Pre-conference record for Janet Walters and Peter Baron
Janet as the Teacher and Peter as the Coach
April 15 –
Janet E. Walters writes:
Attached are my goals
for the 2nd lesson. Please make comments
or suggestions about ways to improve. Remember
those questioning strategies that must reflect compliments!
Peter's Preconference Comments are in blue; Janet’s are in red.
(1) compose an essay in which they discuss the value of owning a
pet
This sounds like fun. Are these still your ESL students?
Do they all have pets? or do you have some you can
loan out?
These students are fourth-grade students in the
elementary school; they are not my students.
I visited the classroom and asked them to bring me snapshots of their
pets. I got several pictures, and I have
gone back and shown them the web page I created. They were astonished when I told them the
whole world could see the pictures of their pets if they shared the web
site. At least 12 students wanted to
know if it was too late to bring a photo.
(2) import a picture of a pet from
a web page
Adding images lends so much life to an essay. Do you
already have the web page built of the samples? I can send you some.
http://www.itasca.k12.tx.us/jwalters/pets.htm
(3) create a table in Word in
which they list the students in the class and the number of pets they have
This could cross over into math if you want to find
things like mean, median and mode. You could even have a picture table, so
instead of a number there would be three little kitties next to Maria's name.
What fun!!!
(4) create a graph that shows the
distribution of pets the students own.
Would this be a histogram showing a visual representation
of the number of horses and goldfish and such?
I think the graph will be a simple pie or bar graph
created with the Wizard in Excel. The
teacher has no knowledge of Excel, so I don't want to scare her off.
The students have never imported a graphic into a
word-processing document, and they have no experience with tables or graphs
Tables are great. When they see how well they can place
things on a page using tables they will love this lesson. Will you show them
how to make the borders disappear?
I will have 1 1/2 hours to teach them how to make a table
and to format it and to help each one do it.
I will have
to play this by ear.
The lesson will take several class periods.
And they'll have fun the whole time. Nice lesson, Janet.
Thanks!
In my
pre-conference with the teacher, I have also learned that the students
have never used a floppy; since they will be working in both the lab and their
classroom, saving to a floppy is a necessity, so I will also teach this skill
as part of this lesson.
Pre-conference record for Janet Walters and Peter Baron
Peter as the Teacher and Janet as the Coach
April 15 –
After
looking at Peter’s goals,
Janet E. Walters writes:
I think you have a very
ambitious project planned. Many of the
teachers at
Peter
responds,
Just like
so many things when we deal with teachers, they will complain every second of
the way until their sites are on line, and then they will be happy.
Do you have specific
requirements for the content of the web site?
Teachers
are at liberty to put anything they want that is school appropriate. The class
I teach will leave them with a home page showing their picture and what they
teach, a rules page, an assignments page, and links to several dummy pages.
Will they use a template that is specific for
the school district or will they create their own?
They will
create a Dreamweaver template for use now, but they
can change it as they desire. There is no district requirement for a specific template.
How many teachers will
you be teaching and will you have assistance?
I will be
teaching with my partner, Katie Favara. We have
taught this teacher class in varying stages, several times already in the 2, 3,
and 6 hour versions. There are 12 teachers already signed up for the class.
Do these teachers presently have web sites
created with another program?
No. They
may have a First Class home page, but not a site.
How will you provide followup?
After this
class they can have the Macromedia MX suite loaded on their teaching station,
and I am always available to help. I will periodically check sites to see how
they are doing. Followup classes will be offered in
the Fall.
Do the teachers need any
assistance to upload their changes to their web site or do they have control of
that function?
They
control upload. The way we set it up is to create in a desktop folder, then
drag the replacement pages to their First Class home folder. That replaces the
old page. They have notes showing the names of the dummy linked pages which
they can create with their template.