Blog Post #11

What Can We Learn About Teaching and Learning From These Teachers?

In his video, Back to the Future, science teacher Brian Crosby discusses the Project-Based Learning methods he uses in his classroom. He details how his students worked on a project using a high-altitude balloon as the basis. By creating the lesson plan around the journey of their balloon all the way to the Earth's atmosphere, Mr. Crosby is able to keep his students engaged and actively learning. Not only are the students able to learn about the science behind the balloon's travels, but also practice their writing skills by documenting it.

Mr. Paul Anderson discusses the Blended Learning Cycle in his video. He breaks down the way in which he teaches his students by unit. He uses the acronym "QUIVERS" in order to explain his method.

Qu - Question
   I  - Investigation/Inquiry
  V - Video
  E - Elaboration
  R - Review
  S - Summary Quiz

This acronym is used to summarize what the students complete throughout each assignment. He begins the lesson with an intriguing question which then leads the students to want to discover the answer. Once they have completed the assigned materials, an assessment is then given.

In Making Thinking Visible, Mark Church uses a video to propose an idea to his classroom. After viewing this video he asks the students to create a headline for that video's main idea as a group. He uses group collaboration in order to allow the student's to share their thoughts and work together to answer the question.

Sam Pane uses a very innovative method to teach his students how to be responsible online. The video, Teaching Digital Citizenship, shows how he uses technology in his classroom. Each one of his students create a super hero online and then get to use this character in their own comic strip. In this comic strip the students show themselves making poor decisions on the internet. The character they created then "saves" them from their mistake. This is an excellent method for teaching proper internet usage that allows the students to show how creative they are.

Project Based Learning shows a high school in Canada that has taken a new approach to teaching many of the core subjects. They have combined Language Arts, History and Information Technology into a blended course. The educators are able to create a more rounded learning experience by including these three courses together. The subject matter has been blended so that writing assignments also have historical implications as well. This also allows for the teachers to expect more from their students' abilities because of the increased amount of time they spend in this type of course.

Roosevelt Elementary's PBL Program emphasizes the importance of public speaking and collaboration from their students. They state that they strive to teach the students lessons that they will use during everyday life in the future. A sense of community is represented in their PBL Program in which students work together in order to solve the problems they are assigned.