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name: kickareforkids@gmail.com
password: kickit!!!

Reading Reflection #11

As a result of using Project-based learning approach, students take learning as well as teaching into their own hands.  This is a very beneficial lifelong lesson that continues to develop even after the project is complete.  A student’s project can be “brought home” when students learn leadership, teamwork, and cooperation throughout their project and because the project is designed, created and presented by them they will complete the project with a sense of pride, achievement and ownership.  Not only is Project-based learning beneficial for students, but for teachers and faculty as well.  The teachers are able to review students’ projects and take a new look into the minds of students.  They are then able to network with other faculty and share inspiration and good, as well as not so good, ideas with others.  Concepts in this chapter relate to our teams topic/project by emphasizing the importance of taking pride in the completed project.  Once the project is completed, our team has developed knowledge about teamwork, dedication and what it takes to help make a project beneficial.  Our teammates will use this knowledge throughout their lives to all projects that they may become involved in. 

Reading Reflection #10

1. Setting aside time for reflection is important in the end of the project. Reflection provides students with a chance to reflect on the work that they have accomplished and completed.  Reflection lets students create their own meaning of different concepts.  This allows the ideas that have been learned to stick. Without reflection, students may not congratulate themselves for all of the hard work and leadership that they did successfully.  Also, it could make the facts about what they learned to go away from memory.

2. Students need to reflect and elaborate because it will help them in their future projects. Elaborating and reflecting help students with their cognitive thinking and allows them to think about the project in a different light. Elaboration makes the project meaningful to students and makes for more ambitious projects that they be a part of in the future.

3. Building a tradition within the classroom is a really neat concept to promote great project work. Starting a tradition will ignite excitement, especially in the younger classrooms. When the community and parents notice the students' accomplishments from the projects, they will be able to give you support as a teacher.

4. Having celebrations for students after they complete a project, no matter the size, it is extremely important to develop confidence as learners. We, as teachers, need to make our students feel important, like they just completed the most amazing project and that the whole world will learn from their findings. It also allows them to reflect on their project one last time and showcase their project. It also gives us as teachers an opportunity to acknowledge and appreciate their hard work.

5. The concepts from this chapter relate to our project in many ways. Using this project can help us build a tradition for celebrating finished projects.  In our case, the annual Kicks are for Kids kickball tournament! 

Reading Reflection #11

Description of what occurs as a result of using the Project-based learning approach.

• Once the project has been completed, the teacher and students will feel as if they have gone somewhere together and leave vivid memories, souvenirs, and artifacts, as well as, ideas for shaping the next learning adventure.

Discussion on ways to “bring your project home”.

• Ways to bring your project home are to capitalize on your investment, critique your work, share your insights, become a resource for your colleagues, enter a contest, and/or enjoy the journey. 

Discussion on how concepts in this chapter relate to your topic/project.

• For our project we will want to critique our work to figure out what worked and what didn't. We are also creating a website that can be used as a resource for colleagues to see what was done and what resources were used to create this project.

Reading Reflection #10

Discussion on the importance of setting aside time for reflection

• It is important to set aside time for reflection to determine that what has been learned really sticks. Also, it can help students feel good about their accomplishments.

Discussion on the reason students need to reflect and elaborate.

• It is important for students to reflect and elaborate because they need to create their own meaning then be able to look at it from all sides and view it from a distance. It helps students reveal things they might not think about such as; what they learned, their growth as learners, and what/how they want to learn in projects ahead.

Discussion on how schools build tradition and identity.

• To build tradition an identity a teacher/school must build awareness in others. Involving families, the community, and students coming up and letting them know what you're up to gives a foundation for tradition. When the community begins to notice and value accomplishments they will give support and want to be involved.

Discussion on the importance celebrating a project.

• It is important to celebrate a project to give students a sense of pride in their work. Celebrating learning helps to build the school's identity. A teacher can put on an event, create a blog, or hold a party to celebrate.

Discussion on how concepts in this chapter relate to your topic/project.

• For our project we will be celebrating our student's accomplishments by holding a community inclusive kickball tournament. The student's will also have the time to reflect on the information they have learned before continuing onto the next assignment/project.

Reading Reflection #9

1. Description of a method of understanding prior-knowledge of students.              It was previously discussed to use a KWL activity to determine you student's prior knowledge, but a teacher must create an activity that will bring up their prior knowledge.
2. Discussion on the importance of establishing anchors for a project. It is important to establish anchors because it can help teachers gain sense of where students are starting (prior knowledge) and how far they are going as they work to meet learning goals.
3. Description of several ways to assess what students learned during the project. A couple ways to assess what students have learned is to create a task that asks students to summarize what they learned, have a panel come in to judge the student's completed work, or encourage student's to enter their work into a contest!
4. Discussion on how concepts in this chapter relate to your topic/project. For our project we have created a kickball tournament which is a task that student's will be running to show what they have learned about this particular sport.

Final Concept Map

The final concept map, I included details about the final presentation of the Kicks are for Kids tournament.  This includes the specifics of the application due dates, the first meeting (date, place time, etc.) and additional edits.

Final Concept Map-Katelyn

For my final concept map I added additional information regarding the Kicks are for Kids event and meeting! :)

Website

Link to our website so we can get started :)

https://sites.google.com/site/kicksr4kidz/

Reading Reflection 9

        1.     Description of a method of understanding prior-knowledge of students.

To get a better understanding of the students' prior knowledge is to create an activity that will require to expose what they already have knowledge of.  This “establishing anchors” activity should be able to be easily monitored by the teacher to get a sense of where the students are and what actions will need to be taken to meet the learning goals.

       2.     Discussion on the importance of establishing anchors for a project.

Establishing anchors is important when conducting a project because it allows the teacher to determine where the students stand with background knowledge.  Then use that background knowledge to develop a plan to be appropriate for the students to reach a certain goal.

       3.     Description of several ways to assess what students learned during the project.

To assess what a student has learned throughout their project is by having the students visually display, or present their work to a panel of judges. The students could do a presentation to a “judge panel” is at the end of their project it may help motivation.  This is a fun, real-world setting to defend their work and explain their research and what they have learned which is a great learning experience for students. .

     4.     Discussion on how concepts in this chapter relate to your topic/project.

This chapter relates to our project because we need to choose a method to assess the students' work. It would be fun to have a coach, fitness enthusiast or a dietitian on the judge panel. This would give them the ability to a connect their project with the real world.  

Reading Reflection #8

1. Description of some ways to build connections and branch out beyond the classroom.
 
Building connections and branching out beyond the classroom can be done simply by the use of technology.  This can be done by blogs.  They can be used to help develop students' writing skills and as well as to help students express themselves.  Their work can be made accessible to fellow students, people outside of the classroom and connect with experts in the topic they're writing about.  Digital-age projects can also encourage or require students to connect with people outside of the classroom, whether they're contacting experts, classrooms across the globe, etc.  Projects that incorporate inquiry are great opportunities to involve an expert, and in certain projects as teachers, we can set a stage for these connections.  Students should be prepared before these connections by teaching them how to conduct an interview to gather the most conducive information for their project.

2. Description of the EAST Initiative Model.
 
The Environmental and Spatial Technologies (EAST) Initiative model requires students to use technology to make a difference.  They do this by doing projects that help them master different technologies while solving a community problem.  The four parts to this model are student-driven learning, authentic project-based learning, technology as tools, and collaboration.  This model also includes teacher to teacher support and training.  Through this model teachers will change their roles from project leader to project supervisor.  Professional development for teachers occurs in three phases.  A collaborative training experience held for a week in the summer, when the educators begin to have questions about implementing the EAST model, and when the educators go further into the real-life problems the students run into.  Teachers also maintain ongoing support and networking.
 
3. Discussion on some reasons to let students “lead” their projects. 

 Students are able to successfully lead their own projects and come up with project ideas that they are passionate about.  Teachers don't have to micromanage the learning, creativity, and projects occurring in the classroom, and students can be intrinsically motivated instead of always extrinsically motivated to do projects.  Students develop a passion for solving problems through their research and personal connections, so they are excited about solving the problem for themselves, as opposed to solving the problem for a teacher.

4. Discussion on how concepts in this chapter relate to your topic/project.
 
 This chapter relates to our topic and project because we can use this model when developing our topic/project.  We can use this project to encourage connections being made with people outside of the classroom in projects and to let students take initiative and independence over their project.  We can also use this model in our teaching style.  We could encourage teachers to take a step back to be “supervisors” as opposed to “leaders”.

Reading Reflection 6

1               Discuss how technology tools can encourage students to be reflective and evaluate their own strengths.

Technology is such a part of our world today it is almost impossible not to utilize it in not only your day to day life, but in your education as well. Technology tools can encourage students to be reflective and evaluate their own strengths in many ways. The use of blogs and different websites such as Surveymonkey and Zoomerang students are easily able to identify trends and help them track their assessments with the rest of the class. Tools such as these allow students to somewhat compare themselves to their peers enabling them to track their progress, strengths and weaknesses.

2               Describe several ways in which you can get students’ minds ready for a project.

As with anything, students need to be excited about something in order for them to have a personal stake in it. In order to get student’s minds ready for a project, you need to determine the prior knowledge that they have pertaining to the topic through self-assessments. This will give you a basis on where you need to begin as well as where you need to go. Students need to see that you feel passionate about the project so it is important that you transfer that feeling to them. If they believe that you care about this and it’s outcomes, it is more likely they will. When students have an interest in their learning it becomes more important to them, therefore allowing them to become more involved. Finally, the teacher can build excitement for the project by “planting the seed” in the previous weeks leading up to the start of it. If the students are hearing about the project and it’s aspects more than just the first time you introduce it, it allows them to think openly about it and develop their own ideas.  To get students excited about the project you need to give the project a purpose and allow them to feel that they are truly discovering something new.

3  Discuss the elements of teaching fundamentals first

Teaching the fundamentals first is a crucial ideal for educators in any subject. Everything we learn, we learned the basics first in order to understand the more complicated ideas, building blocks make the final project. Fundamentals are important in projects because they allow the students to be introduced to the aspects of the project but not in an overwhelming way. In order to know where the project is going to need to know where your students are starting. A great resource mentioned in the book is having children create wikis alone, with a partner, and with another child from another class. This activity allows students to take their ideas and expand them not once, but twice therefore “perfecting” them.

4  Describe the important steps in preparing students for using technology in project.

Technology is a huge resource for our students to utilize during the project process but it is important that we are using it the best we can. Utilizing technology requires planning by the teacher in order to determine which technology can be best utilized and what the students will be familiar with. The most important thing is to consider yourself a student and try to navigate through the technology that you want them to use. You need to discover and research each piece of technology and determine if it is easy or difficult to understand as a student because if it is not, you then have to determine if it worth using.

5              Discuss ways to promote inquiry and deep learning.

Projects are great things for children to explore and investigate different topics and ideas, which in turn will lead to inquiry and deep learning. When students have a stake in their learning they truly are interested in all aspects of it therefore allowing them to investigate it more in depth. As a teacher it is your job to create an experience for the children to discover and learn new things project based learning allows them to learn hands on. It is important for students to utilize what they learn within the classroom and apply it to their own lives and what they know outside of school as well.

Discussion on how concepts in this chapter relate to your topic/project.

The topics in this chapter relate to our project because it’s all about creating a deeper understanding of a “simple topic” Kickball is a sport that many people know about and have most likely played before, but by examining the different health aspects of it you are giving more meaning to the project.

Reading Reflection 5

1.Discussion on the items that should be considered before starting a project with students.

When beginning a project, there are multiple things to take into account. First, you must gather the resources and tools necessary to achieve the learning goals. This will include people, places, and things (tools and technology) that will aid in their learning. Students need to consider ways to make their project engaging and interesting to all involved and to make it worthwhile. Next, students need to plan a project calendar with steps and milestones that will help them stay organized and on task in order to effectively complete each goal and learning target. Finally, student’s need to understand the expectations for the entire project and the learning goals that they are attempting to reach.

2. Discussion on teachers and students’ management needs.

Management is an important thing in creating and completing a project as well as many other things. Management includes everything from the different tools for communication and recourses to different methods and avenues of assessment. In order for a project to be successful, systems and strategies need to be established for all of the above to stay organized. The student’s needs to be kept in mind when determining which management techniques are important and which will help them become most successful. Another important thing to keep in mind about management is time and flow of work so that your students are consistently completing their work in a timely fashion.

3. Discuss some of the technology applications that should be considered for use in a project.

Technology is a great resource for advancing your projects. Wiki, blogs, drupal and textpattern are great online resources to allow your students to utilize. Resources such as the ones listed above allow students to search for information and then work collaboratively no matter where they are. Tools such as these allow projects to be carried out in a more time efficient manor.

Concepts in this chapter relate to our project because there are many aspects to creating a kickball event while also making it an educational experience for students. This chapter defines the process of the different stages throughout the project process, which helps you to stay organized and complete each certain task. The most important thing that this chapter explains is that technology is a great tool to utilize in a project. For ours specifically, we are utilizing South Korean kickball ideals in comparison with the USA, and we would not be able to easily find that information without the internet. Overall, this chapter outlines each step and lays out what is important to think about before and during the project process.

Reading Reflection #7

1. Description of the levels of classroom discussions.    Throughout implementation, several levels of discussion take place.  Teacher to teacher discussion could touch on many different areas including the procedural method, who’s leading, who’s working together, to formative assessment.  This could cover the problems the students are having understanding certain areas.  If teachers are not able to have face to face connection, they could communicate through a blog, wiki or any different collaborative technology tool to keep in touch.  Student to Student discussion can take place from members in one team communicating with teammates, or members of one team collaborating with another team.  Teacher to student discussion takes place in traditional classrooms through lecture format where the teacher dominates the conversation.  However, this approach to teacher to student discussion is modified for PBL.  During PBL, the teacher to student discussion is likely to take place as the teacher travels around the classroom assisting, providing guidance, or keeping the students on task as opposed to the lecture format. 

2. Discussion on the questions for “checking in” on students during a project. With PBL, students are encouraged to take different routes with the project.  With all this variation in the classroom taking place, it is important for the teacher to check in and touch base with the students.  Checking in is used to monitor the student’s progress by making sure that the members of the team have good time management, team work as well as understanding of the PBL topic. Checking in is an essential part to project progress.

3. Discussion on the benefits to students when optimizing the use of technology. When optimizing the use of technology for a project it is important to make sure that the technology being used is the most preferred technology tool of the student.  This is a way that the students will stay interested in the project if they are using technology they are comfortable with. The technology chosen should help students reach their learning goals, keep them organized, expand their horizons, stretch their creativity and gain new insights for communication.

4. Discussion on the 21st-century skills that can make or break a project. Distinguishing troubleshooting is a key 21^st century skill that could make or break a project.  Helping students realize that all the projects are like everything in life. They will more than likely come with some sort of problem.  This is important in PBL because it develops exposure to real life in a way that a person can mess up, but lessons can be learned from the mistakes and can be corrected or modified.

5. Discussion on how concepts in this chapter relate to your topic/project. The concepts in this chapter relate to our topic/project because student to student discussion takes place through the children’s pen pal communication with students in South Korea.  Also, Student to student discussion also will take place in our project when students share their Venn Diagrams with others.  This is an interesting take on student to student discussion with students playing both roles of student to teacher discussion when the students are sharing and teaching each other about the health benefits of kickball.  

Reading Reflection #8

Description of some ways to build connections and branch out beyond the classroom.

• Connect with experts-connect students with experts to expand their knowledge
• Expand the learning circle-include distant countries/continents
• Communicate findings-allow students to share their findings with each other
• Let students lead-allow the students to lead a project

Description of the EAST Initiative Model.

• EAST stands for Environmental and Spatial Technologies. This is an initiative network of schools that demonstrate the benefits of using technology for a real purpose. The four essential ideas are; student-driven, authentic project-based learning, technology as tools, and collaboration.

Discussion on some reasons to let students “lead” their projects.

• Students are capable of leading their own projects especially when a teacher has generated  a project idea the students care about. Students can take on their own learning while the teacher is there for support. 

Discussion on how concepts in this chapter relate to your topic/project.

• We are allowing our students to take the lead in our kickball project especially when it comes time for the Kickball tournament, it will be student-lead with support from the three of us. We will also be using technology as our tools to develop knowledge on kickball and how to play. We will be expanding our learning circle by talking with students from South Korea.

Reading Reflection #7

Description of the levels of classroom discussions.

• Teacher to teacher-teachers continue to discuss the project plan while they implement
• Student to student-students talk with each other about their learning experiences
• Teacher to student-occasionally teacher will have a whole group discussion or lecture

Discussion on the questions for “checking in” on students during a project.

• Questions need to be asked to check-in on students to see if they're staying on schedule, teams are getting along, if they understand the project, and what students are thinking about the project.
• The four types of questions are procedural, teamwork, understanding, and self-assessment

Discussion on the benefits to students when optimizing the use of technology.

• A teacher needs to evaluate the use of technology during projects to determine if it is helping students reach their goals, stay organized, expand their horizons, and whether or not it's equitable.

Discussion on the 21st-century skills that can make or break a project.

• The 21st century skill that can make or break a project is teamwork. Students must work together to successfully complete a project. Ways to help teamwork not break a project is to have students agree on their roles and responsibilities and spell out consequences if they don't follow their agreement. A teacher can also have an assessment or rubric to evaluate teamwork.

Discussion on how concepts in this chapter relate to your topic/project.

• For our Kickball project, my team and I need to consistently be checking in on our students to make sure that they fully understand the project and are staying on-task and organized. We also need to make sure that the use of technology is beneficial and helping the students reach their end goal for the project. Also, we'll want to emphasize the importance of teamwork during this project and evaluate to make sure the 21st century skill is being applied.