Module 6- Co-Teaching!

Last week in my Education 203 class we were given the opportunity to create a lesson plan with another peer from our class. This was a co-teach lesson and it was my first time being able to create and present something like this. I was paired with one of my classmates and together we were able to choose the grade, subject, and lesson plan. The subject we decided to do was a Physical Education lesson. The lesson teaches the students in grades K-2 about their body parts and what they are used for. For our lesson, we decided to focus on the external body parts so that we would not overwhelm the class with an excessive number of vocabulary words they were not familiar. The body parts we decided would benefit our classmates were, nose, eyes, ears, arms, hands, fingers, legs, feet, and toes.

When we were trying to figure out what type of lesson we wanted to teach together we had a fun time looking up ideas on what would be best to teach together. We had to remember that what we were teaching to our students had to be something “they had no prior knowledge on”. This is because when we teach a class of our own one day, the students in the class will not know everything about what we are teaching. This topic we had to choose was going to have to be something we were pretending to teach them for the first time. This was tricky because we could not ask students questions they were supposed to know because they had to pretend they did not know anything. So, when we were sharing facts about the body parts, the students had to be taught everything starting with the basics.

Between my partner and I, we worked on creating a lesson plan that had the following, topic, subject, grade level, time, Illinois learning standard being addressed, academic language, objective, planned support, formative assessment, technology used, instructional plan (Engage, connect, launch), sequence of learning activities, and a closure. This definitely seemed like a lot of planning out, which it was, but we had a fun time trying to come up with stuff together that was going to be enjoyable for students, as well as informative and information filled. While trying to figure out what exactly we were going to do, we tried to make sure we could have an activity the students were going to be able to get up and move around, so they can better understand what is being taught. A very important thing I felt we did was give the students a lot of hands on and labeling of the body parts. It is important the students see their body parts on themselves as well as other people, not just on a picture. 

Once we completed the lesson plan it was time to create a PowerPoint that was going to be interactive and easy to follow along with for the students. We decided to add a couple of Peardeck slides that the students would be able to draw or type on. The reason for this being, we believe students learn best from having hands on experiences and the best way to do that in the classroom is to implement it as much as possible for the students. We also had an interactive activity where the students in our class had to pair up with a peer and label the outer body parts of their peer with sticky notes This was definitely a great way to see which of the students was understanding and applying their vocabulary to real life, and which ones were going to need more practice. I was able to take a lot of good feedback away from this experience and I am very fortunate I was given the opportunity to practice the skill of co-teaching so early on in my educational career. 

Twitter Post #2

Over the past semester in my technology in Education class, we have been active members on education twitters. I was able to make a twitter for educational purposes. Through my twitter posts and retweets, I have been able to share ideas and create new ideas for a future classroom and how I want to hopefully run it one day soon. I think by going onto twitter a few times a week, I have been able to hear from different teachers and administration about their favorite memories or goals for the future. I think hearing their stories from them has helped me create a type of mindset I want to have in the future

So far while searching twitter I find myself becoming really interested in technology tools used in the classroom. I am not a huge technology person, so hearing from other teachers about what they are using in the classroom is a great tool for me to have learned so early on in this process. I think companies like Flipgrid and Ozobot are so interactive in the class and I cannot wait to share these ideas with future students. Another page I actively have begun following is a teacher/blogger/speaker by the name of Jennifer Hogan. She posts some of the most uplifting quotes and phrases for students, leaders, faculty, educators, parents and so on. She does a wonderful job in sharing her stories as well as asking others to talk about what certain words or quotes mean to them. 

I think it would be such a fun opportunity to be an educator and a teaching blogger. I have seen so many new pages on twitter recently about blogs and Teachers Pay Teachers, and it really is eye opening to have discovered so many new materials and ideas though a form of social media! I want to be able to share my ideas and projects with teachers all around the world, and I think a blog or twitter type of platform would be a great spot to do so!

I have been able to retweet ideas and quotes I want to not only share with classmates I have right now, but hopefully I can share these ideas with future students of mine. I hope I can continue to use twitter as an active form of professional development platform. I find myself going on there more often than any other form of social media and I definitely think that is a great start to a wonderful future full of constant education and learning!

Module 5- Flip Project

Welcome back to another blog post! Over the past couple weeks, we have been creating a flip project on our own! A flip project is done by a teacher and shown to his or her students! We were able to learn a bit about flip projects and how they are so beneficial in the classroom. One quote that stuck out to me was on a website called the daily riff. The quote stated, “One of the greatest benefits of flipping is that overall interaction increases: Teacher to student and student to student.  Since the role of the teacher has changed from presenter of content to learning coach, we spend our time talking to kids.  We are answering questions, working with small groups, and guiding the learning of each student individually” (TheDailyRiff1). The flip project takes the teacher away from standing in front of students lecturing notes and information to them, and changes the whole dynamic of the classroom.

            I decided to do my flip project on first grade math. I thought something simpler like addition and subtraction of single digit number would be a good topic to start off with. My first task in the flip project was to create a lesson video showing the topic I was going to be making a quiz on. I wanted to make sure I was not talking for too long and gave the students time to write down the problems and follow along. My video showed students how to add objects together by counting them and then creating an addition sentence. Then I had the students add photos on the PowerPoint and demonstrated how to create another addition sentence. The subtraction demonstration was very similar to the addition one. I showed how to take away objects from one another, and then how to subtract numbers in a sentence. Creating this flip video was easy and a lot of fun to do! I was able to visually demonstrate addition and subtraction and show multiple ways to do it. This would provide students with ways they find easiest to use when solving these types of problems.

            The last step of my flip project was to create a 10-question multiple choice quiz for my students to complete after they watched my flip video. I really enjoyed making this quiz because I was able to be creative with how I wanted to ask questions that could assess whether my students were able to understand the information and then apply it to the problems! I look forward to doing this again with a class of my own one day and be able to work one on one with my students while they get to be independent and complete tasks!