I have taken 3 classes during Spring term. Those classes were, Reflective Practice, Curriculum Planning & Assessment, and then UDL Disability Studies.
For Reflective Practice, we were required to begin this blog. Here, we completed projects, observations, and reflections. We were able to think about how we practice, what we value within education, and what we can do to become better educators. I learned a lot throughout this course. I was able to reflect on how I want to teach, what I could do better, and how to critically think through lessons. One of my favorite assignments from this course was an observation I was able to do in two different classrooms. This was a great learning experience for me as it showed me how effective being organized is for student involvement and classroom management. One of the more challenging aspects of this course was simply that I am not currently teaching full time and so some of the assignments were more difficult to complete in a way that I felt they should be.
For the Curriculum Planning & Assessment course, we did several readings of various articles and a few chapters from different assessment and planning books. Most of this course was participation in discussions by answering questions from the readings but more so, being able to discuss how we would use those ideas within our own practice and classrooms. Our final project was to create a unit with at least 3 lessons and a rubric in order to grade those lessons. This was broken up into different parts so that we could get feedback as we developed our unit. I have taken a course similar to this one in my secondary education studies and so, even though it took some time to complete assignments, they did not feel overly difficult. I enjoyed having a refresher on creating lessons as well as a full unit. I will be creating my own or adapting a curriculum that has been used in the past with the job I will be beginning in August, so having that refresher before I will be creating more lessons was good to have. I will definitely be implementing everything from this course in the near future.
The third course was the UDL Disabilities Studies class. This class focused on learning what Universal Design for Learning is and how to use it effectively in the classroom. Using UDL creates an environment where all students can learn effectively in the classroom. We were able to learn how to begin to implement the ideas and how to use them so that all of our students whether they have a disability or not can be learning. This class also focused on disabilities and accessibility in the classroom. For this class, we read the book, Design and deliver : planning and teaching using universal design for learning. We also read a minimum of three articles a week from a padlet source that our professor put together. In it was a variety of articles on disability, ableism, advocacy, and accessibility. I really enjoyed this course. It had a lot of good ideas, relevant information, and spoke on a subject that I am really passionate about. Making sure all of our students have access to their learning is vital and something I strive to make sure I am doing everything I can to make sure every student is able to learn in my classroom.
Smoke and Mirrors : Art Teacher as Magician (3rd ed., Vol. 66). (2013).
We read pages 9-15 from this book. This book covered stated that student art was created in 3 stages. The pledge - the motivational set, the turn which was project execution, and the prestige - the final bow. This author likened student art creation to magic from a magician. The article states that it is important to keep the magic in art creation and to focus on student experimentation and play. It was a great 7 page read to remember to keep play an active part of student learning.
Nelson, L. L. (2014). Design and deliver : planning and teaching using universal design for learning. In Paul H. Brookes eBooks. https://ci.nii.ac.jp/ncid/BB19171429
We read the entire book. This book went through what Universal Design for learning is, how to engage every student, different kinds of diversity and representation, action and expression of teaching and learning, and finally how to set up a learning environment that all students can learn in and how to incorporate universal design into your lessons. I really enjoyed this book because it broke down the information in ways that was very understandable. Each chapter gave additional information and examples on how it all can be incorporated into the classroom so it was easy to see how we would be able to use universal design in any kind of classroom.
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