Melinda's+Portfolio

Engaged Classroom Participant Portfolio

This portfolio has been created in connection with the Jordan School District Enhanced Classroom professional development project.

Participant Name: Melinda LeSueur Participant School: Fort Herriman Middle School Grade/Subject: 7th grade science

1. Learn how to use new software to help my lessons be more engaging. 2. Integrate software into lesson plans that I already have. 3. Create new lessons based on the new technology skills I learn through the engaged classroom.
 * Personal Goals for the Engaged Classroom:**

1. Students learn how to use the software I am learning about. Possibly using atomic learning as a teaching tool. 2. Students become more competent at basic computer skills to use in our Science Fair Project (cut and paste, highlighting cells, searching on the internet) 3. Students use resources and programs that actual scientists may use in their work. 4. Students learn how to use technology to have additional instructional support. 5. Students understand how technology can be used to solve problems and find answers in everyday life.
 * Classroom Goals for the Engaged Classroom:**

Below are links to pages that demonstrate my competence in several key areas.

My Inspiration document: I think Inspiration would be a good way for my students to make their own notes. I usually use some sort of web chart to for the kids to fill out while I lecture. This would allow them to use their own skills as they listen and create a more personal visually interesting way to remember what they were taught.
 * Inspiration Software**

Links to a few modules that I have found to be particularly helpful: [|Delicious] [|Excel 2008] [|Inspiration 8]
 * Atomic Learning Modules**

I plan on using comic life in my unit on Natural Selection. Students will be able to create their own comic or storyboard about a particular species and how the "fittest" individuals survive to carry on some helpful inherited trait to the next generation. I plan to use iPhoto to sort pictures I will take of lab instructions or to explain how to use complicated objects, like a microscope. This will be useful for students if they are absent. I can make a slide show by taking pictures of the steps I demonstrated to the students on the procedure of labs. Another way that I could use a slideshow from iPhoto would be to take pictures of the white board as I explain new concepts. I could also use pictures in iPhoto and export them to other applications to add labels and instructions to the picture.
 * Comic Life Project**
 * iPhoto**



Link to my del.icio.us  (or Diigo) user profile page [|Melinda's Delicious Bookmarks]
 * Social Bookmarking**

Melinda's RSS Feed
 * Link to a wiki page with RSS widget showing some of my curriculum-related websites**

Link to one of my published Google Docs: [|Science Fair Partnership Evaluation]
 * Google Docs**

Link to my blog: [|Ms. LeSueur's 7th Grade Science]
 * Blogging**

Digital Story Telling Link to my digital story

Lesson Plans I've Created Link to lesson 1: Link to rubric used to evaluate lesson 1

Notes from Reading Using Technology with Classroom Instructions that Work
The other notes were somehow lost or erased on this wiki, but I PROMISE I did read and discuss them with my trainer. Until I find them, here are my thought from the second half of the book.


 * Chapter 7: Cooperative Learning**
 * Movies - use a rubric for movie projects. Make a role description chart for all group members. I could use movies in a genetic disorders project. it would also be helpful for lab groups to have a role description chart with roles assigned at the beginning of each quarter (supply person, clean up person, etc.). I could also use a movie instead of doing our classification project, Classy Mobile, on hangers.
 * Web Resources - use the JASON Project. Have students contact experts in the field for science fair research instead of just using articles and books.
 * Keypals - communicate with other science classrooms in California and Colorado (my nephews' schools) or other countries (the Philippines or Japan) for classification projects or other labs done collaboratively.
 * Webquest - use SDSU. Use for classification - kingdoms unit (going on a research assignment in the rainforest. Gather data and determine the kingdoms these animals belong in)
 * Website creation - for unit 1
 * Shared Calendars - for science fair. Already use one for classroom blog.
 * Concern: what about the many kids whose parents will not let them have an email, blog, etc.? Wouldn't that create a problem creating a user account with google and skype?


 * Chapter 8 : Reinforcing Effort**
 * Using a spreadsheet to track efforts - this would be useful to track progress before and after a test in relation to the amount of studying or homework students completed. I currently have a similar test preparedness or improvement sheet, but it is not set up in spreadsheet format. I could create a spreadsheet and have a link on my blog for students to download from home.
 * Put more blank document templates and formulas for excel in my classroom blog.


 * Chapter 9: Identifying Similarities and Differences**
 * Create a classification table for my animal classification lab on excel. Have students write characteristics of each phylum and class studied in the lab.
 * Use a spread sheet to calculate density for different materials with a bar graph to compare.
 * Shorting substances
 * Copy book's ideas of using Inspiration Software to classify dead, living, and non-living things. Also copy the example teacher's lesson on density and bug classification for my own units. Great way to teach the definition of density versus mass and volume and the relationship of all the measurements.


 * Chapter 10: Homework and Practice**
 * "The purpose of homework should be identified and articulated" - explain at the beginning of the year and throughout why we have homework. The brain science behind the importance of repitition. Give them the scienctific facts and data.
 * Use power point games on my blog for review before a quiz, test, and CRT.
 * Have students create custom virtual flashcards.

I was a little smug reading this chapter because science, by nature, covers all these important concepts, especially with our science fair. BUT I did like the idea of of using the suggested website for Darwin's Pond which is an interactive program allowing students to create an organisms with different adaptations and then letting them go live in a pond environment to see which ones survive and which ones are not fit. It's obviously difficult to teach adaptations and natural selection (evolution) in any real time observation.
 * Chapter 11: Generating and Testing Hypotheses**

**My Reflections**
How I used eInstruction clickers: I used the Senteo system clickers along with Notebook software to administer weekly assessments. The notebook software allows me to see which questions are the most difficult for the students and enabled me to adjust both my teaching style and the assessment itself based upon the results I received. My POD of teachers also partners with the POD above us for a remediation program called Rise and Stretch. We were able to use the clickers in the weekly quizzes and compare results.

I have used the document camera to draw graphs with my inclusion students step-by-step. It was helpful because I was able to use the same exact worksheet they were using at the same time they were doing the assignment. It has also been helpful for correcting assignments and quizzes as a class. I have also used the document camera for our remediation program (Rise and Stretch). For the enrichment portion of the program I was able to show my class how to fold origami by showing them my steps projected on the screen. This enabled me to show something that was relatively small to a whole class of 20 students and enabled them to follow along. It also prevented me from having to walk around to each table to show them the steps 8 different times.
 * How I used the document camera during curriculum instruction:**

I really enjoyed my experience in participating in the Engaged Classroom. It has helped me to become a better teacher by inspiring me to learn about and use technologies that I thought I was either too busy to use or did not have prior knowledge to use. I have many plans to incorporate what I have learned about technology into my curriculum for next year. 1. Voice thread & I-Movie - I would like to use voice thread to have students narrate a slideshow about famous scientists. The Utah CRT test frequently references major scientists. This would also help students learn how to do proper images searches and learn a new program. We could also use voice thread or I-movie with the students so that they could narrate their experiments for science fair. 2. My Blog - I want to update my classroom blog to include uploads of assignments so that students can download worksheets, notes, and powerpoints from the internet. Using the video cameras and I-movie, I would also like to create videos of some of my lectures and labs. That way students who were absent can get the material and instructions that they missed without a long explanation after school or during class. Another little addition I would like to make to my blog is a Shelfari widget to post good science novels for the students to puruse. 3. Proscope - I would like to use the proscope more next year. Hopefully I will be able to purchase a mount for the microscope when we study cells. That way I would be able to point out the cell organelles as seen through the microscope as we do labs, instead of having students follow along on a drawn diagram. 4. Podcasts, NPR, Oxford Lectures - I plan to use podcasts more in my classroom to help my students grasp to significance of science in the realworld. NPR has some great podcasts of their Science Friday which focuses on fun, interesting, and global issues involving scientifc principals. I would like to show clips of Oxford and Harvard lecutres from itunes so that students can see and hear what real scientists are saying now about controversial or cutting edge discoveries. 5. Google Docs or Survey Monkey - I want to create surveys for my students to take to rate me as a teacher, each other as science fair partners, and also to rate lessons and labs that I present and use in the class. Google docs would also be useful for students working together for science fair to communicate their ideas. 6. Atomic learning - If I can afford it I would like to continue my subscription to Atomic Learning. It have been very helpful to get instruction on how to use new programs and also give me previews and ideas of other programs I could buy and use in the classroom. If I continue with Atomic Learning I would also use it to teach students to learn the computer programs that we use in the classroom. 7. Document camera - I will continue to use the document camera for correcting papers as a class, looking and discussing diagrams and the text book, and hopefully for more animal dissections!
 * My in-depth reflection, discussing future plans as to how I hope to incorporate what I've have learned in this program**