Technology Course Learning Experience 2 Reflection

In Science class today, I pulled my eight Gr. 8's aside. I had just finished marking a unit review and was quite unhappy with the results of my students. I wondered to myself, had I failed them as a teacher? Was there something wrong I was doing or maybe not spending enough time with them as they were part of a split class with 20 Gr. 7's? As I pulled them aside and told them about the general results of the unit review, I asked them, "what can I do to help you?"

I was met with silence and gave them some time to think. One student stepped up and finally said, "I think we need more worksheets." Another said, "we have a lesson and you ask us questions challenging questions that we don't know since we haven't even read the textbook yet." Yet another one said, "We don't have enough lessons." I am usually one that takes criticism in stride but these were hard ones to swallow from my students. I wanted to argue back with them, telling them that there was a reason why we don't just use worksheets all the time, or why I try to ask them questions they might not know at the moment to challenge them.

When I look back at our conversation, I took away two things. One thing that I took away from this specific unit of our course and was reminded of is how different students learn differently and how the use of assistive technology can help enhance this learning. I think that I as I know these Gr.8's are quite independent, I was providing independent reading for them and the having a group discussion about what we had read. We went through some experiments as well as some reviews to support their learning. As much as I thought that this was a good plan, something is definitely not working for some students and I know that I need to make changes and provide different learning opportunities for these students.

The second thing I took away was that my special needs student was the most vocal about the things that could be changed. In fact, he was the one that asked for more worksheets. Although initially I thought to myself that not having worksheets was a good thing, maybe for him it could be used as further reinforcement to lessons. There are so many great assistive technology programs that my student could use to help him through the worksheets.

One of the great programs that I picked up from a colleague of mine in my course was a program called "Mindmup". This is an online mind mapping tool but what makes this program great is that it is connected to Google Drive. With a program like this, the mind map can be shared with other students and students can all collaborate to add, delete, and edit their mind map. What a great way to share and learn from each other as another option to a group discussion or even a unit review.

As I continue on in this course, I'm excited to expand my box of tools so I can utilize different strategies and teaching methods with my students.