Final Phase III

 Comprehensive Reflection

Standard 1: Facilitate and Inspire Student Learning and Creativity: The candidates to use their knowledge of subject matter, teaching and learning, and technology to facilitate experiences that advance student learning, creativity, and innovation in both face-to-face and virtual environments.

Micro Lesson One: “Water Crossings”

This lesson facilitated students to understand the challenges of water crossings of early explorers and pioneers, settlement patterns through US history, examining past transportation of early explorers and pioneers, and analyzing various historic methods used to overcome water-crossing obstacle. I started off the lesson asking students a question reflecting on their own experiences of traveling a lengthy trip across the country. Based on their experiences compared to the traveling of pioneers, and having them identifying the threats pioneers faced during their journey. Using students’ experiences assist students learn more effectively when they already know something about a content area and when concepts in that area mean something to them and to their particular background. Also, ask questions pertaining to the students in the community such as teaching the lesson in Navajo community and knowledgeable of the back roads to Tuba City ask the students “How many of you travel to Tuba City on the dirt road? How was the travel? Roads? How are the roads after heavy rainstorms or how are the roads during the winter, does it differ in the summertime?” I wanted to link new information to student’s prior knowledge to activate students the student’s interest and curiosity. These warm-up questions will develop into the main discussion of the subject of the lesson about crossing bodies of water where no bridges existed, how is the problem solved and what factors had to be taken into consideration.  Discussion involved students input describing what hazards pioneers faced, example how to solve the problem crossing a river and overall discuss the factors that had to taken into consideration.

During the first activity part I students study topography map off of Google maps or website covering topography of the globe had to identify several majority cities located at the river crossing, we looked at longest river in US, the Mississippi River. As a class we discuss the findings of the several major cities, why they were associated with river crossings and student’s mentioned their opinions of positive or negative impacts of a crossing site on the development of a region. Next part of the activity, students had to use the topography maps to count the number of bridges and crossings on shorter river, the Connecticut River. Again, discussed as a class what factors are likely to influence bridge numbers and location. Whole activity part I, involved lots of student participation, student’s working in groups, and class collaboration.

I read an excerpt from Frances Fuller –Victor’s book, the River of the west, the author describes a crossing of the Yellowstone Rover by a group of trappers and traders led by Jedediah Smith in 1829. Students looked at an example how the trappers and traders crossed the river, using their problem solving skills to construct a raft of wagon parts. After activity part I, I had students write a short fictional story about approaching a river and the importance of needing to get to the other side. I wanted students to use their imagination when describing the water crossing including the understand of the challenges posed by water crossings, various historic methods used to overcome the obstacle, and traveled by what use of transportation. Student will decide how to tackle the issue of water crossing, stating the problem, and give the solution of the action or actions to achieve the goal of crossing the water. The student’s short written story is the assessment of the students’ knowledge of the water-related transportation problems that faced early explorers and settlers and implement the student’s problem solving, their method used to overcome these obstacles. 

This lesson plan is unit on water crossing; only 1/4 of the lesson was facilitated. The next part of the lesson, activity part II, promote student’s to become more creativity and inventiveness. Whole class participates in a water-crossing contest; the goal of the contest is for small groups of students plan, design and construct a means of carrying a load across a body of water.  Each team will build a water crossing conveyance from natural materials collected from student’s yards, city parks, and school grounds. Before students construct their conveyance, student group must discuss their options, list of needed material for the construction and description why they need those materials; if, they want to construct a drawing of their conveyance by all means include on the sheet of listing materials. 

https://www.taskstream.com/Main/main_frame.asp 

Standard 2: Design and Develop Digital-Age Learning Experiences and Assessments: Design, develop, and evaluate authentic learning experiences and assessment incorporating contemporary tools and resources to maximize content learning in context and to develop the knowledge, skills and attitudes identified in NET-S.

Micro Lesson #1: “Water crossing Design the lesson to incorporate digital tool, Google maps empathizing on the use of topography on the Smart board to distinguish several major cities located on the Mississippi River and counting the number of bridges/crossings on the Connecticut River. Students had to learn how to navigate on the smart board, maneuver from the mouth of the river to the ending in Minnesota and adjusting the zoom in/out on the map. Instead of looking at pictures from general textbook, students working with Google Maps is simple and facilitates collaborative learning; Overall assists teachers extend and refine their geography, social studies lessons through an interactive medium that promotes students to engage in their own learning. Use of virtual atlas is the vast amount of additional information available to users of Google Earth and Google Maps as oppose to the standardized maps that is one-dimensional, paper plane. Google Earth/ Google maps consist of information that is stored in layers, which are accessible all students opening the application. These activities using Google maps was customized to address students’ diverse learning to assist student’s to fulfill the objectives and educational standards in the social studies, specifically geography, history, and language arts. 

 (This is the1st activity were students had to the Smart board and Google maps)

Students using this digital tool could further investigate their own curiosity on their own personal computer, or on the Smart board after completing the activity part I. They could analyze another river and compare their answers to the following questions with another group on the same river. Integrating of the Google maps into the lesson enriched student’s learning by enable all students to pursue info of a map and the community and location; also encourage students further identify the symbols used in a topographic map, examining the contour lines and contour intervals and regional features where the river is located.

To help students become good learners and be successful in their education, it is valid that the teachers, and the students themselves, understand how they learn and assess the strengths and weaknesses in their learning strategies. As teachers we need to provide resources and academic support to help our students to better manage their own learning. Lesson plan activities provided a wide range of assisting students in their learning process: students listened to me reading an excerpt from Frances Fuller Victor’s book The River of the West, verbal class discussions, examining virtual atlas/topography atlas using Google map of Mississippi and Connecticut River on Smart board, answering questions pertaining to both rivers as a class and constructing water conveyance. Last activity students would be applying learned information includes: planning, designing, building, constructing, inventing; predicting, hypothesizing, decision making by challenging students to participate in a water crossing contest.

Micro Lesson #2: “K’e (Kinship)”

The assessment used in this lesson provide students with multiple and varied formative and cumulative assessments aligned with content and technology standards. Assessment was based on student’s power point presentation that include slides of the Navajo introduction: Slide 1) written in English 2) Written in Navajo (Navajo Roman Times Font) on this slide had to speak in the Navajo language by recording their introduction 3) Students had insert a SmartArt Graphic Immediate family tree (section had to written in Navajo, the names of the family members and names of each family is only written in English) 4) Students will name their immediate family members written in Navajo, sentence would look like this “My mother name is _____.” (Students will include recording of them speaking Navajo of each family member’s name)  5) Answer the following question: “Where are you (is the student) from? The question will be written in Navajo and the answer will be written in Navajo and image of where the student is from (picture needs to be a personal taken, not a picture from the web) Include a recording of the question and answer spoken in Navajo 6) Students will answer the question in Navajo, “Where do your parents reside?”. The prop could be written in Navajo or English and includes a picture of where the parents reside, has to be personally taken by the student (not from the internet). Also includes recording of the student speaking Navajo of the question and answer. 7-8) Optional: students want to include where their grandparents (both maternal and paternal grandparents reside) needs to written in Navajo, recorded in Navajo and picture of where their grandparent’s reside, again personally taken. Students demonstrate creative thinking, construct knowledge, and develop innovative products and processes using technology. By applying existing knowledge to generate new ideas in their Navajo Introduction power point presentation product: that had be not only written in English but using their writing and typing skills in Navajo and also recordings had to be spoken in Navajo. Students create original works as a mean of personal expression that reflects their self-identity from creating a basic presentation of themselves through the Navajo Introduction power point. Using the digital resource of Microsoft office, assessing and evaluating the student’s learning of Navajo introduction in a power point presentation for student’s final product is a digital resource that will be continuously used in future for classroom lesson plans.

 https://www.taskstream.com/Main/main_frame.asp

 

Standard 3: Model Digital-Age Work and Learning: exhibit knowledge, skills and work process representative of an innovative professional in a global and digital society.

Micro Lesson #2: “K’e (Kinship)”

I demonstrated use of a power point presentation to my students, instead of other methods of teachings, I provided a power point presentation for my lesson plan on K’e (Kinship). I wanted to model and facilitate the effectiveness of the digital tool in the classroom and transfer their own knowledge of K’e, new concepts of Kinship in developing their own power point. I was drawn to the purpose of power point is for everyone to communicate effectively. That is, to inform or get informed, with CLARITY and UNDERSTANDING. These characteristics would assist student’s comprehension on what is included in Navajo introduction, simplify each part of their introduction into small sections for each slide, and students will be able to accelerate information absorption by creating power point presentation focusing on the content of the Navajo Introduction. Student will be able to analyze their presentation for correct spelling, typing errors, the phrases included in the introduction and the fluency of transitioning from sentence to the next sentence. Students will include on slides, a recording of them reading their information in Navajo, they can evaluate their speech whether it is clear and understand, if not re-record until they are satisfied with their speech. This process allows for students to member their introduction. Also, students could view their presentation multiple times, to review their introduction. Reviewing and memorizing their introduction from the power point will strengthened their Navajo dialogue skills on the next part of the lesson, which each student will take turns introducing themselves in Navajo to class and asking each other questions about their clan affiliation, where they are from, where their parents reside. 

 https://www.taskstream.com/Main/main_frame.asp 

(This link provides the attachment of the power point presentation on K'e and Kinship, sample for students and model of their final product) 

For future purposes of using digital tools like the power point presentation will facilitate student’s to present their research and knowledge of certain cultural teachings of K’e from collaborating with Elders, parents and community members. Students could give a presentation using power point, and having elders, parents or community members recorded their information to place on slide or another possible option is students could create a mini video on the certain teachings of K’e; they have question/questions about and would interview an elder, parent or community member’s response to that question or questions. Invite parents, elders and community members to come see the student’s research work, showcase is to highlight student learning of cultural content and to demonstrate the impact of Project-Based Learning in developing 21st Century Skills of collaboration, authentic learning, and use of new technologies. 

Standard 4: Promote and Model Digital Citizenship and Responsibility: understand local and global societal issues and responsibilities in an evolving digital culture and exhibit legal and ethical behavior in their professional practices.

Both of my micro lessons contained little or did not include teaching the model digital citizenship and responsibility. The time frame of the lesson was narrow window; I had to cram in all my lesson objectives into procedure and instruction, and make move at the end to assessed student’s knowledge based on the lesson. There was not enough room to address the six or one of the six components of digital citizenship or promote digital citizenship. My lesson did not provide students to use the computers to find information on the web or allowed students to freely surf the web. The use of the technology in my lessons provided academic enrichment to meet the diverse needs of all learners by using learner-centered strategies providing equitable access to appropriate digital tools and resources. As an educator, I understand the importance of Model digital citizenship and responsibility in my classrooms and how it prepares students to use technology safety, legally, and ethnically in the school systems as well as socially and professionally. I want to address these components to my students; I might need to set time side to teach each individual section, through means of lesson plan covering that component. This would more likely be successful in promoting digital citizenship and responsibility in the classroom. As students understand each component, they will be able to point out the rules and conditions they need to follow.  

How this might impact your future teaching experiences: what you learned from them, and how this learning may impact your future?

What I gained from this course is learning the new concepts associated with Technology in the classroom. I had created lesson plans, the activities were designed for students to re-frame students from sitting in their chairs, and physical movement in the classroom. I did not take the time to incorporate technology into my lessons. I could think up one main reason why I did not integrate technology into my lesson is because I thought it would complicated task, did not know how to go about it. Today’s society the prevalence of technology in children's daily lives requires parents and teachers to master new literacies, including keyboarding, word processing, Internet research skills, multimedia production, and social networking. Technology is proving to be valuable in support of effective reading and writing instruction, universal access to instructional materials, assessment, professional collaboration, and home-to-school communication. Facilitating technology resources in a lesson increases student learning and powerfully impacts the educational achievement.

Phase II of Micro Lesson 2: K'e- Navajo Kinship and Clanship

    1.           Instructional Decisions/Teaching: Discuss the implementation process and describe

Second Lesson “K’e Kinship” was a unit on Navajo cultural teaching for students to learn the establishment of familial and clan relationships, known as kinship. Kinship is one of five key points of K’e. Students learn about the importance of Kinship through the Navajo teachings and responsibilities. Understanding the background information of K’e, and specifically Kinship in this lesson will assist students to acknowledge and identify their clan affiliation or embrace their heritage.
In the first activity, students will learn the Navajo custom of introduction. Activity One, students reviewed and wrote their introduction in English and Navajo. Two suggestions/modifications I made to the lesson is knowing some of my students are not of the Navajo origin; suggested to the students to use either the sheet of Non-native ethnicities, a sheet that include the names of the other ethnicities and it’s translation into Navajo and the modification I made is giving students a sheet of the Navajo clans, have them pick out random clans to use for their introduction. This was the first time the students were introduce to the language, specific cultural standard, and typing using the Navajo keyword layout. Another modification I made to the lesson is shorting the activity by allowing the students to include their mother’s and father’s origin/clans written in English and Navajo due to time constrain and content. The content of lesson included an individual: who has been taught the stress and intonation of vowels, and letters, developed some vocabulary of Navajo, practiced speaking Navajo words and sentences. The group of students I implemented my lesson were not practicing or writing the Navajo Language, they were placed into a lesson that required much prior knowledge and conditioning of the Navajo Language. I did not want to overwhelm the students with the new information about Navajo cultural and language/vocabulary. I made my lesson very general and required students to speak two sentences. When overall, the students speak more than 5 sentences in their introduction.

Slide 1:
This is simplified structured Navajo introduction using number listings  referring to sentences.  Each number presents the needed clan affiliation or cultural/ethnic origin. Students understood the 1. is your mother's clan or ethnic/cultural  origin; 2. is your father's clan; 3. Your maternal grandfather's clan; Your paternal grandfather's clan; 4. in that way I am young woman or In that way I am a young man. This student selected clans from a clan chart to use for her introduction.

Slide 2:
Students had to type the introduction into Navajo. As you can see the student's used the Navajo keyboard system,  however it is not in the Navajo Roman Times font due to the fact I want to show the student's understanding of the numbers and symbols keys that contain the Navajo characters. The 3 Navajo A's correspond on the keyboard to the 1-2-3 keys. 3 Navajo E's correspond to the keys 4-5-6. 3 Navajo I's are the keys  7-8-9. The 3 Navajo O's correspond on the keyboard to the 0, -, =. Slash L corresponds to the [ (left bracket). Accent N corresponds to the ] (right bracket).

Students had to record their typed Navajo introduction by speaking in Navajo, that is why there is a record icon on this slide.  

• What you did and learned from the teaching/facilitating process

Teaching the lesson to my classmates acting as the targeted student age group, it was challenging task because the students had no prior teaching of the basics in the Navajo language. Lesson was made for students with an understanding of the meaning of K’e, who had learned the four key points of K'e from a previous lesson covering the components of peace, unity, respect, and social relationships. Students who had learned these components further supported students to acquire learning the last component of K'e, which is Kinship. Additionally, students were taught how to pronounce letters with a nasal or high tone mark by stressing the vowel or constant in a word. Facilitating the lesson to the group of students, unknown to the language and cultural background information was subjectively challenging because I felt I was rushing into the lesson without proper teaching of vocabulary words and their pronunciation. As the teacher, I did not want my students to feel uncomfortable with pronunciation, since this was their first time speaking the Navajo language and did not want to stress the students about importance of speaking Navajo correctly.  Therefore, I allowed room for error in their speaking and only practicing two sentences of their Navajo introduction instead what I had planned originally was about five to six sentences include in their Introduction. Also, I assist students in pronouncing the clan they picked or ethnic origin they wanted to include in their Introduction. After I had pronounced the word or words, they would recite the word back to me and I would correct their pronunciation, if necessary. Overall, I learned in an actually classroom, students range from all different speaking levels, it is hard to keep the whole class on the same speaking level. Some students may need more practice than others, I need to accommodate those students and did incorporate for the assessment rubric; if  the student received 1 on scale of 4 to 1, 1 is the lowest and the student must come in after school or before to bring up their grade by practicing their pronunciation until it is fully improved. Lastly, I learned teaching a new concept to a group of students unknown to the language; I should modify my lesson plan to simple lesson such as a beginning intro to the Navajo language by emphasizing certain Navajo words or verbs. Alternative to this lesson would be teaching the students simple everyday English words like yes, no, my, yours, boy and girl (opposite words) and numbers. I believe this would be more helpful to the students introduced to the Navajo language on day 1 of the lesson.

Also in facilitating the learning process for the students, I provided a  power point slide identifying the  important highlights of Kinship and clan affiliation. I thought providing a power point slide would help the students, classmates to understand background information about the Unit of K'e for visual representation purposes.  Also, in the power point slides I provided the layout of the structured Navajo introduction written in both English and Navajo. 

• How alignment to goals and objectives was maintained

Modifications I made to the lesson did not interfere with my goals; however some of my objectives were not emphasized due to the time strain only permitted the first activity. I still maintained the lesson plan concentrated objectives; students became more familiar with the location of the keys in the Navajo font series, students identify their clan affiliation and cultural/ethnic origin, and recite the Traditional Navajo Introduction. The main goal of the lesson plan was to implement a new component of K'e, teaching the students about Kinship through cultural background information of the Navajo traditional teachings: behavior, respecting/acknowledging clanship, importance of one's self relationship to our surroundings, and clan affiliation. Students will connect all the meanings of K'e and understand its importance in the Navajo cultural and self-identity is sacred.

   2.            Assessment of Learning: Describe the evidence you have that indicates: your students' level of success in achieving the lessons goals and the level of success you had in teaching the lesson

From majority of the student's assessment results, they achieved success of the required objectives with activity one. The students made a power point presentation of their introduction typed in English and Navajo included clan affiliation or cultural/ethnic origin of the mother and father. Finalizing the power point, all students recited the two sentences of the structured introduction spoken in Navajo, recording on the second slide: 1) Your mother's clan/origin. 2) Your father's clan or origin (one you are born for). All students spoke in Navajo exceedingly well, with minor pronunciation mistakes such as not stressing or intonations words that contain nasal, high tone, constants, and diphthongs.
Inclusively the success of lesson plan, I think I could have done better at preparing students to speak in Navajo such as briefly touching base with the pronunciation of words or letters that different to English words and letters. Provide students with cognates, a tool for learning a second language. Students of English learn to use the knowledge of cognates to build an extensive base of pronouncing and learning Navajo vocabulary. Cognate words that exhibit the following characteristic: two words that have the same or similar meaning and have nearly the same spelling in both of the languages increases Second language learners vocabularies and the ability to figure out new words and learn vocabulary in Navajo. Navajo and English words do have similarities of the vowel system (a, e, i, o, u), English lettering, and the stem of the word, its spelling is closely related to English word like Shima, ma is mom and shi is the pronoun of I, mine concluding my mom. These cognates give students a foundation of vocabulary. When students can identify cognates from their first language it increases the knowledge of vocabulary of words they already know. Another strategy is the use memory tricks for pronouncing a word by pausing in between letters of a word, thus dividing the word into smaller parts. Thru the use of metacognitive strategies are memorable, this type of instructional strategy positively impact students who may have difficulty saying long words by breaking down the word into easier words will be beneficial to the student. The strategy provides students an efficient way to acquire, store, and express prior- related words. Memory trick provides students who have memory problems an efficient way to retrieve from memory information they have learned.


• How do your individual reflections support this?
• How do the comments from your classmates support this?


Feedback from my classmates provide evidence my lesson was successful but they mentioned the same concern about pronunciation of the Navajo was challenging. I had asked my students the following question: What part of the lesson was the least favorite? Mostly all feedback within this question suggested speaking in Navajo was their least favorite part of the lesson. Based off my own reflection of the lesson I mentioned I did not prepare the students to speak in Navajo by teaching them pronunciation of the words needed for the structured introduction. I should have broken down the long Navajo words; students will have more confidence pronouncing the Navajo words. Surely, I wanted to challenge the students with an unfamiliar language, however on my part I should have better provided learning strategies for students to pronounce the new Navajo vocabulary. And during my lesson told the students it is okay with making mistakes in pronunciation and by making a mistake in pronunciation is not wrong. It is the student's first time speaking the Navajo language.