The English III team had a great couple of days pushing their students collaboration, communication, critical thinking skills, and of course content knowledge. The beauty of BreakoutEDU is the ability to incorporate 21st Century Skills along with content driven lessons.
What did the Breakout incorporate? 1. Clue 1 incorporated content knowledge of the Great Gatsby and puzzles. Students had to analyze symbols in the book as they related to characters. Then they had to decode the names and complete the code using some basic math skills. 2. Clue 2 used knowledge of colors in the books. They filled in quotes with the correct color symbols, which eventually lead to a WORD code. 3. Code 3 required students to put the book events in order to open the directional lock. 4. Code 4 then had them read a passage, finding literary devices, and using those line numbers to open the last box. How were 21st Century Skills involved? Students had to collaborate with their group in order to understand the clues. Through collaboration they used critical thinking skills to not just understand the content of the game, but to solve puzzles. Oftentimes in secondary classes, content becomes the main focus to where there is no other focus on other skills. Was there high student engagement? Absolutely! While I will not go on and say every student was engaged 100% of the time, and not every student loved the challenge, but I would definitely say that most did. Throughout the game you could find students talking it out (even arguing on who was right), competing to get to to open the box first, running through the library to find the clues the fastest, asking questions, and most of all seemed to have a genuine interest in completing the breakout and having fun. To me, the best part, was to see the kids in action and watch their thinking occur in physical ways. Teachers, don't be scared to try new things and get a little "out there." Students appreciate the time and effort you put into lessons to make them engaging. Don't let the 1-2 students who don't like to be challenged, keep you from challenging the others. Try it, you'll like it! You can find the resources for this Breakout here.
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Taking the teacher out of the center room and allowing students to be in charge of their learning is what OneNote, the Collaboration Space, and a little bravery can do for you! Mrs. Hodges got her students researching, creating, and sharing notes through the collaboration space. Learning Objective: Students will be able to discuss chemical properties, physical properties, and states of matter. Lesson Before: Lecture from PowerPoint using project and Promethean board Lesson Using Student Laptops: Students were placed into 6 groups. Groups 1 and 2 were given Topic 1, 3 and 4 were given Topic 2, and 5 and 6 were given Topic 3. Each group had a given amount of time to research their topic and take notes in the collaboration space. After time was up, they paired up with their corresponding group to compare answers. Any changes that needed to be made could be made now and then a spokesperson was chosen. The spokesperson was in charge of explaining their topic to the rest of the class. Below are examples from the Collaboration Space that were generated in one of her class periods.
Mrs. Maeker is using the Collaboration Space and draw features of OneNote to help her students review their work. Here is what she has to say about the project. I gave them the basic criteria of writing 10 complete advanced sentences using these 7 verbs. I pushed the assignment to them through One Note and they accessed it from there. We then moved into the "Collaboration tab" where I could see each of the students work while they were typing their sentences. As I checked their sentences electronically, every time I found an error, I highlighted the word in yellow. When the student made the change, I had them change the yellow color to green to show me it had been fixed. I loved this as I was able to give immediate feedback. I also had the students highlight the use of the irregular verb conjugations all through their sentences in sky blue to assure that they met part of the criteria. The next step for them after receiving the ok from me on their sentences, is to create a PowerPoint of 10 or more slides with their written sentences on each slide as well as including pictures, clip art etc. to make their PowerPoint creative. They will them present their PowerPoint to the class, telling us about what they did over the summer in the target language with a visual. The kids are really excited about working with me in writing this project as well as teaching me too with the technology end of it! " Examples of student work in the Collaboration Space.
The English 1 team has jumped right into OneNote and created a living document, we like to call a Hyperdoc! A hyperdoc allows the students to move through a lesson at their own pace while interacting through videos, websites, text, etc. In this hyperdoc activity the students engaged through analyzing quotes from a novel they were reading and then watched a video to get them exploring new ideas. After a writing activity, they were then asked to create a video to show their understanding of the lesson. Below you will find their Hyperdoc and a final product created by one of their students. https://www.powtoon.com/online-presentation/boLN96JBXmK/?mode=movie Casey Jeter has taken a different approach to using OneNote, and I think it is BRILLIANT! Going away from using the CLASSROOM NOTEBOOK, Coach Jeter has given all of his students editing rights to a traditional OneNote Notebook. By doing this, it allows each student to be a part of the curriculum development and collaboration is running WILD!
Above are samples of student created pages. One unit focused on learning the major contributors to Psychology. Each student was assigned a person to research and their information was then uploaded to a page within the unit's tab. Those tabs are not there for all students in the class to use. What was the lesson? Students were reviewing information they had previous learned in Spanish 1 Why did I choose to use technology? "It's a very boring lesson and is as painful for them as it is for me! I could see it on their faces all day long yesterday. So I jumped right in, and made a Kahoot!" How did technology enhance the lesson? "When I introduced it to 4 classes, they were ecstatic and couldn't get their computers opened fast enough! They loved it. Every kid was engaged and so competitive! It was great and even fun for me just watching them get excited over a relatively boring concept Teacher: Coach Rave Lesson Objective: Students will become better acquainted with the events of the Gilded Age. How was technology used in this lesson? Students used Powerpoint to create timelines that contained the events in order along with a summary of those events. The internet was used to conduct research. How did technology enhance your lesson? Technology allowed the students to research a variety of websites instead of only having the textbook as a resource. The amount of time to conduct the research was cut down by a day, making it easier to do more in the classroom. What a student had to say: Coach Rave is making US history more interesting by allowing us to use the internet, rather than a book, to conduct our research on the Gilded Age. I felt that I had a better understanding, since I was allowed to use more resources. I also enjoyed being able to create my timeline using Powerpoint. |
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