2 Stars & A Wish: ICT Whirlwind

     My fourth week of student teaching is now complete and I can't believe that I am over half way done my LAST student teaching placement! This week offered a really great blend between academic goals and social goals as we had two extracurricular days to celebrate the Day of Pink and Think Day. Two things that I think went really well this week were:

1 ) Merging ICT, Social Outcomes & Student-Relevant Ideas
- This week our school celebrated the Day of Pink and worked towards
  creating awareness about bullying, discrimination, and homophobia. One
  option our school suggested was creating some sort of classroom video
  and my Grade 10 class really wanted to do their own version of the
  Harlem Shake!
- I wanted to make sure we were still focusing on the message behind the
  day so we first worked on creating a collaborative mural at the back of
  our room that would serve as the "backdrop" for our film. Students
  created posters displaying relevant statistics, positive messages or
  personal stories/confessions about bullying, discrimination or homophobia.
- Once our backdrop was finished we filmed their video and spent time
  editing it to include images of our mural, the film, and credits to
  reference the audio sources we used. It was a really fun project, the
  students had a blast, and it was even shared with the school over the
  lunch hour!

2 ) Teaching Music
- On Thursday we ended up being short-staffed at the last minute and
  because I read music and have a music background I was asked to fill
  in while my cooperating teachers covered my classes.
- This was an awesome experience for me as I really enjoyed music class
  when I was in high school (I actually wanted to originally teach music) but
  haven't spent much time on it over the past few years. It was really
  rewarding to have an opportunity to utilize those skills again, practice
  conducting and help students practice their various pieces.
- A lot of times there isn't a qualified sub to cover the music classes so I
  felt like I was really able to help out and hold a "regular" class with them!

     One thing that I feel like I need to work on, however, is getting into a rhythm with my ICT course. Due to the number of extracurricular events happening in the school, my students just finished up their unit with "Mr. L" on Tuesday. This means that my unit on PowerPoint & Digital Storytelling needs to be introduced and completed in a manner of three weeks as opposed to five-six weeks. So far I am finding that my students are fairly familiar with PowerPoint so I am hoping this will allow us to progress quite quickly but I will still be making some modifications so that everything can be completed within our time frame!

Week 3: 2 Stars & A Wish Update

     Last week I shared that I wanted to work on creating meaningful learning opportunities for the students in my Grade 11/12 Agriculture class. This week we began a case study on The Dust Bowl and spent a class and a half watching the documentary "Surviving The Dust Bowl" and discussing the agricultural and environmental implications. From there I created assessment packages that gave students assessment options based off of suggestions they shared with me. Overall, we are working on creating "mini museum displays" that include some type of media, an artifact, and a written report. Here is how I set up their options:

The Greatest Dust Bowl  Photograph		Witnessing the Dust Bowl
Dust-Phenomena P.S.A	Dust Bowl Citizen Trading Card		From the Dust Bowl, With Love
Agricultural Causes & Effects of the Dust Bowl

Row 1 = media

Row 2 = artifacts

Row 3 = written report

Students have their choice of two options in Row 1 and their choice of three options in Row 2, but Row 3 is mandatory. So far I have gotten a pretty good response from my students and they have begun working on their choice from Row 1. I think they are enjoying having options and being able to pick what they want to complete. I will make sure to update and share some of the finished products!