ARTIFACT 1

This is a photo of my students playing Thumb Ball. The game is played with a soccer
ball, on which small questions are written on the ball’s stitched hexagons, questions
like: “Sweet snack or a salty snack?”, “Who do you admire?”, “High fives or hugs?”, and
“What scares you?” The ball is tossed across the circle, and when it’s caught, that
person reads and answers the question their right thumb is touching. One of my
students recently told me, “I love learning stuff about people that I didn’t know.” All in
one, the game mixes action, chance, speed, and connection into something the
students love to play. In this way, playing Thumb Ball supports Standard 3: Learning
Environments because students are learning about each other, listening, and creating a
safe space for students to be themselves, which makes it easier for them to learn.
Thumb Ball has changed my understanding of creating positive social interaction
because I can largely let the ball do the facilitation itself, which allows me to be more of
a participant, so in a way this games has helped me understand that I need to model
positive social interaction in order to expect it from students. In the future, I’d like to
have multiple Thumb Balls to have more questions. Additionally, I’d like to look for more
opportunities to model positive social interaction and engagement for students.
ARTIFACT 2

In a unit about the writing process, students practiced revision strategies by first revising
their letters to the editor with a revision tool that I taught them. After they had the
chance to revise their letter using the tool, and after I had an opportunity to check their
work to see that they were using the tool correctly, I had them pair up and work together
to revise each others letters using the tool. In this way, this revision activity supports
Standard 3: Learning Development because students were involved in individual and
collaborative revising. Many of the students offered great revisions to their partner, and I
have to think that this was due, in part, to the practice they had revising their own letter
first. In the past, I have had students jump straight into peer revision, and I’ve always
had mixed results. Changing the order to individual revision first and peer revision
second seems to have yielded better results, perhaps because the students had slightly
more experience revising by the time they got to their peer’s letter. So I’ve learned that
perhaps students need to practice new skills individually before I can expect them to
use them effectively in a collaborative setting. In the future, I will continue to try out this
method of individual learning and practice first, followed by more collaborative tasks.