Earth Science, Ocean Museum

The students had to developed 10 learning objectives and designed an audio, visual and tactile display of their information for an exhibit as part of a museum. Peer-critiquing and feedback helped to make these projects the best they could be. Also peer-teaching was present in the class which I feel is vital to success for all involved.

The teacher and the students seemed to be enthusiastic about the subject matter and the teacher was very integrated in everyone’s project.

The 9th grade students then teach their lessons to the elementary school children. At the end of the lesson there is a discussion with the 9th grade students on what they thought was done well and what might needed to be improved on. The students also internalized the information and really got a lot out of making the projects and sharing them with the younger students.

Learning Styles Don’t Exist: Video

I totally disagree with this man’s opinion on the fact that people do not have different learning styles. I do believe that the way information is organized and/or explained matters in terms of learning and/or understanding the information. I feel that I am a very visual and kinesthetic learner and feel that I excel when I am able to comprehend information hands-on. I do agree that some people may have all of these learning styles but some people learn better using a model or audio explanations.

No matter what some theorists say, I believe that there are multiple learning styles and I, as a teacher will teach to those styles regardless of what a professor says or not.

Environmental Health: Video

With the combination of both English and Health students at Central Community School in Elkader, Iowa were asked to create a 5 minute video targeted towards youth environmental health issues such as water pollution and air pollution. With help from both the English and Health teachers, the students needed to demonstrate the ability to advocate personal, family and community health. They had to research environmental health issue, present the information in a unique way, and persuade the audience. iMovie and Avid Cinema were two of the technologies that were used to edit their video projects. The use of technology was needed to compile, synthesize and produce their persuasive videos.

One of the positive aspects of this lesson was the peer-teaching that was taken place when the students needed to produce a storyboard to go along with their video. With the help of a teacher, a group of girls were able to start their thinking process and get an understanding of what they wanted to do and how to put it into a storyboard format like the teachers expected

With the help from the school-library media specialist, students were able to evaluate their information and knowledge to make sure that the sources were reliable and valid. The media specialist handed out an evaluation sheet to make the students list two sources and have a discussion on which of these two resources was the best and which was not and if they needed to gather more information and where to find a reliable source.

There was constant reflection back to the English and Health standards of the school district. Applying y standards to the curriculum and expressing the importance of these standards to the students will benefit not only the teacher, but the students as well.