom environement, where students are comfortable taking risks. Then, classes have diverse range of learners, who have unique learning styles. Therefore, communicating both orally and written is important to reach all learners. Text to speech can encourage students to orally respond to a prompt. Through Google Docs students can type with their voice by speaking into the microphone. Additionally, during interactive lessons on Nearpod, students can dictate their answers (when creating the lesson, the teacher must enable this feature). In my classroom, I use Nearpod to promote communication and collaboration, specifically when using the collaborative board (which is like this padlet). I often leave feedback for students on Google Classroom using Mote. Mote is a great way to provide access to learners who need to hear the feedback. On assignments, I use Mote to read directions of a task. This is beneficial to meet the needs of auditory learners. Students are encouraged to use Mote too. This is a good way for students to practice speaking orally. During a writing unit, students leave peer feedback using Mote. We use Flipgrid as well which provides a way to practice oral communication skills. I noticed that sometimes students are more comfortable speaking on this forum then in front of the whole class. Communication is crucial in learning.

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I teach 3rd grade and I incorporate critical thinking strategies into my instruction in a variety of ways. I have students work in groups and encourage students to ask questions while they are engaged in decision- making activities. I also try to incorporate concepts that have different points of views to help students develop higher level thinking. All of my instruction also allows for student discussion and I try to bring in real life situations and ask students to make connections. I also incorporate instruction where students find themselves problem solving.

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I think collaboration is a very worthwhile and important teaching strategy because it teaches students so many things.  Collaboration helps develop social, problem solving, and communication  skills as students work together toward a task or common goal.  Collaboration also fosters independence as students learn to rely on their peers for help instead of the teacher. As a 3rd grade teacher, I use collaboration in many of the content areas.  For example, in math I will give students a word problem to solve.  I will then assign roles such as reader, director, clarifier, timekeeper, and monitor. After students read and discuss and any questions are clarified students then solve the problem independently. Similarly, in writing, we use collaboration during our animal research clubs unit. Again students are assigned roles and work together toward a task such as research where your animal lives. Collaboration is such a worthwhile teaching strategy because it can be used across many different content areas and teaches many valuable skills.

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As a math teacher, thinking critically and problem solving are two of the strategies that are extremely important in my classroom. In every chapter, and I try to incorporate into every lesson, I bring in real-world problems and word problems. I find my students have the most difficulty with word problems. Word problems involve a heavy about of critical thinking. In the beginning of the year, we go through strategies to help students break down word problems in order to help them throughout the year. The more often we do word problems, the more often they are able to use and improve their critical thinking skills. This year coming up, I have made it a point to integrate more word problems than I have in the past.

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As a Spanish adolescent educator, communication is essentially the main focus and goal of every single lesson, activity, assessment, etc. Being able to comprehend the Spanish language in both written and verbal forms is the main objective, daily. While written and spoken communication are both super important, I personally tend to place a tad more emphasis on oral communication, as I believe that it plays a crucial role for not only learning but also teaching any foreign language. Being able to communicate verbally encourages students to reflect on themselves and their work, and it also helps them (students) to get involved in productive dialogues of varying formats.

For written communication, depending on the type of class or level, I have students practice this language skill by partaking in varying and numerous writing comprehension activities that range from simple writing prompts (such as narratives) to more complex prompts such as writing summaries of short stories we read or providing alternate endings to said stories. Writing comprehension can also take the form of more creative platforms such as opinions on current events (in the news), poetry, cooking recipes, digital storytelling, etc. Oral comprehension follows suit, in terms of having students practice and be assessed using varying prompts, platforms, etc. Oral communication can take the form of answering simple comprehension questions on any given task or activity during a lesson, having conversations with other classmates, review games, providing descriptions of varying images (depending on the thematic theme of the unit), video presentations for projects or by use of platforms such as Flipgrid, or digital storytelling.

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Creativity and Innovation - Priscilla Oh

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Creativity and Innovation - Priscilla Oh

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In Kindergarten, creating space for creativity and innovation is very important. As a teacher of little ones, I believe that we need to encourage the creativity of our students and not limit the space. Even when doing simple arts and craft activities, we need to encourage the students to not just follow the simple step by steps provided, but to think outside of the box. STEM has played an important role in this, and I plan to implement this as much as I can in my classroom. This will allow the students to use materials and really innovate. They will have to think outside of the box to really create images and shapes using a variety of materials.

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Collaboration:

In kindergarten, collaboration is so very important. For some students, this might be their first schooling experience and it is where they build many skills. They not only learn to collaborate with their classmates, but how to communicate and be a member of a community. I believe there are many ways that I use this teaching strategy in my classroom. One way is the use of tables/community supplies (not this past school year) in my classroom. Students learn the tools that we will be using in our classroom using a guided discovery. After that, the students get a chance to learn how to use the materials effectively and properly. (For example, how to properly put a cap on a marker, how to use a crayon properly, etc) Then they are expected to keep these supplies in a community bin on their table. Students really learn to work together to take care of their materials and keep them nice.

Another way I use collaboration in my classroom is through my centers. Again, not really this past year, but in previous years, the center materials are placed on a table and students are expected to work together for a common goal. Collaboration is such an important skill for students to learn at a young age because they will spend a majority of their lives working with others, some who might be very different from themselves.