Blog Post #9

Back to the Future
The video Back to the Future focuses on Mr. Crosby's 4th, 5th, and 6th grade classes and how they use PBL. The majority of Mr. Crosby students are second language learners and are students of poverty. I was shocked that majority of his class was not aware of where they lived, what state or country they lived in, or what their address was. His classroom is equipped with laptops, interactive whiteboards, cameras, and their own blogs. This provides students the opportunities to think outside the box. "Creativity builds Passion." One thing we can learn from Mr. Crosby is that no matter where your students come from or what the situation may be, your students can achieve anything in the world. I also took from the video that when working with students you must be patient. Teaching and working with kids will be a difficult, so one must always do more then enough to help impact the students lives in a positive way.

Blended Learning Cycle

Paul Anderson is a high school AP biology teacher in Bozeman, Montana. Recently in his classroom, he has started a blended learning cycle which consists of work online, mobile, and classroom work. Anderson uses the acronym QUIVERS for the cycle he uses in his classroom. The first step is Questions; you have to engage your students by asking them a hook question. The second is investigate, inquiry, or experiment. After the question, you should discover more about the question. After investigation would be video, then elaboration, review, and finally summary quiz. Students must be able to review what they discovered and learned from the question. If you can’t review it, then you have not learned it. Mr. Anderson had many very good points in his video. Since he has started his blended learning cycle, he has had more success with his students and sees an improvement with them retaining and learning more information.

Making Thinking Visible

Mark Church is a sixth grade teacher at International School. In this short video, he shows how he used project based learning and critical thinking. The day before he assigned his project, he showed his class a video on early human beginnings. He then asked the students to get in small groups and discuss the video and come up with a headline that captures what could have started early human beginnings. After this assignment, they are then beginning their two week lesson on early human beginnings. This assignment made the students want to learn what exactly started human beginnings.

Authors: Autumn Sprouse and Jessica Mose