Journal+for+Week+5

I have learned quite a few new things over the five weeks of this course. Today's readings reminded me of some training I had in the early 90's when I was part of the Coalition of Essential schools inititive at the elementary school I was teaching at. Less is more was a common theme throughout the philosophy. We looked at focusing on core learning skills to teach our curriculum. I keep reading the same thing as I read the articles on the 21st Century Skills, focus on the core subjects, move away from drill and practice and begin using 21st century technology in your classroom.

My school in currently in School Improvement, we are failing to meet AYP with our special education population and some of our minority groups. So the students spend a great deal of time going over test prep material.This year I am trying to incorporate some of the ideas from the reading into my classroom. It is easy for me to slow down on the number of novels we read and really go into depth with these novels. In my honors and regular class I have started a wiki as I stated last week to respond to literature, our next wiki will be for mythology and my students are going to research and write a paper on one greek god and then respond to the paper on the wiki. I would like to do this with my inclusion class, but they have difficulty writing and typing. I hope I can have them write a paragraph, versus an essay and post it on the wiki. Finally, with the help of my technology coach I am hoping to have the students create a podcast as their final mythology assignment. I saw one on teacher tube and hope that this will work. We may spend 6 weeks on this unit in class. While we do the unit, I will continue to work on spelling skills, but not grammar. This is a constant dilemna - which basic skills can we not teach, to find time to incorporate some of the new 21st century skills.

I noticed in the article "21st Century Skills: Will our Students Be Prepared?" the references to a partnership with businesses. I think this is a key component to preparing our students. I would like to see my school paired up with area businesses so that my students are aware of employment opportunities and I am more aware of the skills they need. I have been teaching for 22 years, I have never worked in a business, I don't know what engineers, marketing directors etc.. do at work let alone the skills I need to be teaching my students to work there. I would estimate that over 50% of my students parents are working in the service industry or umemployed. We need to be sharing with our students why they need these skills and how they can use them beyond home computer usage.

In regards to the student needs assessment. I received an email from you that we need to be more critical of each other's needs assessments. I agree especially when you mentioned that I need a vision when I'm creating the needs assessment. I guess as we sat done as a team we knew that our students had some skills and we believe they may have more skills than we have, we wanted to find out what they were. I think we are still struggling with what the possibilities are for our students- we want more ideas of what really works.