AER Reflection

1.      Assessment Page During First Teaching Block

  As I am going into my first teaching block I am looking for resources that can help me along the way.  For assessment I will be using my digital portfolio on assessment to help guide me.  The first thing that I would use to help guide me would be the AER Strategy Form.  This form will be a constant reference for how I will use assessment to tackle a variety of challenges such as ELL learners, special needs learners, or report cards.  I have included two resources for every section from the Ministry document Growing Success to help guide me in future uses of assessment.  

  I would also like to use my assessment page from my digital portfolio to continue to blog about my continuing experiences and challenges with assessment.  I believe I have already started off quite well with my first two posts on my past experiences with assessment and my recent experiences with assessment.  I would like to continue this blog by detailing how I am dealing with assessment during my first teaching block and how I am adjusting to assess my placement class.  I believe that this will help with my self-reflection as a teacher and allow me to refine my assessment strategies.  

3. Professional Learning Goal for Job Interview

  If I were to highlight one of my professional learning goals from my AER Strategy Form I would want to highlight my goal to better facilitate support learning for students who are form an Aboriginal, Metis, or Inuit background.  In my AER Strategy Form I have highlighted the need to research the need to study the social and economic conditions these students come from as well as talking to experts and advisors from these communities.  This will be done to help better understand the context that these students learn in and what challenges they might have to learning.  I have highlighted two Ministry of Education documents to help me develop this learning goal.  These resources can be found here and here.  Both of these documents help inform teachers about the learning styles these students might have based on the communities they are from while also providing practical strategies and tools for the successful instruction of Aboriginal, Metis, and Inuit students.  I believe that teachers in Ontario are under-equipped and to help with the effective education of these students.  I therefore believe that highlighting my knowledge and willingness to learn and develop this knowledge would be a desirable asset during a job interview.   

AER Strategy Form

 

 

 

 

Math Reflection Week 11: Formative Assessment

  This was an interesting week for math.  We got the chance to play an "eggcelent" game called, you guessed it, Egg Hunt.  The game requires students to plan out a route through Ontario cities where in each city you get a certain amount of eggs for only one visit.  The catch is that you only have 4,000 kilometers that you can travel.  The objective is to get as many eggs as possible while remaining within the allotted four thousand kilometers.  For this activity we worked in pairs and it was nice to have someone to bounce ideas off of and plan with.  Obviously this activity involved a lot of problem solving to find the optimal solution, but it also involved a lot of number sense keeping track of how many kilometers you have traveled.  For the activity we were provided the distances between cities, but students could perhaps measure it themselves and use a scale to convert it into kilometers.  I also like how this activity does a great job of incorporating Ontario geography into it.   Overall the activity was a lot of fun and I think it really got people thinking and planning which is great.  This activity or something similar to it is certainly something I would like to implement for a math or even geography class.

  Before this game though I class took the time to brainstorm about some ideas for formative assessment for math.  A lot of really good suggestions were given by my colleagues such as math problems of the day, gallery walks, KWL charts, exit cards, self-assessments, and just regular conversations and questions.  I have posted a photo of all the strategies we wrote on the white board below.  I would certainly be interested in implementing some of these forms of assessment in my own classroom or during my placements. 

 

 Michael Feagan. (Nov. 24, 2016). Strategies for Assessment [photo].

  

Language and Literacy: Oral Communications

  I have been looking forward to this week's blog post ever since I settled on the idea that I would write about how tabletop role-playing games (RPGs) can better develop oral communication skills.  Oral Communications has three overall expectations: listen in order to understand and respond appropriately, use speaking skills and strategies appropriately to communicate, and reflect on and identify their strengths as listeners and speakers.  I believe that oral communication is something that is often neglected in favor of reading and writing, which is a shame as I believe good oral communication skills can help to improve reading in writing skills.  You can read more about the benefits of oral communication for learning from this article about using formal debates in the classroom.  The focus of this post however, is on the use of tabletop RPGs in the classroom to help and improve oral communication skills.

  Earlier I have discussed how RPGs can be used to improve reading skills so I won't be spending time here again explaining what RPGs are.  If you're curious as to what they are you can read my earlier post on the reading strand or my genius hour on RPGs in the classroom.  I wanted to share a TED Talk from journalist, critic and teacher Ethan Gilsdorf who highlights how an RPG like Dungeons and Dragons can help children to become better people.  Most of the life skills that Ethan highlights come from the oral communication component that is integral to RPGs.  You can watch the video below to get an idea of what an RPG is and also what skills it can provide players.



  One of the most important skills for oral communication which is also highlighted as an overall expectation is the ability to listen well.  To me this skill goes hand in hand with developing patience, being able to wait and listen for your time to talk next.  RPGs help to develop these skills as you must work together to cooperatively tell a story.  These skills are highlighted in Brian Fogila's article on how Dungeons and Dragons teaches students patience.  The only problem I have with the last two sources is that they use Dungeons and Dragons as their base.  For many this name might sound familiar, in terms of the RPG industry D&D is the most recognized game.  For students though I feel like this would be inappropriate, not because of the subject matter but because the rules can get in the way of the players/students ideas.  To this end I would recommend a less rules heavy and less preparation demanding RPG such as Dungeon World.  I believe that these games can help students express themselves creatively and problem solve in a low risk safe space.  Although many of them are in fantasy settings this is not a requirement for RPGs.  You can find games that are set in historical or  a particular mythological settings if that is something you would rather focus on.  You can also find games that are more friendly for younger grades to introduce them early without fear of the content.  For starters you could always tone down the content of an existing game like Dungeon World, or find a new game.  One that I found that I think would be great for younger kids is called Engine Heart, a game where you play WALL-E like robots and the best part about it is it's free and open source.

  I have played RPGs regularly now for the past 8 or so years, and I honestly believe that it helped make me, and the people I played with, better at communicating.  I will not lie, it is awkward and strange at first but I believe that's more the case the older you are when you start playing.  I believe that younger kids are more open to acting as another character and I believe that RPGs can help create a safe low risk environment that allows students to problem solve or act creatively through oral communication. 

Assessment Blog Post 2

  The Ontario Ministry of Education document Growing Success for me has changed the ways I view assessment.  For me the sections on The Achievement Chart and Assessment for and as learning have offered the greatest change in perspectives.  Each subject's curriculum (Math, Language Arts, Social Studies, etc.) has a section detailing the achievement chart categories and what they mean for the specific subjects.  In Growing Success though it details what these categories mean more generally such as Knowledge and Understand, Thinking, Communication and Application.  The document goes on to explain what the grade levels for these categories entails relating to the provincial standards.  To me this is very important as the Achievement Chart helps to form my assessment of learning.  The language used in the Achievement Chart is what I would use to create rubrics.  To me a standard like this is really helpful for informing how to do assessment of learning in my placement.

  All of this being said there are different ways of assessment detailed in Growing Success, namely assessment for and as learning.  This is something I still feel I am grappling with to understand better.  I understand assessment as learning, it involves different forms of self and peer assessment so that students can better assess their own learning.  However, I am not sure when this form of assessment is most appropriate and if it is appropriate for all students at all grade levels.  I believe that self-assessment is something a teacher has to model, but I am unsure how.  This is something that I would like to look into more, how to model self-assessment of work to students and teach them how to do it.  Assessment for learning to me is a bit more confusing.  I know it involves diagnostic and formative assessment: diagnostic being assessment of student knowledge before instruction, and formative being assessment during instruction.  The problem is that I am unsure how assessment for learning looks like outside of exit cards, anecdotal notes, observations and conversations with students.

  Clearly my learning about assessment is not done as I still have many questions left to be answered and explored.  I can only try to move forward with an open mind and the ability to adapt to new knowledge and experience when it comes to assessment.  

Math Reflection Week 10: Probability and Data Management

  For this week our class was focused on data management and probability.  For me personally I always enjoyed probability and data management, I always see it as kind of a game.  For probability this outlook seems obvious as often lessons in probability involve dice, cards and spinners.  I always got a certain enjoyment out of understanding the odds or likelihood of certain outcomes in the context of games.  To me data management ties into this as it can represent the likelihood of these events in a understandable form. For this week I had the chance to develop a math question with a photo to accompany it.  So due to the timing I decided to make a probability question.  The question is simple enough, if you were to roll 5 dice and each time you rolled you removed the dice that came up as 1 eventually all dice will be eliminated.  If we were to do this process 10 times how many rolls on average will we have to make?  I quite like this problem as it can easily become a whole lesson where the students break up into groups with chart paper to keep track of their experiment.  I also like it because it lets students use dice as manipulatives.  This activity can also be easily extended to incorporate the data management strand by having students graph their outcomes.  At the end all the students can come together and the whole class can combine the data to come up with a class average.  I have personally designed this lesson with a grade 8 class in mind and as such it best fits those curriculum expectations for data management and probability.  You can read through the curriculum expectations here, for this assignment it would be the first and second specific expectation for probability.

  In class we had the opportunity to experience other data management and probability activities.  My table group was assigned the task of guessing how many times we could toss a ball into a cup and guess the likelihood of those events occurring.  We of course got the opportunity to actually toss the ball into the cup, which was fun.  I quite liked this activity because its not your typical roll rice or toss a coin probability activity.  It nicely incorporated prediction into it by giving us the predictions, with our responsibility being to guess how likely they are to occur.  

  Both of these activities I feel like can be turned into a lesson easily and are defiantly going on my list of things to consider implementing in a class during my placement.  I believe that both activities are great for teaching probability and data management as they allow for the use of engaging manipulatives and allow for collaborative group work.  I always loved learning about probability so I would love to get the chance to try and translate that passion and interest into a lesson. 

Math Reflection Week 9: Measurement and Digital Tools

  For this week in our math course we are exploring how to teach measurements to students.  If geometry was my favorite strand in math then measurement was probably my second favorite.  Students learn measurement in math in three stages throughout the grades: definition/comparison, nonstandard units, and then standard units.  Nonstandard units mean using things like cubes, while standard units is measuring in centimeters or grams.  You can explore how this translates to a grade by grade level at the math curriculum here.  Throughout the grade levels students perform two overall expectations that are generally the same.  First they develop good measurement sense using estimation or physical measuring using a variety of strategies.  Second they determine measurement relationships, the relationships among units and measurable attributes among various shapes depending on the grade level.  I believe one of the reasons why I enjoyed both geometry and measurement is because they encourage the use of math manipulative.  Having something concrete to work with defiantly helped my learning and understanding of units of measurement.   

  If you want to know what teaching measurements looks like you can watch one of my teacher colleagues present a measurement lessons here.  I quite like this activity because it makes good use of math manipulatives, having students cut out images from magazines, having students estimate which ones are larger, compare them by size, and then calculate the area of the images using graph paper as a guide.   This lesson also makes use of different means of assessment for and as learning.  Her "students" made conjectures and hypothesis while they worked and the teacher gave feedback to these questions.  As stated earlier this lesson also makes good use of manipulatives, a great idea for a grade 4-5 lesson who often need these concrete manipulatives.  You can find strategies for providing assessment for and as learning in math here.  As I stated earlier this lesson makes good use of assessing reasoning and proving and representing.  The instructor does an excellent job of providing encouragement for the student's learning asking questions to the students, encouraging communication and having the students share their strategies. 

  I also had a chance this week to read and hear about my professor's (Rebecca Bunz's) strategies for better integration and evaluation of digital tools in the classroom.  I don't really think I have the space to go over everything about her strategy here, nor do I think I would be able to do it a good service in doing so.  Instead I would like to highlight one particular stage of her plan that stood out to me.  Stage 5 of her plan focuses on searching, finding, and evaluating digital tools, and highlights that teachers need to consider the cost, rating, age appropriateness, user policy, features, and above all play all the levels.  I believe that this level of scrutiny is so important to do if you are planning on using a digital tool for instruction.  Most important of all though you must consider if this tool will help your students achieve curriculum standards and learning goals.  This feeds back into the earlier criteria, that the teacher must familiarize themselves with the tool and determine if it achieves the goals you want, and if does not can it be accommodated.   Of course this is only step 5, and although it might sounds important there are other steps you have to take to use step 5 successfully, like establishing a PLC. 

Language and Literacy: Writing Strand

  In my earlier blog post for language and literacy I brought up the use of role-playing games in the classroom to teach reading skills.  However, a recent reading has come up that has really grabbed my attention as a prospective educator.  This article focuses on the use of persuasive writing in classrooms and how to teach and model persuasive writing to students. The article is called Gradually Releasing Responsibility to Students Writing Persuasive Texts by Sylvia Read, Melanie London-hays and Alicia Martin-Rivas.  This text highlights a couple interesting points for me.  Firstly it states that students in younger grades never learn or practice persuasive writing, instead focusing on narrative writing skills.  Secondly this article displays how teachers can model persuasive writing to a class using a model called IMSCI (Inquiry, Modelling, Shared Writing, Collaborative Writing, and Independent Writing).  I will break down what I believe these two points mean for teaching persuasive writing, but I first thought it would be appropriate to relate these ideas to my own experiences writing persuasive research papers during my undergrad.  I feel like this is a fair comparison because in the article the students are using the skills of writing outside of language arts class (it's in the context of a science class), and even at a university level I still exercised the basic skills highlighted in this form of instruction.

  One resource that I found in my fourth year undergrad as a history major was the Stanford History Education Group, which offers useful intro materials for writing in history and lesson plans.  For this post though I want to focus on their intro material, specifically their historical thinking chart (pictured below).  To me this chart helps to highlight a lot of what the article on persuasive writing touches on.  The article on persuasive writing makes clear that students cannot learn how to write persuasively without first learning how to read persuasive texts.  This chart nicely highlights the skills that students at any level have to exercise when reading persuasive texts under the Close Reading section.  Likewise, these are things that students have to make clear when writing their own persuasive texts.  I also think that teachers can easily use the IMSCI model in a historical writing context by encouraging inquiry and modelling along the lines of close reading, sourcing, contextualization, and corroboration.  Like the article on persuasive writing I do not believe that these skills are too advanced for elementary students, but should be taught early.  The article by Sylvia Read states that they were instructing a fourth grade class how to write persuasively and got surprisingly good results out of it.  I therefore believe that if teachers model how to write persuasively in different contexts (such as science or history as appropriate to the subject) and provide scaffolding with a gradual release of responsibility they can become effective persuasive writers.

Stanford Historical Education Group. Historical Thinking Chart [Online Image].

Math Reflection Week 8: Geometry and Lesson Plans

  This week our math class got the chance to dive into the curriculum strand of geometry and spatial sense.  Geometry and patterning have always been my favorite math subjects growing up, so I excited to see what my fellow student teachers would do with their learning activities.  I was not disappointed, all of the learning activity presentations this week were great.  The first thing we got a chance to do was plotting points on a grid and connecting them to form an image.  You can find that resource here if you're interested.  As I stated earlier I really enjoyed this weeks learning activities, particularly the ones which included manipulatives.  One activity had us using various polygonal shapes to fit within a large diamond shaped asteroid. 

Michael Feagan. (Nov. 4, 2016). Asteroid Shapes [photo].

  We had to to recreate this shape using different guidelines or restrictions such as it being symmetrical or using at least two hexagons.  I love these kinds of activities for students because it gets them working hands on developing their geometry and spatial sense skills.  Obviously this activity exercises fairly basic geometry skills, but I believe that it can be modified to fit higher grade levels.  The other activity that I liked involved the creation of three dimensional shapes using two dimensional nets.  I feel like this is an activity a lot of students have done even outside of math.  What I liked about how my group chose the do it, is that we used these rubber tiles and pieced them together to form a cube, pictured below.

 Michael Feagan. (Nov. 8 2016), Rubber Cube [photo].

  I always found cutting out nets from paper, gluing them together, and trying to bend it to fit into a nice cube was always a finicky task.  So for me creating it using the nice tile manipulatives saved a lot of frustration.  That being said these tiles are somewhat limited.  For example if you wanted your students to create square or triangular based pyramids these tiles would not work so well, and in that case paper nets would be best.  Still I had a lot of fun getting to manipulate geometric objects in a mathematical context again.  Unlike many things in math, knowledge of shapes, their properties, and relations to each other has never really left me and is still something I'm interested in. 

  We wrapped up our class by discussing the creation of our math lesson plans.  It is an assignment that has us getting into pairs and constructing a lessons plan for any grade, on any strand, using the Brock lesson plan template.  Many of my classes are having me constructing lesson plans and I'm definitely looking forward to it.  Making lesson plans was a skill that I felt I really needed starting this year, so I'm glad I'm finally getting some experience in doing it.  Me and my partner will be designing a lesson plan for a grade 4 class that involves the construction of 3D shapes using 2D paper nets.  So it ties in strongly with what we practiced in class that week.  Progress on this lesson plan has already come along nicely, and I look forward to any feedback on it in the coming weeks.

Math Reflection Week 7: ESL Students

  This week we had a very informative math class with engaging activities from both our professor and fellow students.  This week some of my fellow students took on the role of teaching patterning and algebra to our class.  Now many people find algebra to be an intimidating thing. particularly young students, so I am really happy to say that all of the presenters expressed it in a accessible and understandable way.  I was particularly fond of one student's presentation of patterning where she taught the Fibonacci Sequence and spiral.  Before this lesson I was familiar with the concept of the Fibonacci Spiral in art, but was unaware of the mathematical elements behind it.  I therefore found this activity really engaging for me as I got to learn something new that helped expand my schema.  I also got to thinking about how I would teach patterning and the Fibonacci Sequence in my class, and got to thinking that maybe you could do a cross curricular activity between art and math where students utilize the Fibonacci Spiral.  Just a concept but would be something I would love to look into further. 

  The subject of teaching ESL (English Second Language) students was also brought up in class.  For me as a teacher with plans of potentially teaching abroad to ESL students I was really interested in this.  It also corresponded nicely to the virtual career fair on teaching abroad which was going on the day after.  We broke down ESL learners into four types: early stage learners, foundation learners, confident users, and fluent users.  You can find the document that details what these mean and what strategies teachers can use for them here.  Our professor broke us up into groups based on the four types of ESL learners to come up with strategies for teaching them.  My group got fluent users, which you might initially think there would be no challenges to teaching these students in English, but there are.  These fluent learners often experience frustration due to higher language expectations and can still make errors with more complex or non-standard language such as math.  These students can often get frustrated when their language is corrected.  Teachers of these ESL students should not be afraid to still work one-on-one with them to ensure their understanding and make corrections. 

  I feel like the information I have received this week will be valuable when going in to my teaching service.  Particularly if I decide to go abroad to teach ESL students I will take the advice I have received to heart and try to make a welcoming and encouraging environment for all ESL students.

Language and Literacy: Reading Strand

  For students to develop their reading skills it is important to exercise the skill of reading for a variety of purposes.  According to the Ontario grades 1-8 language curriculum (found here) this means reading for "self-discovery, self-enrichment, and for the sheer fun of it" (p.10).  The curriculum goes on to highlight how this is particularly important for younger students, as it can form the bedrock of their attitudes and habits towards reading.  From a young age I have been exposed to books and to reading in a environment that has always been enjoyable.  So I can agree that making a good impression at a young age is incredibly important.  However, the momentum should not stop there, reading should always be presented as an avenue for student discovery and enjoyment.  How do you do this?  How can you make reading an enjoyable process that encourages student self-discovery?  Well there are many methods out there but I wanted to take the time here to discuss a method which I have been researching and writing about on this blog for the past month.  I am talking about using pen and paper role-playing games to teach reading skills to students.

Sargoth. (March 2009), Role Playing Games at Burg-Con [Online Image]. Retrieved from Wikipedia.

  Now many of my readers might not be familiar with what a role-playing game (RPG) is, so I will briefly describe it here.  A role-playing game involves a group of players taking on the role of fictional character that they have created.  One player takes the role of a game master (GM), who unravels the story to the players orally, describing events, places, and choices the players have.  The players who are taking the role of these characters respond to what is presented to them by GM.  There are many published systems out there that add their rules and settings but that is the basic concept.  A few staples of pen and paper RPGS are the game manuals, character sheets, and dice.

  So what does this have to do with the reading strand?  I am here to argue that integrating RPGs into the classroom is an excellent way of not only incorporating the reading strand, but others as we will see in later posts.  For the reading strand I would like to share an interview with teacher Kade Wells.  Kade Wells is a Texan teacher who used Dungeons and Dragons (a highly popular RPG) in his 9th grade language arts class to great effect.  You can find the interview with Wells here (the interview starts at 21:55).  Wells describes a classroom plagued with apathy, completely unenthusiastic about reading.  Wells describes that having his classroom create characters in a RPG context created a buy in, where students were reading for their own sake because they wanted their characters to do well.  These students were reading game books, manuals for Dungeons & Dragons, and if you are unfamiliar with them these are not small books, these are about 300 page sized tomes with columned text.  Certainly not easy reads even for a grade 9 class, but these students became eager to read them and would wonder how they could find specific things in the text, so would use things like indexes and the table of content to find what they were looking for.  Coming from students who had no interest in books or a history reading, this is big to have students discover how to effectively use things like an index on their own.

  I therefore think that RPGs are great on their own for teaching students how to read dense manuals and unpack rules through skimming and cuing.  We can even see that students are actively reading out of a sense of discovery and for fun.  Of course this cannot meet the requirements for the whole reading strand, students must read for a variety of purposes.  I believe though that a teacher can build these other expectations around the game while still maintaining student enjoyment, discovery, and engagement.  For example students are expected to read a wide variety of texts, well since RPGs are often set in fantastical settings, why not incorporate myths and folklore into the game, have them interact with those texts as if it were something occurring to their characters.  I also believe that reading strategies can be easily incorporated into a RPG by bringing in prior knowledge, questioning (something routinely directed towards the GM), drawing inferences, connecting, evaluating, and most importantly creative thinking.  Although information and instructions in RPGs are conveyed through the manuals and orally form the GM, there's no reason why information cannot be conveyed through other written or graphical means.  Such as through text that might appear in the game world, written stories or events that impact the student's characters, even the reading and processing of information on character sheets is a good example.  If the curriculum says that baseball cards can be used in a classroom (p.11), I see no reason why character sheets can't be.

  As educators we must try to create creative ways for students to engage with reading.  I do not think this is the best way, but I think it that it can be incredibly effective at engaging the students with a variety of texts for different purposes.  Feel free to explore other parts of my blog to find out how else RPGs can be used in a classroom.

James Jones. (April 2009), Dice and Character Sheet [Online Image]. Retrieved from Wikipedia.

Assesment Blog Post 1

  Over the years of your education you are constantly faced with assessment, either from your teacher, peers, or yourself.  Growing up in the public school system in Ontario from grades K-8 I do not remember receiving a very diverse means of assessment.  Most of my experiences with assessment from grades K-8 were test oriented, or based on the teacher's evaluation based on a rubric.  I don't feel like this form of assessment was incorrect, far from I think it is necessary, but it was the only form of assessment I remember from those grades.  It wasn't until high school that I had the chance to experience student self-assessment on our work.  However, this form of assessment was rare possibly due to a lack of trust the teachers had in honest student assessment.  It was not until university where it was common to self-assess your performance in seminars and give yourself a grade.  It was also not until university where I felt like peer evaluation actually mattered, mostly for seminar facilitation.  That being said teacher or professor led assessment and evaluation through papers and tests has been the dominant form for assessing my academic performance.  This is not to say that I disliked this method of assessment, I love tests and papers with rubrics but as a student teacher and as someone who has interacted with teachers from many different backgrounds I realize it has not worked for everyone.  

  I still believe that the current methods of assessment still strongly involve the use of tests and rubrics for projects that are evaluated exclusively by the teacher.  However, I also think that we are shifting away from that as the main focus.  I think there is more methods of assessment out there then there was when I was growing up in the elementary school system.  I think that there is more room being made for student self-assessment and peer evaluation.  I also think that anecdotal observations are playing a stronger role in how teachers evaluate a student's performance.   In most Ontario public schools there is likely more diversity in how students are assessed than I can currently think of.  Just based on my own classroom observations I can say that homework worksheets for subjects like math and geography are still common and larger culminating projects for classes like language arts and geography are still used.  Rubrics are things that, based on my observations, are noticeably absent.  Meaning that students are not provided rubrics for how their assignments will be assessed by the teacher.  This may be just due to that fact that I have yet to see them being used, or that perhaps there is a less rigid means of assessment being exercised.  Worksheets are reviewed and graded by the teacher and given back to the students, likely with some feedback and writing on where the student did well or needs improvement. 

  I know that assessment has largely moved past the use of tests and rubrics exclusively, and there are more diverse means of assessment being used by Ontario teachers.  Currently though I just feel ignorant of what kind of advancements have been made since my time in the Ontario public school system.  I look forward to growing my knowledge on this topic and later writing about how my readings on assessment have changed my beliefs and maybe helped enlighten me to methods that I have never considered before. 

 

Math Reflection Week 6: Math Curriculum

  One of the activities that really stood out to me today in class involved us using paper cut outs of math curriculum expectations and matching them to example activities.  A picture of the activity and the cut outs is posted below, and if you're curious you can also read the Ontario grades 1-8 math curriculum here.  I performed this activity with a partner and even with two minds working on it it was still surprisingly challenging.  This is due to the fact that some of the curriculum descriptions and expectations sound a little vague, and you think that these examples could fit into more than one grade level.  Usually it gets tricky when deciding between two grade levels that a nearer to each other, like grades 7 and 8.  Although I like how this activity had us reading through the curriculum and getting a better understanding of the goals for each grade and how assignments meet those goals it still came across as a little strange to me.  This assignments is a test of our knowledge of the curriculum and mathematical processes.  It assumes we are unaware of what grade level we are designing activities or lessons for, so we mix and match.  In reality I do not think that this would come in handy.  For example if you are hired to teach a grade 6 class you would focus on the math requirements for grade 6.  I think it would have been more useful and applicable if we were given a single grade and many different activities and were required to find the one that just applied to that grade level.  It was a little bit of an overwhelming mixing and matching activity with all the different grade requirements.  I would still considering doing a mixing and matching activity using paper manipulatives like this for my class though.  

 

Michael Feagan. (Sept. 20 2016). Math Curriculum [photo].

   Over the past week I also got the chance to try another math game.  This weeks math game that I tried was called Dirt Bike Proportions.  It's a simple game in which you race dirt bikes, and your dirt bike goes faster is you answer a multiple choice question on simple proportional fractions.  When you answer a question correctly the bike moves forward, when incorrectly it stalls.  At the end of the game it tells you what questions you got wrong and the correct solution.  It is similar in terms of game mechanics to a game a played a few weeks ago but did not write about, Integer Orbits.  Although I think using games for math classes is a great idea, I also think that you need to keep the games fresh on a deeper gameplay level, not just changing the theme and the curriculum.  

  I had a great math week overall, getting the chance to try and improve my knowledge of curriculum expectations is always welcome as that is something I will always be doing in my professional career. 

TPACK Quest

  Over the past few weeks I have been steadily progressing to completing all of my badges, symbols of my course achievements.  The first one I wish to discuss is my badge Cup of Wisdom.  The Cup of Wisdom is rewarded for completing all of the weekly online tasks that help to support my background knowledge with various technologies.  I think my favorite activity within the Cup of Wisdom was the PBL Badge, simply due to the large amount of choice we had in online teaching tools to explore.  I personally loved learning about the timeline tool Timetoast and the trading card tool.

 

  The second badge I wish to discuss is the Genius Hour Badge.  We have talked a lot about genius hour over the past few weeks, but getting a chance to experience is something I'll never forget.  I will defiantly look into using the concept of genius hour in my classrooms going forward, as I think it is an excellent opportunity for students to express their interests and get some self-motivation.  I also really benefited from my own genius project looking into role-playing games in the classroom.  This is a topic I might not have researched otherwise, which is a shame because I got a lot out of this activity.

  The third but potentially most important badge I have received is the Professional Order of TPACK Badge.  This involved coming to class consistently, tweeting regularly, and collaborating in all in-class learning activities.  This badge represents my professionalism, collaboration and dependability.  As a teacher I think it is a good idea to try and incentivize student punctuality and participation.  This badge does a good of keeping students accountable. 

Genius Hour Learning Object

  Earlier in one of my weekly reflections I had mentioned the creation of a learning object for my implementation of role-playing games in the classroom.  This learning object was a timeline of the events during the opening year of World War One using the website Timetoast.  You can find the timeline for this here, I would personally recommend viewing it in list mode rather than timeline as it looks neater.  As I said I would use this tool to have students make their own timelines for specific historical events.

Genius Hour TED Talk

  I have finally finished my TED talk all about my genius hour project on how RPGs can be used in the classroom.  I have embedded the Youtube video of my TED talk below.  I unfortunately filmed it with a big of a cold so my voice is a little scratchy.  Still I enjoyed this whole genius hour project I did.  I'm still considering doing continual updates on it, discussing how RPGs can be used within the classroom.  Perhaps devise some more activities or ways of organizing the class around RPGs and post them.  I would of course appreciate any constructive feedback on my TED talk or on any of my other posts for my genius hour.  I hope this was as enriching of an experience for you as it was for me.  Enjoy my TED talk!

Language and Literacy: Media Strand

Critical Interpretation and Sourcing

  One of the most important aspects of media literacy for me is critical interpretation.  So what is media literacy and how is it critically interpreted?  According to the Ontario curriculum Media literacy is "the study of the art and messaging of various forms of media texts" (Ontario Curriculum Grades1-8: Language, p.13).  This means the study of any media that intends to communicate a meaning to an audience whether it is done through texts, graphics, sound, or digitally.  So then what does critical interpretation of media mean?  Critical interpretation means the ability for students to differentiate between fact and opinion, evaluate the credibility of the sources, understand biases, what audience the media is targeted to, and why the media was produced.  It is these critical thinking skills that to me are the most important to get right when teaching media literacy, as it can help form the foundation for how your students take in all forms of media.

  In class we viewed a short Taco Bell commercial, in which elderly people act "young" while enjoying Taco Bell.  You can find the video embedded below.  What I liked about this exercise is that it deals with something that people experience every day: advertisements.  Having students watch, read, or view advertisements is an excellent way of interpreting what a target audience is and why it was produced.  This activity could also be taken a step further.  It has become a recent trend among online news sites and even magazines to have sponsored articles rather than intrusive ads.  These could make excellent examples of how to critically interpret media.  I would have the students read the sponsored article without telling them it was sponsored by a specific corporation or organization.  After they had read it and had received their opinions on it, I would then reveal that is was sponsored, and then re-evaluate what they thought of the article now.  This would be an excellent lesson in discovering biases, evaluating credibility, sourcing, while also continuing to question who the media was produced for and why.


  In our digital age where we are bombarded with information on a daily basis it is critical that we develop good critical interpretation skills for our media.  We must be able to educate students so that they are properly prepared to evaluate all this new media from its biases to its intended audiences.  From my experiences and time spent in my tech class I have learned of scavenger and treasure hunting activities.  Both are exercises in researching, sourcing, and evaluating credibility.  The only difference is that scavenger hunts provide students a webpage to search through and a treasure hunt gives students a search engine to use.  I would love the chance to use a scavenger hunt activity to teach media literacy, by providing a webpage, a quote, and a claim associated with it students would have to go to these pages I provided and search them to see if these quotes and claims are valid or not.  The activity can also be expanded upon by requiring additional independent research to determine its validity, potentially due to me leading them to sites with bogus information.

  Overall I believe that media literacy and the ability to critically intemperate different forms of media is a important life skill in the 21st century.  As educators we must find new and engaging ways we can use different media to illustrate these skills.

Genius Hour Week 4: Reflections and Final Thoughts

Over the past few weeks I have thoroughly enjoyed researching the topic of role-playing games (RPGs) in the classroom.  I have found many resources to help explain how others have done it, and really enjoyed coming up with my own lessons or methods of integrating RPGs into the class.  For this post I will be reflecting on my experiences with this project, some implications of my project, and in general going over some things I may have missed.  

Due to trying to be concise I have glossed over some aspects both of RPGs in general and their application in the classroom.  I thought it might be helpful here to briefly go over some RPG mechanics and give my own personal recommendations for those interested in entering the hobby just for fun or bringing it into a classroom.  As I have stated RPGs are all about creating your own character and playing in a group of other people who have done the same.  There is one person, often called the game master who unravels a narrative and presents options to players and their characters.  In most RPGs when players commit to an action they often roll dice to determine the outcome and the result is often modified by the character’s stats.  This ends up adding some controlled randomness and necessitates improvisation both for players and game masters.  That is pretty much it for core concepts while trying to be as concise as possible. 

I will now take the time here to provide some personal recommendations and suggestions for RPGs that are good introductions to new players, or would make for an excellent classroom tool.  First and foremost I have to bring up Dungeons & Dragons (D&D), as it is by far the most recognizable RPG out there.  While I think this might help introduce educators to the concept of RPGs I believe that most editions of the game are too cumbersome for a classroom of students grades 1-8.  It is a little too rules heavy to allow for that ease of entry and student buy in.  You want a system that will not frustrate or confuse any of your students.  This is why I had recommended Dungeon World in my last post.  The rules are simple and encourage player creativity and ingenuity in resolving issues.  My second recommendation might come across as bizarre sounding, but if you’re a fan of the movie WALL-E you’ll love it.  The RPG is called Engine Heart where the players create and play as their own robots.  I compared this to WALL-E because these robots are not big or powerful, they’re simple robots designed usually for one or two basic functions, like a robot that collects and incarnates trash, or a robot that greets people.  The rules are quite basic and easy to pick up, it does involve dice but only 10-sided dice.  Besides that the game system is free, you can get a pdf of the rules and character sheets from their websites.  I think this game could work particularly well for younger grades, and might be a great interactive activity to discuss human impact on the environment, much in the same way the movie WALL-E did.  These are just some of the easiest, most accessible, or popular RPGs I could think of.  I might expand this blog further as I discover and read more RPGs that could work for a classroom or go into greater depth reviewing and describing the RPGs I have mentioned and the uses for them in a classroom.

So now that we are at the end of this project, what have we learned and what implications for learning did we discover?  First and foremost I think that this activity highlights the need to engage students in interesting and novel ways.  Children have a natural drive to play, and I think we would be missing out as educators if we did not harness this drive to play to also help them learn.  I think that as a teacher if you are planning on integrating RPGs into the classroom you have to do so in a way that is engaging and inclusive (make sure it’s something that all students can enjoy and participate in) but above all helps to reinforce traditional curricular lessons or incorporates curricular standards into play.  I believe that RPGs can help to teach and reinforce knowledge on social skills, arithmetic, probability, reading, writing, media literacy, problem solving, and critical thinking skills.  There are some issues that educators or those familiar with RPGs may raise, two of which being time and size.  RPGs are often very time intensive activities, and are usually designed to be played with 4-8 people including the game master.  In a classroom setting the best way to account for the issue of time is quite simple.  Just plan out a lesson that would take the appropriate classroom time to complete and weave the RPG around that.  The issue of time with RPGs is something that as educators we deal with for every lesson and is something that we plan and account for better with experience.  The issue of size is something more complicated.  If you have a class of 30 students that far exceeds the recommended players for an RPG.  This is where the teacher must get creative, either by creatively working in RPG elements into traditional lessons thus having it function little differently than a normal classroom.  Or have students break off into groups and decide a student who can keep track of rules along with a character, like a smaller scale game master.  Or ideally but perhaps unrealistically have students simply take turns, this method would of course be a larger test of patients and may eat more time.  

Overall I don’t think there is any one right answer of how to bring RPGs into a classroom; you have to find the method that best works for you and your class.  Experimentation is necessary.  I just hope that I managed to get some people thinking about this topic, got people curious, and got people wanting to explore the potential of RPGs in education.  One of the final things coming up for this genius hour project will be a TED talks.  It will nicely summarize my studies and research on this topic, along with my methods, reflections, and where we can all go from here.