Monday, May 17, 2021

My PBL Class

PBL is a tricky beast! Making a lesson that can be fully contained in a single video is even trickier. But I think I managed to do so with my recording for the TeachNow program. The students responded well to the slides and had enough understanding of the material to jump into the research.

The trick with doing something like this with an ESL class is to very carefully select the new vocabulary, so that it's just difficult enough for the students. If you give them language that's too basic they'll sigh and lose interest. If it's much too difficult, they'll feel overwhelmed, and then lose interest. I think this was the key to the success of this lesson -- relying on vocabulary they already knew as a building block for some interesting new science words.

Unfortunately I could not record the research portion, poster creation or presentations, but here is the presentation introducing students to the topics and assignments.



Learning Environment Management Plan

This was one of the more immersive portions of the TeachNow teacher training program that I'm finishing up. We had to look at our classroom management from a number of angles and describe different methods and apps for effective practices. I think it's a good summary of the classroom environment I'm also working to create -- positive, organized, engaging, with clear rules and expectations that are repeated and rewarded throughout each and every class.