3.1: Classroom Management & Collaborative Learning
Candidates model and facilitate effective classroom management and collaborative learning strategies to maximize teacher and student use of digital tools and resources. (PSC 3.1/ISTE 3a)
Artifact: French 3 Rotational Study of the French Press and Media
Reflection:
I chose a three-day lesson created around the hierarchy presented by Bloom’s Taxonomy to demonstrate mastery of Standard 3.1, which focuses on classroom management and collaborative learning. This lesson involved centers in my French 3 class during the 2013-2014 academic year while studying the theme of press and the media with a grammatical focus on object pronouns. Students began the first day of the lesson by taking a survey in our online learning management system that asked them to choose the magazine they would most like to read. Each magazine represented a certain type of specialized press available in the United States. Students were then grouped according to their interests. Once in groups, they were asked to reflect upon the advantages and disadvantages of Internet press and post their thoughts as a group to an online board on Padlet. A class discussion followed, where students justified their opinions and questioned the opinions of others, all in French.
On the second day, students moved around the room, spending about 10 minutes in each center. One center focused on memorization of vocabulary words and classification of objects as to which pronoun would be used to replace them through interactive activities using the Promethean interactive whiteboard. A second center focused on application as students were asked to participate in a conversation and to respond using appropriate object and stress pronouns. A third center asked students to use a QR code scanner to listen to short sentences in French and then rewrite the sentence with an object pronoun. A fourth center asked students to read an article in French from a scientific magazine and to determine the meaning of three object pronouns used in the article. The last center asked students to go online to a VoiceThread presentation and listen to three statements made by me and then to voice their opinion with an appropriate justification using at least one object pronoun.
On the third and final day, students again sat with their groups and logged in to a Today’s Meet chat room using their French names. They then responded in the room to review questions shown on the interactive whiteboard. These questions were selected based on the quiz that they would take online over the weekend and prompted by their responses during the previous day’s activities in centers. Follow-up questions in the chat room asked students to justify their responses based on vocabulary and grammatical concepts.
Though this lesson was not designed for a course as part of the Instructional Technology Master’s program, it still allowed me to demonstrate mastery of Standard 3.1. This standard states that “candidates model and facilitate effective classroom management and collaborative learning strategies to maximize teacher and student use of digital tools and resources.” Through this lesson, it was vital for me as the teacher to monitor student behavior and problems when posting to the Padlet board, through all of the stations, and during the time spent in the online chat room on Today’s Meet. I also had to focus the class discussion on the most important elements that would allow students to demonstrate critical thinking without feeling frustrated by trying to move out of their depth when conversing in a foreign language. By rotating students through the various centers and using the other two activities as opening and closing activities, I was able to maximize our use of student and classroom technology.
If I were to assist another teacher with implementing a similar lesson, I would search for alternatives to using Padlet. While I have always had good experiences using Padlet in the past, the student’s mobile devices had difficulty accessing and typing on the wall. The online LMS used by my district offers discussion boards and live discussions that could be used instead. I feel that the choice of Padlet was a choice made simply to try something different for students to use. The activity would go more smoothly by choosing an activity more easily streamlined within the LMS and with which both the teacher and students were already familiar. I would also recommend fewer but more targeted questions for the follow-up review on the third day, as we did not have enough time to get through all of the questions.
I chose a three-day lesson created around the hierarchy presented by Bloom’s Taxonomy to demonstrate mastery of Standard 3.1, which focuses on classroom management and collaborative learning. This lesson involved centers in my French 3 class during the 2013-2014 academic year while studying the theme of press and the media with a grammatical focus on object pronouns. Students began the first day of the lesson by taking a survey in our online learning management system that asked them to choose the magazine they would most like to read. Each magazine represented a certain type of specialized press available in the United States. Students were then grouped according to their interests. Once in groups, they were asked to reflect upon the advantages and disadvantages of Internet press and post their thoughts as a group to an online board on Padlet. A class discussion followed, where students justified their opinions and questioned the opinions of others, all in French.
On the second day, students moved around the room, spending about 10 minutes in each center. One center focused on memorization of vocabulary words and classification of objects as to which pronoun would be used to replace them through interactive activities using the Promethean interactive whiteboard. A second center focused on application as students were asked to participate in a conversation and to respond using appropriate object and stress pronouns. A third center asked students to use a QR code scanner to listen to short sentences in French and then rewrite the sentence with an object pronoun. A fourth center asked students to read an article in French from a scientific magazine and to determine the meaning of three object pronouns used in the article. The last center asked students to go online to a VoiceThread presentation and listen to three statements made by me and then to voice their opinion with an appropriate justification using at least one object pronoun.
On the third and final day, students again sat with their groups and logged in to a Today’s Meet chat room using their French names. They then responded in the room to review questions shown on the interactive whiteboard. These questions were selected based on the quiz that they would take online over the weekend and prompted by their responses during the previous day’s activities in centers. Follow-up questions in the chat room asked students to justify their responses based on vocabulary and grammatical concepts.
Though this lesson was not designed for a course as part of the Instructional Technology Master’s program, it still allowed me to demonstrate mastery of Standard 3.1. This standard states that “candidates model and facilitate effective classroom management and collaborative learning strategies to maximize teacher and student use of digital tools and resources.” Through this lesson, it was vital for me as the teacher to monitor student behavior and problems when posting to the Padlet board, through all of the stations, and during the time spent in the online chat room on Today’s Meet. I also had to focus the class discussion on the most important elements that would allow students to demonstrate critical thinking without feeling frustrated by trying to move out of their depth when conversing in a foreign language. By rotating students through the various centers and using the other two activities as opening and closing activities, I was able to maximize our use of student and classroom technology.
If I were to assist another teacher with implementing a similar lesson, I would search for alternatives to using Padlet. While I have always had good experiences using Padlet in the past, the student’s mobile devices had difficulty accessing and typing on the wall. The online LMS used by my district offers discussion boards and live discussions that could be used instead. I feel that the choice of Padlet was a choice made simply to try something different for students to use. The activity would go more smoothly by choosing an activity more easily streamlined within the LMS and with which both the teacher and students were already familiar. I would also recommend fewer but more targeted questions for the follow-up review on the third day, as we did not have enough time to get through all of the questions.