Week+3+Reflections

Week 3 Reflections:

This week was a really busy week for our team. We each created individual books, lesson plans, and activities using the UDL website. Personally, I could take an entire course on all of the great options offered on the UDL website and still have more to learn. I didn’t spend a lot of time on the book builder, because it was not a great tool for my subject area or grade level. I teach 10-12th grade students Biology, Chemistry and Physics. But, there were tons of great resources links on the page for science. I have already found a use for the text to speech program in my classroom for English Language Learners. At the high school level, we only offer support services as most of them have tested out of ESL by age 16. However, they still have difficulty with the language and especially with complex language skills, like subject specific vocabulary. In the past, I have used a set of audio cd’s for the student edition textbook. These worked okay, but were not sufficient for helping students understand the pronunciation or meaning of the words. With the text to speech, students can get help with pronunciation. In addition to adding new tools to my toolkit this week, I furthered my knowledge of mastery and learning objectives with this week’s readings. “Students need to hear something new 24 times to achieve 80% mastery”. ( Pitler, H., Hubbell, E., Kuhn, M., & Malenoski, K. (2007). Using Technology With Classroom Instruction That Works. Alexandria, VA: Association for Supervision and Curriculum Development, Introduction, 3. ) This quote from this week’s reading was very profound for me. I had never realized how many times students needed to encounter new information for an average mastery. Students hear information only 1-4 times in class before most of our units are tested. I know that they are not getting the other 20 times at home. This tells me that I need to start altering the way I integrate review and reteach into my lesson plans so that students are integrating their knowledge at 80% mastery. This also helped me to clarify why so many students have difficulty with test scores. If they aren’t studying at home and only hearing the information 4-5 times in class, then it makes sense that their mastery level is around 50%. This week has helped me to realize that often just being aware that some things exist and that they effect the way our students master content is enough to change how I approach my lesson plans and instructional strategies. This week has been overall very helpful in that aspect. It has also forced me to branch out of my comfort zone and rework a project based on best practices described in our textbook by Pitler, (2007). Previously, students in our Biology course made a Biome Collage using traditional cut and paste, poster board strategies. I realized this week that how students create things can impact their mastery. Based on the information, I changed the project significantly to be more closely aligned with student’s at the focus of instruction. Students were free to choose their Biome. If they are interested in it, they will learn more and transfer the information better to their knowledge base. Then students were allowed to create their project using any means they wanted as long as they met/answered the objective questions for their Biomes. Students were encouraged to use their strengths: poster, scrapbooking, power point, word processing, research paper, iPhoto, iMovie, Movie Maker, PhotoStory, Audacity, Animation websites, etc. In addition, I gave students the grading rubric for the project ahead of time so that the learning objectives were clear. Pitler (2007), suggests from week 1 readings that for technology to be successful students have to have learning objectives clearly defined. Based on this thought, I pre-created a rubric to guide students’ projects. I have not received all of them yet, they are due the 16th, but I am very excited about the buzz students are creating for the project. I have definitely seen an increase in excitement about the project because students like what they are doing, their learning is self-directed, they are interested in the topic and format of the project, and they are in control of their own learning ! Back to 5364 Reflections: Teaching with Technology Reflections