Moving on to 5th Grade

Considering it is three days till the end of the school year, it is time for me to share my news.  I have been asked to teach 5th grade English Language Arts and Math next year, in addition to Integrated Technology to 3rd-6th graders.  I am so excited!  I've already created a website for my class, to be known as ILM, which stands for Intensive Language and Math, and means "knowledge" in Arabic.  Pretty cool, huh?

The website is still a work in progress.  I'm not ready to share it yet, so that will be something to look forward to!

Mrs. Diaz

Week 12

http://questgarden.com/124/13/8/110420113448/

This is the link to my draft web quest.  I would appreciate some feedback on my rubric.  Also if you see any gaping grammatical errors please let me know!  Or if you notice I need something that I overlooked...

I thought this assignment was simple to do ~ it just took a lot of time to think it out and find the references I wanted. What worries me is that when I think something worth 400 points is simple,  that's most likely because I forgot something or didn't go far enough in depth.  I had the same problem in Loretta and Tim's summer class over the "tech manual" assignment...  I wish I had gotten some feedback on that one, cause I missed the boat on that assignment!

This is just a draft.  I plan to play with it for a week until it is due next Saturday.  I have not scored it myself yet. I will do that next week as well.

Thanks!

week 11

This week I am finishing the rest of my planning, task, and storyboard.  I am on spring break next week so I plan to do the creation on Monday and Tuesday.  I have also been working on my Web 2.0 lesson plan and reflection for the past two weeks and that project will end on Thursday.  I feel confident about the WQ and I don't have any concerns at this point.  I am looking at a cohort friend's WQ today and I'm sure I will want feedback on mine before I turn it in and more importantly, before my students use it.  My idea for my task is the discovery of a remote island and my students are to analyze the local government and compare/contrast it to our local Irvine government.  The process is performance based so students will have to find information about about Irvine to complete the task.  I have not decided how to have them display what they learned but it will probably be a visual display or graphic organizer (venn diagram).

Week 10

My goal this week is to look up and select the Social Studies standards that correlate with my local government.  After I do that, I plan to design the "introduction" and "task".  I already have some resources preselected and highlighted on a previous blog, but I expect I may want to add to it. 

I wonder if you are allowed to create your own resources and place them on the web. Then have students look at that as part of your process?  I would think so, although that would take more time and planning and may not be the most efficient way of doing this project...

I like the idea of using Ben's Guide to Government as another resource.  I would like about 4-5 resources for the students to work through to complete their task.

Week Nine Post

Hi again!

Here are some resources I am looking at for my WQ. I have no idea where this will actually go but I am starting to collect websites.

http://www.cityofirvine.org/cityhall/cs/animalcare/pet_licensing.asp  Information about license requirements for dogs.

http://www.cityofirvine.org/cityhall/cs/animalcare/local_animal_resources.asp  Pet sitting, obedience resources

http://www.placentia.org/index.aspx?NID=353 This site is interesting because this current mayor of placentia was elected at 19 yrs old.  My teaching partner knows him and he likes to come to schools to tell kids they can make a difference at any age.  Don't know how this will come up in the WQ but he is an inspiration.

http://www.placentia.org/index.aspx?NID=353 This site has pdf files of facts about different kinds of wild animals found in OC.

http://www.cityofirvine.org/ipd/divisions/animalservices/fledglings.asp  What to do if you find a baby bird in your community.

http://www.cityofirvine.org/ipd/divisions/dispatch/911_dispatch.asp  History of police dispatch.

http://www.cityofirvine.org/civica/filebank/blobdload.asp?BlobID=9079  Bicycle safety

http://www.cityofirvine.org/about/history.asp History of Irvine

Week Eight Post

So I just now realized that I may have missed a blog deadline... Oops!  That is what happens when you get too far ahead.  I thought I had already taken care of it! I actually have covered most of the content in my first posting, but I am going to add a little bit below to cover all my bases!

So my understanding of this project is that it is worth a large amount of my grade in this class and so I need to spend a lot of time on this project and make sure it meets the criteria in the syllabus.  I also understand that a good WQ will be inquiry based.  I've been previewing the course documents and reading the resources there.  I also did a search to come up with some WQ examples.  I also checked out the student samples.  One of the links wasn't working at the time I checked it a couple of weeks ago.

I am working on this project by myself, but my teaching partner (who is not in our class) wants to be involved in its creation since we are going to use it later this year.  We are going to focus on local government and the city of Irvine.  I believe the city of Irvine website is going to provide lots of resources.  I know for sure there are some great links to animal control out there, so perhaps a task about how to get a pet a license can be part of the task the students must complete.

Other than that, I need to start looking for and saving my websites.

That's all for now!

Professional Learning Community

Hi Edel friends!

Just got Back from a PDA for Blended Learning on Monday. My head is swimming with great ideas that really extended what we are learning here in this class. If you want to join a professional learning network follow me on twitter @jendeeaz.

Hope to see you there.