Julianna Lux Course 2 Post 1

Knowing who you teach greatly impacts what and how you teach. (I believe I just resorted to my “how to create a good topic sentence from a writing prompt” technique I teach my students.)  Thinking back on my years of teaching, I’ve found the years I’ve been most successful with my students are the years I’ve encouraged them to allow their talents to shine during the semester’s assignments. Some students enjoy music or theatre or sports or building stuff more than they enjoy sitting in a classroom, so if I can tap into those interests, I find they focus better and participate more during class and make more of an effort on assignments.  Knowing those students who believe they cannot be successful because they have rarely found academic success is also important because I know I need to find as many opportunities to encourage those students and provide them with the realization they can achieve their goals. 

The class who will be completing my PBL is as diverse as I’ve ever taught. I have a football player, a basketball player, some track runners, a shy girl who thinks she shouldn’t be made to come to school because it means she has to interact with people, a sweet Hispanic girl who is working so hard to learn the English language, a young man who was just moved to my class from a higher level (and I can only imagine how this is making him feel), a farmer (who claims he’s Elvis), a transfer student from another Spartanburg district who is still trying to find his place, a few young men who would rather be in computer or art class, and a couple more who still remain enigmas to me (not due to lack of trying).  As to their abilities, I have one learning English (and taking long strides every day); five who excel at everything I give them; five who work hard to do well, but it may take them a little while; two who I know can do well if they wouldn’t give up before they even started; and three who will need a good bit of assistance to be successful in my class, but they haven’t given up yet. 

Knowing who my students are will help me plan the pace, requirements, and opportunities for choice in my PBL units. My current unit is an “All About Me” webzine. The students have written a segment about their names, a short op-ed paragraph about any topic they wished (from a list of 400, which may have been too many, if I’m being honest), and generated two Top Five lists on any categories they wanted. I originally gave them these choices: movies, TV shows, music, and books. They stared blankly at the board and then looked at me and asked if they had to choose one of those categories. I asked them what they wanted to do, and we now have favorite lists of shoes, video games, belts, designers, places, and more.  Not only have they been given a choice (which ensured the completion of the task), but they also have helped me understand them more.  Next week, they will be interviewing group members before turning their works into group Me-Zines.

By knowing what my students can already do, I can make those required elements to increase likelihoods of success. Segments where they’ve struggled some can be required as well. I can then provide some choice in the challenging aspects of the project that will encourage academic growth. Now that I know how quickly (or not so quickly) my students work, I can gauge how long each task will take to complete. I know that I will need to provide some additional activities for a few of my students who will complete their work far quicker than others, and I will need to bring some students back to me during CAVS for additional assistance getting some of the assignments completed by the deadlines.

My PBL wish list is to have smaller tables in my classroom to increase space. I already use tables instead of desks because I enjoy bringing my students together for collaboration opportunities and the tables provides more space to spread out; however, my tables are just too big.  I also want a computer program allowing me to monitor my students’ activities on the computer at all times.  In the past couple of weeks, I’ve allowed my students to use the computers to complete a variety of assignments, project and non-project related.  I’ve needed to work one-on-one with a few of them in order to aid in their success. To do this means I cannot be watching every student’s computer activities or be up and moving around; also, I do not have my room arranged in a way that allows me to see what everyone is doing at once. After holding one student back to discuss his misuse of the computer (he’d finished his assignment, was bored, and decided he was going to flip the screen and the turn the laptop on its side), he told me other students were visiting game sites and searching things that had nothing to do with the assignment. I spent close to an hour looking at every student’s internet history.  If I could pull up everyone’s screens on my computer and project them, I could watch what they are doing. This has multiple benefits: 1) I can ensure my students are only going where I’ve told them to go; 2) I can monitor their progress and make sure they aren’t stalling; 3) I can identify those students who are struggling and not asking for assistance; 4) I can quickly give feedback from where I’m standing (especially beneficial when someone has completed a task successfully; I typically have to be standing over their shoulder or have them tell me they’ve had success); and 5) I can use what a student is doing correctly as a model for the other students.  I have asked before, and I’ve been told we must set up our rooms in a way to monitor all student computers at one time (unrealistic); I’ve looked for my own programs and found a few inexpensive and free programs, but I’ve hit a brick wall when I was told I could not load those to our computers because of the first reason.  I use GoogleDocs/Slides to show students how to collaborate on assignments, but I can’t see what other sites they are visiting; I can only see what they are doing on the document.  When we begin researching various topics, it’s important for the students to choose reliable sources, and being able to see all of their results up on the board at once will allow me to quickly address issues as opposed to missing something and having a student spend a lengthy amount of time doing something wrong just to need to go back and fix it later.  This is my biggest roadblock when it comes to the PBL assignments I want to do with my students.