After reading another one of Rusul Alrubail's blog posts on Peer feedback, I wanted to write about it on my blog. I love her blog posts because I want to be an English teacher and she offers great strategies and activities for reading and writing. Peer feedback can be done from K-12 and I would argue that peer assessment helps to build moral literacy and problem solving skills. By assessing their peer's work or presentation, students learn how to be kind in their feedback but also students have to be critical thinkers in order to help their peers improve their work. In turn, this helps students assess their own work critically as well.
A great technique to use at any age is "Two stars and a wish," wherein students when marking their peers, provide two positive aspects of the work but one aspect that could use improvement. When volunteering in a grade 1 classroom this was very effective in teaching children how to communicate appropriately and kindly with one another, thus helping them to be morally literate for the future. In fourth year university, my education class also used "Two stars and a wish," proving that it can be useful at any age.
Rusul's blog post also outlines ways to introduce peer feedback into the class:
"Have students focus on the positive aspects of the work before pointing out areas of improvement.
Show students how they can phrase things constructively. Instead of “I don’t understand the point of your introduction,” try this: “Your thesis statement can be stronger. Can you provide examples?”
Provide students with categories/areas to focus on when giving feedback, for example: Grammar, structure, sentences, creativity, etc."
Dear Readers, If you are a 90's kid, the above video will strongly resonates with you. I remember seeing this commercial and immediately asking my Mom if I could "Please, Please, Please have a miniature hippo." This commercial illustrates the importance of incorporating media literacy into the classroom. We live in an era surrounded by various media outlets that bombard
us with messages through text, images, and sound (Considine, Horton &
Moorman, 2009). Scharerr (2005) argues that students should learn to be skeptical of media messages and teachers should incorporate media literacy into their curriculum's in order to teach students to think more critically about media practices.
It is important to recognize how the media effects young girls especially. As Bullen (2009) illustrates, the media affects young girls
on a powerful level: “images of women as powerless, passive victims noted
primarily for their bodies and sex rather than their minds and capabilities”
(p., 149). The media perpetuates these gender stereotypes; as prospective
teachers, we should work towards teaching our students to challenge these
assumptions.
As a prospective teacher, one could show their future class
an advertisement or a commercial for a specific large corporation. After
showing the media message, the class could discus as a group, what ideologies
the message is perpetuating. Teachers should encourage their students to
deconstruct and challenge these assumptions. By making connections between
social issues and how media perpetuates them, students will become more media
literate and this will help change how young people are influenced by the
media.
However, media can be used in the classroom in a positive way, as Rusul Alrubail's blog post on Edutopia illustrates. As a prospective English teacher, I plan to incorporate social media in the classroom to allow other platforms for students to express their abilities to write. As Rusul points out, blogging is becoming present in a lot of high school English curriculum's and its a great way to access creative writing skills. Moreover, Twitter is an excellent test of clarity and brevity. Lastly, Instagram combines visual components with written components.
Rusul provides a list of how these outlets can strengthen student's ability to write:
"Consistency: Teachers need to work out a plan with students to make writing on social media platforms a consistent practice in the classroom. Working with the students’ needs, skills and abilities would help the teacher and the student figure out a goal of how much writing needs to be done per week to improve on a specific set of writing skills.
Feedback: The power of peer feedback undeniably helps students to improve their writing. However, it also helps to foster a culture of writing accountability among peers. Peers now feel the need to write, comment and improve in order for them to share their work with their peers.
Confidence: Publishing work publicly is often a very nerve wracking and a scary experience for many students. Though with practice, encouragement, and positive feedback, students are able to gain confidence in themselves to be able to write and share more of their work in the digital world. This confidence doesn’t necessarily translate to stronger writing; however, the more confidence students have when it comes to writing, the more it’s an enjoyable task that they’re engaged with and actually look forward to doing.
Collaboration: When students are exposed to writing from their peers by way of feedback and collaboration, especially when it’s live collaboration (Google doc/Twitter), students are able to develop stronger ideas, find convincing evidence and be creative in composition generally.
In the same study above, 50% of teachers say today’s digital technologies make it EASIER for them to shape or improve student writing. There are so many reasons to incorporate the use of social media in the classroom, but one of the most important reasons is to help strengthen student writing." Hope this was educational! With every good wish, Miss Roberts
Work Cited
Bullen, B. R. (2009). The Power and impact of
gender-specific media literacy. Youth
Media Reporter. (6), 149-152.
Considnine,
D., Horton, J., & G. Moorman. (2009). Teaching and reading the Millennial
generation through media literacy. Journal
of Adolescent and Adult Literacy. 52(6), 471-481.
Scharrer, E. (2005).
Sixth graders take on television: Media literacy and critical attitudes of television
violence. The research was supported by a service learning grant from the
College of Social and Behavioral Sciences at the University of University of
Massachusetts Amherst. Communication
Research Reports. 22(4), 325-333.
After reading a blog post on Edutopia by Beth Holland, I wanted to post on Project-Based Learning.
Has a student ever asked you, "Why am I learning this?" or "Why do I need to know this"? or "When I am ever going to use this knowledge in real life?" Education should not be about memorization or standardization. Instead, students should be engaged and excited about what they learning. Project-based learning allows students to research a particular topic for an extended period of a time, allowing students to engage in challenging and complex problem solving.
As Holland laments, project-based learning "encourages students to engage in inquiry, explore real-world contexts, and share their learning. As an instructional framework, it allows teachers to achieve these goals while still meeting curriculum requirements."
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hnzCGNnU_WM
As the above video illustrates, project-based learning begins with an authentic question or a real-world problem that needs to be solved. It is important that the driving question is something interesting to the students so they are compelled to learn. This gives students ownership of their learning and gives them the critical thinking skills they need to be productive and active 21st century citizens.
I believe that project-based learning helps to tackle many 21st century literacy's. For example, as the above video illustrates, project-based learning often explores environmental concerns. Project-based learning allows for the students to actively engage in the environmental concerns happening within their community and they work to solve the problems. This leads to environmentally literate students who can eventually make a change in the world at large.
Here is a list of what is required to begin project-based learning.
A great technique to use at any age is "Two stars and a wish," wherein students when marking their peers, provide two positive aspects of the work but one aspect that could use improvement. When volunteering in a grade 1 classroom this was very effective in teaching children how to communicate appropriately and kindly with one another, thus helping them to be morally literate for the future. In fourth year university, my education class also used "Two stars and a wish," proving that it can be useful at any age.
