MST PORTAL – Promoting Open, Reflective Teaching & Learning

This morning I met with Jim Schwartz, a professor in the Childhood Education Department at SJFC, to reflect on our goals for the partnership we have established between his pre-service class and the MST PORTAL at Klem South Elementary.

The goals for Jim are to have his students experience inquiry-based teaching and learning prior to their student teaching placements as well as to provide more authentic conversations regarding planning, student assessment, instructional best practices, and the reflective nature of teaching.

Here in the MST PORTAL we are looking to continue to promote open, reflective teaching and learning through shared conversations and experiences with professionals outside of our school via scheduled videoconferencing chats, streaming lessons/presentations, and face-to-face gatherings. Our continued goal is to expand the number of teachers taking advantage of the job-embedded professional development opportunities made possible because of this unique partnership. Whether teachers want to learn more about inquiry-based mathematics (especially with our new math series), the Backward Design process, using technology to support student learning, or simply to gather the collective ideas of 20 eager pre-service teachers to help plan a lesson or unit, these experiences can happen within the school day, side-by-side with another teacher(s) for guidance and support, and as an integrated part of classroom planning and instruction.

In February, Jim’s students will be exploring Understanding by Design and the Six Facets of Understanding including discussing what “counts” as evidence of understanding. To follow up on this work, we have a videoconference scheduled on March 6th to examine and discuss student work samples. If you’d like to join the conversation and perhaps share samples of student work (math problem-solving would be great), just let me know.

For our next videoconference on April 3rd, we are seeking interested teachers to collaborate with the pre-service teachers on the initial development of a math/science inquiry-based lesson. As part of their class requirements at SJFC, the pre-service teachers will work on the development of a webquest to support the content of the lesson. This activity will be inquiry-based, provide distinct roles for students, and may provide a hands-on component. Once completed, teachers will be able to implement the webquest with their students (either the entire class or with a small group) and then reflect on the experience and effectiveness of student learning.

If you have any comments on our progress to-date with this partnership or ideas to share, please comment.

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After several unsuccessful attempts to connect with SJFC to videoconference with pre-service teachers, the technology finally worked this afternoon. Granted, the quality of the video wasn’t great and there was some annoying audio feedback, but at least Jim Schwartz, Associate Professor of Childhood Education, and I we were able to start our conversations and begin to establish a professional development model for both pre-service and in-service teachers.

The first part of the conversation this afternoon revolved around planning graphing lessons for kindergarteners. The goal was to make the task for collecting data more authentic and meaningful for the students as well as to promote deeper thinking. JoAnna, a kindergarten teacher here at Klem South, was able to also participate in this segment of the videoconference and provided valuable feedback to the Fisher students. A few of the ideas brainstormed included:

• Providing students with last year’s snowfall data and then making predictions for snowfall amounts for the coming winter months. At the end of each month, actual snowfall amounts will be graphed and compared to their predictions.
• Asking the librarian to visit the class and ask the students to help her decide which genres of books should be ordered for the library and why.
• Taking the usual “teeth lost” graph and sharing it with a dentist to see how the data from the class compares with “average” tooth loss.
• Expanding the graphing of local weather data (sky conditions and precipitation) to compare it with locations around the country/world where students have personal connections.

For the second segment of the videoconference, we had a shared conversation regarding ways to make a unit on the water cycle for 2nd graders more inquiry-based. This was a much more demanding task for the Fisher students, but hopefully they walked away from the experience with a greater understanding of the need for students to be able to ask their own questions, test their hypotheses, collect data, and analyze results.

I received an email tonight from Jim and he wrote, “They realize that what they are hearing about from you is on a different level than what they are seeing in their field placements. This is exactly why I wanted this partnership to occur, and so I’m very pleased. It was good, and I believe it can only get better.”

I concur and I can’t wait to continue this journey.

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