Week 4 Monitoring the GAME PLAN

As I pursue my action plan, I have learned that I must be more assertive and seek out the materials and resources that will benefit my students. I have volunteered to serve on the new district curriculum team. Our district is developing a new curriculum across the board to align with the national core standards. I want to have an active role in developing a curriculum that addresses the multiple intelligences and learning styles of all our students. We need to address how to reach out to community to provide speakers and specialist to speak to our classes and provide input for the curriculum. I want our curriculum to have variety of assessments that incorporate technology assistance whenever it is beneficial to the students. Diverse assessments will allow us to identify learning needs and adjust our plans and curriculum accordingly. Dr. Ross states that effective assessment indentifies learning objectives, determine teaching method, and choose supportive technology (Laureate, 2009).

This week, I pursued a donor on donorchoose.org to assist in building my classroom library. The request included a variety of reading materials from magazines, literature circles to audio books. I am currently working on a grant through E I have also requested the assistance of our technology facilitator to set up my podcasting listening and production center. This will provide my students with the tools for performance based and project based assessments. This week, we read in chapter 6 that students could record oral presentations, fluency and reading records to demonstrate improvements and areas of development (Cennamo, K., Ross, J., & Ertmer, P., 2009). This will enhance the digital portfolios that I am pursuing in my GAME PLAN.

I found a great resource for differentiating learning strategies and implementing podcasting in my classroom at Education World . 
These trainings are completed at my leisure and can be resourced for further study. My plan states that I will reach out to colleagues in the field that are actually implementing new technologies with research based strategies. These type training, along with my Walden courses, will allow me to continue my pursuit of my plan. The readings this week and online resources remind me that as a professional learner¸ I need to pursue what I need, in order to be a better educator to my students. I must be willing to go beyond my comfort zone to create a global thriving learning environment.

One concern I have is that many of my students perform better on alternative assessments than on the standardized once a year test. This year, I had to justify how student grades were “inflated with B’s or C’s” for students that did not pass the state assessment. I was told that it comes down to results of this final assessment. Sometimes I feel that teaching the test is more important that teaching the child.

References:

Cennamo, K., Ross, J. & Ertmer, P. (2009). Technology Integration for Meaningful Classroom Use: A Standards-Based Approach. (Laureate Education, Inc., Custom ed.). Belmont, CA: Wadsworth, Cengage Learning. (pp. 143-146).

Donor Choose Org  http://www.donorschoose.org/

Education World http://www.educationworld.com/a_curr/archives/virtualwkshp.shtml

Laureate Education, Inc. (Producer). Integrating Technology Across the Content Areas(DVD). Assessing Student Learning through Technology. Baltimore, MD: Author.