Identify desired results -
In our complex classrooms of today it is imperative that educators adjust their thinking about how students evaluate themselves as effective speakers and active listeners. With our ever changing world we as educators must ensure we scaffold for effective speaking and active listening in and out of our classrooms.
Through the key idea for Creative Expression integrating Fine Arts my goal that I seek to achieve is to employ effective speaking and active listening skills for a range of purposes and audiences in and out of the classroom. Why effective speaking and active listening is key to the discipline and what I will stress to my students is that research says that success in our global world depends greatly on the ability to effectively communicate and actively listen for a range of purposes and audiences. This discipline exists interpersonally with the affordance of integrating oral, visual, and graphic information. This discipline of speaking and listening is so important as part of my key idea because through this discipline students will be challenged more to think critically, solve for complex problems, work collaboratively, communicate effectively, listen actively, and incorporate meaning feedback. As the educator it is my responsibility to support my students awareness of the purpose of this disciplinary expertise. By doing so I will inform students that this discipline of effective speaking and active listening is the driving force of their interpersonal skills.
My goal is to dive deeply into expressing and offering opportunities that model how interpersonal skills are life skills and we use our interpersonal skills everyday to communicate and interact with other people both individually and in groups. Informing students of these necessary skills will allow students to take ownership and foster an awareness of how important their speaking and listening skills as well as overall interpersonal skills plays a huge part with them being college and career ready. Speaking and listening has an essential knowledge base that is applicable to students comprehension skills, collaboration skills, presentation skills, listening skills, and responsive/feedback skills. Students can apply these interpersonal skills to different areas of their learning and performances. As I seek the methods of developing this skill I am vested in using scoring rubrics for speaking and listening. It will be my aim to provide students with a criteria for their evaluations of their communication and listening tasks as a form of evidence and build capacity for fair and equal assessment.
Determine acceptable evidence ( performances of understanding) -
The forms of representing this knowledge would be but not limited to Fish Bowl Circles, Socratic Seminars, research reports, accountable turn and talk, focused free write, oral speeches role play, project presentations, graphic organizers, concept mapping, open-ended questions and conversational or procedural communication.
The facets that are important to the disciplines I will be teaching are explain, interpret, apply, and have perspective. Assessing these facets of understanding would be done in various ways for example as students are explaining their data or project design the student will be assessed using a rubric to determine if their explanation has facts, data, and testable design by its set criteria. Assessing interpretations through speaking and listening would be done during Fish Bowl discussion circles, and Socratic Seminar circles so that during this engagement I can assess student ideas and how they relate to the content. Assessing student's application will be done through oral speeches, role play, graphic organizers, concept mapping, research reports, accountable turn and talk. Having perspectives will be assessed using mock trials, class discussions and debates, along with argumentative teams. This would provide opportunities for students to communicate their point of view and others to be active listeners then be able to agree and disagree rebuttal or refute their classmate’s claim. These kinds of assessment I would use to determine whether or not my students have indeed gained understanding of the Big Idea.
The focus of the aspects of these performances of understandings will provide opportunities for students to develop their interpersonal skills through various activities that will require students to explain and communicate their thinking building on what they already know and expanding their knowledge and applying what they have learned to new situations. This is important because the activities /assessments I will include will allow for students to use what they already know , apply it in new ways and transfer that knowledge to new situations. These assessments would be ongoing for my students . I would make this clear with my students through setting up a class check - in chart to generate a list of why it is important to include performances of understanding and include possible ideas to discuss. Then after we have generated the list of possible ideas for performances of understanding we will target the ones that support Big Idea or goals, this would make it relevant to students and their work.
Making public performances of understandings makes learning exciting, authentic, valuable, and fun. I will provide students with criteria by which the performances will be assessed and give students opportunities to assess their own and their peers work.
Performances of Understandings would be divided into three areas of performances: Initial performance, Mid-Way performance, and Sum it - up performance. These performances would occur throughout the unit of study at the appropriate time. So when I began a unit/topic , student would be given an initial performance of understanding to assess students; current understanding of the unit/topic. As the content progresses along , student would have a mid- way assessment which would occur in the middle of the unit/topic for students to develop their understanding of the content.. Lastly students would have a sum it - up performances of understanding where students are now able to synthesize their learning. Students will be evaluated by their responses to open-ended questions, using supporting evidence to support claims or arguments, also students would be evaluated by making predictions and providing evidence to support their predictions. Diagrams , simulations, and models will also be used for performances of understanding. Students would receive feedback on their performances through one-to-one conferences/check-ins, Quick check-list response, Suggestions for opportunities to make revisions, and peer to peer feedback.
Plan learning experience and instruction -
Context - I teach three sixth grade Science classes at Myra Bradwell School of Excellence. This is a neighborhood school with the enrollment population of 98.9% African Americans. At my school sixth thru eighth grade is considered the middle school. This school year 2015 - 2016 our middle school sixth graders will have access to one class block period of sixty minutes with a MAC - Lab . I will use this block to co-teach with the music teacher which we will unit plan, collaborate, and co-teacher the Science discipline and provide opportunities for students to transfer content knowledge and integrate Fine Arts. While having the full use of the Mac- Lab, I will implement the Big Ideas mentioned in Phase II and I have decided along with my administrator to begin small with the integration of the Fine Arts with a focus on music and gradually embed the other disciplines. With that being my focus all three sixth grade Science classes, the music teacher will incorporate the instructional strategies and tools to seventh and eighth grade Science classes. So , ultimately our middle school Science and music classes will all be involved and engaged in the ImagineIT Project.
Content - The sixth grade Science consists of three areas of the Science which are Life Sciences, Earth Sciences, and Physical Sciences. So My students struggle with the CCSS that involve Speaking and Listening and my students have a difficult experience effectively speaking and actively listening.So I want my students to overcome this barrier and foster an awareness of the importance of having developed interpersonal skills which lead to being college and career opportunity ready. This year it is my hope along with the implementation of this ImagineIT project that my students foster and establish effective speaking skills and active listening skills to build their comprehension, become effective collaborators, and be able to present their knowledge and ideas using various forms of multimedia to become successful globally.
Pedagogy - The pedagogical approaches I plan to use are Blended Learning, Learning by Doing, Learning through discussion and debate, and Discovery Learning. These pedagogical approaches will engage my students in collaboration opportunites, complex problem solving experiences, goal setting skills, effective communication, active listening and by far enhancement of interpersonal skills. to be applied cross curricula through integration of Fine Arts in and out of the classroom. There will be opportunities for students to work together on tasks as a group task and their will other time students will work individually for task mastery. Groups will be designed for mixed - ability and differentiated tasks given to the groups. It is my hope that students become effective in their communicative skills and active listeners through their Creative Expression.
Technology - The technology students will have access to is our schools Mac- Lab. This is where students will have opportunities to research content , develop oral speeches, transfer knowledge to construct new meaning, have opportunities to use google to be reflective about their learning, make slide presentations, digital journaling and opportunities to showcase the interconnectedness of domains by designing a product. I am hopeful that through this platform my students will enhance their speaking and listening skills to showcase their interpersonal skills for global competitiveness.
TPACK “Sweet Spot” - Through TPACK framework structure the goal is to hit the “sweet spot” and in order for this to occur technology , pedagogy, and content knowledge must be interwoven into the same fabric , where all three are threaded into one cloth and all hit the “sweet spot” to help students visualize and construct understanding of the interconnectedness of domains. So while facilitating , instructing, and co-teaching I will select pedagogical strategies and technology that will identify performances of understanding goals for the class period. As students engage, explore, expand, extrapolate from, this leads to the “sweet spot” So in order for our students to be competitive globally this is the structure for ensuring the holistic learner has been equipped to be successful and reach their highest potential.
In our complex classrooms of today it is imperative that educators adjust their thinking about how students evaluate themselves as effective speakers and active listeners. With our ever changing world we as educators must ensure we scaffold for effective speaking and active listening in and out of our classrooms.
Through the key idea for Creative Expression integrating Fine Arts my goal that I seek to achieve is to employ effective speaking and active listening skills for a range of purposes and audiences in and out of the classroom. Why effective speaking and active listening is key to the discipline and what I will stress to my students is that research says that success in our global world depends greatly on the ability to effectively communicate and actively listen for a range of purposes and audiences. This discipline exists interpersonally with the affordance of integrating oral, visual, and graphic information. This discipline of speaking and listening is so important as part of my key idea because through this discipline students will be challenged more to think critically, solve for complex problems, work collaboratively, communicate effectively, listen actively, and incorporate meaning feedback. As the educator it is my responsibility to support my students awareness of the purpose of this disciplinary expertise. By doing so I will inform students that this discipline of effective speaking and active listening is the driving force of their interpersonal skills.
My goal is to dive deeply into expressing and offering opportunities that model how interpersonal skills are life skills and we use our interpersonal skills everyday to communicate and interact with other people both individually and in groups. Informing students of these necessary skills will allow students to take ownership and foster an awareness of how important their speaking and listening skills as well as overall interpersonal skills plays a huge part with them being college and career ready. Speaking and listening has an essential knowledge base that is applicable to students comprehension skills, collaboration skills, presentation skills, listening skills, and responsive/feedback skills. Students can apply these interpersonal skills to different areas of their learning and performances. As I seek the methods of developing this skill I am vested in using scoring rubrics for speaking and listening. It will be my aim to provide students with a criteria for their evaluations of their communication and listening tasks as a form of evidence and build capacity for fair and equal assessment.
Determine acceptable evidence ( performances of understanding) -
The forms of representing this knowledge would be but not limited to Fish Bowl Circles, Socratic Seminars, research reports, accountable turn and talk, focused free write, oral speeches role play, project presentations, graphic organizers, concept mapping, open-ended questions and conversational or procedural communication.
The facets that are important to the disciplines I will be teaching are explain, interpret, apply, and have perspective. Assessing these facets of understanding would be done in various ways for example as students are explaining their data or project design the student will be assessed using a rubric to determine if their explanation has facts, data, and testable design by its set criteria. Assessing interpretations through speaking and listening would be done during Fish Bowl discussion circles, and Socratic Seminar circles so that during this engagement I can assess student ideas and how they relate to the content. Assessing student's application will be done through oral speeches, role play, graphic organizers, concept mapping, research reports, accountable turn and talk. Having perspectives will be assessed using mock trials, class discussions and debates, along with argumentative teams. This would provide opportunities for students to communicate their point of view and others to be active listeners then be able to agree and disagree rebuttal or refute their classmate’s claim. These kinds of assessment I would use to determine whether or not my students have indeed gained understanding of the Big Idea.
The focus of the aspects of these performances of understandings will provide opportunities for students to develop their interpersonal skills through various activities that will require students to explain and communicate their thinking building on what they already know and expanding their knowledge and applying what they have learned to new situations. This is important because the activities /assessments I will include will allow for students to use what they already know , apply it in new ways and transfer that knowledge to new situations. These assessments would be ongoing for my students . I would make this clear with my students through setting up a class check - in chart to generate a list of why it is important to include performances of understanding and include possible ideas to discuss. Then after we have generated the list of possible ideas for performances of understanding we will target the ones that support Big Idea or goals, this would make it relevant to students and their work.
Making public performances of understandings makes learning exciting, authentic, valuable, and fun. I will provide students with criteria by which the performances will be assessed and give students opportunities to assess their own and their peers work.
Performances of Understandings would be divided into three areas of performances: Initial performance, Mid-Way performance, and Sum it - up performance. These performances would occur throughout the unit of study at the appropriate time. So when I began a unit/topic , student would be given an initial performance of understanding to assess students; current understanding of the unit/topic. As the content progresses along , student would have a mid- way assessment which would occur in the middle of the unit/topic for students to develop their understanding of the content.. Lastly students would have a sum it - up performances of understanding where students are now able to synthesize their learning. Students will be evaluated by their responses to open-ended questions, using supporting evidence to support claims or arguments, also students would be evaluated by making predictions and providing evidence to support their predictions. Diagrams , simulations, and models will also be used for performances of understanding. Students would receive feedback on their performances through one-to-one conferences/check-ins, Quick check-list response, Suggestions for opportunities to make revisions, and peer to peer feedback.
Plan learning experience and instruction -
Context - I teach three sixth grade Science classes at Myra Bradwell School of Excellence. This is a neighborhood school with the enrollment population of 98.9% African Americans. At my school sixth thru eighth grade is considered the middle school. This school year 2015 - 2016 our middle school sixth graders will have access to one class block period of sixty minutes with a MAC - Lab . I will use this block to co-teach with the music teacher which we will unit plan, collaborate, and co-teacher the Science discipline and provide opportunities for students to transfer content knowledge and integrate Fine Arts. While having the full use of the Mac- Lab, I will implement the Big Ideas mentioned in Phase II and I have decided along with my administrator to begin small with the integration of the Fine Arts with a focus on music and gradually embed the other disciplines. With that being my focus all three sixth grade Science classes, the music teacher will incorporate the instructional strategies and tools to seventh and eighth grade Science classes. So , ultimately our middle school Science and music classes will all be involved and engaged in the ImagineIT Project.
Content - The sixth grade Science consists of three areas of the Science which are Life Sciences, Earth Sciences, and Physical Sciences. So My students struggle with the CCSS that involve Speaking and Listening and my students have a difficult experience effectively speaking and actively listening.So I want my students to overcome this barrier and foster an awareness of the importance of having developed interpersonal skills which lead to being college and career opportunity ready. This year it is my hope along with the implementation of this ImagineIT project that my students foster and establish effective speaking skills and active listening skills to build their comprehension, become effective collaborators, and be able to present their knowledge and ideas using various forms of multimedia to become successful globally.
Pedagogy - The pedagogical approaches I plan to use are Blended Learning, Learning by Doing, Learning through discussion and debate, and Discovery Learning. These pedagogical approaches will engage my students in collaboration opportunites, complex problem solving experiences, goal setting skills, effective communication, active listening and by far enhancement of interpersonal skills. to be applied cross curricula through integration of Fine Arts in and out of the classroom. There will be opportunities for students to work together on tasks as a group task and their will other time students will work individually for task mastery. Groups will be designed for mixed - ability and differentiated tasks given to the groups. It is my hope that students become effective in their communicative skills and active listeners through their Creative Expression.
Technology - The technology students will have access to is our schools Mac- Lab. This is where students will have opportunities to research content , develop oral speeches, transfer knowledge to construct new meaning, have opportunities to use google to be reflective about their learning, make slide presentations, digital journaling and opportunities to showcase the interconnectedness of domains by designing a product. I am hopeful that through this platform my students will enhance their speaking and listening skills to showcase their interpersonal skills for global competitiveness.
TPACK “Sweet Spot” - Through TPACK framework structure the goal is to hit the “sweet spot” and in order for this to occur technology , pedagogy, and content knowledge must be interwoven into the same fabric , where all three are threaded into one cloth and all hit the “sweet spot” to help students visualize and construct understanding of the interconnectedness of domains. So while facilitating , instructing, and co-teaching I will select pedagogical strategies and technology that will identify performances of understanding goals for the class period. As students engage, explore, expand, extrapolate from, this leads to the “sweet spot” So in order for our students to be competitive globally this is the structure for ensuring the holistic learner has been equipped to be successful and reach their highest potential.
