Project Based Assessing and the GAME plan

As I take time to look at the standards which I am planning to use to strengthen myself as a teacher, I think about my GAME plan and exactly I what I will do to carry it out and ensure that it is a success. I have been taking a lot of time to reflect on what I have done over the past school year. With the year ending in just a week and a half, I have from now until August to plan my methods of teaching and make changes to ensure that my goals are met for next year when it comes to my GAME plan.

The two standards I want to work on go hand in hand. I would like to design or adapt relevant learning experiences that incorporate digital tools and resources to promote student learning and creativity and design and develop digital-age learning experiences and assessments.  At this point, my principal and grade level team are discussing exactly what the plan is as far as instruction is concerned for next year. I may be teaching all subject areas like I have been or we may block and I will be responsible for math.  Until I know what I am doing for sure I do not know exactly what I will be doing for my GAME plan and have not planned specifics yet. However, I would like to incorporate more digital tools such as wikis, blogs, Voice Thread, podcasts, Jing, and concept mapping through websites such as Spider scribe to create more project based assessments. There are many tutorials available online which explain how to use the digital tools which is very helpful because they are easily accessible and students would be able to refer back to them at any time if they were to forget or have questions about how to do something. I am hoping that I will be responsible for teaching math because I would like to create projects which would enable my students to learn math in a real world context such as a career which may use fractions a lot or a career where multiplication is used daily. Creating projects which students can do requiring them to apply mathematical skills and concepts would be a great hands on approach to learning the material and seeing the relevance of math. Students can be creative and come up with a role playing scenarios where mathematics must be used to solve a problem and it can be recorded using audio and video to be presented to the class. There is a wide variety that can be done and the wheels are turning in my mind. I just have to know what I am responsible for teaching next year so I can go ahead and start planning for sure some things that my students will be doing.

I really would like to go away from the paper and pencil based assessments especially in math and do more projects based assessments because I truly believe that if students learn a concept and are given the opportunity to be hands on and apply what they have learned to create something, than they will remember it more.  Does anyone have any suggestions on maybe a project I can have my fourth graders do in math?

References

ISTE. (2008). NETS for teachers: advancing digital age teaching. Retrieved on May 9, 2012 from: http://www.iste.org/Libraries/PDFs/NETS-T_Standards.sflb.ashx

Carrying Out My GAME Plan

Throughout the past week I have been thinking about how I could really carry out my GAME plan. My school district only has 15 days left before summer break so at this point it is too late in this year to start anything new since we are wrapping up the school year. For the last four years I have been responsible for teaching all subject areas to my students. However, with the upcoming school year, our principal and my team have discussed doing blocking which will change what I do. Although not set in stone yet, I will be responsible for teaching mathematics to all of the fourth grade students in my school. As a result, I am trying to think of ways that I could incorporate the use of digital tools more in the area of mathematics. When I think about this I think about using tools such as Voice Thread, wikis, blogs, and podcasts. With the upcoming school year and the new common core standards, I know that it is important to be more collaborative and hands on with the learning for common core. In an attempt to prepare for the upcoming year and my plans, I plan to find some workshops I can attend that will provide me with more professional development on digital tools and how to incorporate them into my classroom instruction. I also plan to think about projects I can have my students do incorporating the content they will learn into real world scenarios. It is important that students understand why math is important and how it is used every day in various scenarios. I can also have students maybe perform interviews with people in different careers and talk with them about how they use math. After the interviews are done my students can create a project using Voice Thread or podcasts to present their findings. It would also be beneficial to create classroom blog where students can assist one another and explain how to work math concepts.

At this point I am not 100% sure exactly what my GAME plan will be because I do not know what I will be teaching next year. If I am responsible for teaching every subject as it has been, than I can use more digital tools in having my students do more projects in the areas of reading, science, and social studies.

Do you have any suggestions on classroom projects that I can do using digital tools to teach math?

My GAME Plan

As I take time to look back over the last few years of teaching, I notice that there are many areas in which I can improve in hopes of one day becoming a distinguished teacher. I am currently in my fourth year of teaching and thoroughly enjoy what I do. With technology changing every day, pressures of state testing, and everything else, I sometimes tend to forget to take a step back and think about what I can do to change my styles of teaching in an effort to be more effective and help my students be more successful. The International Society for Technology in Education and National Education Standards offers great information about the standards that we as teachers should meet. When I look at these standards I notice that I am proficient in some whereas in others, I can definitely improve. The two that I think are my weakest include design or adapt relevant learning experiences that incorporate digital tools and resources to promote student learning and creativity and design and Develop Digital-Age Learning Experiences and Assessments.

In looking at the GAME plan introduced this week, I realize that I could easily work to become proficient in my weak areas. When it comes to designing and adapting relevant learning experiences that incorporates digital tools and resources to promote student learning and creativity, I think of projects that my students do every year. Most of the time students would complete projects using PowerPoint. However, in an effort to work on this standard, my goal is to introduce students to more digital tools that can be used to create projects. My action plan would be to incorporate more lesson plans that uses and teaches students various digital tools such as Voice Thread, wikis, blogs, and podcasts. If I can create lesson plans to incorporate these tools than my students will have some exposure to them and begin getting ideas on how they can use them in projects. I can monitor the projects by seeing how much more students are engaged when using technology as opposed to paper and pencil or the usual power point presentation. I can also look at the end result compared to what they have done in the past and evaluate the effectiveness of the use of digital tools.

To design and develop digital-age learning experiences and assessments, this standard somewhat ties into the one mentioned above. My plan is to assign more hands on projects that would allow my students to be more creative and show what they have learned more as opposed to taking a pencil and paper assessment to show what they know. It would be more beneficial if students could show their learning by creating a project. In addition, I can use other sources of technology and keep a blog with my students in which they will post answers to questions presented. In thinking about my action, I would post questions on a blog which students will answer. This will be one method of assessment to ensure that they can explain their thoughts and ideas. I will monitor student performance as well as their engagement in the activity. Evaluating will take place when I review and score their work. I can compare their assessment grades using technology to the standard way of assessing and see which is more effective.

I look forward to working to incorporate more 21^st century tools into my classroom. I have already seen that students are more engaged when they are using technology. If I can teach them incorporating more digital tools and assess them using technology which they enjoy, than I think I will see better results.

References

Cennamo, K., Ross, J. & Ertmer, P. (2009). Technology integration for meaningful classroom use: A standards-based approach. (Laureate Education, Inc., Custom ed.). Belmont, CA: Wadsworth, Cengage Learning.

ISTE. (2008). NETS for teachers: advancing digital age teaching. Retrieved on May 9, 2012 from: http://www.iste.org/Libraries/PDFs/NETS-T_Standards.sflb.ashx