Month: February 2024

Bingo Assessment

What is it? Bingo assessment is a play-off of the original bingo game but instead changed to fit curricular goals. There are two primary ways to play bingo and use it as an assessment. The first, classic bingo has students mark off on their sheet when they hear, see, etc. the required action, once they have a line they yell bingo, and the game can then be restarted or continued to 2 lines, and blackout. Teachers can use this type by using it as a tool for students to be actively listening, keyword searches, and matching games.

The second form of bingo teachers can use is much more effective in the classroom, students are to fill their sheet by using their classmates. Instead of the classic game students are to ask their friends for the information they need. to tick a space students have to find a friend whose “birthday is in January”, “Can tell you what a metaphor is”, or “Can tell you a character from _____”. By using this second form of bingo, students will be engaged and perform better than when using classic assessment strategies (tests, presentations, etc). This is because the students will be excited to play in the bingo game as well as being able to work with their classmates to find success. By Assessing students through gamification and co-operative learning the success of the students will be greatly improved.

Kaldarova, Bolganay, et al. “Applying Game-Based Learning to a Primary School Class in Computer Science Terminology Learning.” Frontiers in Education, vol. 8, 3 Feb. 2023, https://doi.org/10.3389/feduc.2023.1100275.

Herrmann, Kim J. “The Impact of Cooperative Learning on Student Engagement: Results from an Intervention.” Active Learning in Higher Education, vol. 14, no. 3, 12 Sept. 2013, pp. 175–187, https://doi.org/10.1177/1469787413498035.

How will I use it? In my classroom, I plan to use bingo and other gamification and cooperative assessment tools when appropriate. By ensuring the use of these ideas the students will be excited and engaged, but if I use gamification all the time I risk losing this engagement and insufficient data to report on students learning. While most students will benefit from this tool there are always students who could express their learning in a better way by using a different strategy and it is important to give this to them. That is why I will limit my use of this tool to find where students are in their learning and then plan my future lessons using this information. This keeps the games, games, and not the ultimate decider on how a student performs.

Student Reporting Policy

Proficiency scale: The Proficiency scale in British Columbia is divided into four sections: Emerging, developing, Proficient, and Extending. Emerging means the student has shown improvement compared to the curriculum but does not so consistently. Developing is when the student has a strong base of understanding of the curricular outcome but is still building upon a few key points. Proficient students fully understand the curricular outcome and can express that knowledge. Extending is when the student shows a higher understanding of the curricular outcome showing a deeper understanding of the complexity of the topic.

Frequency of reporting: Students are to receive 5 written reports from the teacher throughout the year. There are 4 learning updates throughout the year, two being informal and two being formal. Informal reporting is the chance to share with students what might come up on their report card and what to work on to improve their report kid, this is to remove suprises from the students. These informal reports don’t include a grade and are informative feedback. The two formal reports are report cards, which include grades and informative feedback from the teachers, including what the student learned, where they excelled, where they can make improvements, and how others can support them. The 5th report is a summary of learning which is provided at the end of the year.

Example of an Extending report card comment for English Language Arts:

In this term our big idea was how language and text can be a source of creativity and joy, focusing on forms, functions, and genres of texts as well as different reading, writing, metacognition, and oral language strategies. During this term, Remi showed many of his strengths. Remi,

• Creatively, personally, and meaningfully responds to text.
• Continues to use different types of thinking skills to understand the text you are reading.
• Moving forward continue work on your spelling, grammar, punctuation, and sentence structure, take the time to reflect on your writing, look for where you can make improvements, and of course continue reading.
• I will support you by creating more peer feedback opportunities in our classroom so we can all learn from each other; I still encourage you to ask questions and look into sentence and writing structures that you are unfamiliar with.

Lesson #1

To start lesson #1 in the library, the students were creating mini graphic novels after two or three pre-generated images. The students had some funny and cool ideas that they were able to create. While creating these mini graphic novels the students were expected to create a title, use some sort of literary device, and create a coherent story, while some students were distracted by their friends for parts most students were interested and having fun creating their stories. This was the morning class so allowing the students to chat a little, have some fun, and still complete content is a great way to start the day. The students also had a chance to exchange their library books with their large selection. Afterward, we went back to the classroom and did a short morning meeting before the students began creating a review on one of their peer’s products they had made the days leading up. Students had access to computers and were tasked with creating an honest review with critical feedback on their partner’s product. This classroom was busy but this activity had students engaged and wanting to create a review on their friend’s product, the students were excited to share what they had created and that is what’s most important.

Big idea: Language and text can be a source of creativity and joy

Content: Techniques of persuasion

Curricular competencies: Respond to text in personal, creative, and critical ways

Lesson #2

Lesson #2 began the same way the first did as students were getting closer to completing their mini graphic novels. After students had completed exchanging books and were given a chance to create their work the students went back to the class, completed a morning meeting, and started a new unit on fairy tales. The teacher shared some basic information on fairy tales and fractured fairy tales and asked the class what they knew about fairy tales. The teacher then read them a fractured fairy tale of the three little pigs from the wolf’s perspective, I had never seen a storybook used in a higher grade and was unsure of how students would engage during one, I was surprised, all the students (except for two who were separated and then became engaged in the story) went quite and listened throughout the entire book. The students and teacher then started brainstorming on what elements create a fairy tale, writing these ideas on the board. The students had great input and were able to identify the key points of a fairy tale.

Big idea: Exploring stories and other texts helps us understand ourselves and make connections to others and to the world

Content: Forms, functions, and genres of text

Curricular competencies: Recognize and appreciate how different features, forms, and genres of texts reflect various purposes, audiences, and messages.

Lesson #3

This day began in the library and the students had a chance to finish their mini graphic novels, the library teacher wrote the expectations on the board and asked for students to make sure they had ticked off all the boxes. The students exchanged their library books and headed back to class. After a short morning meeting the students began creating a fairy tale of their own. They were given a template to fill out asking about the setting, characters, and other ideas relating to fairy tales. The students worked in pairs and after filling in their template they could begin their story. The teacher provided them with fairy tale starters, including some from different parts of the world like Africa and Asia. The students enjoyed this and came up with some fun and unique ideas.

Big idea: Language and text can be a source of creativity and joy

Content: Story/text, forms, functions, and genres of text

Curricular competencies: Transform ideas and information to create original texts

Effectivness

Using a story vine as a way for students to connect to a book is a very effective tool to promote literacy and understanding. Students will be asked to reflect on what is important in the book and decide on what should be included in their vine. Using a story vine makes students reflect deeper upon the text then they would in a normal situation, to complete the vine they must decipher the meaning and important parts of the text. To aid in this provinding students with a story board or some organizational tool will help them pick what is important and what does not need to be refrenced.

A story vine is a pice of wool, braided where students create and attach artifacts that resemble meaning in the corrosponding story. Students can create these artifacts using a variety of supplies. By doing this project in pairs more understanding of the book can be brought out, students will be able to bounce and share ideas off of one another. Their are so many benifits and reasons using story vines in the classroom is a good idea, Marlene Mckay states in her book Story Vines and Readers Theatre that by using story vines one will develop many skills such as: a sense of story structure, comprehension skills, vocabulary, fluency, oral language, memory skills, meaningful connections, and much much more.

My experinece

For my story vine on the Paper Bag Princess By Robert Munsch i started off brainstorming with my partner Lauren, together we cam up with some greate ideas to represent what we felt was important to the story.

First, I decided on what yarn I wanted to use, I choose the most colorful as it well just stood out to me. With the help of my peers I was bale to braid my yarn into a “Vine”. Then I started to create my artifacts represneting the story. To create them I used beads, glue, coloured pens, and cardboard; I cut out the shape I would want, Coloured it the colour I needed, and added any beads where it wouldd help create texture. I then attached them onto my vine in corrosponding order to create my first ever story vine.

This experince showed me how effective a story vine can be in the classroom. By doing this project I was forced to reread the book, to analyze parts of it and decide what I thought were the most influential parts of the book. After completing the stroy vine i now have a deeper and richer understanding of The paper bag princess, below are the artifacts i created and the reasons I thought each was important.

1: The first artifact I used was a princess dress, I cut out a piece of cardboard, drew on it and then added beads before attaching it to my vine. The dress is meant to resemble the paper bag princess, who is a rich girl who lives in a castle and is about to mary a prince.

2: My second artifact was the dragon who burned her castle down, he becomes an imprtant charecter for the rest of the book as he is the antagonsit. To create the dragon I cut out a outline using a green stickey note and added red scales to make it look like the dragon in the story

3: The third object I used was the door, here is where the princess confronts the dragon and begins to outwit him to try to save her prince. To do this she asked the dragon blow as big of a flame as he can, and to fly around the world as fast as he can. These flames are my 4th object while the world is my 5th one.

6: the last and most important object in my vine is the paper bag dress. After the princess tires out the dragon she is able to free her prince, but he is not to nice to her afterwards, so instead of returning to her fancy princess dress ways she accepts the title of “the paper bag princess”. By using htis as the last artifact and her original dress as the first I hope to show the growth she has made through the story, accepting unmaterialistic things, and accepting who you truly are.

My Experience using Magic School AI

After creating my account on magic school the first thing I noticed was how many diffrent options their were, ranging from creating a joke to creating a whole unit plan. With over 70 AI tools their was so much to try and see what could help me. The tool that stood out to me first was the “Students Work Feedback”, I was amazed how this was a tool they offered as I did not think AI was far enough to do something like this. I did not get to try it as I didnt have any students work on me but once I have some from my practicum class I will be intrested to try it.

The first tool I tried was the professional email one, I asked it to create an email to a co worker about an upcoming bake sale, asking if they would be willing to bake. While the email sounded and was great it would definitly not be how I would write it. While this tool could be helpful in the future without being able to personalize an AI to my writing I do not think I would use this tool.

Following this I used the text generator tool and asked it to create a one page paper on the building of the Trans-Canada railroad and the following Chinese head tax for grade 6, shown below:

The Trans Canada Railroad, also known as the Canadian Pacific Railway (CPR), is a historic railway that spans across Canada. It played a crucial role in connecting the east and west coasts of the country, opening up new opportunities for trade and transportation. However, the construction of this railroad came at a great cost for one specific group: the Chinese immigrants who worked on it.

The idea of building a transcontinental railroad was first proposed in the 1870s as a way to unite the vast expanse of Canada. The Canadian government saw this as an opportunity to assert their control over the western territories and stimulate economic growth.

To fulfill this ambitious plan, a considerable workforce was required. Thousands of laborers were hired, and among them were Chinese immigrants, who were known for their hard work and willingness to take on challenging tasks. These Chinese workers played a significant role in the construction of the Trans Canada Railroad.

However, the Chinese immigrants faced numerous hardships and discrimination during this time. One key issue was the implementation of the Chinese Head Tax. The Head Tax was a fee imposed on Chinese immigrants entering Canada, and it was specifically targeted at discouraging Chinese immigration.

The Chinese Head Tax was first introduced in 1885, initially set at $50, a significant amount of money at that time. The tax was later increased to $100 in 1900 and again to $500 in 1903. These substantial fees were a way to limit the number of Chinese immigrants coming to Canada and to discriminate against the Chinese community.

Despite the discrimination they faced, the Chinese workers persevered and played a vital role in the construction of the Trans Canada Railroad. They worked under extremely harsh conditions, enduring long hours and dangerous environments. Many lost their lives due to accidents or illnesses during the construction process.

The completion of the Trans Canada Railroad in 1885 marked a pivotal moment in Canadian history. It brought prosperity and economic growth to the country, facilitating the transportation of goods and people from coast to coast. However, it is important to acknowledge the unfair treatment and hardships endured by the Chinese workers who made this possible.

In 1923, the Canadian government implemented the Chinese Immigration Act, also known as the Chinese Exclusion Act, which banned almost all forms of Chinese immigration to Canada. This legislation further marginalized the Chinese community and reinforced the discrimination they faced.

It wasn’t until 2006, more than a century after the completion of the Trans Canada Railroad, that the Canadian government issued an official apology for the Head Tax and Exclusion Act. This apology recognized the injustices imposed on the Chinese immigrants and aimed to promote reconciliation and understanding.

Today, the Trans Canada Railroad stands as a symbol of unity and national pride for Canada. It serves as a reminder of the perseverance and contributions of the Chinese workers, who played a crucial role in shaping the nation’s history despite the challenges they faced.

Magic School AI

I choose this topic as I thought it might struggle in a senetive topic such as this. After fact cheking the text I thought it was pretty good, finding text to supoort my teaching can sometimes be hard to find and time consuming to make. I think to most effectively use this tool being very specific and adding the key points and facts that it adds to the text can help make it more specified for my class.

Students of today have access to more information quicker then ever, they are watching videos all the time that are exciting and engaging. To have my students engaged I have to make sure my lessons are exciting. Thats why I was excited to try Beautiful AI, a google slides creater, by using slides, powerpoint, canva, etc. in my classroom i can create more exciting lessons that more reflect what they are seeing on the internet. Fun transitions, colours, animations, and other techniques are key to keep them excited about whats coming next. By using an AI tool this task can be much easier, I again asked the AI tool to make a slide on the Trans-Canada railroad and Chinese head tax but was a diapointed with how it came out.

I think in the future this tool could be very helpful in creating exciting and engaging lessons but at the moment I do not see it doing that meaning I wont be using it at the moment.

Ethical Issues of AI: Slave labour

According to this TIME News article, Chat GPT used less than 2$ an hour labour in kenya to reduce the use of racism, sexism, xenophobic, and violent the AI used. The article discusses the very little known amount of how AI is available to so many already stating that for AI being an efficiency tool but at the same time requiring large amounts of human labour, which is being contracted out to the cheapest labour. With so much new technology coming from all sectors our governments have been to slow to create proper regulations, with the speed of AI’s development proper regulations for fair worker compensations, data privacy, and other issues will have to be placed to prove this tools use in our futures.