Week 5: Reflection

My Genius Hour Project is slowly coming together!

Just 2 more weeks and my project will be complete. I'm certainly excited to have a final product. At this point, I've learned a bit more about embedding videos and presentations into blogger. This skill is actually quite useful. Knowing how to elevate and diversify the content on my blog is a great thing. It certainly makes things more visually appealing and interesting for readers!

This week I learned that it is mandated for students to have at least 20 minutes of physical activity built into their school day.

What does this mean? Well, the classroom teacher is responsible for having students get up and move. Stretches, squats, jumping jacks, are all ways to get students moving. I like to think of these as "movement minutes". Teachers can split the 20 minutes up throughout the day or decide to do a 20 minute chunk of activity with their students. This is great!

However, I am more interested in getting kids moving during their lessons. How can we create math classes that involve students walking around, working with their hands, or moving among desks?

I found that this resource especially helpful. It provided me with some back ground research to base my plans off.

For next week I will have my project complete!

Week 4 Reflection

kaboompics. (9 April 2015). Design. [Online Image]. Retrieved from http://bit.ly/1OCzGXw

In today's class we had the opportunity to explore some neat movie-making tools online. I had no idea such cool, interactive sites like this existed (and most importantly for free)! I'm thrilled that we've been exposed these online sites, like animoto, because I can definitely see myself using these in the classroom. Also, I think my students would love it as well. Animoto is a very easy-to-use tool that even younger students would be able to enjoy. 

As for my Genius Hour project, I stumbled across some really great resources for incorporating movement into everyday lessons, even ones like math. I was so happy and excited to have found this source! My research so far has been going okay. I feel good about where my project is going, there are a lot of really great resources and research available for teachers who are interested in incorporating movement in their lessons. There's also a lot of research to support this concept. Unfortunately while all these resources exist, I'm curious as to why it's not seen more in the classroom. 

Moving forward, I plan on keeping up with my research and getting a little creative in trying to design some of my own pro-movement lessons. As well, I'm thinking it could be a good idea to create a manual for teachers interested in incorporating more movement into their school day. 

That's all for now, until next week! 

Week 3 Reflection

So far I am on track with my Genius Hour project - but just barely.

I know this might not be the best thing to admit but it's the truth! Balancing the many different requirements this course demands each session gets overwhelming quickly. However, today I started to dig into my research (one step at a time!). I've gathered a couple reliable and interesting sources for my research. The first place I went to gather preliminary research was the website edugains.

To this point, I've found a lot of research that reinforces the motivation behind my question. Basically I've gathered research that proves how critical physical movement and education is to the developing student. This is great! Now I need to narrow my search a bit to find resources and educational tools to implement movement into my theoretical lesson plan.

In fact, I might tweak my question slightly as this project unfolds. Don't hold me to that though. I still hope to wade through more comprehensive research before I make any bold decisions.

From this point on, I need to get up to speed with my research. Research is not something I particularly enjoy doing. Knowing this means I need to keep more on top of my progress! That's why my Proposal Pitch is such a valuable tool for me right now. It's keeping me on track an organized. The plan for next week is to have a nice list of resources and research.

So far, I can't quite say I've learned anything new about myself. I've just been faced with my usual habits. For instance, I know research is not my strength so staying focused in this regard is a small challenge. Since this project has a more practical edge to it I'm definitely more engaged.

Well, that's about it for this week. Until next time!

Genius Hour Project: Reflection #1

In class today we each chose our Genius Hour project topic. It's not unusual for me to totally blank when I'm asked to come up with and decide on an idea on the spot. Thankfully, that didn't happen today! In fact, the topic I choose came quite easily.

The BIG question I'll be asking is:

How can teachers design their daily lessons to incorporate movement/physical activity in every subject or lesson? 

I'm looking forward to exploring this topic further and coming up with some practical answers, especially since this topic resonates with me deeply. As a very active person (sometimes restless), I always found it difficult to sit for more then even 1 hour at a time. In school (especially University) I struggled to sit still and focus for longer then 2 hours. So much so that I strategically avoided taking classes that were 3 hours in length and instead opted for classes that broke the lectures up throughout the week.

Sounds intense right? Well, not surprisingly my marks drastically improved when I was able to adjust my schedule to better suit my learning style. Elementary school students don't have this type of control over their schedule so it is really up to the teacher to experiment and incorporate movement to shake things up in class.

My goal for this project is to discover new resources, tools, and tips to create a more movement-friendly classroom. It's proven, and a widely accepted fact, that students can't focus for long, extended periods of time and that movement helps with focus and retention of information.

In the coming weeks, I'll be gathering research, observing real-live classrooms, and attempting to design my own movement-friendly lesson plan. I'm confident that I can create a classroom environment that includes more physical activity for my students!

Teachers and Copyright: What to Know

These days it is expected that teachers and students have a solid understanding of what the term "copyright" means. The Internet offers teachers an incredible amount of resources, which ultimately has the power to enrich our lessons. However, this means it is crucial for us to know exactly how and in what ways we can use these sources.

San Hose Library. (23 August 2008) Children using the computer [Online Image]. Retrieved from https://www.flickr.com/photos/sanjoselibrary/2839835109/

For instance, not many people know that anything posted online is given a automatic copyright unless is has been released or removed by the author. Basic copyright means that copying, performing, adapting, or distributing online content is prohibited. For Canadian teachers this means we cannot show or distributed any content unless it has a Creative Commons License (CC).



Cellanr. (2009 September 19). OLPC at Kagugu Primary School, Kigali [Online Image].Retrieved from http://bit.ly/1KJ0KDL 

Basically, before you share a video, article, image, etc. with your students you must first ensure you are legally allowed to do so and then take the time to properly cite it. It is also necessary to properly teach and guide your students to do the same. It might be a good idea to review Copyright laws with your students the next time you give out an assignment, especially since most students are unfamiliar with citing digital media. The more transparent you are with your sources the more your students will learn to be too.

Welcome!

Hi there!

My name is Laura and welcome to my Genius Hour blog. I've called this blog "Thoughts by Laura" because that is exactly what this project will be full of - my thoughts and research in topics pertaining to teaching.

To put is simply, Genius Hour is a movement in education that encourages students to take charge of their own learning.

If the concept of Genius Hour is completely foreign to you (as it was for me) I highly recommend you take a quick look at the video below.

Pretty interesting, right? I'm certainly looking forward to learning more about how to incorporate Genius Hour into my own future classroom.

I invite you to read a long on my journey to becoming a teacher! Comments are always welcome and appreciated :)

Laura


Video Source:
Kesler, Chris. (2013 September 6). What is Genius Hour [Video File]. Retrieved from https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NMFQUtHsWhc