Orange+CIG+Group+Individual+Meetings

Minutes of individual Meetings December 2009, January 2010

Since the Orange CIG group worked on individual lines of inquiry under our umbrella wondering; in the month of December 2009 and early January 2010 they were interviewed by the group facilitator individually. Minutes from these individual meetings prepared by Cory Wilkerson, facilitator are below:

- Diane Ader Diane and I met by telephone in January and discussed the outline and goals she had created for her inquiry which centers around the use of technology to engage all learners. She intends to research the use of technology in a music classroom to see which technologies would work for her classes. She has outlined several goals in addition to her research including experimenting with rearranging her classroom to facilitate technology use, writing technology into her curriculum as she prepares the music curriculum required by her principal, researching and implementing software for use in teaching. During our meeting we talked about the ways that Diane could utilize SAS while preparing her curriculum, ways to incorporate all four standards and ways she will measure and document student progress. Diane will attempt to implement surveys with her students as well as journaling her findiings. She will also contact Jamie Kasper for SAS training and for curriculum planning advice.

- Jackie Cavey Jackie and I met by telephone conference in December to discuss her line of inquiry. Jackie will be looking at strategies to help her students become more independent learners in order to engage them in the learning. Jackie will begin by revisiting small group projects. She has used them in the past with mixed success so her first strategy will be to make the groups smaller. Next she will begin to focus on other strategies for making each student more responsible for their own learning. Currently her students are working on research reports in small groups. Tentative plans include using Skype to share these reports with Lorraine's classroom- another teacher in the project. Jackie feels very comfortable with her topic and feels that it will work very well in her classroom. She notes that her principal checks in now and then on her progress and is pleased. She further notes that this is one of the few professional development classes where she has found resources, ideas and materials she can actually use.

- Jessica Higbee Jessica and I met by telephone conference in early January when our Skype connection kept failing. Jessica intends to work on strategies for dealing with an ADHD student in several of her classes. We talked about the ways in which she could broaden the inquiry a bit to include strategies for all learners no matter what special challenges. Jessica has begun her inquiry by meeting with the learning support teacher. In addition I referred Jackie to the keyarts wiki special needs resources. We discussed strategies for her student including a student contract. Jessica will keep data by journaling and observing, trying one strategy at a time and noting the results. In addition we planned a site visit, during which I will have a chance to observe the student in question and offer some ideas. At the time of our discussion Jessica noted that she is worried that her inquiry is too specific and is feeling a bit stuck. We will discuss further during my site visit.

- Joe Andria Joe and I met by Skype in December to discuss his line of inquiry. Joe is focusing on the impact of classroom management strategies on engaging all learners. He noted that this project is challenging him to identify and utilize strategies that will improve his teaching throughout the year. Joe has noted that he tends to lose students towards the end of class- he is also seeking strategies for working with sectionals so that all students are engaged in learning while he works individually with one section of his chorus at a time. Joe shared that he has identified resources to help him with his inquiry- two teachers in his district and a former college professor- as well as books and internet sites. Joe intends to keep student surveys, a journal and possibly other forms of data. He feels that he will be able to observe and record both attitudinal change (more confidence in their singing) and aptitude change (a noticeably improved sound as measured by student and teacher performance critique) Joe and I discussed the structure of his classes and I tried to help him brainstorm ways to include all four PA standards his work despite the needed emphasis on performance. I suggested that students might critique themselves and discuss their own work as an aesthetic line of inquiry. In addition we discussed the possibility of Joe preparing small group assignments or work sheets that would center around historical and cultural connections to his music that could be used during his sectional work as independent assignments. We further brainstormed engaging students with easy to find technology- cell phones. Perhaps students could be asked to find and play their parts on their cell phone? This of course could become problematic, especially in large groups. I promised to send Joe links to cell phones in the curriculum.

- Lorraine Kelly Lorraine will be looking at independent learning strategies to see if helping her students become more responsible for their learning will better engage them with the material. Lorraine started her inquiry by searching for descriptions of independent learners- what are the qualities of an independent learner? She noted that last year she combined visual arts with video technology to engage her students under the Arts Educator 2.0 project. She noted that all of her students cited the work that she did last year with Arts Educator 2.0 as very effective. She wants to build on this and bring the kids out more- connect them with visual arts and allow them other ways to show their learning other than simply pencil and paper tasks which are difficult for some of her students who struggle with the literacy skills of reading and writing. She noted that last year her students discovered that creating their own videos was a form of writing- they were able to express themselves in video essays inspired by a visual work of art. She wants to build on this to create independent learners that move away from needing directed instruction. We discussed the ways in which she could focus on her teaching strategies rather than particular content and the need to focus on the process rather than curriculum. Lorraine has tentative plans to connect with Jackie via Skype to share some student work.

- Tracey Gilpin Tracey and I met by Skype to review her line of inquiry in early January. Tracey will be looking at how the use of art therapy techniques can engage her students. She wants to implement a more holistic approach to her teaching. Tracey will be consulting online resources, other arts teachers, videos, textbooks and Arts Educator 2.0 faculty member Camille Nischal for resources. She has also contacted experts at California University and Mercyhurst College for information and resources. She intends to document her work through written responses from her students, filmed work samples and verbal responses, photos of student work and journaling. Tracey is finding that this inquiry is helping her connect her work with Life Skills students and her visual arts work- which she describes as a metamorphosis. She currently makes use of extensive differentiated instruction techniques to allow her to meet each student where they are, and she looks forward to building on this with art therapy strategies. We discussed the ways in which Tracey can formalize her reflections and the process of refining lessons so that she can collect data and document the effectiveness of the strategies she will use.