Thinking Maps

For my Unit Lesson Plan, I am thinking about doing a unit over writing in elementary school. There are lots of uses for thinking maps when it comes to writing. It's a great way to help students brainstorm, organize thoughts, and map out what they are going to write. Here are some examples of thinking maps.

Teach Like a Champ

These videos came from: https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLc7qiAsR5B_Q1VVMlUrBZ6_axwsfGHNe7 

Video #2:  No Opt Out
I like this technique. It makes the students participate, whether they want to or not. It gave lots of good tips on how to redirect students when they shrug off the question or say "I don't know." You simply have to ask another student to give an answer, and then go back to the person that opted out to repeat the answer. Use positive reinforcement!!

Video #3: Right is Right
Students tend to give up or stop trying once they know that what they got is right. Don't round answers up! It leads to low achieving students. 
Techniques: 
1. Hold out for all the way- Get them to the right answer by helping them, instead of giving the the answer.
2. Answer the question- Redirect them to the question or ask it another way to help them think about the answer.
3. Right answer, right time- Don't let the students get ahead of you, it's important to go through all the steps. 
4. Use technical vocabulary- make them use bigger words when describing things. Set the tone for what you are expecting. Make them think of scholarly answers instead of the bare minimum.

Video #4: Stretch It
Learning does not end with the right answer! Expand their learning by asking follow up questions to make them think. Keep asking questions to see if they know more about the topic. Stretching rewards right questions with more questions.  Recycle questions and ask the same ones to other students. 

Video #6: Without Apology
No content is boring, so don't apologize for teaching it. Our job is to find a way to make teaching interesting. Make everything fun, exciting, and interesting. Learning is valuable!

Video #7: Begin With the End
Backwards Design possibly.... <~~ I was right :)
Don't focus on activities, focus on the objectives. Plan the whole curriculum around it, as opposed to lesson by lesson. Ask yourself why you're teaching what you are and what the end goal was. 
Techniques: 
1. Plan from the top down
2. Plan the next lesson based on the mastery of the day before (larger concepts). GO BACK if they don't know.
3. Plan short daily assessments to assess mastery of the topics at the end of the day
4.Only use activities that help achieve mastery


These videos are so interesting and filled with good ideas. I will for sure keep watching these as I go on as a teacher to give me new, useful, and different ideas on what to do in the classroom!

What's your barnacle?

  For this post, we are supposed to reflect on backwards design. I think it's a really interesting concept, and I like learning more about it. I feel like at first it might be hard to write a lesson plan like this, since I have written so many front to back, as opposed to back to front. It'll be interesting for me to see how I go about doing that. I like the part in the video where it talked about starting small, before going full force. I like that idea;

Thinking big, starting small, and having a team!

   It's important to remember this phrase when doing backwards design. I think it's a key to success when it comes to this concept. This isn't an easy thing to start doing, so having a plan in place will help ensure that the lessons get done the right way. These are the couple of things that have stuck out to me so far about this way of planning, hopefully my knowledge of it will grow and expand with more classes. 

Collaborative Planning

   Collaborative planning is planning with other coworkers in your school. Everyone comes together to create lessons and unit plans together. This helps a teacher because all the work isn't on one teacher. You also have people you can bounce ideas off of, and people you can talk to if you're having a problem during a lesson.

   I like the idea of collaborative planning. I think having to plan everything on our own with no help is a lot of work. It's nice to have people in your corner that you can go to to ask questions on how to teach a certain topic, or asking what kind of activities work/don't work. It's just a good thing to do as a teacher. 

   I work in a school right now, and in every grade, the teachers collaborate on lessons. I've seen them come together and discuss what worked for them with their particular class. Sometimes it works with one class, and not the other. If they have questions or concerns about a certain student not understanding, they also come together and discuss how to help them. I just think overall, it's a good thing to do as a teacher. It's like a "why not?" type of lesson planning. I plan on using collaborative planing whenever I become a teacher.