Student Evaluation
Teacher Self-Reflection
Before
Throughout this engaging and interactive lesson the students had a wonderful time researching their animals, designing a new combination animal, making this animal come to life with construction paper, and then “becoming” their animal while making their digital learning stories. In fact, even before I started this lesson, I felt that students would not have too much difficulty researching their animals on National Geographic, since the group of students I gave this lesson to have utilized this website in the past, as well as would not have too much difficulty making their animals or using the camera on their computers, simply because this group of students have also made shadow puppets in the past and were familiar with using their Chromebooks. Despite this, before implementing this lesson there were a few key aspects that I felt students would have trouble completing. For instance, before starting this lesson, I thought that encouraging students to sit through the directions for the activities would be difficult for them simply because they would either lose interest or be extremely eager to start. Therefore, in order to address this prior concern, I decided to make the slides in my slideshow fairly simple and straightforward to read, while providing various clipart and videos to help keep the students engaged throughout this lesson. In addition to this, before implementing this lesson, I anticipated that some students would have difficulties writing their storyboards or scripts, either if they were still learning English, or had fine-motor exceptionalities. In turn, to address this, I decided to provide students with the option of telling me what they wanted to say, which I could then write down, not taking away from the fun and excitement of these activities, but rather, scaffolding the process to complete these activities. |
After
Day #2 In general, the first day of implementing this lesson was incredibly exciting, as I greatly enjoyed watching the students faces light up as they realized they could let their imaginations run wild and create their very own animals out of two of their favorite animals. However, even though during the second day of implementing this lesson this excitement continued, there were still a few instances that I didn’t expect or anticipate, and that I will definitely change if I were to implement this lesson again in the future. For example, during the second day, I explained to students how they could either continue what they worked on for the first day, which mainly included researching their animals and drawing a sketch of their animals, or they could begin filling out their storyboard sheets and bringing their animals to life by creating them out of construction paper. In turn, after introducing these two activities, I realized that many of the students had actually already completed their storyboards and puppets on the first day with my scaffolding and help, and were ready to move forward to creating their scripts for the ending videos. Therefore, I decided to modify what I planned for this day, and introduce the next activity students could work on once they finished their sketches, storyboards, and puppets, by explaining how they could work on the scripts for their digital learning stories. However, after introducing students to the fairly open-ended script format, I realized that even though it was a great way for the students to share their ideas, the vocabulary, such as the word “diet”, and the open-endedness of the script was difficult for some students to complete, where I had to constantly explain what the words meant and write sentence frames for the students. In turn, I decided to address this realization on the last day of implementing this lesson, where I differentiated the scripts for students by writing definitions of the words and including various sentence frames, as well as offering students who wanted more free-range the original empty script, so that all of the students felt comfortable completing this task. Moving Forward Overall, making these digital learning stories was incredibly fun, and I would definitely implement this lesson again in the future. However, the general layout of this lesson took longer than I anticipated, where even after making a couple of movies on the last day of this lesson, I still needed more time to help more students make their videos and put their movies together in a larger class digital portfolio that we would then watch during an ending showcase. In fact, after implementing this lesson I also realized that I had to differentiate the instruction more than I originally anticipated, which means that if I were to implement this lesson again in the future, I would provide students with less complex vocabulary, more sentence frames, and most importantly, more time to fully immerse themselves in the world of digital learning stories. In regards to having more time, in an extension of this lesson, I planned to engage students in the process of creating a more complex movie through using a movie making software, which I would scaffold and teach them how to use. In turn, with more days and opportunities, I would help the students I worked with actually put the videos they made into this software in order to share with everyone. In fact, being able to share their videos with everyone was something I hoped the students would be able to do, where after completing this lesson, I actually spoke with my mentor teacher who exclaimed that it would be fun to put the videos the students made on “Seesaw”, which is a technology app where teachers, students, and parents can view all the adventures students have while in class through picture, words, and videos. Therefore, in placing the digital learning stories on “Seesaw”, students would be able to share their discoveries and creativity with others. In the end, even though creating a longer movie using complex software would be interesting, I realized that for this group of students, my lesson was developmentally appropriate for them, simply because through using technology they were familiar with, such as a computer camera and Google drive, but engaging in a task that required higher cognitive thinking levels, and most importantly, creativity, these students were not only fully engaged in the activities, but were also having a fun time immersing themselves within the world of digital learning stories. |
Day #1
Overall, even though these were the only two anticipations I had regarding difficulties students would have throughout this lesson, there were additional realizations I had during and after the lesson that I didn’t anticipate. For instance, the first realization I had occurred on the first day of implementing this lesson, where I realized that the activities I had planned would take longer than I anticipated for the students to complete, where in the end, this lesson actually took three days instead of one for students to travel through the complete process of making their digital learning stories from start to finish. In regards to this first day, after introducing the digital learning story through a slideshow presentation and asking the students questions during the presentation, I realized that the students were extremely excited to learn about digital learning stories, and did an excellent job discovering what a digital learning story was just based on the words. This truly surprised me, and I was thrilled that the students were not only excited to make their own stories, but also did not lose interest or become overwhelmed by what I was asking them. However, despite their initial excitement, throughout this lesson, I did not expect that students would not understand what a “combination” was, since this was a key word in the lesson. In turn, this realization was actually a good reminder as a future educator, where I personally need to watch my own vocabulary and accommodate based on the developmental level of the students. In addition to this, throughout this initial lesson I did not expect that during the creation of the combo animals, students would want to use imaginary animals or various foods such as ice cream to make their creations. Therefore, in order to address their excitement, I decided to discuss with the students what they would like to create and what I hoped they would research, and eventually made a “compromise” with the students where I explained how they could use “imaginary” animals or food, as long as they combine them with a real animal they researched, which the students excitedly agreed to. Finally, after implementing this initial lesson, even though I originally thought that the writing portions of these activities would be difficult for some students, I did not expect that students would get as frustrated as they did when creating the storyboard and drawing the pictures of their combo animals. In turn, during the lesson, I decided to differentiate this activity by helping the students draw an outline of their animal, having them explain what they wanted written on their storyboards which I would then write, and most importantly, explaining to them that they are just doing sketches right now, and that when I do sketches they are often really rough as well. Overall, despite these moments, many of the students greatly enjoyed the activity and were thrilled at the chance to share their animal creations with others at the end of the day. Day #3 In regards to the last day of implementing this lesson, this day was extremely interesting, simply because at this point in time I originally planned to wrap up this lesson and showcase the students’ digital learning stories, however, the students were all at different stages of development, which meant I constantly differentiated and scaffolded throughout this ending lesson, as well as provided extensions for students who had completed all of the tasks. For instance, in regards to students who had finished their sketches, storyboards, puppets, and scripts, and were ready to start making their movies, I decided to take a group of students out into the hall in order to make their films. However, making movies was more challenging than I anticipated, simply because many of the students are still learning how to read and pronounce new vocabulary, which I helped to scaffold throughout the video making process. In turn, it took a couple of takes for each child to finish making their video, which the other students in the group were extremely excited to watch. In fact, I was thrilled that the students found the movie making process incredibly fun, as they were eager to become their animals and be “move directors and actors”, where many of the students were even more excited to make their movies because they had the new script format with sentence frames to help them through this process, so they could focus on becoming their animals, not the technicality of vocabulary. Therefore, after giving these students the sentence frame script, they were able to let their imaginations run wild, without having to worry about how to structure these scripts, and could focus on what was important, creating their incredible digital learning stories. |
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