The first article I read was the Fundamental Change in Education. Being a third grade, regular education teacher at a title one school, I have seen many students that are not engaged, bored, or just do not seem to care about school. They have a hard time seeing the importance in their education at that age. In this article they talk about students learning on a deeper level by pushing purposeful planning of lessons to the real world and by having students be creative in their learning. This real world connection just started to be a huge focal point for me in the past two years. I didn't think writing word problems in math using real world concepts would change the way students viewed math, but I was wrong. The idea of students understanding how a new concept can help or impact their future learning, or jobs, made the students seem more curious. While I was reading this article the first thing that came to mind was the STEM activities that I have done with my class.
This article also talks about the world today being more digitally driven. This is very true and one of the main reasons I chose this major. I want to be able to utilize and be successful at using technology in my classroom. I think technology is an amazing tool for our students that could really benefit them as learners. Teachers no longer have to stand and lecture a class all day, while having them do book work that is directly linked to the standard. Now with technology, we can have our students making powerpoints, prezi's, research, google docs for partnership, the possibilities are endless. The students can now make real world connections while learning new things that might not be part of the standard ( like how to collaborate, put their ideas into words). Using techonology in these ways will help reach a higher level of thinking.
Being a math and science teacher, Bloom's Taxonomy is a vital part of planning my lessons. Most of our lessons are concepts built off he basic understanding. We move from writing an equation and labeling each part to eventually being able to see someone else's work and identify errors made within their work. In our school district, Educational objectives and learning targets are the big push this year. The verbs that are used in this article are exactly what we have been focused on using for our learning targets. I thought it was interesting to see how changing just the verbs in your objectives, or targets, can decipher what level your students are at according to the taxonomy.
Although those are the two articles that stuck out most to me, Connecting Depth and Balance In Class was also a fascinating read. All teaching work with students that have different learning styles. We all work with students that learn at a faster pace or a slower pace than others also. Technology is definitely a helpful tool when trying to meet each student where they are according to their level of learning. They also talk about how some people are very excited to jump right in and start using technology in every way possible, but others are very hesitant. This reins true in every school. I know many teachers and other professionals that just aren't sure they want to rely so heavily on technology. My co-workers and I use google drive to keep all of our resources together to help us collaborate and share useful resources, our school uses a program called I-Ready to gather data on our math scores, and we use a program called reading eggs to gather data for our students in reading. These programs also have lessons that go along with the standards of the grade they are currently enrolled, but use resources from previous grades so each student can have differentiated instruction. I love that this article highlights the idea that technology is a helpful tool for day to day use in a regular education classroom that is practical.
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