Time to stretch! And what better way to stretch than with the late, great John Denver. Now, I am by no means a devout John Denver fan. In fact, I know very few John Denver songs. That's not to say that I don't appreciate the music of Mr. Denver, just to say that I haven't taken the opportunity delve into his extensive catalogue. In fact, before a few years ago my experience with John Denver only went as far as singing "Thank God I'm a Country Boy" in elementary school music class. Seriously. But a couple of summers ago I heard a cover of the song "Goodbye Again" performed by Youth Lagoon on XM radio. Youth Lagoon is the moniker of one Trevor Powers from Boise, ID. If you've never heard of him I strongly recommend you check him out. So, I decided that I would record my own version of "Goodbye Again" in the comforts of my own kitchen. It's pretty minimal for a couple of reasons, chiefly among them my lack of time to make the recording (kids!) and the amount of time it's been since I've recorded anything (kids again!) I've played music for some time and was in a few bands in my high school years. Below you'll see the inaugural performance of The Forward Approach in Central Park (Ottumwa, Iowa...) It was a short lived band, but we had a grand time. Our attire was what we hope would be the new embodiment of "business casual" but, alas, it never caught on.
Below you'll find three items. First, John Denver's original song, performed live. Second, the Youth Lagoon Cover I mentioned earlier. Finally, my version. It's nothing flashy, but it's something I'm still proud of.
I have added some rituals to one of my classes. Each day students do a 5-10 minute warm up on a half sheet of paper. Students can work together or ask me questions while they are working. I usually try to speak loud enough when I'm helping students so that anyone nearby can hear me if they have the same question. At the end of the time (which I count down on a timer on my SmartBoard) one student is randomly selected and has to show his/her warm up sheet to the class (projected on the SmartBoard via iPad) and explain what they did on each problem. I find that this also helps to build a sense of community as students are working together and celebrating together with the presenter. I unfortunately didn't have time this year to do any energizers at the beginning of the year. Maybe sometime soon!!!
I need to make a more concrete implementation plan that describes how that data collection fit in with my research and the timeframe in which my data collection will take place.
I need to make another tracking sheet to track student success and progress on life topic skills such as homework completion, attitude/behavior, and working in groups.
I need to do some forward thinking to look for any possible issues or potential roadblocks.
1. What are the concepts embedded in the movie I AM? Document responses on your blog.
How do human beings impact the world around us.
Society sends a message of separation. You should separate yourself from others by showing that you’re better.
Stuff doesn’t make you happy
mo’ money, mo’ problems
Economy shouldn’t be the most important thing in our lives.
Cooperation should be a more important value over competition.
“Be basis of nature is cooperation and democracy. It’s in our DNA.”
Mirrored neuron means that what you see happen your brain actually interprets it as something that you yourself did.
We have evolved to help one another and be compassionate.
2. What are the enduring understanding(s) from I AM?
Humankind is interconnected by more than just a physical presence amongst one another. We influence each other whether we realize it or not
Humanity is genetically hardwired to feel compassion for one another.
You must be willing to find what it is that makes you able to make an impact on the world.
What is YOUR new story?
How will you “wake up” the forces of good within your students and your colleagues?
This year as Student Council advisors Dusty and myself have created the goal of making our council a more unified body. We have been advisors for the past five years and one of the issues we have faced in the past is a lack of unity within our council. It is often the case that the seniors, juniors, sophomores, and freshman have little to no interaction between one another. Our freshman in particular are often shunted to the side of the work that we do because they do not have experience in the activities we put on. Our plan is to integrate all grade levels together throughout the year by creating groups that include a few students from each grade. In doing so we will hopefully create activities that are better planned, more focused, and successful.
Continue working on including all sub-topics into my ROL
I want to make sure that I focus on how I will be implementing the ideas from my ROL into my own class and not just describing how they work in general.
Read the article “Through the Lens of a Critical Friend” by Costa and Kallick.
Find your Critical Friend and discuss the following and document you insights on your personal blog:
What is your understanding of the role of a critical friend?
Someone who is willing to listen to your ideas and and provide you with another perspective in which to view them and give feedback to improve your work.
What value could you gain from a critical friend?
Critical friends can help to you to see any potential pitfalls that may arise as you work through a particular idea. A different perspective is also allows you to see get some clarity on aspects that you maybe didn't think about.
Share your reaction and questions pertaining to the six-step process for critical friends.
In step three the learner sets the outcomes for the conference and is in control of the feedback, but I think that there should be an opportunity for the Critical Friend to also bring up other ideas that he or she noticed without fear of venturing outside of the bounds of the conversation.
What key character traits would an individual need to possess to be an effective and desirable critical friend?
A critical friend would need to have good listening skills and the ability to be objective. They would also need to be able to be good an rephrasing and summarizing ideas to make sure that they are properly understanding the learners objective.
Which traits do you feel will be the most challenging for you personally?
The process seems potentially time consuming, even though the author says it can take 20 minutes or less to complete. I don't know if that time commitment is realistic and it seems so difficult to find time to do much of anything without adding another time commitment into the mix.
Next, generate questions based on the scenarios below. Be sure to record your questions on your personal blog.
Your critical friend has just shared that he/she did not go into the depth you would have expected on a critical reflective practices piece assigned the previous month. What kind of questions could you pose that would help push him/her to the next level?
I could continue to ask questions about what they think the consequences of certain actions might be. That might cause the learner to look deeper. "Is there another way to look at this?" "Am I missing anything?" What would be the consequences of this?"
You’ve asked your students to pair up and critique each other’s writing/assignment. What kind of questions do you hope they would ask each other?
Why did you decide to answer in this way?
What influenced you to write this essay?
What were you thinking about when you wrote this work?
Where might you add one of the "Worksheets Don't Grow Dendrites" instructional strategies?
I can incorporate movement very easily by doing something as simple as breaking a worksheet into parts and posting those parts around the room. Students would need to move from section to section completing the work/questions from each part.
Cooperative learning can be accomplished by grouping students together during a review day and assigning each group a portion of the unit to condense and describe to the whole class.
Humor can be used by making funny insights during a lesson to keeps students' attention and enhance engagement.
Although we did not have one of the groups in our community share this strategy, graphic organizers works great with a unit involving the properties of different special quadrilaterals.
Music is used in Algebra 2 to sing the quadratic formula to the tune of "Pop Goes the Weasel".
Roleplaying could be implemented where one student plays the "teacher" and grades another students work giving him/her pointers on how to improve and complements on what he/she did correctly.
Here is a link to one of my data collection tools I will be using this fall for my Standards-Based grading implementation in my Algebra 2 Concepts class. The tracking sheet shows all of the learning targets I laid out for the course and a place to input scores and observations for those targets.
