Goal: Have my science lesson this semester incorporate the Smart Board in order to encourage student engagement. Progress my abilities as a teacher by being able to include new technologies into my lessons.
Update: I was unable to complete my SMART goal. I was presented with circumstances that I could not change, and that were impossible to incorporate my SMART goal into. When I asked my CT for dates and lessons she would want me to do for the semester, she told me the only science lesson I would be able to do was day 4 during the fourth grade plant unit. Day 4 already had a lesson plan laid out and I did not have much wiggle room to add in my own ideas or material. Because of this, I was also unable to add in a Smart Board activity into the lesson. I have learned through making a SMART Goal that making and planning out goals to have throughout the school year is a great way to motivate yourself to add in new thoughts and ideas when lesson planning to continue growing as a teacher. I have also learned, however, that when planning for lessons and working with students, there are so many variables that many times the teacher’s flexibility with lesson planning can be just as important. Not everything goes as planned, and while it is still good to have the plan in place, there also needs to be acceptance when the plan is simply impossible to work with. I think that when I have my own classroom this goal will be much more achievable, however, because I can decide the lesson plans I use and the different activities I have students participate in (for the most part), whereas being a practicum student in the classroom of another teacher I was working around her schedule and around her ideas/styles of teaching rather than my own.
Select
I am able to read the standards students are expected to accomplish, and know what the students need to learn in order to be successful with that standard.
Reflect
I want to be able to create lessons that match the expectations of the standards, but that are interactive, engaging, interesting, and fun to students so that they are enjoying learning the information.
I want to be able to manage a classroom effectively and efficiently so that students are getting the most knowledge out of my lessons as possible.
I want my students to leave my classroom with a love for science rather than feelings of frustration or confusion.
I want to incorporate games, discussions, activities, experiments, and new technology into my lessons.
Affect
This will affect me as a teacher because if my students are uninterested in my lessons and are not willing to participate or work hard on learning the information I am presenting them, they will leave my classroom without valuable knowledge that I had the opportunity to provide. I will be an ineffective teacher.
Project
To provide a product that can be measured to show that I have met this goal, I will make my lesson an interactive activity with the students that includes using the smart board in class. By doing this, the students will be more engaged in learning the information, and because they will all be involved in the activity, will be more open to share ideas or opinions with one another. Adding in the smart board will also encourage technological use within the classroom to promote new ways of learning. I will write down the experiences of the lesson in a journal to be reviewed at the end by my cooperating teacher.
My goal is to get my students excited about learning new scientific information by making their science lessons fit their interests, match their level of knowledge and understanding, and also fulfill the standards expected of them. I can complete this goal by creating a classroom community that encourages interactions between my students and myself, incorporates creative activities that teach them the necessary information in a fun and engaging way so that they are eager to participate, and a classroom that promotes openness of ideas and opinions so that new perspectives and varying ways of learning can be included in each lesson so as to connect to as many students as possible. I can learn from my practicum experiences on classroom management techniques to keep the schedule and routines of my classroom smooth and in order to the best of my abilities, and I can learn new ways to teach science in an interactive way from my CT by asking questions and staying involved in the lessons occurring throughout the semester in her classroom. I can gain new ideas and insights from my peers as they learn from their classes, as well. I can research lesson plans from other teachers around the world that match specific science standards and use them in creating my own lessons for the future.
By having the Smart Board incorporated into my lesson, I will better understand how to teach my students through the use of new technologies within the classroom. As of now, I do not fully understand how to use a Smart Board and have yet to use one to teach. I am making this my Smart Goal for the semester so that I can advance as a teacher by being able to use a different style of teaching that I am currently unfamiliar with. What I will be doing with the Smart Board will be an interactive activity that allows students to talk to one another and myself as they learn and that encourages student input; the ideal would be a game on the Smart Board students could play in groups so that they are having fun and interacting with one another as they learn the new material.
My CT will assess my use of the Smart Board in my lesson and provide feedback on the success or needed improvement of my lesson based on student learning and engagement. The journal that I keep throughout the process will serve as my thoughts, point of view, and overall conclusion of my lesson which will also be given to my CT for review and commentary. I can use my notes and my CT’s feedback as a thorough assessment of how my lesson went and use it to make changes to the lesson as well as others for future use in my own classroom.
Update: Even though I was unable to complete my SMART Goal and do the lesson for science that I had intended, I was still able to receive a lot of feedback from my CT on how my running of the Day 4 plant unit lesson plan went. Because day 4 was primarily a hands on activity with students working on the plants they had planted six days prior, I was mainly walking around the room, keeping students on track and under control, monitoring their progress with their plants, and seeing how well they had understood the concepts I presented in the first 10 minutes or so of the lesson. My CT formally observed me during this lesson and I was able to see her written critiques of my lesson on the observation form she returned to me. She said that for the lesson I had been challenged with I did about as well as anyone could have done (the science class students are difficult to manage much of the time and do not listen or follow directions very well). She said that I presented the information to the class in a way that was easily understandable and that the students were well under control for my lecture portion of the lesson. She said that while they were working with their plants, she noticed that me walking around the room and working with individual pairs of students one after another seemed to work really well in keeping them on task and in aiding them to work on their plants accurately and efficiently. At the end of my lesson I had to think of a way to fill up a lot more time than had been planned for (students finished with their plants about 10-15 min earlier than the lesson plan had scheduled), and she said that the discussion I had with them on what they had just learned and done with their class and the review I had with them on terms or ideas they had worked on throughout the unit was a good way to fill in the time gap. Overall, I think if I could go back I would change a few things about how I conducted the lesson, but for the most part it ran fairly smoothly and the students were able to learn the necessary material the lesson presented.
Conclusion
Even though in my updates I explain that I was unable to complete the goal I had set for myself this semester, I was able to complete a different goal through this portfolio. Rather than choose one Smart Board activity to go along with one specific lesson, I found eighteen different Smart Board activities that could go with many different science lessons in a fourth grade classroom, all of which I included on this site under ACTIVITIES. Hopefully, this compilation of Smart Board ideas will aid myself in the future and others in their own classrooms to make science lessons more fun, engaging, interesting, and effective for all students.
Update: I was unable to complete my SMART goal. I was presented with circumstances that I could not change, and that were impossible to incorporate my SMART goal into. When I asked my CT for dates and lessons she would want me to do for the semester, she told me the only science lesson I would be able to do was day 4 during the fourth grade plant unit. Day 4 already had a lesson plan laid out and I did not have much wiggle room to add in my own ideas or material. Because of this, I was also unable to add in a Smart Board activity into the lesson. I have learned through making a SMART Goal that making and planning out goals to have throughout the school year is a great way to motivate yourself to add in new thoughts and ideas when lesson planning to continue growing as a teacher. I have also learned, however, that when planning for lessons and working with students, there are so many variables that many times the teacher’s flexibility with lesson planning can be just as important. Not everything goes as planned, and while it is still good to have the plan in place, there also needs to be acceptance when the plan is simply impossible to work with. I think that when I have my own classroom this goal will be much more achievable, however, because I can decide the lesson plans I use and the different activities I have students participate in (for the most part), whereas being a practicum student in the classroom of another teacher I was working around her schedule and around her ideas/styles of teaching rather than my own.
Select
I am able to read the standards students are expected to accomplish, and know what the students need to learn in order to be successful with that standard.
Reflect
I want to be able to create lessons that match the expectations of the standards, but that are interactive, engaging, interesting, and fun to students so that they are enjoying learning the information.
I want to be able to manage a classroom effectively and efficiently so that students are getting the most knowledge out of my lessons as possible.
I want my students to leave my classroom with a love for science rather than feelings of frustration or confusion.
I want to incorporate games, discussions, activities, experiments, and new technology into my lessons.
Affect
This will affect me as a teacher because if my students are uninterested in my lessons and are not willing to participate or work hard on learning the information I am presenting them, they will leave my classroom without valuable knowledge that I had the opportunity to provide. I will be an ineffective teacher.
Project
To provide a product that can be measured to show that I have met this goal, I will make my lesson an interactive activity with the students that includes using the smart board in class. By doing this, the students will be more engaged in learning the information, and because they will all be involved in the activity, will be more open to share ideas or opinions with one another. Adding in the smart board will also encourage technological use within the classroom to promote new ways of learning. I will write down the experiences of the lesson in a journal to be reviewed at the end by my cooperating teacher.
My goal is to get my students excited about learning new scientific information by making their science lessons fit their interests, match their level of knowledge and understanding, and also fulfill the standards expected of them. I can complete this goal by creating a classroom community that encourages interactions between my students and myself, incorporates creative activities that teach them the necessary information in a fun and engaging way so that they are eager to participate, and a classroom that promotes openness of ideas and opinions so that new perspectives and varying ways of learning can be included in each lesson so as to connect to as many students as possible. I can learn from my practicum experiences on classroom management techniques to keep the schedule and routines of my classroom smooth and in order to the best of my abilities, and I can learn new ways to teach science in an interactive way from my CT by asking questions and staying involved in the lessons occurring throughout the semester in her classroom. I can gain new ideas and insights from my peers as they learn from their classes, as well. I can research lesson plans from other teachers around the world that match specific science standards and use them in creating my own lessons for the future.
By having the Smart Board incorporated into my lesson, I will better understand how to teach my students through the use of new technologies within the classroom. As of now, I do not fully understand how to use a Smart Board and have yet to use one to teach. I am making this my Smart Goal for the semester so that I can advance as a teacher by being able to use a different style of teaching that I am currently unfamiliar with. What I will be doing with the Smart Board will be an interactive activity that allows students to talk to one another and myself as they learn and that encourages student input; the ideal would be a game on the Smart Board students could play in groups so that they are having fun and interacting with one another as they learn the new material.
My CT will assess my use of the Smart Board in my lesson and provide feedback on the success or needed improvement of my lesson based on student learning and engagement. The journal that I keep throughout the process will serve as my thoughts, point of view, and overall conclusion of my lesson which will also be given to my CT for review and commentary. I can use my notes and my CT’s feedback as a thorough assessment of how my lesson went and use it to make changes to the lesson as well as others for future use in my own classroom.
Update: Even though I was unable to complete my SMART Goal and do the lesson for science that I had intended, I was still able to receive a lot of feedback from my CT on how my running of the Day 4 plant unit lesson plan went. Because day 4 was primarily a hands on activity with students working on the plants they had planted six days prior, I was mainly walking around the room, keeping students on track and under control, monitoring their progress with their plants, and seeing how well they had understood the concepts I presented in the first 10 minutes or so of the lesson. My CT formally observed me during this lesson and I was able to see her written critiques of my lesson on the observation form she returned to me. She said that for the lesson I had been challenged with I did about as well as anyone could have done (the science class students are difficult to manage much of the time and do not listen or follow directions very well). She said that I presented the information to the class in a way that was easily understandable and that the students were well under control for my lecture portion of the lesson. She said that while they were working with their plants, she noticed that me walking around the room and working with individual pairs of students one after another seemed to work really well in keeping them on task and in aiding them to work on their plants accurately and efficiently. At the end of my lesson I had to think of a way to fill up a lot more time than had been planned for (students finished with their plants about 10-15 min earlier than the lesson plan had scheduled), and she said that the discussion I had with them on what they had just learned and done with their class and the review I had with them on terms or ideas they had worked on throughout the unit was a good way to fill in the time gap. Overall, I think if I could go back I would change a few things about how I conducted the lesson, but for the most part it ran fairly smoothly and the students were able to learn the necessary material the lesson presented.
Conclusion
Even though in my updates I explain that I was unable to complete the goal I had set for myself this semester, I was able to complete a different goal through this portfolio. Rather than choose one Smart Board activity to go along with one specific lesson, I found eighteen different Smart Board activities that could go with many different science lessons in a fourth grade classroom, all of which I included on this site under ACTIVITIES. Hopefully, this compilation of Smart Board ideas will aid myself in the future and others in their own classrooms to make science lessons more fun, engaging, interesting, and effective for all students.