Reflection 3

When you are teaching a subject to your students it’s not always easy to get them to understand the big picture. Students have a hard time connecting what they are learning in the classroom to real life scenarios. For example, a teacher taught the number line all the way to 1,000. The students had a hard time understanding how big of a number 1,000 really was. The teacher decided that by copying 1,000 names off Wikipedia would help students realize how many people a 1,000 people are. These created a text to world connection for the kids and know they understood the bigger picture. Math class is a prime example where teacher need to help connect the dots for students. “Where am I ever going to use this in real life?” This question is so common in a math classroom. If teachers make the concepts more relevant to students then they will be more engaged and eager to learn.

Teachers need to continue to improve their teaching as technology advances. Bloom’s taxonomy is a effective guide for adjusting to this transitional time. Bloom’s categories of objectives are; Apply, Analyze, Evaluate, and Create. Bloom’s taxonomy is moving towards education that includes more collaboration and imagination. We want to prepare our students to be life long learners. We need to select topics that they can relate and make connections to.

The focus is to prepare for students to be ready for the real world. The world is becoming more globalized every day and our students need to learn about it now. They need to become inventive thinkers, good communicators, and productive workers. Being able to develop these qualities in a student comes down to the teacher’s effectiveness.

There are 8 essential learning functions; Ubiquity, deep learning, making things visible & discussable, expressing ourselves/sharing ideas/ building communities, collaboration, research, project management, reflection. These are all learning functions that prepare you for real life situations/jobs. Ubiquity is about students using more tools like mobile phones, web based applications, and GPS are just a few examples. Deep learning function is about students explaining, reporting, and voicing their own opinions. This helps them create their own opinions and views.  Making things visible & discussable is about teaching with visuals. Instead of just telling students verbally all the time, show them. A concept map would be a good example. Expressing ourselves is about defining who you are. A modern day example would be Facebook. Collaboration is obviously just about working together so that you can bounce ideas off each other and come up with good conclusions. Research is about finding the information. Today research is not a problem because of the Internet. You can literally find everything that you need to know. Project management helps you relate to how everyday life is about working as a team. And reflecting on yourself will only make you better at what you do.

This chapter related to our class in many ways. Our class is set up so that we develop these skills. We work as a team, communicate with each other, and are working on real life situations that we can relate to. Our project in this class is helping us develop skills that will help us in the real world.