I was involved in one PLC while I was on my placement. In the PLC’s that we did in our classes, it consisted of my peers giving an oral presentation that I could not really focus on. It was one person talking for about 15 minutes while the rest were supposed to follow along while nothing to look at. I was dreading going to another PLC where I could not focus or follow along and risked being embarrassed in front of teachers that I had been trying to impress for the past 3 weeks.
I was thoroughly surprised by what I experienced. The PLC was on using the inquiry method in the new Social Studies curriculum. It started off the principal started with a speech about the new social studies curriculum. This PLC was for the junior teachers only. We got grouped by grade and discussed what the different teachers were doing in social studies and how we were using the inquiry process. It started this great discussion on how different people interpret the inquiry process and apply it in their classroom. The PLC ended with the different teachers discussing how they use the inquiry method. The interesting point was the grade 8 teachers spoke to the grade 7 teachers about how the inquiry method change when entering grade 8 and how they could adapt their methods in order to help students succeed in grade 8. Similar things happened with the grade 7 and 6 teachers. It really help teachers construct ideas about inquiry based teaching in order to help students succeed.
The above example is also an example of a PLN which is a Personal Learning Network. The teachers that were a little weaker when it comes to social studies were able to converse and learn from their colleagues. This one session was more helpful with teaching me the inquiry method than anything I have learned in teachers college so far. Throwing ideas around with colleagues is a great idea to discover new teaching strategies.
Those teachers also became part of my PLE (Personal and Professional Learning Environment). I will always have my AT as a source of knowledge that I can go to when I have a question. The picture above is a program that we were shown this week called Symbaloo. It is a program that allows you to create “tiles” that goes to websites that are part of my Learning Environment. My learning environment consisted of true educational websites to social media sites. I felt like the connections that are made through social media are as important as the information gathered from reading any information on any education website. I loved this week’s activity because it made me think and do research to expand my learning environment. Of course there are things that I was unable to input, such as family, friends, colleagues and mentors. It was a great activity to really learn how large my learning environment is even though I am not even a teacher yet.
I was thoroughly surprised by what I experienced. The PLC was on using the inquiry method in the new Social Studies curriculum. It started off the principal started with a speech about the new social studies curriculum. This PLC was for the junior teachers only. We got grouped by grade and discussed what the different teachers were doing in social studies and how we were using the inquiry process. It started this great discussion on how different people interpret the inquiry process and apply it in their classroom. The PLC ended with the different teachers discussing how they use the inquiry method. The interesting point was the grade 8 teachers spoke to the grade 7 teachers about how the inquiry method change when entering grade 8 and how they could adapt their methods in order to help students succeed in grade 8. Similar things happened with the grade 7 and 6 teachers. It really help teachers construct ideas about inquiry based teaching in order to help students succeed.
The above example is also an example of a PLN which is a Personal Learning Network. The teachers that were a little weaker when it comes to social studies were able to converse and learn from their colleagues. This one session was more helpful with teaching me the inquiry method than anything I have learned in teachers college so far. Throwing ideas around with colleagues is a great idea to discover new teaching strategies.
Those teachers also became part of my PLE (Personal and Professional Learning Environment). I will always have my AT as a source of knowledge that I can go to when I have a question. The picture above is a program that we were shown this week called Symbaloo. It is a program that allows you to create “tiles” that goes to websites that are part of my Learning Environment. My learning environment consisted of true educational websites to social media sites. I felt like the connections that are made through social media are as important as the information gathered from reading any information on any education website. I loved this week’s activity because it made me think and do research to expand my learning environment. Of course there are things that I was unable to input, such as family, friends, colleagues and mentors. It was a great activity to really learn how large my learning environment is even though I am not even a teacher yet.