EEND 680 Reflection & Artifacts

Walk-Through

If I had to pick one thing that has stuck with me throughout multiple classes, it would be the 4 C's. So when given the assignment to design a walk-through form, I wanted to incorporate the 4 C's in some way. I thought it would be beneficial for the person I was observing to see which of the 4 C's were present in the lesson. 

The person I was observing was interested in measuring student engagement, and I figured I measure that by observing how the students were answering questions. Early in my career, I had a principal who really encouraged me to focus on questioning, an ever since, I've always put an emphasis on using questioning to differentiate and assess.  I think this has helped me improve my teaching, so when I met with the teacher I was observing, I told her that I'd be jotting down questions she was asking and checking off how the students responded. As I was doing the walk-through, I learned that my form wasn't best suited for a walk-through because it was difficult to write down all of the questions.  I needed more time to gather the data I was looking for.  On the plus side, I think both the teacher and I learned a lot throughout the entire process!

Professional Development Workshop Design

One full day- students not in session

During this class, I learned that planning engaging professional development, that meets the needs of all, isn't easy! I wanted to make sure the PD I designed was engaging, meaningful, and differentiated. I planned a full-day PD for Defined Stem, which is a resource for project-based tasks. In order to make the PD meaningful, I wanted to make sure to include a "Why we use it?" portion in the overview. In order to get buy-in from staff, they have to understand the purpose of the learning how it can be beneficial to students. I also differentiated by breaking the staff into grade level groups and assigning them a task that was geared towards the standards they taught.  That way, each staff member could take something away from the session. And what do teachers want most? Time to dig into resources in order to start planning.  I thought it was super important to give time to grade levels to discuss how the resource could be used in their classrooms. Overall, I gain a greater appreciation for those who plan PD!

D181 Better Together Challenge

Challenges galore! As we continue to chip away at our capstone project, in which we are creating and implementing a district-wide challenge, there's no doubt that we'll face our own challenges in doing so.  Perhaps the biggest obstacle is finding common times to collaborate with other classmates.  Having the Google Doc is great, but I think we're most productive when we're all in a room together discussing and ironing out the logistics. When we had the time to do that during one of our classes, I felt we got a lot accomplished.  Having one more session like that would allow us to get this thing rolling!
I believe our incentive team is ready to start creating; however, we need to have a better grasp of what the challenges will look like before we can create those incentives.  Our team discussed doing shout-outs and providing stickers to participants.  We also thought it would be cool to have a digital leaderboard.
Although we'll continue to face challenges, I'm looking forward to seeing how this capstone project rolls out! D181 Better Together!