Blog for this week -- Free write about your final project/ portfolio. How are you doing? Do you have any specific questions about either project? Please give me an update on your project.

I feel as though my final project is coming along little by little. The thing that helped me out the most was creating the lesson plan and getting feedback on it. I think that I had the main idea of the lesson plan correct, it is just some little things I need to focus on in creating my 2^nd lesson plan for the final project. Some of the things that I need to focus on in creating the 2^nd lesson plan would be to focus more on content rather than trying to have the whole lesson revolved around the technology. I need to use the technology as a tool rather than the main purpose of the lesson. This is important because it is not a class for technology, it is a History class that is using technology as a tool to better understand a certain lesson. I think that the easiest way to assess the students in their understanding of the lesson would be to create a rubric for the students that has a large portion based on content and a smaller portion of the rubric based on if their hit certain guidelines in creating their presentations. The question I have is besides the presentation that we need to make to the class, and the two lesson plans along with the narrative due the final day of class, is there anything else due for this project?

The portfolio project is something that I really need to focus on for the next few weeks. I think that once I get all of my assignments organized and categorized, the project will get done pretty quickly. I think that the toughest part is understanding what all of the categories mean and which assignments we have done as a class fall under these categories. I also need to work on creating a paragraph for each of the categories that explains what is encompassed under the specific standard, and how the attached assignments reflect the standard. The starting point is creating the paragraph and then seeing how each of the specific projects that we did in class relate to the standards.

How will you handle the reluctant learner? This week, we talked about the learner and learning styles. We addressed the fact that there are many different ways to reach students. For this week's blog, I want to give you a fictional situation. You are the teacher of an 8th grade English class. Your class is reading the novel "Huck Finn" by Mark Twain. You have a student named Renee in your class that has some significant challenges. She is living in her 3rd foster family in the past 4 years having been removed from her birth family because of severe neglect. She has been diagnosed with Attention Deficit Disorder and is receiving speech and language services for a speech/language disorder where she has a difficult time processing what you are saying to her (receptive language). You do note that she has a significant strength in math. You have assigned the class the task of creating a keynote presentation that highlights the main events from each chapter. You have broken the class into groups of 3. Each group has 4 chapters they need to present. Their task is to find a picture online that could possibly illustrate an event or character in that chapter and to note the most important events of the chapter. When this project is complete, your hope is that you can put all of the chapters together and have a keynote summary of the text. Renee is working with a girl named Liz who is a straight A student and a boy name Josh who is the class clown. Renee is refusing to engage with the other members of the group. She says that the activity is "stupid" and she doesn't like the other two members of her group. What do you do? What action do you take to try to get Renee to engage?

The first thing that I would try to do is to figure out what is wrong with the lesson for the student. I would try to get her to tell me what is not working for her and why she doesn’t like it. If the student thinks that the activity is “stupid” then the teacher would need to fully explain the keynote application to show all of its features. With students like Renee, as the teacher you need to focus on how you present the information. Making the students feel like the work that they are doing isn’t actually work is key. While introducing the keynote presentation, you need to describe how neat all of the features are and how all of them can be used. Getting the student excited about using the keynote presentation is crucial because this is the hands on part of the activity. Also, the teacher can explain how this application can be applied to other activities. This is important because even though the student may not like the particular activity, they can become familiar with it so they can use it for other classes or use it for things that they have interest.

With group work activities, it is important to break up the class according the ability of the students in the class. Keeping all students involved and interested is clearly a difficult task. In this case, I would pull Liz aside and explain to her the situation with the group. She has a tougher task because the students in her group are not as focused as she is. I would ask her to do her best to get both members of the group involved. Sometimes students listen to peers better than they do their teacher. If the teacher and the some students are on the same page, the students can relay the message that the teacher is trying to get across to the students that are not involved with the lesson. In this case, Liz could act as the mediator to keep everyone in the group focused, participating, and engaged.

Often teachers have to set some ground rules for projects like these for students to simply get them done. If trying to talk it out with the student and mediation didn’t work then I would explain to the student that sometimes you have to do things that may not be your favorite activity. After putting in the effort to see where the student was coming from and I, as the teacher, was left with a negative response from the student, I would just have to leave it up to the student to participate. There is only so much a teacher can do to try individual students to focus. It is not fair to the other students in the classroom, who may have questions on the project, to spend all of the time on a student who thinks your activity is “stupid.” If trying to reason with them, reintroduce the lesson, and show how the lesson can be fun doesn’t work, then you need to move on and put the ball in the student’s court.