Team+3

Team 3
Member Names: Bill Thyne Kelly Thyne

Wednesday
Design Studio: Reflect on your content and pedagogy With your Partner reflect on the following questions: What content areas do you teach? English, ELL, Language Arts, Elementary Education What content strengths do you have? Literature, Reading, Writing What content do you find difficult to teach? Grammar What do you consider your role to be as a teacher? Leader, Mentor, Facilitator, Role Model, Collaborator, Student What instructional methods do you use as a teacher? Group Work, Large Group Discussion, Individual Work, Modeling, Sharing, Review/Re-Teach What technologies do you use as a Teacher? Document Camera, Word, CD/Audio, Internet News Sources, Video/DVD What are some of the persistent problems you encounter in your instruction? Participation from all Students, Wide Range of Student Abilities With your partner, identify possible areas of overlap.


 * Reflection Notes:**

Thursday
Guiding Questions I. What is the compelling question you would like your students to answer? Do you have any sub-questions to engage students? What is the ideal place to live? Be specific - city, town, state, country and think about about the elements of living that are important to your group. Things to consider: type of housing available, industry/jobs available, how do you get around/bike, car, public transportation, what is the cost of living, family oriented? weather/climate,

II. How are new literacies featured in your compelling question? Research online, post research findings on a blog type website

III. How will you organize or group your students for the PBI? Hand pick who will be in a group - heterogeneous groupings based on ability level, with a mixture of English abilities in each group.

IV. What prior knowledge do your students need to have to complete this PBI lesson? What lesson(s) would come before the PBI? How do you do research online? Can they type? Do they know how to use a blog? Do they know how to organize information? Do they know how to take notes? We will need to consider what English skills/knowledge they will need, but are unsure yet as to what that will be.

V. How will you scaffold and support your students' gathering and analyzing of information? How will you monitor this process? Ask questions about their ideas, make sure they are covering all of the material....need more. We will monitor by looking at their blog pages, by observing, by talking to the students

VI. How will you scaffold and support your students' creative synthesis of information in their PBI product? How will you monitor this process? Not sure yet what the final project will be, so we need to think about this...

VII. What intellectual elements in students' PBI product will be evaluated. What forms of assessments will you use (e.g. rubrics, checklist, etc). We will evaluate the students' reading, writing, speaking and listening? skills as related to the English language. We will also focus on researching online, so we will also evaluate if the students are able to select valuable sources and cite them correctly. We will use rubrics, and student self evaluation to asses them.

VIII. What technology tools will students use in creation and sharing of their PBI product?


 * Reflection Notes:**

PBI Compelling Question:
What is your ideal place to live in America?

Content:
Reading, Writing, Speaking, Listening Research

Learning Outcomes for this PBI:
SWBAT use online research to complete a group project SWBAT cite online sources correctly SWBAT read and comprehend online resources SWBAT write notes from their sources onto their blog pages SWBAT discuss the project with their group members SWBAT use spoken English in the group presentation SWBAT evaluate other group projects

Method:

 * Model online research on a different topic, and have students practice on this topic, share findings
 * Show students the MLA citation for online sources, have the students practice writing them
 * Groups go on line to summarize various online resources, ask the students how they decide what information is relevant
 * Teachers and/or students model how they have written notes for other things they have read, discuss what might be most useful from these models
 * Have students discuss in their groups the questions they must ask and answer to answer the compelling question - students must consider what is important to them in the ideal place to live, and come to a consensus within their group. Share ideas with the whole class and as needed, add to the ideas the students came up with.
 * Brainstorm what important things are to consider when engaging the audience in a group presentation. Review and practice these things in mini-lessons.
 * Based on the presentations that students are generating, have them come up criteria that they think will be important to evaluate each other on. Once the criteria is decided, model how much feedback they should give.

Assessment:
Formative assessments: observations, checking up on the blog posts, exit cards, journal questions, in class activity assessment

Summative assessment: Using a rubric to grade the presentation, using a rubric to analyze the blog

Technology Tools Used:
Blog site, online sources and search engines

Things to Consider:

 * What kind of blog site do we want the students to use? We will have to teach the students how to use the blog, possibly in a mini-lesson in which they create a blog for themselves or for some other aspect of the class.
 * What kinds of criteria will we need to include in our rubrics?
 * We need to brainstorm with the students what kinds of things they could do for their presentations. Have them come up with ideas, and then introduce other ideas that they might not have come up with - digital photos as a medium for displaying ideas, skits, talk shows, what else?
 * What other materials will we need?
 * Add their cities to Google Maps at the end.
 * Email people in the place they have chosen - get some contacts from there - contact a chamber of commerce, maybe a local high school and get students in touch with the people from that place to add a different aspect of research to their projects.