I am not doing the remote learning that everyone is doing at the moment. You can call it lucky if you want but I miss my kids and I think it would be a fun adventure to try a lot of the tools we have used in this class. However not going to lie, I am also enjoying my time off. I have been thinking a lot about remote learning and seeing the importance of technology and how it can be used to really reach these kids. If they have the resources available, which all kids currently should have, the world can be opened up to these kids. By having the resources, there are so many opportunities to make learning valuable and exciting. I do think teachers need more than a few days or weeks to plan for this type of learning and I don't think I would want to be full time remote learning like we are now. But having these tools and resources will be great to use in the classroom the following years and will hopefully get parents more involved as we continue in education. I am hoping that now that parents have to be involved they will continue to do so because it is so important that the kids see their parents prioritize education. I am also hoping that now the government, districts, and administration really see the importance of 1:1 technology. I've heard over and over again since I started teaching and even in my education program that 1:1 technology is important and yet I have not seen it prioritized. I am hoping that now it will be prioritized and we can start seeing 1:1 technology in ALL classrooms and in ALL schools.
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This entire program has really made me take a step back and look at the specifics of my teaching. It has made me ponder why I am doing certain strategies and techniques. It has made me think and consider if certain strategies are actually helping my students. This program has helped me evolve into an innovative thinker by making myself willing to adapt to change and try new tools with my students that I wouldn't have otherwise. I've been saying it this entire course, I was terrified to try different online programs because I wasn't sure my students (third grade - seven and eight year old's) would really learn with them. I was nervous they would waste time and not use the tools correctly. I was backing away from tools because I was scared and nervous, which is what makes me frustrated with some other teachers who won't use technology because they don't know how to use it and are not always willing to try. I had to take a step back and remember, KIDS CAN DO AMAZING THINGS IF YOU JUST GIVE THEM THE TOOLS TO BE SUCCESSFUL. With this program I have learned the importance to being willing to try new things and be willing to fail. I have learned the importance of visuals, modeling, and making sure students understand the end goal. This course, and whole program really, has helped me evolve as an educator and be willing to include technology more. I am actually really excited to be teaching first grade next year and I am not afraid to incorporate technology like I would have been prior to this program. I am excited to allow myself to fail and allow my students to explore different tools next year and the years to follow.
After reading the different assigned readings texts, I have taken a few things into account when it comes to designing my own site. It needs to be simple and everything needs to have a purpose. The end user of the website needs to know the end goal of the site and it should be clearly stated for the user.
For my rounds of research, I really tried to keep it simple and straight to the point. I made sure to model EVERYTHING that was expected and that my students new the end goal was to write a narrative that they created themselves. I tried to give them the visuals they needed and gave them a chance to create their own visuals to help add details to their writing that they would be doing at the end of all the activities. It took about three weeks to complete, but my students final narratives were some of the best writing pieces they did all school year so far. Maternity leave for myself came at a weird time. My first week away, the district closed schools. Today, the governor closed school for the rest of the school year and is expecting teachers to teach through distance learning. While I was already planning on being out for the rest of the school year, I was able to get in my action research. Here are my thoughts from it.
I completely two really important rounds of research for teaching students how to write a narrative. The first activity that we worked on was creating a story map. I created a large story map poster with the class. This poster described what went in each section. This is a written out organizer for students to plan out their writing. This organizer has students decide their characters, setting, problem, solution, and key events. I also modeled how to fill one out using a story from a unit that as a grade level we decided to skip. The second activity that I used for research was teaching students how to complete a storyboard for their story. Using the same story I used to model the story map, as a class we created a storyboard. First I read the story aloud, then added pictures to the storyboard the second time reading the story. In another lesson, students added text to the storyboard that I cut out from the story. I created this storyboard on a big poster board so that it could be interactive for the class. After modeling both the story map and the storyboard, students were set off to first create their story map. After creating their story map, students were to create storyboards online on storyboardthat.com. After all students were finished, I provided time for students to share their storyboards with peers and to receive feedback. After students were finished with their story maps and storyboards, students wrote their narratives first drafts in their writing journals. After their first drafts, they went into google drive and published their writing in a google doc. Students published both their storyboards and their published google docs into our google classroom. My takeaways from this action research and my thoughts from our readings: When I first started in third grade I thought that students would already know how to write a narrative and that I would just need to teach them how to add detail and edit their writing. I was wrong. I was modeling writing for students, but I was modeling how to edit and add detail when my students needed some basics first. This made me think about all the readings and how they mention keeping in mind who the learners are and what their needs are. I had expectations of third grade students but didn't realize until this action research that they needed basics and the needed visuals. A second takeaway from this action research that I had was that so much is expected of third grade students when they are still figuring out how to be a student. They are still learning foundational skills, especially kids who didn't master skills in the primary grades. The fact that these kids are expected to take the CAASPP test is mind blowing to me. They can barely type when getting into third grade and that is only the students whose previous teacher taught them some form of typing. Third grade students shouldn't have to take the CAASPP as a final test, honestly I think in third grade students should take it for practice. Yes there are IAB's, but let's be real that's nothing compared to spending a week or two taking the actual test. These test scores follow them and it's not fair. I have two weeks before going on maternity leave and I have not finished my first round of research. I have, however, seen a huge difference in the way my students have reacted and tackled a narrative writing assignment. What I was missing before was designing lessons to make my students fully capable to achieve our end goal. I was also missing visuals - KEY FOR ELEMENTARY. This is where the reading really stuck out to me. Before I was really just giving them writing examples, modeling writing, and then sending them off to write. I know as an elementary teacher the importance of visuals and yet.... I was missing that. After having my one on one with Brenna and learning about the story map and storyboards. I changed how I presented students with creating a narrative. I gave them visuals to work with and create first. This has taken two weeks however to complete, due to typical interruptions and really allowing students to put in time and effort to create their narrative. This week they are going to take the visuals that they created and start drafting their narratives. All I could think about with the reading was the importance of knowing your audience and making content as accessible as possible. That is our job. Our students need us to get to know them and understand what they need. It is our job to adjust to them and it should never be the other way around.
I again had a hard time with the reading for this week. I connected more with Baggio than the other readings that we had. This is what I have taken away from the reading:
When reading Dervin's article, I was pretty confused the entire time. After I read through the article one time I had to go back and reread it. I still don't feel like I fully understand what the text is about and do not feel confident that I could teach it to someone else. I had to look up a lot of the vocabulary in the text in order to even start comprehending, and even then I do not feel like it did much help. Honestly, I felt defeated just reading the introduction because I wasn't sure what the introduction was even trying to say. What I understood from the images provided in the article is that people ask questions in order to make situations better. The purpose of surveys is to help make a company, situation, experience better.
What I have taken from this article (more like the images that were used for examples) is that student input can be valuable. If we can ask students what is working for them and what is not, then we could gain some insight into our teaching. We could take their input and hopefully filter out strategies that are not working and filter in more strategies that are helpful to students. |