Post 2 Brandon maynard Ch 8

I wanted to give some time for me to be in the classroom before I really started making posts. I felt that if I posted once a week I would be more making things up and fitting them to what the assignment is for instead of it being based on truth. I have been teaching now the past nine days. I felt now was as good a time as any to share some experience. I have only been at Vinson for two full weeks, tomorrow will make my third. The students have been really great coping with the transition from working with the regular teacher, to a full on student teacher, and back to the regular teacher, and then to me. It has appeared to be a hard time for the students because teaching styles have constantly changed for them since December. The big news has really happened the past week. I was given the opportunity to start a cooperative group assignment with the students or allow the teacher to finish hammering through the chapters so we could reach my unit faster. We decided on the group activity.
I feel I can relate this section better with Marzano's chapter: "Setting Goals and Providing Feedback." The students are currently working on an activity which covers all of Gardner’s intelligences. That would be to create a new state. The teacher and I set a scenario up to where a major earthquake erupted in Washington DC leaving nothing but a gaping hole in the earth like Death Valley. The students groups were instructed to create a new state which would represent the new capital of the US. There was a checklist provided, similar to a rubric, which provided information which they must include in order to create the new state. Within this checklist, there were some pretty difficult tasks. I made them difficult because I know, as a group, the students could complete the tasks with a little extra thinking. One task all of the students had difficulty with was using longitude and latitude to mark the four directions of the state (north side, south side, etc.). The next day I presented them with a bell ringer which they were to tell me what longitude and latitude were and some characteristics of each.
This was great because it really helped them understand what the objective was for that section of the activity. I saw the bell ringer as positive feedback because it permitted us time to talk about what the coordinate system was and gave me a chance to do some public "great answer!" or "that’s really close, your on the right track, keep trying!" I think this kind of feedback is really great because it can be directed to the individual or the entire class. Everyone hears me say "Great job Sam" or "You're really getting close Alex!" and the students can see that I am encouraging them to try harder.
Back to the checklist. I designed this as part rubric and part checklist. The students can see ALL requirements for the assignment and see what each section of the activity is worth, but can also check off each section as they finish it to show me as I walk around and observe that they are making progress. This entire checklist is my goal. I want to see them complete everything on it and do it asking as many questions as possible. That is my goal because you can't learn if you're not asking questions. If you are not asking questions you already know how to do something and there is really no point in doing it if you already know how it's done.
Tomorrow the students are presenting their work to the class. We will be using an ELMO to display their states new flag and the smart board to show us where they placed the new state. I am really excited for tomorrow and cannot wait for them to show off their work. Some groups are even singing a new national anthem. It's going to be great!