Phase 3 Signature Assignment

Part 1 

• During the course of this semester, my philosophy of education has not changed, if anything it has only strengthened. I still firmly believe in a child centered approach that focuses on the whole child, not just their academic needs. Through this class, I have learned many technological tools that I can use to help me support the whole child as well as tools that will support me in individualizing instruction to support each of my students at their instructional level with their needs.
• In my classroom I am going to use technology to aide my students in creating graphic organizers through Kidspiration, give them opportunities to play educational games on iPad apps, use the smart board during lessons as an interactive tool and use a website like Weebly to give parents and students a place to connect with my classroom and be updated on what is going on in the class. As I begin to make more and more lesson plans, I intend to always try to find a way to include technology in at least one part of my lesson and to continually include technology in my instructional day. I also intend to keep up with researching new educational tools they become available as technology advances and experiment and try them in my classroom.

Part II

Standard 1: Facilitate and Inspire Student Learning and Creativity

1.    I used the Storybird tool to promote, support, and model creative and innovative thinking and inventiveness by giving my students the opportunity to create and publish their own books. I did this because it is important to give students a sense of ownership with their work and giving them the kinds of tools that will allow them to take ownership of their products can empower them to create and be innovative thinkers. 

2.   I plan to use CNN student news website during my community time in the morning to engage students in exploring real-world issues and solving authentic problems using digital tools and resources. By exposing my students to real-world current events and problems I will be able to widen their worldviews as well as start real conversations about how we as a class can help and try and use technology to implement those solutions.

3.    I plan on using a blogging tool in my classroom to promote student reflection using collaborative tools to reveal and clarify students' conceptual understanding and thinking, planning, and creative processes. By having my students reflect on current events, daily lessons or projects in blog form and compiling them on a classroom website, my students can practice self reflection as well as giving me a chance to informally see where they are in their understanding.

4.    By using Google tools I plan to model collaborative knowledge construction by engaging in learning with students, colleagues, and others in face-to-face and virtual environments. Google tools is a wonderful way to collaborate with parents using Google forms to arrange volunteering, snack supplying, etc. I can collaborate with my colleagues by sharing documents, spreadsheets and presentations and I can collaborate with my students by using Google forms to ask about interests and take polls on what they would like to do for things like field trips etc.

Standard 2: Design and Develop Digital-Age Learning Experiences and Assessments

1.    During the course of this class I designed or adapted relevant learning experiences that incorporate digital tools and resources to promote student learning and creativity by creating a Pen Pal lesson to international pen pals that utilized Google Earth so that the students both were able to expand their ideas about the world as well as use their creativity to write letters about themselves and their lives that their pen pals would enjoy. In the future teaching this lesson I could also make it possible to have the children use email to write letters back and forth to their pen pals.  

2.    I plan to develop technology-enriched learning environments that enable all students to pursue their individual curiosities and become active participants in setting their own educational goals, managing their own learning, and assessing their own progress by utilizing iPads and smart boards in my lessons and center activities. During centers, all of my students will be given the opportunity to choose a topic that interests them and do a project in any medium of their choosing. By using iPads for research each student can choose an individual topic that they want to learn more about and they can use their center time to accomplish this. This is an engaging project that they can use to challenge themselves and use technology to accomplish.  

3.    In my story writing lesson utilizing the tool Storybird I was able to customize and personalize the learning activity to address students' diverse learning styles, working strategies, and abilities using digital tools and resource by differentiating my instruction from using only Kidspiration and Storybird to including Pixie, a program that is easier to use and is easily adaptable to different learning styles and instructional levels.

4.    In my classroom I am going to provide students with multiple and varied formative and summative assessments aligned with content and technology standards and use the resulting data to inform my learning and teaching by using anecdotal records during conferences and lessons, recording how the students are interacting with the technology. I am also going to use apps and games as formative assessments by periodically sitting down with my students and watching them play these skills based apps to see the understanding that my students are showing. During my school year I am going to make sure that I use the information that I have gathered to change my instruction to support my student’s needs by addressing any areas that may need re-teaching or differentiated instruction. 

Standard 3: Model Digital-Age Work and Learning 

1.    I demonstrate fluency in technology systems and the transfer of current knowledge to new technologies and situations by using many different technologies on a regular basis like Microsoft Word, Powerpoint and Excel as well as using the Google Drive tools on a daily basis. I use a variety of these tools to accomplish things in both my academic and social life.

2.    I collaborate with students, peers, parents, and community members using digital tools and resources to support student success and innovation. An example of this is how in my future classroom I will use Google forms to do an interest inventory for each of my students to determine what interests them in order to effectively engage them.

3.    I will communicate relevant information and ideas effectively to students, parents, and peers using a variety of digital-age media and formats by sending out a weekly parent letter via email as well as having a classroom website that I would keep updated with events and news as well as showcasing student work.

4.    I will model and facilitate effective use of current and emerging digital tools to locate, analyze, evaluate, and use information resources to support research and learning by showing my students how I do research and by modeling how to find specific information in an effective and safe way. 

Standard 4: Promote and Model Digital Citizenship and Responsibility

1.    I will advocate, model, and teach safe, legal, and ethical use of digital information and technology, including respect for copyright, intellectual property, and the appropriate documentation of sources by teaching lessons on how to use technology in a safe, ethical and legal way as well as reminding my students through mini-lessons about how to use technology in a safe, ethical and legal way especially when we will be starting projects that will be affected, like making a presentation and being sure to use copyright free photos. 

2.    I will address the diverse needs of all learners by using learner-centered strategies providing equitable access to appropriate digital tools and resources by working with my school and students' families to make sure that all of my students are able to have access to the same technologies and as a teacher I am going to make sure that things that I assign are able to be completed using resources that all students have access to either at school or that I can arrange for them to have the access to in their homes or communities. 

3.    I will promote and model digital etiquette and responsible social interactions related to the use of technology and information by teaching lessons about digital etiquette as well as encouraging students to have social interactions in a way that is both safe and monitored, like having an email pen pal that is arranged and communications monitored through the teacher.

4.    In my lesson about international pen pals, I developed and modeled cultural understanding and global awareness by engaging with colleagues and students of other cultures using digital-age communication and collaboration tools. The students had to do research on the internet about the area that their international pen pals are from as well as look at Google Earth to see geographically where that location is and how it is different from where my students live. I have two versions of this lesson, one for the younger grades which has them typing their letters on Microsoft Word and printing them out in order to send them via mail and the other version of the lesson is for older kids that establishes an email relationship with their international pen pal that is monitored by me.

This class has taught me all about how to integrate technology into my classroom and I am going to make sure to take advantage of all of the various technologies that are available to me. Technology is a huge part of our modern world and it is an asset in the classroom and I intend to make it an integral part of my classroom. 

Teaching Portfolio iBook

When deciding on what to do for my project I know that I wanted something that I could use for applying for jobs moving forward. In one of my other classes we had to put together a teaching portfolio that we could give to prospective employers when we interviewed. When the project was mentioned it seemed to me that something I could do that would be great for this project as well as for going forward into my teaching career would be to have a digital version of a teaching portfolio that I could give to prospective employers. I am very happy with my product because I think it gives a good overview of who I am as a teacher. I hope to continue to add to this and improve it as I go through student teaching to eventually have a product that is comprehensive of all of my teaching experience and can be used to show the kind of teaching applicant I am. As a teacher who is going to be going into classrooms that are advancing into the 21st century, it only makes sense that as an applicant I begin to move away from the traditional and present myself as a modern candidate, and that includes using technology! By creating a digital teaching portfolio, I am setting myself up to go into the professional world with a product that I can continue to keep current and use to show that I would be an asset to any school.

Pen Pals Reflection Phase 2

1. Instructional Decisions/Teaching

During my lesson  what went really well as the use of Google Earth. I found that they enjoyed the idea of the pen pals but that they enjoyed using Google Earth to explore both familiar places as well as places abroad. Modifications I made during the lesson was encouraging my students to practice using Google Earth by looking up their houses back home. They really liked this because they were able to practice with the technology while making it so that they could personalize the lesson to themselves. 

2. Mechanics

The technologies I used were Microsoft Word and Google Earth. We all used these technologies during the lesson, me by modeling how to use Google Earth to find a location and my students used it to look up specific places. My lesson was within the correct time frame because my students had enough time to produce the work I wanted them to and also have enough time to explore using Google Earth. 

3. Assessment of Learning 

My students were all able to include the components of a friendly letter as well as including details about themselves. They were also able to use Google Earth to find areas in Dublin. I felt like this lesson was successful because my students were engaged and interested in what they were doing. The comments on my peer reflection support this because they said that they really enjoyed the lesson especially the Google Earth part and that this is a lesson that they would teach in their future classrooms. 

4. I learned a lot about the international resources out there for teachers while doing research for this lesson. There are so many different options out there for teachers who want to look for international relationships for themselves and students. By just doing some brief research to see what kind of pen pal options there are, there are many ways that a teacher could reach out and form a connection with an international source. In the future I will be sure to do research into what kind of options there are out there to enrich my lesson before settling on using what I know off the top of my head.

Pen Pals Lesson Reflection

Assessing Prior Knowledge and Planning Instruction:
Prior knowledge for this lesson is knowledge of what a friendly letter is. I would have taught a lesson about what a letter is and had the students write letters to each other and their families. When the pen pal lesson is taught it will be more about refining the conventions involved in a friendly letter. Prior knowledge will be assessed by starting the lesson with a discussion about friendly letters to refresh their memories about what a friendly letter is and how they have used it in the past. My objectives for this lesson are the standard of having the students use greeting, closing and commas correctly in a friendly letter as well as a personal objective of having them add personal details about their lives and  their culture in their letter.

Designing Instruction:
The instructional methods I described use the idea of engaging students through interest and ownership. By giving the students the opportunity to choose what is in their writing, it allows them to take onwership of their work and it engages them because when they get to decide what the content it, it is usually content that is interesting to them and they enjoy writing about it so much more. Students who are interested in what they are doing are more engaged and it makes what they are doing meaningful.

Planning Assessment:
My assessment aligns with the standards because it checks off the parts of the friendly letter that my students need to know. My assessment demonstrates student engagement because they are able to choose what goes into their letters. They can make it as long as they want as well as include whatever details they feel are important to them. By making this assignment personal, it means that my students are able to express their ideas and express on paper about themselves, and it demonstrates higher order thinking skills because they have to think about their lives and themselves and decide on a way to write a summary that encompasses the basics about their lives.

ISTE NETs Standards:
1. My lesson meets the creativity standards because they students are able to be creative in how they write their letter as well as they have the opportunity to include a picture or illustration to go along with their letter.
2. In their lives, my students will have to use word processing programs to type everything from emails to essays. It is important that they are exposed to this because it is so important that they master this basic technology because they will use it all of their lives and being knowledgeable in it will help them in their careers and personal lives.
3. I will model the process of writing a letter to the other teacher while my students write a letter to the other teacher's students. I will make sure that my students know how I used technology and why I used it when I did.
4. The lesson I created advocates safe use of technology because we are writing and sending our letters to a source that has been verified by communication between the teachers. This is a very learner centered lesson because it is customizable to each and every child because they are each creating a unique work of their own that can be modified if need be. I will have modeled in my writing how even though we are writing to another classroom, that we will not be using our last names, just our first names as a way to make sure that everyone is protected. Global awareness is integrated in this lesson through the nature of international pen pals. By adding in research about the place the pen pals live and finding them on a map it helps so that the students can see that there is so much more word out there and that we can explore it right from our classroom. I think it is so important for students to use the technology tools at hand to explore other parts of the world and cultures and this is a easy way to start that.

Pen Pals Technology Lesson

Pen Pals Lesson Plan 2

I. RATIONALE:

The reason for this lesson is to practice the curriculum/standard of letter writing as well as widening the students worldviews by exposing them to different parts of the world through letter writing and pen pals to international students.

II. OVERVIEW

Grade Level: 2

Subject(s): ELA & Social Studies

Topic of Study: Letter Writing

Time Allotment: 1 school week (5 days)

Standards:

Demonstrate command of the conventions of Standard English capitalization, punctuation, and spelling when writing. a. Capitalize holidays, product names, and geographic names. b. Use commas in greetings and closings of letters. (2.L.2)

Strand 4: Geography: PO 4. Describe elements of culture (e.g., food, clothing, housing, sports, customs, beliefs) in a community of areas studied.

Objectives:

Students will be able to write a friendly letter to an international pen pal using commas in their greeting and closing. They will include basic details about their personal culture in their letter to their international pen pal.

III. IMPLEMENTATION

Procedure:

This lesson will be done over a course of 1 school week (5 school days).

Day 1: Discussion about students lives in the US and how they are different and similar to other students internationally, focusing on the area of the international pen pals (ex. Dublin, Ireland)

Day 2: Centers:

Reading Center: Information about Arizona and about international pen pal place will be available for students to read to give them ideas about what they want to say to their pen pals to introduce them to their lives.

Map center: Students will use maps to identify where their international pen pals are located as well as seeing where Arizona is in relation to that place. They will then use Google Earth with teacher or aide guidance on iPads to see where their pen pals go to school.

Pre Writing Center: Students will outline what they want to tell their pen pal, including basic details about themselves and where they live.

Day 3: Students will be given a penpal to write to with their name, age and gender. They will then handwrite letters on practice paper and conference with teacher and aides to get their papers edited. If the students have time they will draw a picture to include with their letter.

Day 4: In the computer lab, students will use Microsoft Word to type and print their letters.

Day 5: In whole group, teacher will include all letters in an envelope and show the students how to address an envelope on the document camera and get it completely ready to send to pen pals at the Sacred Heart BNS in Dublin Ireland.

Technology Integration:

The teacher will assist students in using Google Earth on iPads during the map center. Students will use computers with Microsoft Word to type up their letters in order to print them and send them to wherever their pen pals are located. The teacher will also use a document camera to project the addressing of the envelope so that it is easier for the students to read.

Differentiated Instruction:

• Cognitive delay: Students with cognitive delay can dictate a letter to an aide who can type it for them and can help them to edit it.
• Gifted: Gifted students can be challenged in the kind of vocabulary that they use and in the length and amount of details in their letter.
• ELL: ELL students can use sheltered language in their letters as well as including only whatever information that they wanted to include.

IV. ASSESSMENT

Procedure:

To assess I will read their letters before we send them and use a checklist to make sure that they have all the components of a friendly letter.

Instruments:

Assessment Checklist:

• Greeting
• Closing
• Correct use of commas
• Correct use of capitalization
• Basic personal details are included

IIV. MATERIALS AND RESOURCES

Example of letter:

Dear Alan,

Thank you so much for working with my class to be our international pen pals. We are at DeMiguel elementary school in Flagstaff, Arizona. Flagstaff is a small town located at 7,000 feet elevation so we get all of the seasons, sometimes even when we are not supposed to! It snowed yesterday even though it is spring! We have a class of 23 students, all second graders. We are so excited to be your pen pals and we look forward to talking with you more and we also look forward to hearing all about Ireland.

Best,

Laura

Materials:

• iPads
• Computers
• 1 large envelope
• International postage

Lesson Reflection Phase 2

1. Instructional Decisions/Teaching (InTask Standard #9)

• During my lesson, my peers were engaged in the technology but they wished that the technology I chose had worked differently. I also think I should have familiarized myself more with the Storybird portion of my lesson as opposed to the Kidspiration part which I focused more on. 
• My peers created some great stories including beginnings, middles and ends with creative cover pages. They had fun using their creativity to make these stories. They completed all my objectives and they maintained all the standards. 
• If I taught this lesson again I would make sure to be completely familiar with the procedural parts of the Storybird website instead of just familiar with the way the story creating part of it works.  

2. Mechanics:

• The technologies that I used was Kidspiration for story mapping and outlining and Storybird for the story creating. 
• The technologies used were used by the students by starting with Kidspiration and outlining their story and then they used Storybird to take the outline to create and illustrate their story. 
• My lesson was within the correct time frame because the students had enough time to experience the technology but also to get the content of the lesson. 

3. Assessment of Learning (InTast Standard #6) 

• Digital artficats

• From what my peers created, they were successful in the checklist of what they were able to create in the time allotted. They made cover pages and started their stories with a beginning and a middle, with more time I know that they would have been able to continue their stories and finish the end. 
• I felt that my lesson was successful overall. I thought that it went really well, my peers seemed engaged in what they were doing and I felt that they understood the technology. I wish I knew more about the procedure for using Storybird but now I know that I need to be familiar with all parts and aspects of the technology before teaching it. 
• My individual reflections support this because I have said I feel confident in the lesson that I planned and that I thought that it would really be an interesting and engaging lesson. 
• My classmates said that I was prepared and that they liked the lesson but that they wish that the technology was different because they wished that they could have the ability to add their own illustrations instead of the ones that come with the program that you have to choose from. 

4. In this lesson I learned that anything that you could want to do with students in the classroom can be achieved by using technology. I also learned that there are a lot of ways to use technology in the classroom that is more than just the obvious of using iPads and smartboards. In future lessons I will be more aware of what technology is out there and know that I can use it to enhance my lessons and use them to support individual student needs. 

Storyboard Technology Lesson

I. RATIONALE:

The reason for teaching this lesson is to integrate technology into the writing curriculum for second grade.

Standard:

Write narratives in which they recount a well‐ elaborated event or short sequence of events, include details to describe actions, thoughts, and feelings, use temporal words to signal event order, and provide a sense of closure. (2.W.3)

II. OVERVIEW

Grade Level: 2nd

Subject(s): ELA

Topic of Study: Story Writing

Time Allotment: 10 – 30 minute lesson blocks

Block 1 – Paper and pencil brainstorming and brainstorming with a partner

Block 2 – Kidspiration planning basic

Block 3 – Kidspiration planning more details

Block 4 – Story writing

Block 5 – Story writing

Block 6 – Story writing

Block 7 – Story editing/typing

Block 8 – Story editing/typing

Block 9 – Story illustrating

Block 10 – Story wrap up

Standards: Write narratives in which they recount a well‐ elaborated event or short sequence of events, include details to describe actions, thoughts, and feelings, use temporal words to signal event order, and provide a sense of closure. (2.W.3)

Objectives: I want students to be able to know the components of a story and be able to use those components to create a story and use a combination of technology and creativity to make a product that they can be proud of.

III. IMPLEMENTATION

Procedure:

1.    Teacher will read students a few children’s books, pointing out the different components of the story along the way.

2.    Students will brainstorm ideas on paper for a story that they would want to create.

3.    Students will discuss their ideas with a partner, fleshing out more of the details in the process.

4.    Using Kidspiration, students will use the story mapping capabilities to create a storyboard with the basic components of their stories in a graphic outline form.

5.    Teacher will sit with each student and conference while the others are in their planning stages

6.    Students will then use their detailed Kidspiration storyboards to write their stories, including the components of a title page, dedication page, beginning, middle and end.

7.    Teacher and aides will edit students writing.

8.    After papers have been edited, students will use the tool Storybird to begin to type their stories.

9.    Students will use the illustrations available to them in Storybird to illustrate their stories

10. Students will publish their books and will present them at an open house for families and friends to appreciate their work as a community.

Technology Integration:

Students and teachers will use the tools of Kidspiration and Storybird to enrich this lesson.

Differentiated Instruction: Describe how you will differentiate the instruction for each of the following:

• Cognitive delay - I would use a different technology like Pixie that is more friendly to students with non-reading cognitive delay.
• Gifted – Due to the nature of this assignment, gifted students can challenge themselves as much as they want to and they have the freedom to use their creativity to create whatever product their imagination can
• ELL – For students who are learning English, context is one of the most important tools for learning. For those students, I would encourage them to write their stories with however much detail they feel comfortable with, making sure to really embed their vocabulary and ideas in context.

IV. ASSESSMENT

Procedure:

For assessment I would create a checklist that I can use to assess whether the students have included all of the components of a story in their Storybird finished product. Success on this assignment will be based on whether the components are included, not based on the content.

Instruments:

The checklist will look like this:

• Title and Cover Page
• Dedication Page
• Beginning
• Middle
• End
• Illustrations
• Typing
• Temporal Words
• Use of Kidspiration
• Use of Storybird

IIV. MATERIALS AND RESOURCES

In this section include any examples you have created for the students, resources (software, web links, books, crafting items, etc.) and other necessary items

• Children's book for modeling an example of a story
• Paper and pencils for brainstorming
• Kidspiration for story mapping
• Storybird account for creating the finished product
• Computers with keyboards for using Storybird
• Parent and Aide involvement to help with the creation of the final product
• Use of a community space for a presentation night