Doing my own thing...Steph Kiero

Well, I've gone a bit rogue and worked on my own task this PLC.  Here is a bit about it.

1: I actually chose a tool related to "How can students show their knowledge in more effective digital formats?"  The tool will be Educreations and a shared Google Doc.  The goal is for students to have a digital platform to create and present problems, solve others' problems, and present solutions.

Students will work on a foam tile project in which they learn to write expressions to describe perimeter and surface area in terms of a variable.  They will also learn to group like terms and plug-in given values to evaluate an expression.  Students will practice with pre-designed tiles and ultimately create a tile and solution of their own to share on the class doc.  This is a multi-day lesson that I am teaching during Extended Math.  Students will spend one class period at the end viewing and solving problems from at least 3 other students.

Mt time table is behind everyone else, so I'm still figuring out what works and doesn't.  Posts 2 and 3 will be coming shortly.

PLC Round 3 Post 3

Using Blogger prompted everyone in class to be engaged simultaneously, and saved time in the class.  The students were using the target language in a personal way that wouldn't have happened verbally.  They were interacting more with each other.  They helped each other, and the teachers, with the technology.  Blogging removed the anxiety that sometimes accompanies class discussions.

PLC Round 3--Post 2

Group Reflection on classroom implementation of tool (BLOGGER) used


Instead of reflecting on Concordia, we decided to set up a classroom blog to begin a discussion using specific grammar points during group discussions.  Each language set up an 8th grade blog.

What worked:

All students participated in the blog and the set-up went smoothly.  Structure helped.

• In German Frau Grover assigned each student to write three sentences reflecting on a film.  Each sentence had to be unique requiring the students to read the other posts before making their own.
• After a long weekend or break French students practice what they did but this took a lot of class time and became disengaging.  When this activity became part of the blog, it took less class time.
• When they made mistakes another assignment was to make a suggestion to correct another
• Most students were respectful and engaged and some were able to use the language in a more personal way

What we learned:

An efficient way to invite multiple guests is to put a comma and a space between each member.

Structure helps.

This is a learning process and we learn from the students too.

You can label your post to help organize.

Up-loading pictures is possible.

Not many students had not blogged very much before.

What didn't work:

We had some students whose invitation expired.  Also a few students did not have authorization to use Blogger.

Some students made grammar errors and others read those and made the same mistake.