Learning as a Transmedial, Multifaceted Experience
My use of different media in the classroom is primarily to provide multiple entry-points for comprehension and engagement and exit-points for demonstrating competency. What I mean by that is that in a class of thirty students, you are going to have thirty different people with different ways of understanding the world. I need to teach the essay because that is one representation of understanding that is assessed at the provincial level, but that is not the only way to demonstrate understanding. I need to present print-based text to my students because that is the nature of the exams with outcomes that determine their futures, but that is not the only way that people present and share information.
For those reasons, I use multiple media approaches in my teaching practice while still teaching conventional skills/content when there is a specific reason for doing so, not because that is the only or even the best way.
For those reasons, I use multiple media approaches in my teaching practice while still teaching conventional skills/content when there is a specific reason for doing so, not because that is the only or even the best way.
Visualizing Bruno's Observations in The Boy in the Striped Pajamas
This is a lesson from a novel study that I did with my English 10 class. I knew at the beginning that I wanted the focus of this novel study to be the relationship between Bruno and the setting of the novel, "Outwith"/Auschwitz. This is one of the earlier lessons that I taught in the novel study where I asked the students to draw a picture of Bruno's point of view of the setting of the novel and choose three specific examples from the novel that they referenced in their illustrations.
Click here to see my lesson plan and my reflection on its effectiveness.
Click here to see my lesson plan and my reflection on its effectiveness.
Character Relationships in Buffy the Vampire Slayer and The Outsiders (Junior English)
This would be an assignment I would like to give to an junior English class (likely English 8). While examining the relationships between Darry and Ponyboy in the novel, I think it would be helpful and interesting for students to look at other examples of similar character relationships in different stories and platforms. In this example, this would be one of a series of lessons that explores the relationship between Darry and Ponyboy (from The Outsiders) and compared it to the relationship between Buffy and Dawn (from Season 5 of the TV series, Buffy the Vampire Slayer).
Click here to see the lesson plan for this lesson.
Click here to see the lesson plan for this lesson.
E-Portfolio Project Using Weebly (Career-Life Education/Career-Life Connections)
This is a project that I assigned my Career-Life Education class. Because of my familiarity with the platform, I introduced Weebly to my students as a tool that they could use to begin building a professional digital profile. In their portfolio design, students were required to use some rudimentary elements of website design (titles, subtitles, image/text placement, and hyperlinks), and the content itself would include a wide variety of information about how the students viewed themselves as learners as well as career and educational choices they would pursue when they finish high school
Click here to see the overview of the project and my reflection on its effectiveness.