Lesson Goals and Senteos

I am learning a great deal about the Universal Design for Learning and how it can be used to maximize the learning opportunities for every student in my classroom. This mindset for lesson organization maximizes student choice by strategically implementing differentiation and multiple intelligence theory.

My goal with Universal Design for Learning is to develop better lesson goals. I want to make sure that each of my lesson goals meet the criteria of clearly, concisely and correctly showing students “what should be learned, how it should be learned, and why it should be learned” (Cennamo, Ross, & Ertmer, 2009, p. 121). Incorporated into my goals, I will include the standard of what the students should know and be able to do, plenty of choices on how they can go about meeting the standard, and an opportunity for students to personally connect and engage in the content in a meaningful way. I am beginning to realize that too much of my instruction is didactic, or topic-centered, approach that does not meet the needs of my culturally and intellectually diverse community of learners” (Cennamo, Ross, & Ertmer, 2009). My classroom would function with greater engagement and efficiency if I adopted a more communal, or topic-chaining approach that would permit more students to be engaged with each other and a variety of learning modalities at the same time ” (Cennamo, Ross, & Ertmer, 2009). One technological tool I want to become proficient in using the Senteo Response “clickers” that I have access to in my classroom.

In order to take action on these goals, I will develop a lesson plan template with an emphasis on best practices emphasized by Universal Design for Learning. I will make this template flexible enough for virtually any lesson I teach, but I want to make my lessons more consistent in their organizational flow and their ability to engage more students with more learning modalities on a daily basis. Because our district has a high stakes summative assessment at the end of the semester worth 15% of the student’s grade, I feel like my students need plenty of practice with forced-choice assessment formats (Cennamo, Ross, & Ertmer, 2009) so I will use the response remotes to engage the all of the students in formative test practice and review on a regular basis. This requires me plugging the students names into the computer program, which can be tedious, but the return in student engagement in discussion, understanding, and polling will be well worth it.

I will monitor my progress on these goals by seeing if the Senteo Response remotes work as well as I wanted them to, and by continually adjusting and improving their use in the classroom. As students get practice with them, I could eventually use them as a unit test. I will also ask for student feedback in how I structure the goals of the lesson and how effective the “clicker” are in helping them learn and assess what they know.

If the lesson template I use, and my experience with the Senteo Response works well, I will share my experiences with other teachers, and encourage them to give it a try. As of right know the Senteo remotes are not used very much in our classrooms and seem to be collecting dust in classroom closets. I am looking forward to unleashing the possibility of improved student learning by improving my lesson planning and by incorporating the Senteo technology assessment tools.

Paul

Resources:
Cennamo, K., Ross, J. & Ertmer, P. (2009). Technology Integration for Meaningful Classroom Use: A Standards-Based Approach. (Laureate Education, Inc., Custom ed.). Belmont, CA: Wadsworth, Cengage Learning.