The Alamo Zone

http://edtechreview.in/trends-insights/insights/259-21st-century-educator-skills

Although using the ASSURE model can help teachers become a 21st century teacher, there is more to that title than just a using a lesson plan format. A 21st century teacher’s job is to teach students how to learn.  We need to improve student learning while also being technologically competent at the same time. As teachers, we need to have more than just basic computer skills.  It is important that we use technology to create a learning experience for the students.  Many classrooms are now paperless and rely solely on technology for assessments, as well as all assignments.  This not only helps to prepare the students for the 21st century, but can also help classrooms become nearly paperless.  

What are the characteristics of a 21st century teacher? Read on...

http://www.edutopia.org/discussion/15-characteristics-21st-century-teacher

Schools should provide plenty of technology focused professional development.  If it is best practice to use technology in the classroom, then teachers need to be given the knowledge and the resources to do so.  Many times, schools will say they want teachers to use the latest and greatest thing, but then there is not enough training or support in order to make that happen.  

Technology also provides a great opportunity for teachers to connect with home.  Email is a great communication tool, but creating teacher webpages where assignments can be posted also help to improve the lines of communication between school and home.  My school uses pages such as Edmodo and Google Classroom.  Google Classroom allows teachers to send emails to parents about upcoming assignments as well.  

Teachers can also access a variety of educational grants, which can help tremendously in times of financial need.  Applying for a grant can be frustrating and time consuming, but there are resources available to help those teachers who are interested.  For more information about applying for educational grants, visit: http://www.neafoundation.org/pages/grants-to-educators/ . 

http://beckytoddlibrarian.org/tag/assure-model/

Although lesson plans written in the ASSURE model do take longer than many other accepted formats, this model helps teachers to set up at 21st Century classroom.  The text states: 

“By following the step by step ASSURE model, teachers receive the support and guidance to develop, implement, evaluate, and revise lessons that integrate technology to increase student learning and prepare them for future careers.” (Smaldino)

I think the ASSURE model really helps teachers think about the type of students they have and the learning characteristics of those students.  It really helps to put the classroom into prospective and helps the teacher think about what kinds of strategies will help all students get the most out of the learning experience in the classroom.  The revision component of the model also helps teachers look at student assessment and progress and really evaluate what worked and what didn’t in order to adjust the lesson for the future. 

The ASSURE model also helps teachers plan lesson components that will provide students with the opportunity to engage in higher order thinking and deep levels of learning that may not be achieved with other accepted lesson plan formats.  Despite the amount of time involved with writing the ASSURE model, these lessons will really help to prepare students for the 21st century in a variety of ways and help them to become successful beyond the walls of the classroom. 

The second part of this chapter talked about using visuals in the classroom, such as timelines, flowcharts, graphs, and photos.  So I figured this would be a good time to talk about the current unit in my English 12 class.  We do a unit on writing personal reflective essays.  We have the students do an electronic journal entry first to get them thinking.  The prompt asks them to think about an experience that had an effect, positive or negative, on their lives.  Once they finish the journal response, we give notes on writing a personal reflective essay.  We give them an example, and then talk about how to write the introduction, body paragraph, and the conclusion.  The most important part of the essay is not just writing about the experience, but figuring out the lesson that each person learned from the experience.  The lesson learned is then the thesis statement of the personal reflective essay.  Here is a website with some good information on how to write a personal reflective essay:

https://academichelp.net/academic-assignments/essay/write-reflective-essay.html

The next major part of the assignment (before the essay itself) is to have the students go through personal photos and think about at least five big events that had an impact on their lives.  We then use a site called ‘history’(hstry), which can be found at www.hstry.co. The students create their own visual timeline using personal photos and a brief paragraph about each event, along with what they learned from each event. We have used other sites before, such as Capzules, but this new site is actually more user friendly.  An example of my coworker’s timeline can be found here:

https://edu.hstry.co/timeline/my-life-in-pieces

Once the students create their timeline, they post it to Google classroom so the other students in the class can view it.  Each student must comment on at least two other students’ timelines and make a suggestion about which event the student should use for their personal reflective essay. We then have the students write a paragraph after eating some poprocks and talk about the tastes, smells, feelings, and anything else they experienced. The students are then given a graphic organizer to help them get their thoughts down on to paper as a prewriting activity for the personal reflective essay.  The students then begin writing their essays, which are a minimum of 5 paragraphs long.  The final essay will be submitted via Google Classroom.  Essays are graded using a rubric, which I also think is a great visual for the students so they know exactly how the assignment will be graded.  

This writing assignment is generally a favorite assignment for the students because they get to talk about themselves and their personal experiences.  It is also a rather easy assignment, once they can select the event to write about.  It is always nice to see the students so focused and engaged in a writing assignment.  On Friday when the students were writing, the only things you could hear were the sounds of the students typing on their Chromebooks.  The students also tend to share more personal experiences because they find that sometimes the more difficult events in their lives are the easiest to write about.  My coteacher and I always enjoy reading the essays once they are turned in because it really gives us some insight into our students.  It’s a real surprise sometimes to see what the students are willing to share and to read about some really tough personal experiences.  So although this is a predominantly a writing activity, the use of the visual timeline really acts as a jump off point for the final reflective essay.

Several years ago, I taught a Learning Support Literacy Skills class.  Our newly hired reading specialist set up the program and we taught it together for a marking period. The new class format would officially launch the following year. She taught me a lot of new strategies that I had never learned about before - strategies that would have helped me a great deal even though my college years. 

http://dcreads.wikispaces.com/DC+Reads+Documents

We focused a lot on interacting with the text.  This includes things such as making predictions, asking questions, making personal connections, visualizations, and reacting to the text.  What she told me was that we as good readers automatically do these things.  However, our struggling readers have never learned how to do it and it does not come naturally to them.  So how we addressed it was to read out loud to the students and stop periodically to have them write one of those responses directly on the text or to use sticky notes.  This skill later became known to the students as annotating the text and was a skill that eventually became emphasized in the English classes.  Although the students complain about having to annotate the text, it really does help them to comprehend what they are reading.  When I was in college, I would read and reread textbooks and never remember what I wrote.  Or, I had what I refer to as the “dreaded highlighter disease”.  This is where I would take a highlighter and highlight almost everything on a page because I was always afraid I would miss something important.  When it was all said and done, I could have used a black light to make the entire room glow from my highlighted pages.  If I had learned to annotate, comprehending the texts for my classes would have been much easier and I would have been able to stay more focused on what I was reading.  

We also focused on developing vocabulary.  We incorporated graphic organizers for new vocabulary words and simply had students create lists of words they were not familiar with from their independent reading books.  We also taught the students how to do a “textbook chapter walk”. This involved having the students simply look through a content area textbook and look at the parts - chapter titles, subheadings, bold faced words, graphs, charts, etc. This is a simple skill that content teachers could also incorporate into their classes, but many don’t think about how difficult it can be to interpret a textbook chapter.  

For more information about teaching literacy in the content areas, visit: http://www.edutopia.org/blog/literacy-instruction-across-curriculum-importance.

http://mrsand.weebly.com/english-iv.html

Students would also make written responses to not only the read aloud, but to their independent reading books.  We had designated the last 15 minutes of class time to independent reading.  Just like with any other skill, students need to practice in order to get better. Many of them have never really had the opportunity to sit down and read a book that they enjoyed (many of the students never realized there were books out there that they WOULD enjoy!).  

As I mentioned in my previous post, video resources are valuable tools in the classroom. As the text states, 

“8 to 18 year olds spend approximately 53 hours per week using entertainment media. Thus, teachers can build on this predisposition by integrating the viewing or producing of video into instruction.” (Smaldino)

It only makes sense that teachers try to use video when appropriate in order to engage our students.

In my cotaught English 12 class, we not only use video as an instructional tool, but we also have the students create their own videos during our unit on creating an argument. First, we introduce the lesson by talking about what an argument is and discussing Aristotle’s triangle, which addresses the three components of an effective argument: Logos, Ethos, and Pathos.  

https://www.pinterest.com/pin/247486941998354754/

The students are then given the assignment of creating a public service announcement that is geared towards the students at our school.  The students can use any resources that are available to them in order to create an effective public service announcement to present to the class.  

At a recent staff development day, I had the opportunity to attend a session on video editing.  We learned how to not only clip a video to use only the part that we need, but also learned how to edit out any inappropriate language.  Sometimes, there are video clips that can be valuable instructional tools, but they contain some foul language.  Through this staff development session, we learned how to “mute” out the inappropriate language to make the video clip suitable for students.  I found this session to be very beneficial and definitely something that my coworkers and I can use in the future.

My school also offers a Multimedia course.  In this course, students learn how to record “news” clips, edit clips, add audio, add video, and compile everything to create our daily morning announcements. Not only are the students learning valuable skills through this course, but they are also participating in authentic assessment because the final product is shown to the school on a daily basis.  The students also star in the videos themselves, serving as newscasters and weather reporters.  The teacher of this course is our resident audio/visual guy, and every year, he puts together an awesome video for our teacher talent show.  The video always stars a number of our faculty members. The students go absolutely nuts for these videos and they are a huge hit among the students and the staff every year. You can see an example of one of these videos below:

All of the classes where I coteach use a variety of audio and video resources to enhance learning.  For example, in my English 12 class, we use videos to get students writing.  We give the students a guided prompt, and then show them a video of something that is in the news.  The video clips are about 3 to 4 minutes long and come directly from reliable news sources, such as NBC Nightly News or other broadcasting news site. An example of a video clip we might use can be found here: http://www.nbcnews.com/nightly-news/video/teacher-volunteers-to-donate-her-kidney-to-first-grade-student-661200451862

Once the students are finished viewing the video, they respond to the given prompt in their electronic journals, followed by a full class discussion.  The videos really enhance to journal responses because it puts the topic into a visual format, and also helps to get the wheels turning in their heads.  We could give the same journal prompt, but without the video to accompany the prompt, the responses would not be as thorough.  We also use videos to accompany the novels we are reading.  For example, we read the novel, The Kite Runner, and at different times throughout the unit, we show clips from the movie. Showing the movie helps the students to put names with faces, as well as helps the students to visualize what is going on in the story.  The movie also provides the students with the chance to compare and contrast the movie with the book, which is a higher order thinking skill.  We just finished reading the biography, Escape from Camp 14, which is about the only person who was born in and escaped from a North Korean prison camp.  As we read the book, we also showed the students video clips of North Korea to help them understand what really happens in that country. Since it’s difficult for the students to wrap their heads around the fact that this is a true story, the video clips help to enhance the students’ understanding, not to mention the fact that it also helps them to appreciate what they have! We have also provided the students with audio versions of the books so that our struggling readers do not become frustrated and can be more engaged throughout the unit.   Although the clips are not always available, an example of an audio version we might use can be found here: 

In my English 11 class, we have used video to accompany some of the British literature we read in class. We showed the students The Wife of Bath before delving into the Canterbury Tales, and we also just finished the movie for Macbeth after finishing the play. Since Shakespeare can be difficult to follow, the movie helps the students to understand what was going on in the story.  

I also coteach a Chemistry class.  Video definitely helps the students to understand the chemical processes because they can actually see what is happening in a chemical reaction.  For example, we discussed the reactivity of certain elements on the periodic table, and in order for the students to understand how some elements are more reactive than others, we showed a video of scientists putting the different elements into the same type of setting (water).  

http://www.clinton.k12.ky.us/News/30744#sthash.M4OWCTdH.dpbs

Anyone who watches daytime television during the week will be inundated with commercials for cyber charter schools.  And, there seems to be more and more online schools opening each day.  However, I am not a fan of the full time cyber charter school option.  My experience has been that the students who decide to do a full time cyber school are the students who do not want to come to school, do not want to do their work, and do not want to follow the school rules.  We get emails when students complete a cyber school program. However, rarely do we actually get those emails and rarely are the student successful. Granted, this is a valuable option for those students who will truly benefit from it.  For example, a student may have an illness that does not allow them to attend school regularly or a student has severe social issues that make attending school difficult.  But, it is not a good option for all students.  I think the lack of structure sets the students up for failure. If they were not completing their work in a traditional school setting, its not very likely that they will take the initiative to complete the work for a cyber charter school.  We have also had reports of students’ parents completing the online coursework for them, and there was really no way for the school to prove it.  We have had a lot of students leave to do cyber school and then come back because they realized they were not successful.  By that time, they have lost valuable instruction and it can be difficult to make up for the missed time.

The cyber charter schools are also for profit, and I have a hard time with the fact that the school districts have to hand over money when school budgets are so tight. My principal once told me that it costs our district $25,000 a year to send a learning support student to a cyber charter school.  At one time, our district was paying 1.5 million dollars to send students to cyber charter schools with little to no success because they simply did not graduate.  With the lack of success, those school dollars could be spent to improve things inside the classroom instead of throwing them away on programs that are not being successful. The Huffington Post posted an article about the funding issues with cyber charter schools, which can be found here: 

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/zachary-k-pearce/cyber-charter-school_b_1654741.html

http://www.learndash.com/category/distance-learning/

I think distance learning can be a great option.  Personally, I enjoy being able to take online classes from the comfort of my own home. It works very well for me because I can work around my job and family responsibilities because I can do the work in my own time.  I would never be able to sit in a traditional college setting one or two nights a week for 3 hours anymore.  Distance learning has made it possible for me to further my education, and for that I am very grateful.   My husband also completed his master’s degree through an online program.  Once again, the online program provided him with the opportunity to further his education while still working a full time job and keeping up with family life.  I feel that distance learning has opened the door for a lot of people to go back to school, an option that may not have been previously available to them.

An article that discusses the different models of blended learning can be found here: 

http://www.dreambox.com/blog/6-models-blended-learning

My school has started to offer a blended learning option for several classes.  This is a new option, so I am unsure at this time as to how successful the program really is, but I know more classes are going to be added next year.  The students meet during a scheduled class period and complete the required work for the day.  They then meet face to face with the teacher one day a week. At this time, the blended option is only available for Physics and Safety Education, but I do believe the course options are expanding for next year.  

My school also offers some classes through a cyber program as a credit recovery option.  Students can complete the online course work during a study hall or outside of school.  The school counselors get weekly updates about the student’s progress and can follow up if the work is not being completed. This option has been successful for students but not others.  Some students simply do not do well with the less structured educational setting. However, I do believe this is a good way for some students to complete extra courses or to make up a course that he or she had previously failed.  

The second part of the chapter focuses on supporting learning context with technology and media.  Each of the contexts mentioned has its advantages and disadvantages and do not work for everyone, but each one has something to offer.  The first context mentioned is face to face instruction.  As a high school teacher, I truly believe this format is the most beneficial for my students.  My learning support students struggle as it is and benefit from small group instruction or one to one instruction.  I think taking the teacher component away sets those students up for failure.  Face to face instruction provides immediate interaction and students can pretty much get the help they need right away, or have their questions answered right away. I will always believe that there is no real substitute for having an actual human being teaching school age students directly in a classroom setting.  Here is an article that talks about the benefits of face to face instruction:

https://www.natcom.org/CommCurrentsArticle.aspx?id=884

I think distance learning is beneficial at the higher academic levels, such as college or grad school.  As a working adult with a family, I am grateful for the opportunity to be able to take classes online.  However, I am also disciplined enough to get my work done and meet deadlines.  I do not feel that distance learning is the best option for a majority of high school students.  I think it can be a good option for those students who cannot attend a traditional high school for some reason (such as a student at my school who is currently going through chemotherapy).  However, I do not believe this should be the go-to option for students who do not like school.  I see too many students who have not been successful in a cyber school setting.  I feel it has become a cop out for many students who simply do not want to get out of bed in the morning or do not want to follow school rules.  And, from what I have seen at my school, these students are simply not successful and end up dropping out anyway.  If they were not disciplined enough while attending a traditional school setting to complete their work, they will not be disciplined enough to complete it in a less structured setting.  I also feel that these types of programs are a drain on the financial resources of the already struggling public schools.  My principal once told me that it costs my school $25,000 dollars a year to educate a learning support student in cyber school.  

http://giphy.com/gifs/KJg6Znn4V1Jcs

Although I understand that such a context does have its advantages, I have rarely seen it be successful with the students from my school.  

My school is currently experimenting with blended learning in several different classes, although I am not yet sure of how successful this context is since we have only started it this year and I do not have a great deal of interaction with the students who participate.  The option for blended learning classes, such as Safety Education and Physics, is available on our course selection sheets for next year as well, so I am assuming our administration is seeing some success with the program.  

http://www.memegen.com/meme/ie2327

The first part of Chapter 4 focuses on the types of learning strategies.  The presentation strategy is frequently used in my cotaught classes.  My English 12 coteacher uses this strategy to give notes to the students, and although we are doing most of the talking, the presentation is also very informal and there is a lot of opportunity for the students to contribute their own thoughts.  I think this strategy is necessary in order to provide the students with new information for a unit.  We use a lot of power points when presenting new material, but the students are not expected to take a very large amount of notes.  

http://rebloggy.com/post/lol-fail-funny-gifs-omg-supernatural-school-class-education-entertainment/39864302469

We stick to the basics to get the point across, and rarely do we spend an entire class period in the presentation strategy. Although my coteacher is extremely entertaining and engaging, we do have some students who simply cannot stay focused out of boredom, not getting enough sleep, or simply because they are distracted by outside factors.  It can also be difficult for the students to copy the notes, so I also take notes and can provide those to the students who struggle.

The demonstration strategy is used primarily in my cotaught Chemistry class.  Atlhough my two English classes give the students models to follow, Chemistry is a completey different type of class.  Demonstrations are often used at the beginning of a unit and they work well for giving the students a concrete idea of what a specific Chemistry term means.  For example, when we talk about physical and chemical changes, a demonstration works really well for showing the students the difference between the two.  

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gCbqjs-pqJo

Discussion is another strategy that is used frequently in my English 12 class, and the one that I feel is the most engaging.  I think it helps many of the students to feel comfortable because they can freely share ideas and thoughts on the topics.  Even during presentations of new information, there is a lot of discussion that takes place.  Each week, the students are expected to read several chapters of our independent novel and then we engage in a fishbowl discussion about the section that were read.  This strategy is extremely engaging, and it also gives my coteacher and I some insight into which students are really reading and which ones are not.  Here is a link that explains what a fishbowl discussion is and how it can be incorporated into a class:

https://www.facinghistory.org/resource-library/teaching-strategies/fishbowl

There is not a great deal of drill and practice used in the classes where I coteach, but I know it is used frequently in our math classes.  My school currently uses a program that has students complete math problems and it provides feedback about the answers.  I’m not entirely familiar with the program because I do not coteach a math class, but from what I have seen the students have to answer a certain number of questions before they can progress to the next level.  Students are also given a certain number of objectives to master each week.  The program is available online so the students are not limited to working on it in the classroom only.  If the students do not get the correct answers, the program provides feedback to walk them through the steps of solving the problem.  My school has seen a great deal of success with these types of drill and practice programs and our Keystone scores have increased significantly over the past few years since we have been using them.  

I would say that cooperative learning is used most often in my classes when there is group work involved.  We do not do any activities that involve the students interacting with students or people in a location outside of the classroom, but the students can interact with each other outside of the classroom through the use of Google Docs.  When we use cooperative learning, there is always a finished product at the end, such as a public service announcement or a debate. This strategy works well as long as everyone sees themselves as a part of the team and contributes equally to the finished product.  In addition to the scores we give the students, we give them the opportunity to score each other.  

Require Learner Participation

I’m sure we can all remember those days in high school (or maybe even college!) where the teachers did not expect us to participate. We were just supposed to sit there and listen to them talk.  And to be honest, I can’t remember a single thing I learned in any of those classes.  Sure, I probably had to memorize something for a test later on in the week and I can remember writing my notes over and over again just so I would retain that information.  But actually learning something? Nope, didn’t happen. If those teachers had taken the time to get us involved, I’m sure I would have learned something (and maybe even remember what class I learned it in!).

http://www.relatably.com/m/boring-lecture-memes

Student participation is such a crucial part of the learning process.  We cannot simply expect our students to sit passively by and absorb the information we give them.  With the number of distractions today (cell phones, texting, social media, etc.) our students’ minds are elsewhere.  That’s a lot of interference for us to compete with in a class period.  In order to reach our students and get them to truly learn, we have to involve them in the learning process.  My cotaught English 12 class uses a lot of discussion (plus my coteacher is extremely engaging).  I think a good portion of our class time each day is spent in discussion even when the students are taking notes.  And there is no doubt they learn and remember what is discussed.  I think this video might sum it up. **Warning: some lyrics may be considered offensive, depending upon your sense of humor**

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VxkHM4DUDKM

It’s even more effective if we can get the students to participate using the technology they love so dearly.  Chromebooks are used almost daily in both of my cotaught English classes.  But it is also important to use technology that has meaning to what’s being done in class.  And when the technology is used for the right reasons, it can get our students thinking at a higher level. 

“Students use critical thinking skills to plan and conduct research, manage projects, solve problems, and make informed decisions using appropriate digital tools and resources” (Smaldino et. al., 2015). 

For example, in my cotaught English 12 class, students had to create a public service announcement as a final product for our unit on creating an argument. The students had to think about the target audience (the population of our school), the message they were trying to send, and how they needed to send that message using ethos, logos, and pathos (ethics, logic, and emotion).  This activity used technology and required higher order critical thinking skills.  We also use Google Docs almost exclusively, which allows the students to collaborate with each other inside and outside of the classroom, or communicate with the teachers in real time.  We don’t use a lot of educational software for practice, other than using Kahoot for review in my Chemistry class. However, our math classes do use an online program for practice, which gives them immediate feedback on their progress.  The teacher would not be able to review each student’s progress at the same time, so the program does the job.  Students cannot move on to the next level until they have hit a certain level of mastery.  

Although I feel I provide my students with feedback, this is an area where I need to improve.  I need to provide more feedback throughout the process rather than just at the end.  From the discussions with colleagues in other classes, this is an area that a lot of teachers feel they need to work on.  It just goes to show you that no matter how effective you are (or may think you are) or how long you have been in this profession, there is always something we need to improve upon.

Evaluate and Revise

As good educators, we need to constantly evaluate our lessons and ourselves.  We need to figure out what worked, what didn’t work, and how we can change it.   

“Without this step, it is impossible to know whether instruction is successful or how to revise unsuccessful stages” (Saldino et. al., 2015). 

I think it is also important to provide students with the opportunity to evaluate themselves and each other.  And it is also important for us to give students the opportunity to demonstrate what they learned through real world strategies, or authentic assessment.  Giving students a project to complete is not only a better assessment of what they learned, but it is much more engaging for the students.  We also need to be willing to let the students evaluate us.  They have to listen to us day in and day out, so their feedback is important.  

http://visihow.com/Avoid_Sleeping_During_Class

Even though we may not like what they have to say, as long as it is reasonable, we really should value their opinions.  In many ways, I think that the opinions of the students are more meaningful and more valuable than an administrator who only comes in one class period every few months.

State Standards and Objectives - Why do we need them? 

As teachers, we are all too familiar with standards and objectives.  It’s what we have heard about from day one of our educational training, right? Well, what is really new for me are there technology based standards.  Since technology was not a big thing when I was in college, such standards did not even exist (I didn’t even send my first email until my junior year of college in 1995!) But these objectives really help to drive our lessons and figure out exactly what our students should be learning.  

http://sagansense.tumblr.com/post/102568132115/soyeah-this-happened-during-a-press

My administration is pretty flexible with how we write our lesson plans.  They figure as long as key components are included and the lessons are easy to follow, we can use whatever format we want.  And, I must admit, that as a coteacher, I am not really writing my own lesson plans.  My coteachers have the content based lesson plans that they have been using, and I add in adaptations.  But my administration does not require the technology based standards to be included at this time.  And, I think almost every teacher at my school (except for the one who has been there for almost 40 years) is incorporating technology to the best of their ability.  So although we have become experts at writing lesson plans and it is expected that we incorporate technology into our classrooms, it is not mandatory to include the standards in our plans.  And, if schools are moving towards using more and more technology, it only makes sense that these standards should be included in our lesson plans.  A full list of these technology standards can be found here:

http://www.iste.org/standards/iste-standards

Selecting Strategies

We use a variety of strategies and resources in my cotaught classes.  Since my students really range in ability level, we have to figure out not only what motivates them, but we have to figure out what works best for them.  We do a lot of teacher strategies, but also incorporate a lot of student centered strategies.  My cotaught English 12 class is very project based so the students spend a lot of time working in groups.  We have had students create their own country, which tied in with our reading of Animal Farm.  We just completed a debate unit where the students researched, created both affirmative and negative arguments for a topic, and then actually debated the topic against another team.  This unit focused on the students creating an argument and backing it up with evidence, which is a valuable skill for the real world.  We don’t want any of our students to have this experience...

http://www.dumpaday.com/funny-pictures/funny-pictures-42-pics-10/attachment/funny-educational-quotes/

My English 12 class uses electronic journal entries which are completed in response to viewing current event video clips.  This ties in with what the text mentioned as students discussing the pros and cons of a topic.  

We may come up with some great strategies, but if those strategies do not work for our students, or they do not have the prerequisite skills to benefit from that strategy, they will not be motivated.  And without that motivation, the students will not learn.  We do not want the students to feel that they will fail before they even begin.  

http://danielskatz.net/2015/03/27/does-anyone-in-education-reform-care-if-teaching-is-a-profession/

Selecting Resources

Teachers have access to so many great technological tools and resources to help students learn.  However, we cannot simply use technology just because we have it.  We have to make sure that it ties in with the content and that the students can really learn from it.  No one will benefit from technology and media that is not connected to what is they should be learning. My coteachers and I spend time reviewing potential media prior to using it with the class.  For example, we are reading Escape from Camp 14 in my English 12 class, which is a story about the only person ever born into and to escape from a North Korean prison camp. I told my coteacher that YouTube had some video clips which documented information about these camps, so we spent time on a staff development day viewing the videos.  

We could pick and choose what we wanted to use rather than waste the time showing everything when only half of it would really work with our class.  Here is an example of one of the videos we used.  This is an episode of the HBO show, “Vice”, taken from YouTube: