Peer Observations

Part two of your assignment is to observe and videotape a lesson (from 10-30 minutes, approx.) of one of your colleagues. After you've been in each other's room to do this, set up a time to meet to discuss the following questions:

• To what extent were your students actively engaged in their learning? How do you know?
• What was your intended objective for this lesson? Did your students meet this objective? How do you know?
• What were specific procedures and teaching strategies you used in the lesson to support student learning? Why did you choose these procedures and strategies?
• How did you ensure fairness, equity, and access for all students?
• How would students apply the information from this lesson to their worlds outside the classroom?

Let Neil or Matt know if you need us to cover your class while you are observing your partner's class. We will follow up on this work in December.

After you've completed your observations and have discussed them with your partner, please post comments about the experience on this section of our blog.

Enjoy the experience!

Iowa Core Curriculum: EC Q&A

Congratulations! You've posted some great questions in regard to the Iowa Core Curriculum. Good job! Now you get to answer those questions. Why? Simply because this is relatively new for all of us and there's a plethora of information out there on the ICC. It's quite possible that some of the answers to those questions will not only require us as educators to think outside the box, they are also going to require us to learn outside the box and ultimately to teach outside the box. We can do this! AND we can make it worth doing!

• Please start your post by listing the members of your group.
• Then list all 3 of your questions, followed by your group's response.

You can do this with a concise written summary via the blog OR by more creative (outside the box) ways such as linking a video, pdf, power point, doc, url, picture, etc...

It should not be necessary to complete this assignment outside of the school day. Collaboration is the key! Have fun with it!