Kate's Take

Context and objectives:  7th grade language arts students are working on communication standards.  This lesson will be cross-curricular and students will engage with a variety of media related to campaign ads from another city or country from years prior.  After analyzing the persuasive measure of the media and the campaign literature, they will develop their own campaign where they will work to get their "candidate" elected by demonstrating attributes and strengths and presenting the "candidate" in the best light possible.  "Candidates" will be candy bars, and after students all present their "candidates," an election will be held.   Learning Outcome: Students actively engage in listening, discussing, and presenting ideas using text and other sources of evidence to drive and demonstrate their thoughts. Standards:  7.CC.4 Analyze the main ideas and supporting details presented in diverse media and formats (e.g., visually, quantitatively, orally),...

    This week’s readings were all about comparisons.   First, Fisher et al. discussed how the pandemic seems like the first time that online learning was used for many, it really has been used for years in the wake of other areas of crisis (2020).   Hurricane Katrina, wildfires in California, and other localized disasters have created need to have an option to learn online for students.   This poses an interesting situation, as the family becomes more of a role in education than ever before (Fisher et al., 2020).   Teachers need to keep the focus on information that students don’t already know, the topics that parents and guardians can’t teach on their own, and include social and emotional interventions (Fisher et al., 2020).   It was also mentioned that there was opportunity to learn from the previous iterations of online learning, but that simply it didn’t happen – the goals were to get things back to normal and not to improve upon online or fa...