Key Assessments, Case Studies, and Creativity, Oh My!

Now that there’s only approximately a month left in the school year, my professors are assigning final papers and projects.

"It is the supreme art of the teacher to
awaken joy in creative expression
and knowledge."
-Albert Einstein

In almost all of my education classes at Miami, my classmates and I have had to complete several different key assessments. These assignments typically have longer rubrics and when we complete them, we upload them to an online portfolio for our professors to review and grade them.

This past week, I just completed a Learning Segment Assignment which is one of the key assessments in my EDT 428 class. For this assignment, I had to create 3-5 lessons in sequential order that centered on an essential question and provided students with opportunities to engage with a complex text.

I decided to create 5 lesson plans and I decided that I wanted my students to complete a “This I Believe” speech as this learning segment is the start of a new unit on public speaking. I used a variety of texts to show my students what makes an effective public speaker, but the complex text that my lesson focused on is Martin Luther King, Jr.’s “I Have a Dream” speech.

For my ENG 304 class, I am currently working on a case study in which I need to explore how writing has played a part in the development of an individual. In order to complete my case study, I have to interview my participant, collect and analyze a variety of texts that my participant has written, and then I also need to directly observe and record my participant while they are writing.

I decided to use one of my friends in my cohort as my participant, and I’m interested to see what I will learn about her writing process and how writing plays a role in her life.

Beyond this, I have received my assignments for final papers and projects, and I am looking forward to a few of them.

Most notably, I am looking forward to my final paper for my linguistics class because I had the opportunity to pick any topic (as long as I could relate it to linguistics) and I have decided to write about the morphology of terms that Shakespeare coined.

In my EDT 423 class (Young Adult Literature), I have to create some sort of video/animation/anything that can play on its own, as long as it’s not a book trailer, about one or more young adult books that I have read this semester. This project will be challenging, but I am looking forward to the creative aspect…

Freewrite Friday

I’ve noticed that I am drawn to classrooms that start each class period in a predictable manner so that students know what to expect when they walk into class.

Throughout my time in the education system, I have seen a variety of ways in which this can be done, and I have developed different “theme days” that I think could work well in my future classroom. Below are my ideas:

                     Movie Quote Monday

I got this idea from my coordinating teacher last semester. I liked this because it often got students talking, and I think that there are quite a few writing activities that could be created from different movie quotes.

Tasteful Joke Tuesday

This was something that my 7^th grade math teacher often did. It was a different way to start class, and I remember it broke up the monotony of the school day.

Wildcard Wednesday

Having a day built in as a “wildcard” I think could be useful in my future classroom because it will give me the opportunity to fit something in if needed.

Thoughtful Quote Thursday

This is a potential photo I could show my students and
ask them to write about.  (Photo I pulled over to take
while driving to my field placement this semester)

Similar to Movie Quote Monday, for Thursday’s, I will put up a quote on the board (from a historical figure, an author, an influential individual, etc.) and if there is time in my lesson, I will have students write about the quote.

Freewrite Friday

On Friday’s, I will give students the option of answering a few different writing prompts in their writer’s notebooks. These prompts will either be questions, or even photos, to get students thinking. This will give students a chance to gather their thoughts before class starts, and focus their attention on English class.

For each of the above ideas, I will do my best to make them fit in with the theme/topic of the day so that my lessons all tie together, but I also like these ideas because it lets students have fun with the learning process.

Spring Break without the Spring

This week was spring break, but the weather wasn’t very spring-like for me and most of my friends who also went home for break. A lot of my friends woke up to snow on the ground, making for a very chilly spring break.

Photo I took in the Formal Gardens on
campus last spring.

Hopefully once we return to Oxford for the rest of the semester spring will finally appear and all the snow flurries will dissolve (at least until winter).

In terms of the rest of the semester, April is looking like it will be a very busy month because of papers and projects. I intended to use my spring break to get ahead on all of these projects, but…

“The best laid schemes of mice and men often go awry.” –Translated from Robert Burns poem, “To a Mouse.”

At least, however, most of my friends have just as much work as I do over the next month and a half, so I’ll have company for the many days I intend to spend at the library.

However, a break in this dreadful wintery weather would certainly make these assignments a lot easier…