Reflection 7

Ricki Feuereisen 

Chapter 7

        While reading this chapter I found some useful information that I would be incorporating in my classroom as a teacher. The first set I came across was different levels of classroom discussions. There are three different levels, which are teacher-to-teacher, student-to-student, and lastly, teacher to student. The first one, teacher-to-teacher is what it sounds like. Teachers work with one another about the project that is being worked on in the classroom. It especially helps if you are working together on a project that is being implemented. Collaboration is key between colleagues; you get instant feedback and are able to ask questions and bounce off ideas from one another. With teacher-to-teacher, you can talk about what is working with the project and what you want to improve on for next time. Another helpful component could be to use blogs to communicate with one another no matter where you are. The next level is student-to-student, student’s work together to provide feedback to one another and bounce off ideas. It is important for students to communicate with one another and to help each other out especially when doing a project. When students communicate, they are able to expand on their original ideas and how to approach a problem and steps that you can take to solve the issue. Lastly, there is teacher-to-student, with this the teacher has the opportunity to talk individually with students or as a whole class. The teacher can walk around and observe what students are doing and talking about during work time. The teacher can address the whole class and redirect students or go more into detail/re-explain about what the class should be doing. With teacher-to-student, teachers should have the opportunity with asking higher order questions to their class to make them think deeper about what they learning about.

            Next in the book, it talks about four questions for checking in on students during a project. The four components are procedural, teamwork, understanding, and self-assessment. Procedural is tracking your progress on how you are doing with completing assignments and also looking at due dates and staying on top of things. You can also ask yourself questions, like how am I doing? Teamwork is where students talk and work with each other. Students have the chance to ask each other question’s and be there for support. With teamwork, you need to make sure that everyone has a part to complete and has something to work on. Questions that you can ask yourself, how am I getting along with my teammates? Do you like whom you are working with? Understanding is pretty simple; do students know what to do? Are they helping each other? The teacher can walk around and see if students are having good, solid conversations about the topic. Lastly, there is self-assessment, as a teacher you can have students write a reflection about the project and how they think they did and how it went. What did they learn? What were they excited about? What would they change and how would they improve for next time?

            The third question that we are supposed to address is the benefits to students when optimizing the use of technology. The benefits that students receive when using technology for a project they talk about in the book is students gain new insights into how to communicate with a culturally diverse audience and to become reviewers of other students work. With technology it also allows for students to reach their goals and keep them organized.

            Next, the book talks about 21^st-century skills that can make or break a project. There are two skills that can do this, the first one being teamwork, if students don’t get along the teacher needs to help students work through their problems. If students don’t work well together then it can make a project go horrible and students won’t do their best work. The second skill is troubleshooting, in the book it discusses who elementary school students were paired up with high schoolers to share their writing, and the elementary school students were intimidated, and they didn’t do their best work. Teachers need to communicate with their students.

            This chapter relates to our project, because as a group we communicate with one another and we communicate with the teacher, which would be using the teacher-to-student concept and student-to-student concept. We are also working in groups and we all have a part to work on and if one person doesn’t do their part it would affect the outcome of the project; we all count on one another to do their part.