Reflection for 11/8
Happy Monday!
This week, I’m actually a little digitally speechless (which is very unusual!). I think I’m meeting-ed out this week, so much so, that I am feeling a little passionless about any one particular hot topic. All the PLC, RTI, social studies curriculum, universal design, report card talk has fried my brain! 
A few disjointed thoughts… I was glad to learn about Grab last week – I have used it before, but it had been awhile, and it was a nice refresher. I could see applications of that program in making technology manuals for kids (0r adults) to use. I am also excited to learn more about Podcasts and the application for that technology in my classroom. I haven’t tried creating or playing any yet, but plan to tackle that media in the coming weeks. I could see broadcasting information for kids from one of the many Podcasts available on I-tunes. I could also see the application for Podcasts on a sub day. You could leave your instructions in a Podcast format so that the kids could hear directions and guidelines as intended by the classroom teacher. I suppose I would have to have a technologically-savvy sub, but I think we are moving toward that (hey, and you could always burn it on a cd!).
Our objectives are coming along. I think we came a long way from our original draft. We were also to rework or delete any objectives that we perceived as subjective or unclear. We refined exactly what we were looking for in the process and narrowed our statements down to the essential ideas and skills.
We really struggled with finding a way to assess voice in writing. I think I’ve always struggled with this in my correction of student work. It is hard to say exactly what voice is. It can also be very subjective. What I consider good voice could be very different that Janet or Julie’s perception of the same piece of writing. So, we dealt with this by debating what we specifically wanted to see in the students’ writing – and eliminating the term “voice” altogether. I think in the end, we were able to develop quantifiable objectives by really thinking about precisely what we wanted instead of using blanket terminology (like voice).
Although I’ve known this is what we needed to do to develop objectives, it wasn’t until we had drafted some vague ones that we were able to rework those ideas and design concrete and quantifiable objectives. It also took the discussion between my colleagues and myself to really hash out what we wanted and how we were to word our demands.
I think this process will help me in creating everyday lesson plans. I will be able to think about the “meat and potatoes” (or essential understandings, to be more technical) I want the kids to gather from a lesson. This focus should help drive my instruction and assessment. I also plan to work harder to make my objectives (daily and unit) more available to students. It gives the kids a sense of purpose and understanding when they can see what they are working toward and a possible route to get there.
I think that’s it for this week. I am looking forward to our “objective share” this week in class and hope that we will be able to cement our objectives and get to work on the assessment piece.
See you Thursday!
Reflection | Comment (1)One Response to “Reflection for 11/8”
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So much for chronological commenting! Talk about disjointed…
I’m glad the review of Grab was helpful. There’s a keyboard shortcut for taking screen shots, but I can never remember what it is. I like Grab because it is in the Utilities folder and it’s easy to use.
We’ll be examining how to create podcasts tomorrow, and I’m confident that you’ll find ways that this technology might be included in assessment methods that match your group’s objectives. The context for the podcast will originate with making annotations in digital text, which I think may have direct relevance to your unit.
“Struggling” is a good way to describe the process of developing learning objectives! I know that your group has been working hard on yours, and I see how it is paying off. Again, your objectives will never be “completed,” so it’s important to let them go at some point and know that they will change as a result of assessment alignment, implementation of the unit, and just things that strike you in the middle of the night. If you have captured the intent of the objective, that is 85% of the work – the other 15%, which is often consumed by finding the right words, will sort itself out over time.
We talked about this a bit last week, but I’m glad I’m reading this now to re-visit your group’s dilemma about “voice.” Because measuring this is complicated by the factors that you’ve identified (e.g., bias, subjectivity, etc.), I can understand the tendency to want to abandon it as an objective. You might, however, keep it in and see how it goes in the implementation of the unit. Something as simple as “Students will demonstrate an emerging “voice” in their writing” might be a start. You don’t have to assess them on the quality of the voice, just simply give them feedback on how they’re doing with developing and identifying their voice. Not sure if that makes sense, but I offer it as something to consider.
More later.
Cynthia