Reflection #7

1. There are three levels to classroom discussion. The first one is teacher to teacher. Teacher collaboration is very important when creating a project. Teacher may work together to talk about procedural ideas as well as how they can work together to create an assessment tool. The second level of classroom discussion is student to student. Students should be talking about their learning experience as they are learning. Remind students that communicating between each other will help them learn from each other. As a teacher it is important for you to listen in on student conversations. Model for your students the correct way to give effective feedback. The last level of classroom discussion is teacher to student. To me, it is most important to have a strong connection between the teacher and the student. In project based learning you really only once whole classroom discussions when introducing a subject, making an announcement or to wrap up a section of the project. It is more important that you have personal conversations with students to grasp how they feel about a project. 2. It is important to look at 4 areas when checking in with students: procedural, teamwork, understanding, and self assessment. Procedural just means they have all the basic things they need, such as are your students staying on tasks. It is important that students can work together in an effective way to make sure they are learning from each other. This may include asking students to write a reflective piece on working in their specific groups. 3. Students should be using appropriate technology for certain projects. Things to consider when thinking of the correct technology is questions like, is this helping the student learn or are they getting off task? Is the technology helping students stay organized? Are students using the technology to gain knowledge? Do all students have access to the technology they need? 4. The book talked about technology giving students a chance to relate to real life problems. The idea of using technology gives the students a chance to mess up and learn from their mistakes. The book said "In the traditional classroom, there's no room to fail. It's errorless learning". However, I do not agree with this statement. When I was in elementary school we didn't do hardly any activities on computers, or using technology at all. There were many chances that I had to mess up and still be able to learn from my mistakes. 5. The reason this chapter relates to our project is because I am having a hard time adjusting to the fact that technology is used in everything we do. I am a very traditional person and don't plan on using a lot of technology in the classroom. This relates to me personally because of this struggle. I also think this chapter relates to our project because we are three people working together to create a lesson plan.