Monitoring My GAME Plan

Have I located the resources and tools that I plan on using to kick start this plan? I already have the table giving various comprehension tasks for students in the book titled Differentiation Instructional Strategies for Reading in the Content Areas (2009) by Carolyn Chapman and Rita King. Since the professional development resource is in a box in my new classroom, I have not been able to yet locate that tool. So, I went online to find additional resources. I found a resource that could be in my tic-tac- toe choices. YacaPaca.com allows teachers to find fun online assessments that can be emailed to certain students. Then I can send the assessment to the individual students who selected that choice assessment. I also found http://daretodifferentiate.wikispaces.com/Choice+Boards where there are sample tic-tac-toe choice assessment boards, even for math! At that site, there are choice boards that focus on the Multiple Intelligences too! My colleagues and I have a meeting at the beginning of August where I will begin accessing their expertise in giving choice assessments. A question that came up for my blogging community is- does anyone know of valuable, free resources online that would be useful for creating choice assessments? I would love to also use the knowledge of my online teacher community to help me find the best resources available to me.

I realized that I might need to make a few modifications to my GAME Plan (Cennamo, Ross, & Ertmer, 2009). Although ePals is a fantastic resource for getting students to communicate with other cultures using digital tools, I realized that I have the resources to do this task in my own school building. As I mentioned before, there are many cultural backgrounds represented at my school, and the ESL teacher would be more than excited to begin this collaboration to build school community. The reason I am not limiting myself to just ePals is because I went searching for classrooms that might involve my new subject area of math. Unfortunately, there are not many classrooms looking for math pen pals. I will continue looking for the perfect classroom match, but I want to make sure I have a back up plan just in case ePals is not the perfect resource. I understand that "there should be a clear link between your [my] students' learning goals, the instructional activities you [I] select, the resources you [I] include, the assessments you [I] administer, and the tools that support them" (Cennamo, Ross, & Ertmer, 2009, p. 116). I did learn something new by searching ePals website that they provide more than just pen pals. I can use this site to also have online forums, upload student work, and allow students to collaborate on project based learning projects. I thought that was interesting, because it connects perfectly to my NETS-T standard two indicator to “develop technology-enriched learning environments that enable all students to pursue their individual curiosities and become active participants in setting their own educational goals, managing their own learning, and assessing their own progress” (NETS-T, 2008). This could be a choice assessment possibility for my students! I love when goals overlap so nicely!


Resources:

Cennamo, K., Ross, J. & Ertmer, P. (2009). Technology Integration for Meaningful Classroom Use: A Standards-Based Approach. (Laureate Education, Inc., Custom ed.). Belmont, CA: Wadsworth, Cengage Learning.

Chapman, C., & King, R. (2009). Differentiated instructional strategies for reading in the content areas. (2nd ed.) Thousand Oaks, CA: Corwin.

National Education Standards for Teachers. (2008) Retrieved July 7, 2010. Website:http://www.iste.org/Content/NavigationMenu/NETS/ForTeachers/
2008Standards/NETS_T_Standards_Final.pdf