21st+Century+Learning+Final+Project+-+MM

__ Part I __ 21st Century Learning involves educators acting as “interior designers” as they create plans and activities to suit their clients’ (students’) needs. For the upcoming school year, I’m focusing upon creating **__rigor__** within the four walls of my classroom. I want my students to become not only critical thinkers and problem solvers, but also reflective thinkers as they explain their rational and constructively and purposefully respond to their peers’ thinking.

The rigor element moves students beyond the factual and procedural mathematical knowledge. Over the course of my teaching career, I have observed many students excel at procedural tasks (e.g. multiply these fractions or find the area of the rectangle). However, I witnessed them struggle when asked to apply and/or synthesize their learning to a application word problem. I believe incorporating rigorous problem solving opportunities will permit students to envision the applicability of mathematics to areas outside of the classroom, thereby, intrinsically motivating them to continue learning.

In order to prepare students for a rigorous environment, it remains important that I provide the necessary instruction regarding foundational skills through engaging lessons and activities. Last school year, I had utilized the instructional strategy known as whole brain teaching/learning, which, as the name suggests, requires students to utilize all parts of their brain as they acquire new knowledge. For instance, after delivering a small chunk of information, students turn to a neighbor and reteach the same information to each other. As students reteach the information, they need to incorporate movement to illustrate the words. Consequently, all types of learners (visual, auditory, and kinesthetic) benefit from this type of instruction. With my focus upon rigor, students’ learning will be positively impacted. They will begin to stretch their mind as they begin visualizing mathematics as a meaningful and worthwhile subject, particularly due to the real world applicability. In reference to career readiness, students will acquire the necessary social skills sought out by employers, particularly collaboration, leadership, problem solving, effective communication, and accessing and analyzing information.

The “**__rigorous__**” component of the 21st Century ecosystem connects to many other elements of this ecosystem, including, but not limited to, the following:
 * making **connections** to previously learned skills
 * creating a safe learning environment, in which students become **socially responsible**, feeling comfortable taking risks and working **collaboratively** to achieve established learning targets
 * allowing **flexibility** as I provide differentiated activities to accommodate students’ readiness levels
 * promoting consistent use of higher order thinking skills as students become **critical thinkers** and reflective consumers of information as they work towards finding solutions to real life application problems
 * promoting **strong communication skills** as students need to clearly express and defend their thinking
 * making students resourceful as they become responsible for **connecting** to resources, which, besides people, they could find in their books and their class’s website

As a result of this endeavor, I will achieve the ultimate goal of the school year – to **empower** students by having them take ownership of their learning.

__ Part II __ //__Please note all of the artifacts described below are under construction. __//
 * Artifact One **: When students enter sixth grade, they desperately require organization skills. In past years, I have had students maintain a math binder divided into sections to hold their assignments, assessments, class activities, notes, and vocabulary lists. However, this tool did not work for the majority of students. Rather than placing a task under the appropriate and assigned category, they simply threw the paper into their binder. Consequently, many important items became lost in the shuffle. Also, I attempted a folder with the left pocket containing notes and right pocket containing assignments. Unfortunately, because of the mass amount of notes, students needed to continually obtain new folders after theirs would rip at the seams. For the upcoming school year, I will be attempting the use of interactive notebooks. This notebook would require students to tape any “loose sheets,” such as foldables, into their notebook. Therefore, when they leave school, they only would need to remember to take home their notebook. From this linked example, one can see the rough format of this notebook and my modifications. This knowmia video will also be restructured and shown to students enabling them to see a rough sketch of the function and look of their notebook.

The rigor presents itself not only in the actual solving of the problem, but also during the collaboration with their peers as they have to know how to effectively and respectfully communicate with each other. Through this process, they need to reflect over their thinking, as well as their peers’, and become critical thinkers and problem solvers. Furthermore, they create more rigor during their presentations, which have to contain clear explanations and rationale of their steps. When students become the “teachers,” they feel empowered as they are not only responsible for their learning, but also for their peers’ learning.
 * <span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman',serif; font-size: 12pt;">Artifact Two **<span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman',serif; font-size: 12pt;">: Once students have developed and mastered the necessary foundational skills, I will divide them into smaller groups, assigning each group a different application problem from illustrativemathematics.org or another similar resource. Each group would find their problem by logging onto edmodo.com and clicking on their assigned group letter. Once a group solves their problem, they choose the medium for presenting it to their class. They have the following choices:
 * <span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman',serif; font-size: 12pt;">Create a poster
 * <span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman',serif; font-size: 12pt;">Use the ladibug document camera
 * <span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman',serif; font-size: 12pt;">Create a “Screen Chomp” presentation


 * <span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman',serif; font-size: 12pt;">Artifact Three **<span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman',serif; font-size: 12pt;">: Parents need to be aware of their students’ learning. Although I send seasonal newsletters highlighting current and future topics of discussion, they do not //show// the lively discourse and rigor achieved by their children. Therefore, on my Google site, I plan to embed copies of selected presentations, through video or pictorial form, to share with parents in order to encourage, and challenge, an interest in their child's education.