TES Blendspace Problem of Practice Project

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Problem of Practice Storyboard

Problem of Practice Statement:

How do I establish a classroom environment that promotes a growth mindset and encourages students to become engaged in critical thinking behaviors such as making deeper learning connections, applying previously acquired skills to novel situations, and engaging in metacognition with respect to the learning process?

I have been doing a lot of thinking about how to answer my problem of practice.  Originally, I intended to focus on increasing critical thinking during my language arts block.  However, as I began to go through the design thinking process, a new idea emerged.  To answer my problem of practice, I am proposing that my students apply the knowledge that they learn about sound in our science unit to design something useful for our classroom.  All year, we have been wondering if there is a way to reduce the background noise of a busy classroom from our recordings on the iPad.  The students love to talk about what we are learning and often this is the most authentic form of assessment for a first-grader.  However, our recordings can be difficult to hear due to surrounding noise from the classroom.  To answer this problem, the students will be using Inquiry Based Learning and the Design Thinking process to develop solutions that will result in better sound when recording.

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Problem of Practice Prototype

Diigo Resource Links

Click here to explore my research regarding my Problem of Practice.

Problem of Practice

On first thought, I was drawn to two different problems of practice.  I am interested in exploring the idea of creating lessons that foster collaboration and higher-level thinking with my students as well as the problem of providing feedback to students that is individualized, timely, and meaningful.  While I would like to eventually focus on both of these problems, I know that I can do only one at a time.  I am feeling most drawn to focusing my energy this semester on finding ways to foster collaboration and higher-level thinking within my lessons.  I would really like to make more inquiry based lessons and this problem may need more input from the group than the problem of feedback.  I am also interested in exploring the many technology applications that will lend themselves to helping to come up with solutions to this problem.  Through this problem, I hope to develop uses for technology that reach into the transformation levels of the SAMR model.

Introductions