Virtual Penpal Assignment

Virtual Penpal Assignment

ePal Map

ePal Map
The students will communicate with other 3rd graders from Nigeria, Africa through ePals. They will ask questions dealing with nutrition and physical activity to gain insight into another culture. Students can use Google Maps to see how the climate may affect the food grown in Africa.

web evaluations

Hey Katie! These are the three internet cites I'm evaluating. Just wanted to let you know so we don't do the same ones.

http://www.cdc.gov/physicalactivity/everyone/guidelines/children.html

http://kidshealth.org/kid/stay_healthy/food/pyramid.html

http://www.healthychildren.org/english/healthy-living/nutrition/Pages/default.aspx

Concept Map #1

Concept Map 1

Reading Reflection #2

Sarah Betzold

EDT 3470

2-2-12

Reading Reflection #2:

Creating a Professional Learning Community

            Jeff Whipple, a Canadian middle school teacher stated, “Having somebody to brainstorm with about planning, having colleagues to reflect with about what was going on in the classroom- that was great” when talking about his first teaching job and the value of having teachers to collaborate with. Learning communities are focused on allowing teachers to work together to come up with best practices, improvements, ideas, projects, etc.

            There are many benefits of learning communities. A huge benefit is that teachers no longer have to work on their own. Teachers can work together with other teachers to come up with great ideas for lessons, classroom management, projects, etc. Teachers overall are able to make improvements in their classrooms and as a group focus on student learning.

            Learning communities affect teachers in positive ways because teachers are able to learn new strategies for teaching and receive useful information from other teachers.  Teachers are able to bounce ideas off each other and reflect on what has been working in the classroom and what hasn’t been working. Teachers no longer have to work in isolation. They share the responsibility with other teachers of bringing good ideas into the classroom.

            Learning communities also have a good affect on students because learning communities focus on student learning. The topic of discussion is always the students and how to provide students with the best learning experiences. Teachers focus on improving and doing their best to help students learn.

            There are many components of shared vision in learning communities. It’s always important that teachers share the same focus on student learning, goals, improvements, beliefs, values, etc. Teachers should be committed to working together and sharing ideas.

            The concepts in chapter two relate to my project in this class because my partner and I are working together and sharing ideas to come up with a good unit on staying healthy. We are sharing the responsibility and bouncing ideas off of each other. Great ideas come from working in with others. I can already tell that my partner and I are benefitting by working together rather than alone because we each have good ideas.

Reading Reflection #2

After reading about learning communities I think it is the most beneficial way to successfully conduct project based learning. The focus of learning communities does not only benefit the students but the teachers as well. By surrounding yourself with other colleagues who may have the same goal or maybe a different goal will better yourself as a teacher.
The learning community will ultimately make the "business better" as Peter Senge says. By creating the community everyone will "expand their capacity to create the results they desire".
This is just one of the benefits for learning communities. The teachers are not the only ones benefiting. The main ideas of the communities is to "ensure that the students learn, create a culture of collaboration for school improvement, and focus on results.". So students, the school, and teachers gain all the benefits of the collaborative community.
Teachers will learn that maybe what they thought was an effective way of teaching a certain subject in math was better to do it a different way. Taking all the constructive criticism will be the best way for teachers to better instruct their students. Also as a teacher you are not alone. You won't have such a high burden of making sure the students learn what they are supposed to. This is that shared responsibility.
Students will gain the advantage of collaborating with other students whether it be within their grade, school, or internationally. By using project based learning the possibilities are endless in the student sense that they can gain a lot of information in ways they haven't before.
The components for a shared vision in learning communities are all things that will make the student succeed and the teachers as well. All the components have some sort of aspect of sharing. They "share a vision, hold shared values, collaborate with each other, work together in collaborative teams" all of the components require team work and sharing ideas and achieving the shared vision.
Concepts in this chapter relate to our project in many ways. Not only the obvious that we are sharing a blog together to bounce ideas off of each other. But also as a class we can view each others blogs and see maybe a different approach to a similar idea we might have for our project. Also in this chapter I like how it gave places to use online collaboration. I think this might be an aspect for our project that we want to incorporate.