Spaces and people as resources

The Spiffy Center
What a nice change of pace to be in a colorful facility that encouraged group work by its very architecture! I have not seen a more usable and aesthetically pleasant space on campus. The outlets everywhere were perfect - the evidence for that is how many of us trip over cords or can't find outlets in our usual room! I really hope we get to work a lot in that center this year. It made me think about how to arrange desks in my classroom. I like arranging them in an arc, similar to how they are in our usual room, but it would also be valuable to arrange them in groups of four or so with students facing either other for group work. This is where the tennis ball suggestion (tennis balls on the bottom of desk and chair legs) could really come in handy!

Librarians as Resources
I feel a little ashamed to admit that I was a teeny bit skeptical of having so many librarians come in. I clearly overestimated the skills I have in finding resources and underestimated how helpful librarians are! Our librarian guest was able to show us resources I didn't even know existed. One particularly awesome one was todaysmeet.com. On that website, you can share links with friends easily in a chat-like way. It is far more convenient than e-mailing links all the time or having to type them in to a bunch of different computers. I can definitely see myself using that resource in the future.

Our guest also helped us find the Michigan content standards, which really shaped the way we formed the lesson. In addition, she was just a great help suggesting resources and teaching approaches, giving guidance about what teaching was like on the ground, and more. Suffice it to say that I hope to never underestimate a librarian's help again!

Planning a Lesson
I really enjoy practicing lesson planning because it seems like such a central thing we will be doing as teachers. There are so many things to consider when planning. My own group discussed the readability of materials (our librarian was able to show us some resources that read online text out loud - a tool that could help struggling readers or people who prefer auditory learning to visual learning), how much time each activity would take, some of the merits and drawbacks of direct instruction, what was important to emphasize in the lesson (which we made about radiation), and what we wanted students to take away from the lesson.

I had fun coming up with assessment ideas with my group. We thought of objectives first, then the activities, but when it came time to assessing, we realized we hadn't covered all of the objectives we wanted! We had to go back and tweak our activities. I thought it would be a neat idea to have students write a letter to someone of their choice (choose from a list) regarding nuclear power and radiation - be it a scientist, a local politician, or someone in California who may be at risk due to their location. This seemed like an authentic assessment that would really measure the students' mastery of the objectives we outlined.

There's no 'I' in 'team'*
*but there is a 'me,' sort of
It was really fun and useful to work in a team. Bouncing ideas off of each other was a huge help. It made me think that it will be really valuable to bounce ideas off of my colleagues when I am teaching. 'Hey I've got this idea, what do you think of it?' The saying that two heads are better than one is certainly true. I do think that it took a bit longer working in a group than it would have if we were working individually, but I bet the product we came up with was better than what we could have done alone.