Module Seven Notes

Theme for Module Seven: Critical Thinking, Problem Solving, and Real World Data

The day began with a viewing of the "Gotta Keep Reading" Video made by Ocoee Middle School in Florida.

Micheline shared the Spanish version of the CTAP Cypersafety page, and showed participants how to locate Cybersafety resources in Spanish in the CTAP directory of resources.

Sara talked to the group about developing deep questions, or driving questions, to guide student thinking and research. Stevenson teachers worked on developing driving questions for the lessons they are developing for use with students. A good driving question will lead to other questions.

Presenters shared some wonderful resources for use in the classroom that focus on the curriculum areas.

• The Thinkfinity site, with resources from ten content partners - all of which are free.
• The ThinkQuest Library, with websites that were created by students for student use.
• The Calisphere site, with resources from the University of California designed for classroom use and
• The California Learning Resources Network, which enables searching by state standard and links to resources (both free and commercial).

Stevenson teachers spent time working on their lesson/unit plans, incorporating electronic learning resources into planned activities driven by their essential questions.

Some of the lessons in development are:

• A lesson on the Sumarian Social System, which includes having students develop a Cornell note page, write, use a graphic organizer, research images online, and involve their parents tying modern images to the roles in Sumarian society.
• Integrating computer technology into math and science, looking at teaching math and science.
• Teaching students about cybercitizenship and internet safety.
• Having students collect data about favorite meals in the school cafeteria and analyzing the results.

Sara mentioned an article that Mr. Oram shared with the presenters about about recent positions being taken by Diane Ravitch about education and learning.

During the next part of the professional development, the group learned to create surveys or quizzes using Google Forms. Working together, Micheline stepped everyone through the process of creating a quiz using a Google Form.

The session concluded for lunch at noon.