Reading Reflection 7

There are three levels of classroom discussion: teacher to teacher, student to student, and teacher to student. Teacher to teacher involves the project planning and taking advantage of opportunities to work together. Face to face collaboration isn’t always necessary to work on the project between teachers. The use of project blogs or wiki can help teacher-teacher conversation continue.  Student to student discussion is a crucial part of the learning process. It is important to remind students that good communication skills are a part of effective teamwork and “explaining their thinking gives students opportunities to learn from and challenge each other.” Teacher to student interactions are more dominate in traditional classroom settings. So in a PBL setting might need less teacher to student interactions. Using management tools through project web sites or blogs, online calendar, or online workspace can help check in on the students to see where they’re at.

            Many different questions can be asked to check in on students during a project and for different areas of the project. Some procedural questions include: are we staying on schedule? Do we have the right materials available? For teamwork check in you might ask, “is one student carrying too much of the load for the whole team?  Are students able to manage conflict themselves or do they need my help?” These questions can help move you in the right direction before continuing with the project to ensure a positive outcome. To check in with student understanding it is important to spend time observing them at work and listen to their conversations. If students are struggling you can ask them questions to trigger deeper thinking, “have you thought about ____?” When self-assessing you can ask questions that encourage reflections. Offering project journals and blogs give students the opportunity to share things they might not want to in class.

There are unlimited benefits to students when optimizing the use of technology. An example from the book was the use of MP3 players in the classroom to integrate them into teaching as opposed to confiscating them. The students were able to easily make and listen to podcasts. This helped students because they could go back and listen to the information instead of asking questions repeatedly. The students described this as a “better way of learning.”

            21^st century skills can make or break a project. It is important to watch carefully to students working in teams right at the beginning. Help the students learn to manage conflicts and work together. This is an important skill that they will continue to use throughout life. One idea from the book was to implement roles for each member that consists of certain responsibilities, and if they neglect these responsibilities they can be fired. By making teamwork an assessment like this, it helps emphasize the importance of teamwork.

            This directly relates to what we do in this class because of how important teamwork is. To work in groups sometimes can be hard, but with the right communication and problem solving skills, it can really enhance learning.