C4T #3

Casual Models Help Uncover Hidden Thoughts My first teacher was Heidi Siwak. Ms. Swak wrote about using a responsibility circle and a casual model of responsibility after her students had read Ray Bradbury's book All Summer in a Day. Using responsibility circles requires the students to find reasons for their opinions, but does not ask them to think at a deeper level, nor to find connections between their justifications. By using a casual model of responsibility, it helps students by making thinking more explicit. This model breaks down the hidden layers and causes students to build connections between ideas.As students dug deeper into causality, they begin to link ideas and see how one aspect influences another. It is a fun thinking task to engage in.

My Response to Ms. Swak: I explained to Ms. Swak about our EDM310 class and how we are learning to use technology in our future classrooms. I thought this was a very good post because she seems like she is such a fun an active teacher in her classroom. The use of both of these models in her classroom and her interaction make it seem like she is a very good teacher. I would love to incorporate the use of these models in my future classroom.

Structuring Effective Collaboration and the Place of the Individual The second blog Ms. Swak wrote about was group work. Ms. Swak talked about collaboration and effective group work. She discussed the role of the individual in the group based on accountability and their contributions. She also discussed some projects her class worked on. She had her students construct knowledge on longitude and latitude to teach the younger students how it works. Ms. Swak had her students hold a knowledge building circle after they had all gathered their information so they were able to share. Ms. Swak also discussed collaborative inquiry, co-operative learning, and flexible groupings within her classroom.

My Response to Ms. Swak: I explained to Ms. Swak a little bit about our EDM310 course and how we are learning to incorporate technology in our future classrooms. I also explained to Ms. Swak that we do a lot of collaborative group work in this class. I really enjoyed reading her post because it showed me different ways to incorporate group work in my future class. Ms. Swak is good at working around each individual students needs and I feel that her information and resources will help me later in my teaching career.