Chapter 2
Before beginning a project I will need to know about my students' academic skills and social and emotional skills. This knowledge of my students will be the foundation of the project and will help me to successfully navigate my students through the project. My students come from different familial and cultural backgrounds. These backgrounds cause the students to have brains that are unique from each other. This uniqueness in their brain will influence how the students approach the project, the choices they make throughout the project and what they learn at the end of the project. During the project some of my students will need more support to work through the project. It is important to realize that even the act of learning will change my students' brains which is an important part of learning. The project will cause students to think and this process of thinking actually enhances the students' ability to think better. As students learn they connect old information to new information which helps the brain become more organized and increases their ability to understand the world around them. The idea of novelty is interesting to me. To improve my teaching I will need to teach skills to my students in new and unique ways which will support my students' learning experience.
Chapter 3
The physical environment of a classroom can enhance students' learning. The environment needs to have an area for students to collaborate throughout the project. It is important for students to have an area for students to research the information they need for the project. My current classroom situation has many aspects that is already conducive to student learning. There is a large space for whole class instruction as well as small spaces for small group or collaborative work. Students can sit at tables or sit on the floor to do their work. I would like to improve the research areas for my students. This improvement would include adding more books to the classroom and increasing the use of technology.
Hi Alana,
ReplyDeleteI appreciate how you have taken the concepts presented in chapter two and three and gone beyond summarizing them and actually considered how they will influence the implementation of your project based learning experience. You shared how you will need to teach skills that your students need to develop in novel and innovative ways in order to support your students' unique needs and abilities. You also shared how you want to improve the research areas in your classroom environment for your students by adding more books and increasing the use of technology. One easy way I've learned to add interest and provide support for my students in the independent reading center and/or research stations is by creating text sets of books and other multimedia materials that connect to the theme/topic of the pbl and provide students with opportunities to expand their knowledge and to also ask questions. It doesn't have to be a book for this to be effective, it can be photographs, magazines, songs, video clips, etc.
Thank you!
Dawn