Our world is changing at a rapid rate and so is our educational system. What worked 10 years ago, even 5 years ago, may not be the most effective for instructional purposes to reach all students. 25 years ago when I was in elementary school, it was very much a traditional style education with text books, worksheets, and little innovative teaching. Now as a teacher, I am constantly changing my instructional practices to make sure that they are keeping up with the advancements in technologies and learning styles of my students.
Embedded Files
Figure 10.2.1 © Giulia Forsyth, 2012
"The typical time it takes for a writer to go from book contract to publication is usually somewhere in the nine months to two years area. Many factors come into play for this range of outcomes, including the size of the press and how far out they plan their production schedule.:" (Brewer, R. 2020). For a text book to get published, it could take two years, and sometimes more. This type of publication timeline cannot keep up with the rapid changing education system that is evolving daily. I typically change my lesson plans each year due to new innovative strategies and techniques. Sometimes, I change them within the week as I discover ways to teach the standard more effectively.
Flexible Educational Resources, or Open Educational Resources, allow lessons, activities, and resources to be shared in a public domain globally. "The goal of open educational resources is to give educators and students around the world access to high-quality learning materials.” (Bixler, N. 2021).
Open Educational Resources like OER Commons is an example of a flexible educational resource or open educational resource that allows teachers to search and find lessons and activities at their fingertips.
These lessons and activities can be used as is, or adapted for the students in their classroom. "Open educational resources are beneficial to teachers because educators can personalize them specifically for their learners’ needs." (Bixler, N. 2021). Teachers can search a specific subject, educational level, and standard. Then teachers will be given a list of open educational resources that they can use with the students, adapt certain parts, or use as differentiation tools. Flexible educational resources allow for flexibility in student's learning so that we can adapt to meet their needs. "In many blended and personalized learning environments, traditional materials are too inflexibly designed (also expensive, analog, and often outdated) to easily be used by educators seeking to personalize and utilize technology to meet the needs of all students. The availability of Open Educational Resources (OER) provides an opportunity for educators to find the right content for their students and adapt it based on needs and instructional approaches."
Curated Menu of Educational Resources
Curated Menu of Educational Resources
Padlet:
Padlet is an online platform where teachers can link specific resources for their students to access. "It acts as an online whiteboard for the aggregation of ideas, images, videos, and other articles. It has a problem-based learning system that allows learners to post research questions and work toward the answer through their combined work." (Lynch, M. 2022). There are many different layouts that Padlet allows a creator to choose from to organize the curated resources. The most common style that I choose is the section layout. This layout allows me to create section headers for each subtopic of the standard and create a section for student responses.
Below are two padlets that my 5th grade students use when investigating science standards. The padlets below are in a section style format where students can access specific information to the section header they need. Students can also pose questions after they have conducted their research to have answered by the teacher, other peers, or collaborators outside of the classroom. Students at the beginning of a unit will be given the link to the padlet wall for them to use for investigating resources for our standard. Students will take a couple days to use the padlet for research and work through hands on activities
Standard: S5P2.
Obtain, evaluate, and communicate information to investigate electricity.
- a. Obtain and combine information from multiple sources to explain the difference between naturally occurring electricity (static) and human-harnessed electricity.
- b. Design a complete, simple electric circuit, and explain all necessary components.
- c. Plan and carry out investigations on common materials to determine if they are insulators or conductors of electricity.
Standard: S5P1.
Obtain, evaluate, and communicate information to explain the differences between a physical change and a chemical change.
- a. Plan and carry out investigations of physical changes by manipulating, separating and mixing dry and liquid materials.
- b. Construct an argument based on observations to support a claim that the physical changes in the state of water are due to temperature changes, which cause small particles that cannot be seen to move differently.
- c. Plan and carry out an investigation to determine if a chemical change occurred based on observable evidence (color, gas, temperature change, odor, new substance produced).
Subject Rooms:
At the beginning of the year, I showed my students on my classroom website, a Google Slide file that is completely for them to use as resources to help for each subject. Each subject has its own "room" with links that were curated by me for my students. A student can click on the computer labeled Math Room to be taken to a slide that is full of math resources. This is for my students to use as they need and not specific to a certain standard or content.
Engaging Pedagogies and Best Practices of Instructional Design
Engaging Pedagogies and Best Practices of Instructional Design
HyperDocs can be designed in many ways. The HyperDocs you see above are designed to have the information on the right side, and their task on the left side. The two HyperDocs above are used for 5th Grade Science standards. The HyperDoc on the left addresses a 5th Grade Earth Science standard on constructing an argument on if surface features are created from constructive forces and/or destructive forces. Students first begin by exploring different landforms found in the United States and reflect in their journals on the question for their task. The next part of their HyperDoc is using a Padlet to gain information on constructive and destructive forces to be able to aid in writing their argument using scientific reasoning.
The HyperDoc on the right addresses a 5th Grade Life Science standard on understanding inherited traits, acquired traits, and learned behavior or instincts. Students will use the resources on the left side of the HyperDoc to answer the questions on the right side of the HyperDoc.
Interactive Student Notebook
Math Standards:
MGSE5.G.1
Use a pair of perpendicular number lines, called axes, to define a coordinate system, with the intersection of the lines (the origin) arranged to coincide with the 0 on each line and a given point in the plane located by using an ordered pair of numbers, called its coordinates. Understand that the first number indicates how far to travel from the origin in the direction of one axis, and the second number indicates how far to travel in the direction of the second axis, with the convention that the names of the two axes and the coordinates correspond (e.g., x-axis and x-coordinate, y-axis and y-coordinate).
MGSE5.G.2
Represent real world and mathematical problems by graphing points in the first quadrant of the coordinate plane, and interpret coordinate values of points in the context of the situation.
An interactive student notebook is a way for student to engage in the content of the standard with a curated resource developed by the teacher. "They’re designed to teach organization, allow students to explore ideas creatively in their own manner, and encourage multiple learning approaches for the same content that engages in higher-level thinking." (Toro, S. 2021). To the right, you can see that I have a student interactive journal on a 5th grade math geometry standard for coordinate planes.
Students go through the 5 E stages of Engage, Explore, Explain, Elaborate, and Evaluate. With each stage, the students are tasked with an activity, video lesson, or game that they must choose to help them in mastering the standard. As you click through each stage, you will see a home button in the top right. The home button helps them navigate through the notebook. The notebook is just a resource to use to help in progressing towards mastery of the standard for coordinate planes, but each student will also have tasks to complete outside of the notebook to turn in to the teacher.
Monitor and Observe Effectiveness of Educational Resources
Monitor and Observe Effectiveness of Educational Resources
Progress Learning:
Progress Learning is a platform that teachers can use to monitor progress of mastering standards in math, ELA, science, and social studies. Teachers can collect data on individual standards of the class as a whole, while also collecting data on each individual's progress in meeting the standards. Progress Learning has lessons and activities the students can move through or a teacher can create an assignment or assessment for students to complete. To create an assignment or assessment to monitor progress, Progress Learning offers a bank of questions for each standard and substandard for math, reading, science, and social studies.
EdPuzzle:
EdPuzzle is an online platform that teachers can use to monitor progress in mastering of standards. It gives information like total scores out of all video lessons and quizzes taken as well as total time spent on the lesson. This allows me to see if they needed to spend more time than the length of the video lesson and also if a student needed to rewatch the lesson. The next piece of data collected is about each individual lesson that the students complete. You can click on the individual score to see exactly what question were missed to help identify struggle areas of the student.
References
Bixler, N. (2021, September 21). What are open educational resources (OER)? Retrieved February 19, 2023, from https://hapara.com/blog/what-are-open-educational-resources/
Brewer, R. L. (2020, June 9). How Long Does It Take to Get a Book Published? Retrieved February 19, 2023, from https://www.writersdigest.com/getting-published/how-long-does-it-take-to-get-a-book-published#:~:text=With%20our%20rules%20established%20above,they%20plan%20their%20production%20schedule.
Lynch, M. (2022, February 3). Product Review of Padlet.
Retrieved February 17, 2023, from https://www.thetechedvocate.org/product-review-of-padlet/
The Learning Accelerator. (n.d.). What are Open Educational Resources and how can I start using them? Retrieved from https://practices.learningaccelerator.org/problem-of-practice/what-are-open-educational-resources-and-how-can-i-start-using-them
Toro, S. (2021, April 27). How to Get the Benefits of Interactive Notebooks in Digital Formats. Retrieved February 18, 2023, from https://www.edutopia.org/article/how-get-benefits-interactive-notebooks-digital-formats/
Page updated
Report abuse