550 Week 5

This week was challenging...time-wise and brain-wise! As I worked to finalize the lesson I'll be teaching on Monday during class, I also attempted to be a contributory team member to our group presentation and finish up the individual week's work.

My experiences with online communities has been positive for the most part. I've been extremely lucky to travel through the world of online learning with a motivated, hard-working, high-achieving cohort with the shared objective to finish (and survive?) this program. As the "community" for all my classes has stayed constant for the most part, I've grown to know what to expect from classmates in terms of support, feedback, etc. The asynchronous portion of our learning community has at times been the most educational as it's an opportunity for me to peruse other classmate's thoughts and contributions at my own pace and peruse more in-depth the topics of personal interest. The constant provided by the cohort has helped me to grow comfortable and confident. Once I leave the online community I'm comfortable with--the one provided by this cohort, I'm sure my experience base will broaden, my investment will change, and I will learn differently.

Twitter is another online community I'm a part of but not invested as readily as there's no extrinsic motivation to keep up-to-date on my Tweets--reading or creating...The same with Facebook...I hope once I complete this program and feel like I can breathe again...I'm able to invest myself in some online communities that not only strengthen me as a teacher, mother, and person in general.

I believe the greatest benefit of collaborative groups is the ability to share and combine experiences, education, and know-how peer-to-peer. This sharing is where I truly believe the greatest learning takes place whether it be in a cohort collaborative group or in my classroom of 7th graders.

I believe the greatest challenge of collaborative groups, relevant to our cohort experiences, is being able to carve group time that fits all of our schedules. Knowing others are dependent upon you regardless of the hectic nature of the week, especially a holiday week, creates added pressure and challenge to effective collaboration.

My thoughts regarding the social development and socialization issues have been broadened. I was extremely narrow-minded and almost prejudice in a sense when it came to socialization and online learning. I incorrectly believed that the socialization skills of online students were/are far below that of students who learn in a traditional classroom. I was so WRONG! The video helped give me a clear and convincing picture of how a middle school student's socialization is affected and shaped by online learning.

550 Week 4

This week reminded me how my students feel when they complain about being overwhelmed with the amount of work they're responsible for in an evening's time or a week's time. I don't often assign homework in the classes I teach but will continue to work diligently to make my assessments authentic to insure my focus is on the STUDENTS. It's good to empathize with our students!! In reflecting on my teaching experiences to date, I would say that the proportion of teacher centered versus student centered lessons has been too much teacher-centered the past year or so (as this program sucks the living marrow from my bones). I strive to create student-centered lessons that allow for real-life, performance tasks and opportunities for students to construct and apply based upon what we've learned. Some of my frustration the past year-and-a-half has resulted from our school's movement toward semester tests. At times, I get hung up on covering content to reach the mid-year and end-year milestones so that students are prepared to fill in bubbles to show their mastery...Ughhgh! This weeks work was a fabulous exercise in refocusing what I should be doing in the classroom.

I was able to identify more than one authentic assessment to measure mastery of a single concept lesson when I guide students through our poetry unit in spring. Anchor activities keep students independently and collaboratively engaged while offering opportunities to apply their knowledge in a variety of ways as they perform tasks. If only all my teaching was so engaging! In due time...baby steps...

The rubric I created for my lesson clearly defined expectations and scoring for my Differentiated Mode Investigation lesson so that my students could reference the rubric as a place to find straightforward expectations as well as easy to understand information. Looking at the rubric, students can see how they will demonstrate their skills learned in the lesson. Prior to working much beyond my thoughts for the switch from a teacher-centered to a student-centered lesson, I sketched out the rubric. Knowing what was being assessed helped clarify the direction of my lesson.

While working on this module I had success while doing something new involving changing a teacher-centered lesson to a student-centered lesson while focusing on authentic assessment as well as ways to differentiate. I encountered some difficulties in the process, but the end product is something I'm proud of.