Final Inspiration

Reflection - Chapter 10

Writing is such a personal and reflective task; students are given the opportunity to write about their views on specific subjects when journaling. As educators, it is our responsibility to facilitate a love of writing and teaching students how much they can learn from themselves. We all know school days are busy; therefore writing must be planned and precise. It’s easy to think we will implement reflection; but carving out the time and pre-planning the questions will ensure this important task doesn’t get left out.

By pre-planning the questions, you can promote elaborating and critical reflection skills. Questions should ask more than, “What did you learn?” Try asking students why this project is important to them, and why they care. Predicting is a valuable skill and fits in perfectly for journaling about projects. Children have wonderful imaginations and love to share; facilitate that joyful experience.

When students care about something, it shows through pride. Build that pride by incorporating your schools’ traditions and identity into your PBL projects. For example, our bird project will include a tour of our school ground; specifically the garden sanctuary. This sanctuary was built by students and staff and is an ever-growing entity of our school pride. The students reflected during a writing assignment about how important they feel; taking care of the garden is so fulfilling. This reflection sparked the idea that we must include a tour on the day of our event.

Reflection - Chapter 9

Before starting a new project, teachers should assess their students’ prior knowledge. The best way to find out what they know is to ask them! I successful model for doing this is using a K-W-L. Ask the students to write anything they know about the topic and what they predict or expect to learn during the project. Anchors are great way for a teacher to measure learning in a frequent, timely manner. The anchor begins with the prior knowledge; from there you gain insight what direction to take.

Anchors are a great idea and if teachers use them properly, they can be great, alternative assessment tools. The information you obtain from the K-W-L can help you establish the anchor points for each individual student; possibly aiding in assigning collaborative, small groups. Also, knowing that each student learns and progresses at different rates, anchor points ensure that you are providing differentiated assessment based on each students learning journey. Alternative assessments that are effective and fun include self-reflection writings, peer feedback, project creation, portfolios; assessments that offer more than circling True or False on a quiz.

My students will journal daily on their own during the birding project, as well as team reflections on their blog. I really appreciate the ‘want to know’ part of a K-W-L and plan to use that information to help establish anchor points for each student. I believe that involving students in the planning of their learning journey of our project will help with the entire process.

Reflection - Chapter 8

Technology can bring faraway lands right into your classroom! Students can visually experience different cultures and global concepts through podcasts, distance learning sessions, and blogs. Teachers can build virtual classrooms, offering a safe and structured learning environment with students from around the world, or even down the hallway. When you branch out of the classroom your students look forward to interacting with a world that previously was out of reach.

One particular model fantastically represents the ability of branching out in a classroom using technology; the EAST initiative Model. This program started in Arkansas in 1996 and has now spread across seven states and over 260 schools; including both secondary and post-secondary levels.  Academia has partnered with industry and both state and federal government agencies to bring real world into the schools. The four main components of the EAST model are:

·         Student-driven learning
·         PBL; students are engaged
·         Technology as tools, and
·         Collaborations
Teachers are trained in these techniques and offer support to one and another. This level of professional development has proven to be positive and results in teachers and students learning.

Think back to your favorite subjects in school; you always did the best in those situations! When students lead their projects their interests are sparked, and therefore they will feel more responsibility and pride in their work.

My project will involve many components of technology. One of the most exciting is talking to other 3^rd grade classes in various countries about birds in their region, and migration. We will discuss our findings with the other 3^rd grade classes in our school by creating a blog.

Reflection 11

As a result of project based learning the student will be able to take their knowledge and memories and be able to recall them in years to come. The students will be able to make connections and use what they have learned through this process for future projects. There are many ways that you can "bring your project home." Some of these include: capitalize on your own investment, critique your own work, share your insight, create a project library, publish your project, and enjoy the journey! These concepts relate to my project because the chapter discussed the end results to "bring our project home." We will be using these concepts and show others all the work we have accomplished with project based learning by creating our own website and sharing it with others.

Chapter 11

Students can benefit a lot from Project Based Learning. Students Results from PBL contain the fact that they will move on with knowledge and skills they will be able to keep with, and use their whole life. In comparison to studying for tests, and be assessed where the students are likely to forget the information PBL gives students the ability to manage time, projects, enable the skills to work with a team, and much more important aspects to education passing on to real world situations. To be able to “Bring your project home” it is key to take your investment and capitalize on it. It is also important to critique your work, share thoughts, and become a resource to others around you. Another important thing is to be able to look back at work and understand how certain plans made it successful. By doing this you are able to pick out pieces that worked. Picking out specific things such as technological tools and strategies can help you for when planning future projects. It is important to give insight to co working teachers for they will also learn from you. This chapter applies to your project of Birding because our main goal is to have the students develop and take the skills that they build to use later in life in the real world. It is important so that the students can hold on to ideas so that they can apply them to future projects they may be assigned at a later time.

Reflection - Chapter 11

The result of project-based learning projects is an amazing learning journey! These well thought out projects provide student and teachers experiences that will last a life time; true learning. By the time a project is completed, results include research using technology and community or global collaboration, a comprehensive understanding of the project content, and an appreciation for learning.

Chances are that when a project is finished, there will still be some lingering questions or even questions about new project topics. The first step to take in “bringing it home” is to reflect individually and as a group. Focus on how you feel now that the project is done, what worked or didn’t, and ask each student to write about something they look forward to researching after the completion of the project. Following this technique keeps the learning project alive in what your class does each day.

Our group project on birding will follow these guidelines. Our Event Day is going to be a huge deal! This final piece of our project will be such a learning event itself; requiring a great deal of reflection. I will be taking notes of how our Event unfolds but most importantly, the students will do their bst to predict what will happen that day. If we find something didn’t work the way we hoped, we may plan our next project around how to fix that kind of issue.