According to the standards published by iNacol, I have met standards C, D, E, J, and K several times in this particular unit of TOOL. Please find not only the standards and the section of Communicate that helped me reach and master these standards, but also an explanation of how I feel this mastery was achieved.
Standard C: The online teacher plans, designs, and incorporates strategies to encourage active learning, application, interaction, participation, and collaboration in the online environment.
Standard E: The online teacher models, guides, and encourages legal, ethical, and safe behavior related to technology use.
Standard J: The online teacher interacts in a professional, effective manner with colleagues, parents, and other members of the community to support students’ success.
Standard K: The online teacher arranges media and content to help students and teachers transfer knowledge most effectively in the online environment. All of these sections show how I, as an online instructor, will effectively transfer knowledge to the online environment. From the Newsletter as a form of ongoing communication, to the discussion postings and rubrics, each of these sections shows an artifact that I created to share knowledge of some sort to my students. Each section here is pertinent to the work done in the online classroom for GAVS as we are expected to complete each of these tasks on a consistent basis!
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I love (LOVE) using rubrics for grading! They remove the guessing from assessing! I have a rubric to post here that is for a mini-skit, which I like to offer in the face to face classroom, but also in the online classroom as a differentiation option for a Vocabulary and Grammar Project. The rubric covers four topics that are directly linked to the state and national MCL standards, so the project is beyond justified. It is general enough that it can be used with any unit of study because it truly focuses on the use of the language holistically. The first category is structure and flow, which focuses on the conversation within the skit. Unnatural hesitations and the reading from notes are unacceptable because it shows that you don't know enough language to improvise. Students are not held to a script, but are rather encouraged to use what they know to express fixed ideas. The second category is pronunciation and intonation. This ensures that the student is attempting to produce sounds of the target language and use proper inflection and tone. Preparedness and recording is the third category. This specific category is to force students to practice the conversation before recording it and turning it in. We all know that the more we practice anything, the better we are at performing, and speaking a second language is no different. Communication must show that you are familiar with the words, how you say them, your body language, etc., and as a second language, so will never have spoken these words in their lives. This category ensures that students get a fair chance in terms with their effort because they have practiced and are ready to perform. The last section is for movements and gestures, which communicate a lot of the message of any conversation. Students, according to state standards, should be able to properly use non-verbal cues to complement what they are attempting to say. It also shows that they know what they are saying and didn't just memorize random words:) In the rubric, each product can be rated on a scale from 0-5. A poor performance would be rated either a 0-1, 1-3 is a fair rating, and good to excellent would be from 3-5. While this does leave a little open to interpretation, as long as the expectations are set with the students, this should not be a problem. I am a firm believer that interactive practice online is one of the best ways to makes sure you know what you are doing in an online class. As feedback, I often post general feedback along with a link to interactive practice especially when students don't do well on an assignment. Please find some examples below. The link is posted, but the entire image is linked to the practice! Artifact #1: This would be left for feedback when students are learning to use direct and indirect object pronouns in the same sentence. It can also be used for practice online because clicking on the object takes you to links where you find interactive activities with immediate feedback on how you do! Artifact #2: The following graphic reviews the preterite tense endings for past tense in Spanish. If you click on the actual image, it takes you to interactive practice found on the web. I like to leave this feedback when working on the past tenses! Artifact #3 Another object I would use for feedback would be a quick review of direct object pronouns (especially if it seems that the student didn't understand the material well). The following is a video made for digital feedback. Please find a writing assignment that I made for this section below. Since I teach Spanish, the assignment is in Spanish. For those that don't "habla español", the student is to write an email to the principal of their school because they are having issues with another student. They must mention at least 3-4 things that the other student has done wrong, include at least 3 direct object pronouns in context and use the past tense. Next you will find the rubric that I would use to assess the product. Of course the rubric would be given to the student before they began the assessment so that they know how they will be graded. When leaving feedback, I would leave some personalized comments, but I would also leave a stamp. The following is an example of feedback I would leave. Many times the writing assignments are more for self assessment than for a teacher to pick apart and assign a grade. When I want students to self assess, I would leave the following feedback so that students reflect over their work.
Differentiation is all about saying the same thing or presenting the same material, but in a different way. I like to do this for me, as well as my students, because it keeps us from getting bored with the same ol' stuff! Sometimes even communication needs to be differentiated and I have many examples of differentiated communication. One example that I use all the time is a video I made to teach students how to find their incorrect answers on a test. I often receive email communication from students asking "how can I see what I got wrong on my test so that I can do well on the final" and writing out the steps is not only monotonous and time consuming, but it doesn't really help. Sometimes we need to see things happen. I created a YouTube video about this. It's nothing special; it's just some screen shots with indicators on it so that students see what they should be looking at when they look at their incorrect responses. That communication is shared below: Synchronous Sessions assist in developing a learning community for students because it opens up a channel of communication for the students that would not be there otherwise in real time. Students have a constant with an online session- it is set for a specific time each week and they know they can count on attending, talking to their teacher, chatting with their classmates, and asking all of the questions that they want. It also means a deeper look at some of the content that they have viewed or will view and a chance at direct instruction, which is limited in real time in the online classroom. Once a student attends, they will continue to come back because they get to know the teacher as a person- their sense of humor, their passion for their content, their knowledge of the content material. They will be drawn to communication with their peers and know that someone else is going through the same thing they are. Let's face it, for a high school student, completing an online course is not the easiest thing to accomplish, but if they have the support of one another, they know that they have a friend that is in it with them. Many times the students that usually attend will build a point of contact, like a group chat, and they will support one another in reminders, asking and answering questions, and even just socializing. This gives the group a whole new reason to buy in to the course! The Synchronous Session is essentially your opportunity to put the finishing touches on building a classroom environment!
The activities shown are examples of what I would do in the Synchronous Session. Transitions are pretty smooth, but even more so because we use Adobe Connect, which means that I can have one display option set up for the warm up, another for the lesson, and another or the interactive activity. I simply click on the page to the right that is previously prepared for each part of the lesson. This makes transitions smooth but obvious to the students. This serves a formative assessment because I get to watch the students interact with the material, so I can assess whether or not they need additional instruction on the same topic or if they are ready to move on to something different. Participating in the activity itself will give students a chance to interact, get to know one another and their teacher, trust that it is a safe learning place, and feel comfortable making mistakes but also knowing the right answer!
In Navigate, we were asked what some of the most effective instructional tools used in the online classroom were in our opinion, and the discussion forum is one of the tools I chose. Now, the forum can be used to benefit instruction, but it can also go horribly wrong. The point of the discussion posting is to foster conversation about our learning or using our learning so that students can:
Discussion forums can serve as a teaching tool in many ways. One can simply ask questions about the content so that students use what they have learned, we can ask that they explain something, walking us through it as they understand it, we can have them make corrections to work we post or the work of others (self-correction is a big deal!). Discussion forums can be great teaching tools, but there must be requirements. First, students should not be able to see posts made until they make their own to prevent them from just "borrowing" ideas that have already been posted. Next, students must be required to revisit the site; to serve as a discussion, they must respond to their classmates. They must ask questions and also respond to them. Students should have to visit the discussion forum several times to participate in conversations. An ineffective way to use the discussion forum would be to allow students not to respond to questions asked to them or respond to posts by their classmates. If they are not participating in that way, what is the point? Is it really a discussion? In the discussion forums, I ask that students respond to the questions asked to them. If they do not, they cannot receive a perfect score. Also, a high A means that they worked beyond the requirements of the assignment, so responding to one classmate and never returning to the forum is not enough. They must go above and beyond what is asked of them, responding to several other students and fostering conversation by asking questions and giving substantive responses to their posts, as well. We must promote the acts of conversation if it is truly to be a discussion. Also, the teacher must respond to several posts. I always respond with a comment as well as a question (and I check to see if students answer my question!). Another effective strategy, especially in language, is to have the students post a voice recording of their post. This way they are practicing speaking and pronunciation. Saying the words aloud activates a different part of the brain and creates a stronger memory of the language and grammatical constructs. I also encourage the students to make their posts personal; fostering those relationships will cause the students to want to come back and communicate with one another. They will enjoy the work that they do. I have included just a couple of News Announcements that I have used in my courses below. When creating News Announcements, I use many different systems. I use PowerPoint, Preview, Piktochart, PosterMyWall, Imagechef, and many more. I use images from free sites like Freepik and sometimes animated images from sites like Animation Factory. There isn't a program that I won't try, as long as the News Announcement is attractive, informative, and useful! News Announcements are used for many different functions in the classroom, as well. It can suggest study material, or even provide interactive practice with an embed code! The News Announcements could serve as reminders for due dates, supplements to course content, differentiation, remediation opportunities, and many other purposes. This is why it is important to always read the News Announcements as a student: crucial information could be found there!
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