Monitoring My Game Plan Progress

 

As I continue to work towards my masters degree at Walden, one of the most important pieces that has stuck out to me is the importance of reflection. Not only the importance of teacher reflection, but the importance of student reflection. This led me to developing my GAME plan with a focus on student reflection and personal reflection.

Each week I continue to dive deeper into my GAME plan and each week I feel that I am becoming a better reflective teacher. This week I have changed up my lesson plan style. At the bottom of each day I have added a reflection section where I can quickly sit down and jot down notes about what went well and where I need to improve. I also have been jotting down student names that seemed to struggle and the approach I would take with them. I would say that this process has averaged about an extra five minutes a day, but has been worth it. I feel like I have been better at going back the next day and reviewing material that did not go well in new ways and better at pulling struggling students back to re-teach. The process seems to be working well, but I am always looking for suggestions on better ways to reflect as a teacher.

The area that I still continue to improve on is my goal for having my students reflect. I mentioned last week that I had placed the students on the website My Big Campus and had them reflect. The process went ok, but I was not overly happy with the final results. This week I did an example reflection with my class and talked them through the thinking process and what I was looking for in a good reflection. My next step is to create a rubric or a checklist for the kids. I feel with a rubric or checklist it will give the kids something to help guide them and allow them to better understand my expectations. I am currently discussing with fellow teachers and walden colleagues what types of rubrics have been successful for them and hope to have one completed soon.

At this point I do not feel like I need to modify my action plan. As our reading discusses reflection is extremely complex and demanding process that requires a lifetime of dedication (Cennamo, Ross, and Ertmer, 2009). I will continue to try new methods and work with my students to create the best fit for our classroom. It will take time and lots of work, but I truly believe the benefits that will come from it are worth all of the work.

References:

Cennamo, K., Ross, J. & Ertmer, P. (2009). Technology integration for meaningful classroom use: A standards-based approach. (Laureate Education, Inc., Custom ed.). Belmont, CA: Wadsworth, Cengage Learning.

Carrying Out My GAME Plan

 
Last week I discussed my GAME plan. Both of my goals were based around reflection, which is an area that I feel is important for both students and teachers. My first goal is to use blogging with students to help build a reflective classroom and my second goal is to reflect on my own practices and how I use technology to enhance it. In order to carry out these goals it is going to take some work and lots of planning. To start the planning stage I need to ask myself three questions: 1. what resources will I need to carry out the plan, 2. What additional information do I need, and 3. What steps have you been able to take so far.

Resources Needed/Additional Information:
For the most part I have the resources that I will need. Students have their own MacBooks and I have my smartboard to do demonstrations and show expectations. Through talking to colleagues and trial and error I will have to come up with the best student friendly blog that will meet my needs. I will also need to come up with a way to organize my own reflections in a useable format. To accomplish this I will once again talk with colleagues and explore options to see which one best fits my needs. 
 
Steps Taken So Far:
This week I took my first step of trying to get students involved in reflection through blogging. We currently use a website called My Big Campus with out students. This website resembles Facebook, but in a clean educational format. I have previously completed discussions on here, but never had the students reflect on their knowledge. This week we did a small reflection on what they learned after a lesson and what they still are struggling with. It went well, but I would like to do more with it in the future. Reflection was a new process to my students and they are going to need lots of practice and demonstrations. 

In this weeks video, Dr. Ross discussed the importance of technology and how it can reach different learners and enhance the learning of diverse learners (Laureate Education, 2010). Through reflection I hope to gain knowledge of what technology works best for my students and what they need incorporated to better their education. Technology truly does allow us to adapt education to each individual students needs.

Developing Your Personal GAME Plan

 This week I visited the International Society for Technology in Education website. On this website, I used the National Education Standards for Teachers (NETS-T) to evaluate my teaching strategies to determine if I am successfully teaching 21^st Century Skills. I discovered that, for the most part, I am following the standards they have listed, but there are a few areas that I need to improve on. I have selected two standards and will discuss my GAME plan for strengthening my confidence below.

In our reading last week, Cennamo, Ross and Ertmer (2009) discussed that todays learners are self directed. They discussed that self-directed learners must follow a four step process to be successful. This four step process is know as the GAME Plan. The four steps are set goals, take action, monitor progress, and evaluate goal success (Cennamo et al., 2009)

The first standard that I plan on strengthening my confidence in is promoting student reflection using collaborative tools to reveal and clarify students’ conceptual understanding and thinking, planning, and

creative processes (ISTE, 2008). My goal is to use blogging with students to help build a reflective classroom. I will ask students to reflect on their learning at the end of each unit. In their reflections I will ask them to make goals and then go back and evaluate their goals at a later date.

The second standard that I plan on strengthening my confidence in is evaluating and reflecting on current research and professional practice on a regular basis to make effective use of existing and emerging digital tools and resources in support of student learning (ISTE, 2008). I feel that the process of reflection can be very important to improving your teaching strategies. My focus for reflection will be on the impact incorporating technology had on the lesson or where I can add new technology to make the lesson even more effective. When I see areas of improvement in my reflection I will immediately take action and incorporate my findings and then reflect on if the change improved the lesson. Through reflection I will constantly be evaluating and making changes. I feel this will help keep me on top of my game and allow me to do what is best for my students.

I am excited to get to work on my goals. I hope that these goals will make me a better teacher and allow me to improve my students learning. Hopefully, when students leave my room they will be better prepared to be members of the 21^st century community and have a passion for being a life long learner.

References:

Cennamo, K., Ross, J. & Ertmer, P. (2009). Technology integration for meaningful classroom use: A s tandards-based approach. (Laureate Education, Inc., Custom ed.). Belmont, CA: Wadsworth, Cengage Learning

International Society for Technology in Education. (ISTE). (2008). National education standards for teachers (NETS-T). Retrieved from http://www.iste.org/standards/nets-for-teachers