Summer Reflection
From the first day of the MSUrban WiPro STEM Program, we were introduced to some intriguing icebreakers and getting-to-know-you activities that I am looking forward to using this fall in my math classes: The Pickers and The Shoot ’N Tweet. I had anticipated long days of discussing the reading materials and looking at more reading materials, more of a traditional classroom lecture setting; but it was a welcome surprise to instead have many hands-on activities that we can actually use later with our more tech-savvy students.
Throughout the two-week face-to-face sessions, we were infused with lots of information. We learned how to make memes using a meme maker website. We began envisioning what we might want to concentrate on for our Imagine IT Big Idea. We had small group discussions on what constitutes STEM for us as individuals and what STEM education looks like in our respective classrooms and in the world around. We shared with members of our group what our most challenging concept to teach has been. This allowed us to share with one another some suggestions of how that particular concept could be enhanced or broadened to help students comprehend it better or be more engaged in learning. We learned how to use Facebook and Twitter and began our own websites and we learned how to connect our website with a hyperlink.
On Day 5, we presented our “best” lessons to other teachers within our cooperative groups. We shared with one another the strengths of each lesson, possible ways on how it could be enhanced, and suggestions for modifying the lesson for diverse learners. On the sixth day, we spent the morning engaging in imaginative games and reenactments led by a member of The Second City Training Center. The Improvisation for Creative Pedagogy offered a myriad of improvisation techniques and exercises that could be integrated into any curriculum for more active and engaging student-centered learning. I will especially use “One Word Story” and “Dr. Know It All” to encourage students to reason through geometric theorems, postulates or proofs—the concepts which I had always been the most difficult for me to teach. The afternoon session was a field trip to the Museum of Science and Industry. This was an important part of our learning experience because it had been several years since I had attended the museum. The field trip generated ideas about what I might want to use for a big idea project. I subsequently went back to the museum two more times in order to see other exhibits that I had missed the first time. One involved patterns in nature and the other exhibit involved future energy sources. These will both play huge parts in my lesson planning for the school year.
As I began brainstorming about prospective project ideas, I knew that I desperately wanted to connect more real-world examples into the geometry curriculum. I also wanted to expose my students to a plethora of STEM related careers:
The summer session was filled with many new experiences. It was a lot of hard work that took many (if not most) of us out of our comfort zones. We were taught many technological techniques that may have been new to us, but not necessarily for our students. The combination of hard work, thought-provoking articles, new formats for disseminating information (i.e. social media, pictures, videos, etc.) provided each of us with a variety of new methods that we can not only share with our students but also with our colleagues and administrators as teacher leaders within our respective schools.
As I prepare for the upcoming school year, I am looking forward to using the flipped classroom model as my students will each have their own Chromebooks. This will allow me an opportunity to not only prepare some prerecorded classroom lectures for students to watch at home or outside of the classroom, but I will also include short videos that share key information about environmental issues within the community or globally. Thus our classroom experience can allow for more differentiated instruction and provide the students with more opportunities for cooperative group assignments. Classroom experiences can become more student-led with more hands-on activities as opposed to just focusing on mastery of specific topics. This approach would also open up the possibilities for students to explore problems at a deeper level using more higher-ordered thinking skills.
Not only will I use the flipped classroom model, but I will use both low tech and high tech tools and repurpose them for enhancing learning.
“Repurposing these cool tools for educational purposes, however, is not simple. If educators are to
repurpose tools and integrate them into their teaching, they require a specific kind of knowledge that
we call technological pedagogical and content knowledge (TPAK).”1
--Mishra, Punya, and Koehler, Mathew.
Through the assigned reading and careful reflection, I realized that I have perhaps been stuck in a specific teaching mode and that I may need to rethink how I teach students geometry. Have I been stuck on just one mode of teaching and not fully shifted to teach for a more global society. As detailed in the Journal of Digital Learning in Teacher Education in an article entitled, “What Knowledge is of Most Worth”, in addition to the fundamental knowledge of the core subject, I will also focus more succinctly on the following:
References
1Mishra, P. and Koehler, M. (2009, May) “Too Cool for School? No Way!” International Society for Technology in Education, 14-18.
2Kereluik, K., Michra, P., Fahnoe, C., and Terry, L. (2013) “What Knowledge Is of Most Worth: Teacher Knowledge for 21st Century Learning” Journal of Digital Learning in Teacher Education. Volume 29 Number 4. 127-140.
From the first day of the MSUrban WiPro STEM Program, we were introduced to some intriguing icebreakers and getting-to-know-you activities that I am looking forward to using this fall in my math classes: The Pickers and The Shoot ’N Tweet. I had anticipated long days of discussing the reading materials and looking at more reading materials, more of a traditional classroom lecture setting; but it was a welcome surprise to instead have many hands-on activities that we can actually use later with our more tech-savvy students.
Throughout the two-week face-to-face sessions, we were infused with lots of information. We learned how to make memes using a meme maker website. We began envisioning what we might want to concentrate on for our Imagine IT Big Idea. We had small group discussions on what constitutes STEM for us as individuals and what STEM education looks like in our respective classrooms and in the world around. We shared with members of our group what our most challenging concept to teach has been. This allowed us to share with one another some suggestions of how that particular concept could be enhanced or broadened to help students comprehend it better or be more engaged in learning. We learned how to use Facebook and Twitter and began our own websites and we learned how to connect our website with a hyperlink.
On Day 5, we presented our “best” lessons to other teachers within our cooperative groups. We shared with one another the strengths of each lesson, possible ways on how it could be enhanced, and suggestions for modifying the lesson for diverse learners. On the sixth day, we spent the morning engaging in imaginative games and reenactments led by a member of The Second City Training Center. The Improvisation for Creative Pedagogy offered a myriad of improvisation techniques and exercises that could be integrated into any curriculum for more active and engaging student-centered learning. I will especially use “One Word Story” and “Dr. Know It All” to encourage students to reason through geometric theorems, postulates or proofs—the concepts which I had always been the most difficult for me to teach. The afternoon session was a field trip to the Museum of Science and Industry. This was an important part of our learning experience because it had been several years since I had attended the museum. The field trip generated ideas about what I might want to use for a big idea project. I subsequently went back to the museum two more times in order to see other exhibits that I had missed the first time. One involved patterns in nature and the other exhibit involved future energy sources. These will both play huge parts in my lesson planning for the school year.
As I began brainstorming about prospective project ideas, I knew that I desperately wanted to connect more real-world examples into the geometry curriculum. I also wanted to expose my students to a plethora of STEM related careers:
- To increase their motivation to perhaps pursue one of those fields;
- To strengthen their ability to understand key topics in geometry;
- To reinforce basic whys and why nots associated with concrete geometric rules.
The summer session was filled with many new experiences. It was a lot of hard work that took many (if not most) of us out of our comfort zones. We were taught many technological techniques that may have been new to us, but not necessarily for our students. The combination of hard work, thought-provoking articles, new formats for disseminating information (i.e. social media, pictures, videos, etc.) provided each of us with a variety of new methods that we can not only share with our students but also with our colleagues and administrators as teacher leaders within our respective schools.
As I prepare for the upcoming school year, I am looking forward to using the flipped classroom model as my students will each have their own Chromebooks. This will allow me an opportunity to not only prepare some prerecorded classroom lectures for students to watch at home or outside of the classroom, but I will also include short videos that share key information about environmental issues within the community or globally. Thus our classroom experience can allow for more differentiated instruction and provide the students with more opportunities for cooperative group assignments. Classroom experiences can become more student-led with more hands-on activities as opposed to just focusing on mastery of specific topics. This approach would also open up the possibilities for students to explore problems at a deeper level using more higher-ordered thinking skills.
Not only will I use the flipped classroom model, but I will use both low tech and high tech tools and repurpose them for enhancing learning.
“Repurposing these cool tools for educational purposes, however, is not simple. If educators are to
repurpose tools and integrate them into their teaching, they require a specific kind of knowledge that
we call technological pedagogical and content knowledge (TPAK).”1
--Mishra, Punya, and Koehler, Mathew.
Through the assigned reading and careful reflection, I realized that I have perhaps been stuck in a specific teaching mode and that I may need to rethink how I teach students geometry. Have I been stuck on just one mode of teaching and not fully shifted to teach for a more global society. As detailed in the Journal of Digital Learning in Teacher Education in an article entitled, “What Knowledge is of Most Worth”, in addition to the fundamental knowledge of the core subject, I will also focus more succinctly on the following:
- Meta Knowledge
- Problem Solving & Critical Thinking
- Communication & Collaboration
- Cross-Disciplinary Knowledge2
References
1Mishra, P. and Koehler, M. (2009, May) “Too Cool for School? No Way!” International Society for Technology in Education, 14-18.
2Kereluik, K., Michra, P., Fahnoe, C., and Terry, L. (2013) “What Knowledge Is of Most Worth: Teacher Knowledge for 21st Century Learning” Journal of Digital Learning in Teacher Education. Volume 29 Number 4. 127-140.