I have spent the last few days watching Ted talks, the BYTE2013 conference in Neepawa online, and following different educators, schools, and divisions within MB on Twitter. There is so much PD out there, but as I was talking with two other teachers in my building, we have zero time to decompress and DEAL with all of the info we are thrown.
Sometimes, I feel like my kids. They go from class to class to class, and sometimes, to one more class - with breaks and a lunch in between of course. They have 3 or 4 subjects thrown at them, assignments to do, teachers with different expectations, and tests or quizzes to study for. How can I ask my kids to keep performing to their highest potential when they are running out of steam? Especially during our last period of the day. Part of this (at least I believe) is the transition between the quarter system (or Copernican system) we were on last year, and the other part is... well something I do not know yet. I know some people would be hard pressed to say "lazy", but I do not think that that is the case. Stressed, maybe? Frustrated, or overwhelmed?
I have one student who has completed all of the required outcomes for the course. I have told my grade 11s that we will be going through all of the basic outcomes in class and if they have opted into the alternative delivery program, they need to show me each of those outcomes at least once more to a capacity of a 50% - but they should be showing me more than that.
Below is an example of what I'm having my grade 11s do in class. The first part of the MB ELA curriculum states that students need to find the main ideas in a text and come up with their own thoughts about the text. For the first part of the class, I use my document camera (my newest - and favourite - piece of technology in my class) to model what I expect them to do as they read their articles/texts. I read it aloud to them, and they follow along in their handouts. As I read aloud, I do a think aloud, meaning whenever I make a text-to-self connection, find a main idea, or something I don't agree with, I highlight it and label it on my handout and they do the same. At the end of a reading, my pages are usually covered in multiple colours of highlighter and are all marked up!
Then, we work through the questions or the response together, with me leading them when we get off track a bit, or giving them some background information (like in the renovictions in the WFP in August 2012). Then, I give them some time to soak in what they've learned and give them a new text to try it out on. I walk around and let them work, leaning over shoulders, prompting when they're stuck, and generally try to help them get something that they might have missed. But the only thing that changes between what I did and what they're asked to do is the actual content of the article. Everything else is the same, no tricks here.
Here is a sample for outcome 1.1.1 - identifying main ideas and coming up with their own thoughts.
So once all of my students who have opted in for the alternative delivery model finish their outcomes, they complete one last outcome, an evaluation of what is to come. Below are two students' examples of the process. I'm excited, because THEY'RE excited. I also had one of the two students view the video at the bottom of this post, which explains why for the last question one student said N/A. Maybe I could say that I'm collecting data on their anticipation levels?
Here is the video I had my kids watch about what we're (kind of) doing. I told them that we wouldn't do the weekly questions, group endeavor, and weekly presentations (these kids were in the program all day at school, not just one period).
If students designed their own schools...
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