Jigsaw and our groups

In class on Wednesday, our teacher, Dr. Smirnova was out due to her surgery on her finger. As a class we had to figure out what was needed to complete our assignment on the jigsaw puzzle. I think that we managed pretty well without a teacher there. We worked really well together and there was no problems and Ashley did a great job being in charge and figuring out what we had to do as well.
We made our groups for the jigsaw puzzle. My part of the group is to learn about how doing jigsaw and cooperative learning can help children with their social skills. So far, I have learned alot about how it helps the social skills. I think that some things are obvious, like learning how to talk and have a social interaction with their peers. But other things like having a self value because you feel a part of the group are not as obvious and I think it is important that my group understands how doing the jigsaw can really help everyone to work on their social skills in the classroom. I think this activity is hard but I am trying to figure out how to put it into a lesson. I dont think it will be too hard but we will see!
We dont have class again until after Thanksgiving break so it will give us a couple days to try and fix our IPM lessons and I know I will be starting to work on my cooperative learning lesson plan as well because I think that I really understand the concept of this.

..........Treasure Hunt....

I have to say that my Treasure Hunt has been the hardest thing that we have been doing in class this year. I dont know why this has been so difficult for me, its possibly that it is the fact (and I have said this before) that I am not computer savy at all. I am having a hard time trying to make the pages for this even though i have all the websites and information that I want to provide into the treasure hunt. It is starting to become very frustrating.
On the up side, I have been learning so much about cooperative learning and alll the different types up lessons that we can do based off this type of theory. Kagan is who I have definietly been learning the most from. I have learned about the jigsaw, the think-pair-share and many many more types of lessons. I know that we still have to write one more lesson for this class and I am so excited to do mine on cooperative learning that I have already started thinking of the content and the grade that I want to do my last lesson plan on!!

Learning about Cooperative Learning

Next week in class, me and 4 other peers will begin to help teach our classmates about Cooperative Learning/Social Interaction Model. I have been doing some research and looking up everything that I can find about this type of lesson that we are going to be working on next. I am nervous because I dont want to teach the class the wrong thing even though I know Dr. Smirnova will lead us back in the right direction.
What I have found out from these theorys is basically: the main definition is "thinking about thinking". This is the highest level of thinking that a student can reach. Basically, this theory is like a jigsaw puzzle. Each person gets a peice of the puzzle and they all become experts at their own section. By doing this, it puts a responsibility on themselves and on the group, they sink or swim together because each person needs to teach the rest of their group about the idea that they have mastered themselves.
This is a great lesson because the students really need to work together and not only does the social interaction model have the students attain higher levels of thinking but it works on their own social skills as well.

Treasure Hunts and Information Processing Models

The last class we have started to discuss working on our Treasure Hunts as well as our lesson plans for the Information Processing Model. I am excited for completing both of these tasks. I think the information processing model is really good because the students are able to attain higher levels of thinking. Sometimes the lesson plans can be a little more difficult to write because it is natural, as future teachers, that we want to teach the students by lecturing and making sure that they are on the right track; but it doesnt work that way for this lesson. We have to give the students a question and based on the questions, we give them some information and they have to teach themselves. I think this is good because when a student(s) teaches themselves something they are more likely to remember it. You know that they have remembered it when they can teach it back to you or explain it to you in their own words and by having the students create something at the end of the lesson, this is exactly what they are doing.

I have not started my own treasure hunt yet but it seems like a new and exciting but challenging activity. Everyone in the class is working with partners on this assignment but I opted to work alone. I dont mind this because sometimes its just easier this way and I dont mind doing the extra work either. My treasure hunt is going to be on metacognition which is basically "teaching about teaching and thinking about thinking". I am excited to start this because I really feell like I am going to enjoy doing this assignment!

Indirect vs Direct Lesson Plan

In class the last few days we have been going over the differences between Direct Lesson Plans and Indirect Lesson Plans. I really enjoyed doing Direct Lesson Plans but I know that this type of teaching does not let the students reach a higher level of thinking, but Indirect teaching does.
I really like the presentations that we have been doing because we are learning about Indirect Lesson Plans but we are learning by teaching through this method also.
Me and my partner Ashley had to give our presentation last Friday. We used the balloon popper on the Smart Board to have our classmates decide which words went along with Indirect or Direct instruction. Im really excited to be learning more about Indirect teaching because I love when the students are hands on and by doing this type of lesson the students get an opportunity to do this.