Brooke-Lynn's Blog

The Fall 2018 session of practicum is reaching a close. This means saying goodbye (for now) to our professors, our classmates, and our students. To reflect on my semester, I created a video about my experience and what I've learned. (Because if a picture's worth a thousand words, imagine what a video is worth.*) You can view the video here:  https://www.powtoon.com/online-presentation/c3QYXPMBmUd/?mode=movie#/ *Also because it was a required part of the assignment; not gonna lie.

Yesterday, I attended the Student Teaching Portfolio presentations. This is a biannual event in which pre-professional teachers nearing the end of their program at UMF reflect and present on the time they spent in the field. It’s also an opportunity for other students in the program to collaborate with and get advice from these “student teachers." The first person I spoke with was an elementary education major working in Lewiston. She shared with me the work she had done over the period of her student teaching and some resources she had found particularly helpful in her kindergarten classroom. While much of her work was specific to her concentration and not necessarily applicable, her teaching philosophy stood out to me. She built her philosophy around the Stanley Kubrick quote, " I think the big mistake in schools is trying to teach children anything, and by using fear as the basic motivation. Fear of getting failing grades, fear of not staying with your class, etc. I...

Thanks to Laney  for helping me create this!

In  Embedded Formative Assessment, Dylan Wiliam makes the case for formative assessment as the way to improve the learning of all students. He first makes this case by supporting his assertions with statistical evidence. This evidence is followed by specific strategies he considers successful and a discussion of their benefits and disadvantages of each. Beyond formative assessment, there were many themes that persisted through the book, many of which are summarized on my Twitter by chapter ( 3 , 4 , 5 , 6 , 7 ). In each chapter, he addresses a certain aspect of effective formative assessment in practice. Although I think it is important to have a holistic view of the classroom and the many things educators must do for their students, Wiliam makes a persuasive case for the power of formative assessment as a way to engage students and inform future instruction. Something I especially enjoyed about Wiliam's book was his recommendations of specific strategies in each chapter. M...

For the last three weeks of radio silence, I've been in the field, teaching sixth graders in my local school district. It has been an awesomely meaningful experience, as tiring as seven hours of eleven-year-olds can be. During this time, the students have been my focus and I have spent a lot of my time outside of the classroom reflecting on the occurrences of the day. Although I only completed eight days in the field, I learned a lot about the realities of teaching. My cooperating teacher has been a wealth of information, and our teaching styles are very similar. Nonetheless, I have also been exploring online resources to improve the teaching I have been doing. As a part of an assignment in which my classmates and I reached out to our former teachers, we requested resources from these educators. Many of these were useful in informing issues I ran into while in the field. Emily at Teacher, Teach Me How to Teach!  recommended Edutopia , a website bursting with information and advic...

Last Friday, I attended the Association of Computer Technology Educators of Maine (ACTEM) conference. I had been preparing for this conference for almost a month, so I went into it confident in my work and expecting a positive experience. (After I finally woke up, having left campus before six in the morning). As expected, I came out of the conference with new ideas and resources for my unit and for teaching in general. I received many recommendations for tech, many of which I will be looking into for future unit planning, and a couple I may use in the unit I am currently building. These are things I might never have even thought to look for without these recommendations. I'm looking forward to integrating some of the resources, especially the add-ons to Google Suite apps, which I think will prove to be effective formative assessment tools. The sharing of resources is one of the most practically beneficial aspects of collaboration and I was glad to have been i...

For those of you that don't know, I am currently building a unit for an English literature class for the first time. There are a lot of things I am trying to take into consideration with it, so I'm constantly altering in little (or big) ways. Right now, I'm pretty confident in my unit sketch, which encompasses a number of standards and learning experiences. For the purposes of my classes, I have focused primarily on three major assessments for the unit. Recently, I made a Padlet to express these assessments using images of displays from MoMA and Smithsonian . I approached this as an opportunity to test out Padlet as a potential technology to use in the classroom and I certainly did learn about the program. I was surprised by the MoMA and Smithsonian websites, though. These websites are very well-curated and are a hidden gem of a resource. The display can be used in a way similar to how I used them in this Padlet, as writing prompts, or for a multitude of other uses in an...

If there is one thing building a unit has taught me, it's that the seemingly easy things can take a long time for a perfectionist (i.e. me). Finding a rubric is perhaps the strongest example of this, considering I have spent way more time on this than should have been necessary, even though I had initially counted it as a simple 30-minute undertaking. In my research, I found a lot of rubrics that I thought were okay, none that I thought were truly awful, none I found perfect, and, of course, none that fit my unit. As a jumping off point, I decided to look at rubrics for essays. As an aspiring English teacher, I figure essays will be an unavoidable part of each and all of my classes. Along the way, I also found the Teachers Pay Teachers website, which will likely see a lot of use from me. Even if you're not looking to buy resources, it can be a great source of ideas and inspiration (and some free stuff, as well). The first rubric I found had some positive aspects but was n...

Reproduced by permission of the publisher, © 2012 by tpack.org In eighth grade, my English teacher assigned a project on fairy tales. We all read multiple interpretations of Cinderella and examined the common motifs as a class. We were then required to choose a junior fiction or young adult novel that was characterized as a modern retelling. My teacher had put out a table of books organized by the fairy tale or folk tale on which they were based. Each student was then responsible for reading their chosen retelling as well as three children's books from different cultures. From these adaptations, the student found common motifs (at least six) and applied them to each story. The proof we provided for that application was a table on Google Docs. We were also required to create a project on the book we read from a list of options. This project was a favorite of many students and it taught us how to find commonalities between texts, identify motifs, and express our thoughts on a ...

The Extraordinaires Design Set is a collection of character and "think" cards. The activity we did in class was a lesson in both GRASPS and differentiation. The underlying message of the activity is to look deeper. At first, we were required to look only at the front of the card. The front of each card presented an archetype of sorts; a character rather than a person. There are observations to be made, but they are primarily surface-level. The potential product we designed for that person is different than that we might design once we knew more about their life, as we were required to do, per the "think" cards. As the back is also only images, there is still only so much to be learned, but four images provide much more information than a single image. Thus, our understanding of the character's needs is expanded. Once there are four students, the planning becomes even more difficult. This is an important lesson to keep in mind as we go into the field and, late...

As a part of the publicity project the students will take on, they will each compose reaction tweets after each reading, as if they were live-tweeting their reading. While the students could write such a thing in their journal, their journals would only be read by their teacher and maybe by peers. Sending their reactions into the Twitterverse allows for interaction between them and people outside the classroom. In addition to increased engagement, this activity may increase a student's care in what they write. If it's going to be visible to anyone on the internet, they may be more thoughtful in their responses. While the limitation of 140 characters can be difficult for some students, it can also be viewed as an exercise in expressing one's self in a concise and accurate way. This assignment is an example of the tenth teaching standard: collaboration. It applies specifically to 10(g), that the teacher " Uses technological tools and a variety of communication st...

I've wanted to be a teacher longer than I've been in school. It's an inarguable fact that my older sister, Brianna, is the reason for this, although my father played a role in it as well. Because of this, I can't say that any of my teachers inspired me to become an educator. I can say that they inspired the kind of teacher I want to be. Like every student, I've had teachers I loved and whose classes I loved as well as teachers whose classes I dreaded. I was lucky enough, as I hope most students are, to have had a number of exceptional teachers. My freshman science teacher, Mr. Danala, was one of the first teachers to truly inspire me. He created a classroom where everybody seemed involved, in large part due to his amazing skills in forming relationships with his students. As freshmen, we were pretty apprehensive. Although most of us knew each other, it was still new in that none of us had ever taken a high school science class before. The class was well-str...

While researching the Google Apps in The Google Apps Guidebook by Kern Kelley, I was intrigued by the chapter on Google Photos. Although the app itself is somewhat limited, the Pixlr extension it explained is an impressive tool, essentially a free version of AdobePhotoshop online. The summative assignment I am currently designing for my potential unit about Michael L. Printz award winners and honor books allows a choice of final projects and many of them could use this technology. One option is to create a photo journal, in which students would ask themselves "what would be on the protagonist's camera?" For this, an editing tool would be incredibly helpful, especially if the book they choose has a fictional or fantastic setting. This tool might also help students who choose to make a collage. If they cannot find an image they want, they can make it using other photos and the Pixlr program. As a fun addition, I have imagined how this might play out in the classroom. ...

As a pre-service educator, I see technology as an important enhancer in the classroom, when integrated well. As technology advances, it becomes an increasingly necessary enhancer. The students being taught in school right now and in the future will likely never know a world that isn't full to bursting with rapidly advancing technology. Thus, in order for them to be successful, their education must include technology in practical and creative ways.  The following is a three-song "soundtrack" of how this tends to play out in a learning setting. 1. " A Whole New World ," Aladdin (1992) Promotional poster for the film ©Walt Disney, 1991 Originally sung by Lea Salonga and Brad Kane This song, as many people know, is sung by the main characters of Aladdin  as they take a magic carpet ride, seeing things neither of them had had the opportunity to see. In many settings, including a classroom, technology serves as a kind of magic carpet, opening students u...

("School's" should be read as "schools") I have had many experiences in which technology has enhanced my learning and many experiences in which my education has been impaired by technological difficulties. I believe that technology is an amazing tool and understand that it is constantly evolving. In order for its inclusion in the classroom to be successful, though, it must be embedded in the curriculum rather than a lengthy lesson separate from the actual class content.

There are many beliefs I have surrounding English and teaching, but perhaps the one I've held the longest is the importance of reading. Many of my fond childhood memories include reading or books in some form: my father reading to me and my sisters as children, my older sister trying to teach me how to read when she came home from kindergarten, the many book clubs I have been a part of, my volunteer position at my local library, and many more experiences. Adventure, courage, and wisdom are only some of the many things people can gain from books. Likewise, books are only one source of gaining these things. While books are an obvious and abundant source, I see all media as a potential source of information or experience.

As a class, we were asked to generate four norms, or rules, for our classroom that we believed would foster a good learning environment. These are the norms we decided on as a class!