Week 6

Learning Experiences:

For the past two weeks I have been working on the performance task part of my unit. We have been learning about what a performance task is and the difference between that and the learning experiences part of a lesson. The performance task being the end assessment of the lesson. It is a summative assessment, while the learning experiences are tasks that lead up to the performance task and help prepare the students for it. Learning what these assessments are and how they work goes along with the NCTCS standard 1a2 which says that I will “draw on appropriate data to develop classroom and instructional plans.” I am doing this by learning how to use these assessments appropriately. I have not started working on my learning experiences yet because I am still finishing up my performance task. But I think I have a good working plan for my performance task. My conceptual lens is this: “How are communities and citizens interdependent on one another?” For the PT I want my students to create an informational product about the community they live in. I want them to create it with the audience in mind being newcomers to the community. I want them to show case their community for their new neighbors, but I also want them to find ways that their new neighbors can get involved in the community. My original idea was for them to create a booklet, but I really want to provide them some more options in how they want to present their information. However I am having trouble coming up with some solid ideas. They could do a video or maybe an interactive website, or…. If anyone has any ideas please feel free to share.

Outside Learning:

Another week at Washington Elementary has gone by. I am really having a wonderful time there and I feel like I am learning a lot from having more experience in an actual classroom. It has been decided this week that we will stick with the class we are in for the entire semester instead of rotating to different classes. I like this idea because I can really get to know the students and watch them grow, instead of being uprooted and put into a new class every few weeks. This Tuesday was Valentine’s Day and the teacher of the second grade class I am in did not let it go to waste. She had plenty of activities planned for it. First of all she had a listening game where the students each had a card with a riddle on it. They would read their card and everyone had to listen to see if their card fit the riddle. Then the student who's card fit the riddle would read their card, and it went on.  She also had Valentine activity booklets that she had made up that the students would work on when they finished other tasks. In two weeks they are going to be doing Dr. Seuss and Read Across America and the teacher has recruited the other 2 students who are working in the class and myself to plan everything for that Tuesday. I am really excited for this but I am also quite nervous. I hope it goes well.

Future classroom:

A couple of weeks ago I said I was researching activities and resources in Fine Arts to use in lesson plans. This will come in quite handy these next few weeks as I prepare for the Dr. Seuss day at Washington. And planning this day is going to be a great learning experience to help me with my future classroom. It also goes hand in hand with working on my performance task and learning experiences for my unit plan. As I get practice doing these things, it will hopefully come more naturally to me and I will become more efficient in making them.