My goal from the start was to engage students. To make them want to learn and try their best. Motivation is a hard thing to quantify but work quality is not. The TPACK model is a overlap of what we teach, how we teach it and what tools we use to make it possible.
The WHAT started out as active listening skills and slowly transformed into peer feedback skills. From my first round of research I could tell that student really could show improvement in their active listening skills if the teacher took the time to teach them. They next step in my quest was to find out HOW to make them want to listen. I no longer wanted my voice to be the only one heard in the classroom. I no longer wanted the students to only look to me for help. I wanted them to become my allies and for them to take ownership over their learning. As a result my question evolved into:" How can strategic peer feedback instruction with the use of technology tools help to improve work quality in the classroom?" I began teaching them the steps to giving good feedback. We learned about the do's and don'ts of feedback. We watched tutorials such as Austin's Butterfly. This lesson taught them what good peer feedback looked like from a group of students who were also learning to use this skill. They learned an acronym called T.A.G which stands for : TELL what you liked, ASK a question, GIVE a suggestion. All of these lessons were the building blocks put in place to help them gain more independence with the act of giving feedback. Next, is the HOW or the pedagogy. I built in time to our schedule each week that was set aside for giving feedback, we called this Feedback Friday and the kids could not wait for this time to come around each week. We had been using the digital portfolio tool called Seesaw since the beginning of the year. They post phonics lessons, reading recordings, math exercises, videos of themselves answering questions and much more. Prior to the implementation of Feedback Friday myself and parents were the only ones to leave comments on student work. Opening up the feedback forum was a little bit intimidating at first, but any sort of comment that was made would need to be approved by me first which was helpful. We would take time at the end of each session to pick out good feedback and also pull out feedback that needed more work. They knew that only the good feedback would be posted to student journals. Finally, without the use of technology this change would have been impossible. Seesaw enabled me to see the feedback that my students were making on each other's work so that I could more effectively scaffold my teaching to help meet their needs. This tool also allowed for good opportunities for me to me to teach digital citizenship as well because some students found it entertaining to post comments under someone else's name. They also were leaving comments on work that they would never have said to the person's face. This raised some important conversations about cyberbullying and proper internet conduct. The use of pencil and paper would have not been adequate for teaching these skills because many students were unable to leave written comments but Seesaw allows for students to leave verbal feedback as well. This was a good way to differentiate the expectations to all of my students. In the center of this model, where all of these parts come together is a place where students effectively utilize peer feedback to improve work. It is a balancing act. I found sometimes one area would need a refresher course to stay on track. They sometime need help re learning how to use the technology appropriately or they need to be reminded of what good feedback is. This balancing act is what teaching is all about but, when it come to the impact that any given strategy has on student learning feedback is considered one of the most effective especially by John Hattie and his research. From trying this in my classroom I now know this to be true.
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I found a document on the district website that was all about appropriate use of technology for employees in NVUSD. There was also a separate page that covered appropriate usage by students. I got to thinking that this will need to be explicitly taught to my 5th graders next year. Of course it is a form that each of them sign at the beginning of the year and then it gets filed away inside their cume file in the office never to be looked at again. I think that this document needs to be reviewed regularly so that students are well aware of the consequences for misuse of the internet at school. Apparently they have had a big problem with the 5th grade students in the last few years.
As I perused the website a bit more I found in the 21st century learning page that they did indeed have a mission statement that seemed pretty artfully stated. "Our mission is to transform lives by instilling and inspiring lifelong learning in every student. We believe it is imperative that we make learning relevant to the real world in order that our students can thrive in the work force, contribute to their communities and become respected members of society." The page has a district philosophy and goals and objectives page that I thought was pretty cohesive with what we have discussed in our time in the Innovative Learning program. I have never really spent much time investigating these pages on the NVUSD website and I am glad that I did because I feel like the district is in support of what we are trying to achieve, however, I also feel like it is a little bit contradictory because they want us to teach from the text so to speak so that these kids are CAASP ready but they also want us to transform them into 21st century learners who have a broad capability to use technology and media use. They also state that these skills are best taught when integrated into the curriculum.... BUT HOW?! Well..... I think that's where we come in. We are the HOW we are the ones who are designing a capstone project around how to use these tech and media tools in ways that teach the content while also teaching students how to collaborate, communicate and be creative.
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