Standard+5

**Standard 5 - Teachers Know How to Manage a Classroom**The teacher uses an understanding of individual and group motivation and behavior to create a learning environment that encourages positive social interaction, active engagement in learning, and self-motivation.

**Evidence 1** Blueprint for a Moodle Site that provides online learning experience.

This blueprint is the layout for a hybrid course that was used by my seventh grade language arts students during a parts of speech unit of study. A hybrid course allows for participants to interact with material both in the classroom and online. It was uploaded to a district provided Moodle site called the Student Learning Community or the SLC.
 * Rationale **

The course was developed in order to give students an opportunity to interact with classroom materials in a social, online environment and was used throughout the 2009-2010 school year. General instruction and face-to-face interaction occurred in the classroom, while students had access to discussions, games, videos, and other links through the SLC wherever there was a computer with an Internet connection. The site provided students a chance to come together in their learning through the use of online discussion and collaboration. It also presented the opportunity to discuss netiquette and online safety; two incredibly important social skills.

As to my development, the creation of this hybrid course gave me the opportunity to experiment with online learning in my own classroom. It supplied me with the chance to witness, firsthand, middle school students interacting with learning materials presented in an online format. I was able to verify what research showed about how Digital Natives learn and how they engage with the learning process. Students were far more likely to access and complete assignments when they were presented in the online learning environment. Furthermore, students who used the online community consistently outperformed their traditionally-instructed peers.

The online learning environment is a complex social environment with its own unique set of skills, rules, and procedures. This experience gave the class an opportunity to explore netiquette and apply what was learned directly to the learning process. At the same time, students were presented with multiple opportunities to discuss and respond to each others’ work, thus providing an opportunity to work efficiently and cooperatively.
 * 5.K.3 The teacher knows how to help people work productively and cooperatively with each other in complex social settings. **

Writing instruction has the potential to be uninteresting. Knowing full well that many students find it both laborious and unexciting, I developed the site in order to enhance student motivation, engagement, and productive work. Realizing that technology can hook the most reluctant learners, I used the online learning environment as a way to augment classroom instruction.
 * 5.S.6 The teacher analyzes the classroom environment and makes decisions and adjustments to enhance social relationships, student motivation and engagement, and productive work. **

The online learning environment represents my commitment to learning and employing new motivational strategies for my students. Based on the research of various experts, I determined a need for relevant instructional strategies that match the development of an adolescent student.
 * 5.D.5 The teacher is committed to continuous development of individual students’ abilities and considers how different motivational strategies are likely to encourage this development for each student. **

Standard 1 / Standard 2 / Standard 3 / Standard 4 / Standard 5 / Standard 6 / Standard 7 / Standard 8 / Standard 9 / Standard 10 / Home