Standard 1

Candidates use all of the following:

1. promote, support, and model creative and innovative thinking and inventiveness.

To support promote, and model creative and innovative thinking and inventiveness I first had to practice this myself. In class I always attempted to think outside the box and try to do activities in a way that allowed for high order thinking in real life application. I did this by allowing open ideas and thought processes in planning and accommodating for and during lesson application.

1. engage students in exploring real-world issues and solving authentic problems using digital tools and resources.

In all of my lesson plans, I really thought of how I could apply the standards to real life situations that the students could relate to. I wanted the students to learn to information but also be able to relate to the lessons in their own life. I think by allowing them to do this, the students will learn the information that much more in depth. I let the students use a classroom blog and the internet to solve authentic problems related to the lesson topic, they could write openly about what we learned about and use their imagination to create stories, letters, and speeches related to the Civil War era. Since we live in a digital world I believe it is important to allow students the responsibility to use technology for their own creative thinking. 

1. promote student reflection using collaborative tools to reveal and clarify students' conceptual understanding and thinking, planning, and creative processes.

During this semester, we were required to reflect back on our time spent in class and grow from it. We also had peer feedback that allowed us to reflect on what worked and what didn't work during teaching lessons. For myself when teaching, I could look back at what I wanted my students to learn, look at their work, and see an overall of what I could improve on by what kind of work they did. In learning, reflecting is an important part of the creative process in order to learn and grow from the experience. After every session I allowed my students to talk about what they did, and why they did it as such with each other. People learn better when it is a social interaction between their peers. It is important to allow for this collaboration in my future endeavors as a teacher in order to reveal and clarify each student's understanding.

1. model collaborative knowledge construction by engaging in learning with students, colleagues, and others in face-to-face and virtual environments.

I think in class we allowed for collaborative knowledge construction by allowing for peer reflection and conversation. We could talk about the lesson of what went good and what I could improve on in the future. It is good to get reflection back from students in order to see what you should do in the future. When I was teaching I created my own example of the work I wanted them to do,  I think this was a good engaging learning experience because it allowed them to see what I wanted from them. I think it also engaged the students with the teacher because I was putting myself in the students shoes for the lesson. By having a blog, I was allowing the students to participate in a virtual environment while still having face-to-face interactions in class.