Lesson Plans/Activities/Ideas

Virtual Brain Breaks

In our current virtual learning environment, educators are feeling the need to ensure students are learning by filling their day with back to back activities. Taking breaks prevents the brain from becoming overloaded and gives time for information to process (source). This idea is not new to the education world but it might be helpful in the virtual education world. The suggestions below will help create an environment that honors brain breaks in our virtual learning environment (source).

Think of the age group you teach and understand what their attention span is, deliberately chunk activities and tasks appropriately for their specific attention span
Break up tasks by asking questions and including discussions
Balance on screen and off screen activities so that students can take a break from staring at computer screen and can utilize tactile functions

References:

Image source, Edutopia

All other sourced information is hyperlinked as applicable above.

@hollandkaylah

Finish the Year Strong

The focus of education has shifted dramatically in the last few months due to the closure of face to face instruction. This unprecedented time has been deemed trauma-informed teaching. In order to prevail through the situation, many educators have turned to virtual education and video chats. The issue with video chatting is that there are limited ways to engage students through a screen. Below are several recommendations for amping up video chats in order to help educators finish the school year strong (source).

Invite a guest speaker – think book authors or experts in your field. You never know if someone will say yes until you ask.
Take your class on a virtual field trip – there are numerous options for virtual field trips right now so utilize your host screen and take your students on a journey. Click here to view a list of current virtual tours.
Connect your students to another class – create an environment of global curiosity and connect your class with another class in another state or country. Students in both classes can work on projects together while both teachers co-teach. Twitter is a great place to find educators with similar passions to yours.
Create a design thinking project that engages students both on screen and off screen. Future Design School created a Facebook group that includes at home design thinking resources.

References:

Image source, Photo by Chris Montgomery on Unsplash

All other sourced information is hyperlinked as applicable above.

@hollandkaylah

Ideas for Making and Tinkering at Home

This week we’re investigating maker education, tinkering, and coding in our educational technology courses. Translating all the hands-on experiences from our face-to-face class meetings into the online learning environment has been a fun challenge. Thankfully, we actually began preparing this module for the online environment in Summer 2019, so it has been a work in progress. A special thanks to colleague and EdTech Team member, Melissa Marshall, for helping develop the module.

I thought I’d share some of the resources that I put together. Perhaps these will give families ideas to spice up their days of quarantine. Please share your ideas and recommended resources in the comments, so that our preservice and in-service teachers can learn from you, too.

Slideshow of Examples

Browse through this slideshow to view examples that might spark inspiration for your next maker or tinkering project.

Possible Materials

Feel free to bookmark, save, or print the following document.

Guiding Students to Be Independent Learners

“In the quickly evolving workplace and at a time when graduates are competing for jobs and careers with others around the world, the capacity to change rapidly and apply new skills is paramount. Bottom line: Learning how to learn is a game changer in the global knowledge economy, and it’s never too early to teach students how to begin to learn more independently.”

Donna Wilson and Marcus Conyers share three strategies for helping students become self-motivated and take charge of their learning.

Benefits in Explaining One’s Math Thinking

"It’s hard to get kids in the habit of talking about how they are thinking about a problem when they’ve had many years of instruction that focused on getting the 'right answer.' That’s why educators are now trying to get students in the habit of explaining their thinking at a young age." — Source: Mind/Shift

Continue reading the full post for examples, tips, and classroom video footage.

Image Source: EdTechTeacher

21st Century Skills: It’s More Than Just Technology

“Given the growing ubiquity of [technology] in schools, as well as the increasing numbers of educators advocating for their use, it can seem as though education may have reached a tipping point when it comes to improving students’ 21st-century skills. According to the Partnership for 21st Century skills, these can be categorized as the 4Cs: Creativity, Critical Thinking, Communication, and Collaboration.” — Beth Holland

Beth goes on to share that she has started to worry about the growing presence of what she calls the Fake Cs.

Source: EdWeek

Journey from a Makerspace to a Maker District

This article shares the story of Albermarle County Schools’ experience integrating maker education throughout all the schools in the district. In particular, snapshots of Agnor Hurt Elementary and Albermarle High School are spotlighted. I recommend diving into this article and considering how Albermarle’s experience and ideas can impact your classroom, school, and district. Here are just two nuggets I gleaned from reading this.

“Making shouldn’t be isolated. We want to get away from that idea. Makerspaces and classrooms are one and the same.” — Andrew Craft, Elementary Teacher

“When people make, they get back to the basics of who they are as humans. Making puts the learner at the center of the work — and when that happens with our kids, the content makes sense to them.” — Pam Moran, Superintendent

Source: EdSurge.com

Project-Based Learning Through a Maker’s Lens

“A Maker is an individual who communicates, collaborates, tinkers, fixes, breaks, rebuilds, and constructs projects for the world around him or her. A Maker, re-cast into a classroom, has a name that we all love: a learner. A Maker, just like a true learner, values the process of making as much as the product.

“Making holds a number of opportunities and challenges for a teacher. Making, especially to educators and administrators unfamiliar with it, can seem to lack the academic rigor needed for a full-fledged place in an educational ecosystem. However, project-based learning has already created a framework for Making in the classroom. Let’s see how Making could work when placed inside a PBL curriculum unit.” — Patrick Waters

Source: Edutopia.org

Can Micro-Credentials Create More Meaningful PD for Teachers?

With micro-crentialing educators “can no longer attend a workshop and receive credit for merely being there. Instead, they must take their learning back into their classrooms and try it out, submitting evidence, receiving feedback from peers and refining their approach. They also have to reflect on what they learned through those experiences. Participating teachers then submit these artifacts, which are evaluated before the micro-credential is awarded. If the reviewers feel the educator did not submit strong enough evidence of learning, they can provide feedback and ask the educators to try again.” — Katrina Schwartz, Mind/Shift

Continue reading this article.

Image Source: CollectEdNY

10 Examples of Innovative Formative Assessment

“Innovative formative assessment strategies are part of the heart of any modern classroom. They provide crucial information about what students understand and what they don’t. These ungraded assessments are also valuable guides for students. It can help them enhance their performance. Teachers can use them to determine if further instruction is necessary.

“Using innovative formative assessment consistently and effectively removes the surprises from getting final grades. When integrated into teaching and learning on an ongoing basis, students can constantly improve and excel. Formative assessment is “assessment as learning”. In other words, the feedback is used to improve the learning.” — Lee Watanabe Crockett

Click here to view the ten examples.

Image Source: sparkaction.org