Chapter 10 reflection

Taking time to reflect after a project gets finished can help your students feel accomplished and make the learning stick. Thinking ahead to how you will wrap up your project will help culminate activities to celebration the journey, and remind learners of what they have gained along the way. After reflection time, it may be a good time to think about rewarding the students with a celebration or praise of some sort. Celebrating a project once it is accomplished is very important to show students their hard work paid off and that you are proud of their performance. A celebration can be big or small, and you will be able to decide by scaling it to the size of the project. Showing student’s work and putting on a party is a great way to celebrate learning and build your schools identity as a place where kids learn through projects. It is important to remember that all celebrations should not be all seriousness. Make sure that project celebrations include the following:

-An opportunity to look back one more time

-Acknowledgement of how hard work and commitment contributed to the success of the project and a culture of excellence at your school.

-Appreciation for those who helped.

-A display of learning

-An opportunity to showcase projects to colleagues, administrators, parents and others in your learning community.

To ensure that everyone is included and having fun, you could have students create and present their own categories and awards, the sillier the better.

Reading Reflection #9

Let Students Lead! Exactly. Kids are more capable than any given amount of adults out there. They retain so much and have such an imagination. We teach them to be independent but we keep them from exploring things they are interested in. Elise Mueller really took advantage and gave her students complete creative control of their own learning. If we give them control they are not going to disappoint and you better believe we're all going to learn something from them. She allowed her student to connect with someone who had something very important in common with her and many other students will benefit from Mueller expanding her classroom. Jeff Whipple's experience with other classes outside of his classroom and school walls was truly magnificent! It's amazing what technology can do and who it can connect you with. The students got to connect with the author of the novel they were reading and he answered all of the questions they had through a blog! Lisa Parisi is the host of DENchat on Twitter that connects discovery educator network teachers with others about the topics everyone is interested in. I followed the chat! And that's me connecting!

Reading Reflection #8

There isn't necessarily a point to project based learning if your class can't pull the information from their story board, slide show, movie, etc. and respond with meaning to what we want them to learn (Let's be real). So by conducting a classroom discussion that is productive and insightful is so very important to the student and the teacher. Each level of classroom discussion plays a large role in who is learning. I really like how the book mentions that when the students are discussing they should be talking about everything as it happens and ask one another questions as they need to. I learn the most when I talk with my table mates. A lot of them times they way they explain something it is 10 times better understood than when the teacher tried to explain it. The level of classroom discussion that can benefit both at the same time would definitely be teacher to student or when the teacher and student communicate. The teacher has the opportunity to ask higher-order questions in which the entire class can be involved in. This gives everyone the chance to reall think about the project they just did and think about the outcomes that they received and why that happened.

Reading Reflection #7

Project Launch was a very interesting and informative chapter. Introducing a new project to a class is a very exciting and invigorating time for students! I love projects and think they are so much fun! I would much rather do a project than read, listen to a lecture and then take an exam. So when a project is introduced, the most important thing is how we do that and how we get our students excited about the adventure they are about to embark on! One of the most exciting things about new projects is that we are almost always introduced to a new way to present that project. Technology is s lot of focus these days and they make kids happy! The chapter gave a lot of tips on how to help the students organize their information and how we can keep technology running correctly and how to keep the right people involved.

Reading Reflection #6

The section on team planning really stuck out to me in the chapter discussing project management strategies. The first statement that is expressed, "students naturally gravitate to the kids they feel most comfortable with" is half the battle with teamwork. Even today, as a college student, if I know someone in my class and have worked with them before, chances are, I'm going to address them comfortably and continue to work with them on class work. Students all tend to do the same thing because we like to stay in our comfort zone. When we broaden our horizons and actually work with other people, we come to find a different perspective on whatever the topic may be. In a team (especially one we have chosen on our own) we know that our characteristics compliment one another and that is very important for team work. I may be good at writing but my partner may be good at the math portion. Together we can create a pretty unstoppable team! As teachers, I think it's hard to veer away from giving students the choice to work with someone they want to work with but in the long run, the practice of having to find a connection with another person will benefit them in so many cases. Teamwork is extremely important and project management bases a lot of its success on just that.

Concept Map Part B

Reading Reflection 9

The most important point that I took from Chapter 9 was to connect students with the professionals of whatever they're learning. For example, "A ninth-grade biology teacher saw potential benefits for his students when he heard about a deep-sea expedition to be conducted by marine scientists at the University of Delaware" (187). The teacher arranged for his students to be able to participate in a conference call with the marine scientists. Being able to talk to experts in the subject area that the students were learning about motivated them to do their own research about the topics so that they would be well-versed in the matter when the conference call came. Connecting students to experts not only motivates them to do more in-depth research into the subject matter so that they will better understand what the experts are talking about, but it also shows them why it is important that they learn what they do. Instead of telling your students that you're learning about deep sea vents because that's what the state told them they need to learn, you can make connections with real career opportunities that the students will have if they end up enjoying/being interested in further exploring the subject matter.