Week 1

 Part 1:  A Little About Me

        Hello!  My name is Chloe LaPorte.  I am from Michigan and this is my 3rd semester at Southeastern Oklahoma State University.  I am planning on getting my masters in Mathematics and I should be done in August.  I currently teach K-5 STEM/media at a local Title 1 school.  My career goals are to one day move into a math interventionist role.  Outside of school, I live with my husband, our two dogs, and one cat.  In my free time, I run agility with one of the dogs and have recently passed our certification exam for her to become a therapy dog.  My goal is for her to be working with my students as soon as possible.

Part 2: One ISTE Standard and a Matching Activity

        ISTE Standard 1.2 focuses on Digital Citizenship.  This is something that I teach every year as a part of the "media" portion of my job.  1.2b examines Online Behavior and states "Students engage in positive, safe, legal and ethical behavior when using technology, including in social interactions online or when using networked devices."  If my students take away ONE thing from the six years they spend in my class it is how to be safe and kind online.  One activity that I do for this standard is a card sort.  I typically do this for 2nd-3rd grade but it could be tweaked around for any grade.  I print out cards that show a picture or text of things we should do online vs what we shouldn't do online.  I give the cards to the students (they typically work in groups of 4-5 students) and tell them to sort without giving much direction.  Some groups create a "good / bad" categories, "yes / no" categories, and I even had a group split it into three groups with "yes / no / maybe".  The next time I teach this lesson, I would take pictures of the groups the students made and maybe use scrap paper for them to label the groups.  With these pictures, I could project them on the screen and talk about an inconsistencies or differences that we see.  Another alternative is to have the students do a gallery walk and view the other groups work.  At the end of this lesson, I typically have the students sit at the carpet and we go over the card sort and I explain any confusion.

Part 3:  How My Lesson Supports Kolb's Triple E Framework

        Engage:  This lesson engages my students by having them work together to physically sort cards.  I have some colleagues who have done this lesson but with digital cards on a Google Slides.  Being able to physically sort the cards with your hands engages the students and helps the kinesthetic learners.  The students are moving from passive learner to active social learner by working with their classmates and discussing how and where to sort the cards.

        Enhance:  This lesson enhances student learning by providing choice and allowing the students to take ownership over the task.  This is a lesson where I act as the facilitator rather than the teacher.  I am not guiding them step by step.  Instead, I give the cards and tell them to sort.  I intervene when groups are arguing or if they aren't being productive (i.e. fighting over who gets to hold the cards) but other than that, I let them guide their learning for this activity.  These cards can be used as scaffolding because students are tapping into prior knowledge.  I typically do this card sort activity the day after I do a more formal, sit down lesson.  On day 1, I do most of the talking.  On day 2, the students do most of the talking.

        Extend:  This activity creates a bridge between the students school day and their everyday life experiences because the internet is all around us.  Our students are living in a very technology focused age and that makes it important that they know how to properly behave online.  This is a real skill that will make students success inside and outside of the classroom.