Stephanie Hill

Reading Reflection 3

The “Big Idea”  is a concept that has a several components that are discussed in chapter three.  When working with other teachers one should consider asking themselves “what do these add up to” in relation to curriculum standards.  Each grade level has a different level of standards and it is important to think about why each concept is important and why we actually need this standard when teaching our students.  An example that I thought was of importance was on page 46 about taking physical science education to the next level.  It is important to challenge students and allow them to work with real-life situations, such as burning wood for fuel.  Also, I agree that when students feel like their experiments or projects actually do something for the community; they are more likely to put effort and care about what they are doing.

                Students will also gain 21^st century skills such as being able to apply, analyze, evaluate and create; all of which will allow students to think beyond subject mastery.

                Continuing,  students will also gain 21^st literacies.  Some of these skills that students will gain are inventive thinking,  effective communication, and high productivity.  Each of these higher level skills will benefit students in their future careers and allow them to not just learn the material but take these skills into their futures.  When students practice literacy in this way, they learn to work rely on themselves, become intentional and sincerely try to work for their futures.

                                Another concept that was discussed in chapter three was the essential learning functions.  There are eight essential learning functions cause students to further their knowledge.  To begin, the first essential learning function is ubiquity, which means that students are given the opportunity to learn at all times of their day.  Thus, children can learn when they do not even realize they are learning such as through an Ipad or MP3 player.  The next essential learning function is deep learning.  Deep learning refers to students not just finding typical websites but digging deeper and having to work through a website with difficult layers and understanding. The third essential learning function is making things visible and discussable, which allows students not just to look at a map but understand what the map is telling them and be able to think about what they are looking at.   The fourth essential learning function is expressing ourselves, sharing ideas and building community.  This function refers to students using their similar interests to work together as one, such as MySpace.  The fifth essential learning function is collaboration-teaching and learning with others.   I think that this function is very useful because it allows us to come together to listen to each others ideas and opinions  which allows us to be open minded.  The sixth essential learning function is research, which in my own terms means helping students make sense of what they are trying to find, such as being able to narrow down their topic and be more specific when they look up information on the web.  The seventh essential learning functino is project management: Planning and organization.  Although the seventh essential learning function is obvious to many of us as teachers, it is one of the most significant parts of the our job.  We need to find an organizational system that works for us and master it.  The final essential learning function is reflection and iteration, which encourages students to reflection on their previous thoughts or new thoughts they may have on a topic.  Reflecting on ones ideas helps us grow as learners.

                Reflection and iteration highly relates to my project because as a group we must reflect upon what we could fix about our time management (for example) each time we meet, reflection on how we worked together that week and reflection our strengths and weaknesses.