CED 525 - Week 2 - Reflection on Setting Objectives, Providing Feedback, and Providing Recognition

This week we were also asked to post a reflection to your blog for each of the strategies that we studied this week: Setting Objectives, Providing Feedback, Providing Recognition. We were given some guiding questions to use.

Setting objectives

What is the purpose of asking students to set objectives?

Setting objectives is an area that I need to improve upon. When I first started teaching, I use to create detailed lesson plans that incorporated student and teacher objectives for each lesson. This objectives were also tied to the state standards. I use to write the student objectives on the board so that students were aware of their goals for the day. Even though I still use a lot of the same lessons, I have gotten away from this approach because of it was very time consuming. I have focused more or my energy on incorporating new labs, tools, and resources into the curriculum instead. These tools are interactive and effective but, students are not aware of what they should be achieving. It would be more effective if I convey the objectives to the students so that they can determine if they have gained what they need to succeed. Our school is starting to use a service called Build Your Own Curriculum. This resource will provide me with another opportunity to start creating and sharing learning objectives. I also hope to gain student feedback and start to have the students create their own objectives prior to the start of a unit. This will allow them to become more invested into their own learning.


Providing Feedback

What kinds of technologies can I use to help students provide feedback?

I am a science teacher and one of the major objectives that we want our students to learn about is the ability to write a proper lab write up. One of the thoughts that I have had is utilizing rubrics and peer editing to improve their scientific writing. I think that using technology like Rubistar and google docs would improve this process. Rubistar would provide clear and detailed criteria. Google docs would be a great way for student to share and collaborate outside of the classroom.

Providing Recognition

What kinds of technologies can I use to provide student recognition?

I currently use edmodo for our classroom website. This is my first time using this tool and I have experimented with how I use it. I envision eventually having it become more of a social experience for my students. I would like to have the students post comment to each other and myself. Student posts can be done publicly or privately. I would like the students to discuss what we learned and how we can apply this. We can also talk about areas that we may struggle and how we can overcome these issues. This would allow me to provide recognition to the students and it would also allow the students to recognize each other. This would create a very friendly learning environment.