Course Reflection

Collaboration
Throughout this course, I have learned a lot about collaboration, both through our course
readings and through my own personal experiences in this class. By reading about the different
types of learning we can have our future students do, such as service learning or problem-based
learning, I have seen that collaboration is key for many of them. Students are often split into
groups to work on a large project or address a problem that is important to them. They learn how
to work together effectively so that they have good time-management, communicate well about
their plans and goals, split up the work fairly, and create a quality product that shows their
learning. I went through this process with my group throughout the breaker and maker education
projects. We had to collaborate throughout the entire process, and I saw that it made the project
go by much more smoothly when we had good cooperation. I hope to promote good
collaborative learning in my future classroom.

Social-Emotional Factors
The learning environment is greatly affected by social-emotional factors. From the
activities and readings we have done in this class, I think the most important one is students’
motivation to learn and complete the assignments at hand. When students are motivated to
succeed, they will be more self-sufficient and will approach education with curiosity and interest.
They will work hard and will be more proud of the work they have done. One way to foster
motivation in students is to study topics that are relevant and interesting to them. For example,
letting them do a project on a career that they are interested in or a project based on a place or
resource in the community that they are familiar with. You can also foster motivation by giving a
real-world context to what the students are doing. For example, they could present their final
product to relevant community members. By creating a positive social-emotional environment in
your classroom, your students will be more motivated and will feel accepted in the classroom.

Mathematics
One thing that actually surprised me a little bit is how much mathematics comes into play
in the innovative classroom. For breaker and maker education, there are lots of measurements
that need to be taken. For many types of learning, especially problem-based and service learning,
there is math involved in the statistics that students will learn about or take into account when
working on these projects. They can gain experience working with percentages and diagrams
such as pie charts and bar graphs. Students will also learn about money during many of these
projects, by calculating their material costs or doing a project that aims to save community
resources and money. There is also math involved in the time-management of all these projects,
as students need to keep track of time to make sure they will be able to finish everything by the
end of the unit. It’s very beneficial for students to do these types of projects with mathematics
weaved into them because they get experience working with math in different contexts.
Low Socio-Economic Status Backgrounds
Innovative teaching methods can greatly help students from low socio-economic status
backgrounds, whether this is just some students in your class or if the school is located in a
low-income area. Having students do project-based learning impacts these students by showing
them that they can make a difference in their community. Throughout these innovative projects,
they improve their collaboration, problem solving skills, creativity, and resilience. They also stay
engaged and create a final product that they are proud of at the end. Having opportunities to do
project-based learning helps students improve in their reading and social studies skills. This will
help them gain proficiency in many content areas so that they can continue to succeed
throughout their educational journey.

Thinking Routines
Throughout this class, we have been exposed to many different visual thinking strategies
that we can use in our future classrooms. Using these thinking routines can affect student
learning in a number of ways. Firstly, they help students identify what they know and how they
have grown throughout the unit. Next, they can prompt students to make connections between
past and current lessons, as well as across content areas. They also can create excitement about
learning as students share their ideas in small groups or as a class. Thinking routines can also
impact our teaching. By doing visual thinking strategies with our students, we can use them as a
type of formal assessment to see what concepts our students have a strong understanding of and
what things we might need to review with them. I am glad we have seen so many different visual
thinking strategies that we can use with our students in the future.

Personal Growth
I have grown from this class in my creativity, problem solving, and critical thinking
abilities. One artifact that shows this growth is the pencil dispenser that my group made for the
maker education project. I feel that during this project, I grew a lot in my creativity because I
was challenged to think outside the box and imagine how we could take a laser printer and turn it
into something entirely different. I had to solve problems throughout the process by helping to
test our model and adjust it to work better. I also had to think critically about our ideas and assess
which ones were more likely to work. Another artifact that shows my growth in this class is my
final VTS for the class, which was the explanation game. It shows how I have learned to think
creatively about grading and the types of assignments I plan to give my future students. I believe
my problem solving skills are evident because I was able to find connections between the main
ideas and also connect them to maker education. Finally, it shows my critical thinking because
after completing the reading I had to think about shortcomings in the article and generate new or
alternative ideas that could be added. (My artifacts are attached after this reflection document).
Suggestions For Course Improvement
I think this course was very valuable because it has given us the opportunity to learn
about lots of innovative teaching methods. We can use these in the future to help our students
learn while developing 21st century skills. One idea I have for how we could develop this
knowledge further is that we could practice coming up with ideas for each teaching method. This
could be incorporated into the small presentations that we do each class session over the readings
and videos that we had for homework. For example, when each group shares what they have
learned about place-based learning, they could also share an idea of where they might take their
students and what they could do for a place-based learning opportunity. Another idea I have for
course improvement is that the visual thinking strategies could be incorporated into the breaker
and maker education projects to help connect all the course content. We could use a VTS while
we generate ideas for the project or to organize our thoughts about content standards relevant to
our project.