Friday, August 9, 2013
in
IN
1. Bio Poem
I hope you enjoy learning a bit about me! I am going to try to use this and a Wordle as a getting to know you activity with my class this year.
2. Graphic Organizer
This is a graphic organizer that I use when describing characters at the beginning of a book. They will use this information to then write a paragraph about a the character using the words they choose to describe them. Early in the year I will have them do this with a partner and also combine ideas. They will do a graphic organizer on friendship then one on a specific character in the story. Using the two graphic organizers, they write a paragraph describing how those traits make that character a good friend (in Charlotte's Web).
3. Websites
There are a ton of websites available as resources for teachers. I included a few that I thought might be new to some and left off some of the more popular ones that teachers know about. I have used many of these websites before and I am excited to use the new ones that I discovered in class.
4. Book Trailer
I enjoyed making the book trailer using Animoto. I think the class would love using Animoto to describe characters or even chapters in the book!! I could envision teams working together on certain chapters then watching them all together! I can also see using it to describe a place the kids when on vacation as a beginning of the year activity.
5.Lesson Plan Cover Letter
6. Lesson Plan
IN
In Class Portfolio
1. Bio Poem
I hope you enjoy learning a bit about me! I am going to try to use this and a Wordle as a getting to know you activity with my class this year.
2. Graphic Organizer
This is a graphic organizer that I use when describing characters at the beginning of a book. They will use this information to then write a paragraph about a the character using the words they choose to describe them. Early in the year I will have them do this with a partner and also combine ideas. They will do a graphic organizer on friendship then one on a specific character in the story. Using the two graphic organizers, they write a paragraph describing how those traits make that character a good friend (in Charlotte's Web).
3. Websites
There are a ton of websites available as resources for teachers. I included a few that I thought might be new to some and left off some of the more popular ones that teachers know about. I have used many of these websites before and I am excited to use the new ones that I discovered in class.
4. Book Trailer
I enjoyed making the book trailer using Animoto. I think the class would love using Animoto to describe characters or even chapters in the book!! I could envision teams working together on certain chapters then watching them all together! I can also see using it to describe a place the kids when on vacation as a beginning of the year activity.
5.Lesson Plan Cover Letter
6. Lesson Plan
Website List for Teachers
Websites
- Student resources, Teacher resources
- Category: Students
- Grade level: K-3
- Subject Area: Reading and Listening Comprehension
- This is a great website where real actors read children’s stories. With headphones this could be a great listening/comprehension activity or a great whole class read aloud. This is a great site that kids can use at home as well. It is also available on youtube. http://www.youtube.com/StorylineOnline
- Student Interactive Learning Site
- Category: Students
- Grade level: K-6
- Subject Area: Mostly math games, a few vocab and geography games
- This is a great website that kids can use on their own to practice math skills. They choose the grade level and the area that they want to focus on.
- Student Interactive Learning Site
- Category: Students
- Grade level: 3-4
- Subject Area: Social Studies
- This is an interactive website where the student gets to be President for the day. They get to choose their activity and then learn a fact about the activity that they choose. It is a great way to learn about the Presidents!
- Teacher recources
- Category: Teachers
- Grade level: K-4
- Subject Area: Graphic Organizers
- This is a great website from Houghton Mifflin on different graphic organizers. There are over 30 graphic organizers created for you ranging from clocks to KWL charts to spider maps. A great handy resource.
Proteacher
- Teacher resources
- Category: Teachers
- Grade Level: K-4
- Subject Area: Teacher ideas
- This is a great website to go to for teacher ideas and advice. It is separated by categories and provides a ton of information ranging from bulletin board ideas, tips for new teachers, end of year activties and seasonal ideas.
- Student Interactive Learning
- Category: Students
- Grade Level: K-12
- Subject Area: All subjects
- This is a great website where students can pick the topic they would like to work on. There are geography, language arts, science and math games to name a few. You can focus on one area for the students to explore during center time. For example, if it is during social studies, they can choose the state game to sharpen their skills.
- Student resource
- Category: Students
- Grade Level: K-4
- Subject Area: Poetry, Language Arts
- This website allows students to plug in words to create poems. This is a good resource when just beginning a poetry unit to have the class become comfortable with creating poems. They can also be quite humourous!
- Student resource, Student Interactive Learning
- Category: Students
- Grade Level: 3rd grade
- Subject Area: Science
- Students learn about simple machines in a fun way! They interact with the website to find and name simple machines. This could be used with brainpop as part of your simple machine unit.
- Teacher lesson plans
- Category: Teachers
- Grade Level: K-5
- Subject Area: All subjects
- This is a great website filled with free lesson plans for all subjects. They also have printable worksheets, thematic units, sections on bulletin boards, seasonal ideas, teacher resources etc. On the front page they have a calendar that has important dates. For example, an authors birthday or an important event, some are fun to share with the class.
- Teacher lesson plans
- Category: Teachers
- Grade Level: K-12
- Subject Area: All subjects
- A detailed listing of lesson plans covering all subjects. The lesson plans are free and broken down by grade level. There are other great topics including top 20 bulletin boards and printables. A great website to scope out.
Thursday, August 8, 2013
Live dialogue
https://docs.google.com/document/d/1Lb49vzdUioQvKw5npejoFdk3lDr7NdDc-9d1bUIsj3s/edit?usp=sharing
Wednesday, August 7, 2013
Too Dumb for Complex Texts
The last paragraph of this article summarizes the thesis and makes a strong statement. Do you agree or disagree and why?
I agree with the author that we need to make time to disconnect from the internet and dedicate to reading complex text. Students are easily distracted when they have their smartphones at their side. If they are attemtping to read complex text and they receive a text, they will become distracted and disengaged from the complex text.
It is important to carve out time in our schedule to model reading. A common practice in elementary schools is DEAR reading which means drop everything and read. This is an uninterrupted time in the school day where the class reads silently. The teacher should model how this is done by explaining to the class that everything else is put away, with only their book on the desk, no bathroom visits or questions.
I also believe it is imperative to teach the class how to read complex texts. Students need to be taught the skills needed to understand how to tackle complex texts. They need to be taught to slow down, read carefully and sometimes re-read the text for understanding. They need to be taught higher level thinking skills and put them to the test. This is a challenge to teachers due to the expectation of kids to have everything done quickly. Students are used to the quick response from the internet or a text, so slowing down to read difficult material is hard for the students to grasp.
The article indicates that this needs to be done more at the high school level, but I think it should start in the elementary schools. Higher level thinking skills can be taught at a young age and continue to be taught as the children grow and begin to read harder texts. I also believe it is important to discuss the need to unplug with parents and stress the importance of reading complex text. In my district we have "unplug" nights one a month. On these nights we do not assign homework and we encourage family time with no electronics being used for the night. The kids are excited to come to school to share what they did on unplug night, ranging from being read to or playing board games to taking a walk. There is value in unplugging not just to read complex text, but to learn to slow down and enjoy those around you in conversation.
I agree with the author that we need to make time to disconnect from the internet and dedicate to reading complex text. Students are easily distracted when they have their smartphones at their side. If they are attemtping to read complex text and they receive a text, they will become distracted and disengaged from the complex text.
It is important to carve out time in our schedule to model reading. A common practice in elementary schools is DEAR reading which means drop everything and read. This is an uninterrupted time in the school day where the class reads silently. The teacher should model how this is done by explaining to the class that everything else is put away, with only their book on the desk, no bathroom visits or questions.
I also believe it is imperative to teach the class how to read complex texts. Students need to be taught the skills needed to understand how to tackle complex texts. They need to be taught to slow down, read carefully and sometimes re-read the text for understanding. They need to be taught higher level thinking skills and put them to the test. This is a challenge to teachers due to the expectation of kids to have everything done quickly. Students are used to the quick response from the internet or a text, so slowing down to read difficult material is hard for the students to grasp.
The article indicates that this needs to be done more at the high school level, but I think it should start in the elementary schools. Higher level thinking skills can be taught at a young age and continue to be taught as the children grow and begin to read harder texts. I also believe it is important to discuss the need to unplug with parents and stress the importance of reading complex text. In my district we have "unplug" nights one a month. On these nights we do not assign homework and we encourage family time with no electronics being used for the night. The kids are excited to come to school to share what they did on unplug night, ranging from being read to or playing board games to taking a walk. There is value in unplugging not just to read complex text, but to learn to slow down and enjoy those around you in conversation.
Tuesday, August 6, 2013
Our Brains Extended
How could we rethink our K-12 curriculum for the 21st century, symbiotically combining human strengths with the most powerful technology strengths?
I think one of the biggest things schools need today to combine human strengths and technology strengths is more teacher training on technology tools. At my school we have smartboards but we have never been properly trained on how to use them. I use my smartboard daily for my math lessons. The math program we use in Swampscott incorporates a daily smartboard lesson that is aligned with the lesson of the day. I also will use interactive websites such as storylineonline, brainpop and various lessons on the smartboard exchange. However, I feel with more training I could utilize the smartboard more effectively. I am sure there are things that the smartboard is capable of that I do not even know about!
Another way I think we need to use technology and human strengths is through connecting and sharing with others. Students today are at an advantage with tools such as youtube, skype and blogging. Students can post something on youtube and the item has potential to be viewed around the world. Youtube and teacher tube also have great videos and lessons that tie into the curriculum. This past year when I was teaching a math lesson, I found a great song on youtube that helped the class differentiate between area and perimeter. The tune was so catchy that the kids were singing it all day long and requesting to watch it multiple times! We found a great video on shapes as well that caught on the same way. Bringing real life experiences, by using a pop song to help the kids learn the difference was fun and exciting to the class. It was different from a math book lesson and the kids really loved it. Anytime you can incorporate something that the kids can relate to, helps them to remember it and it fosters a sense of excitement.
Skype is another fun tool that could be incorporated in many ways. A class could skype with another school as part of a project or with someone sharing information. For example, we could skype with a local lobsterman or historian when learning about our Swampscott unit. We took many walking field trips around town to see historic sights, but skyping with some of the people we didn’t get to meet from town would have been exciting for the class.
Another way to incorporate technology is by keeping a class blog. After our field trips, I could post the pictures onto the blog and have the kids comment on their favorite part of the field trip on the blog. This could be a fun homework assignment, and something that includes the family by having the blog accessible.
Lastly, incorporating lessons on teaching the class on how to use the internet, how to research properly and how to think critically will aid the students in maximizing their time spent on these various tasks online.
Monday, August 5, 2013
Technology Autobiography-blog assignment
I was born back in 1973, before Ipods, Ipads and Iphones! To communicate we would have to call each other from our houses! If you weren't home, then whoever was trying to reach you, just had to call back and try again later. Back in my day, there were no cell phones! Once you left the house, there was no other way to communicate. Sometimes I think those were easier times!! Today people can reach us no matter where we are!
When I was young I was one of four siblings! We had a busy household. We had one rotary telephone on the wall in the kitchen. I still remember that blue phone to this day! My sister would walk around while talking on the phone and inevitably get the cord wrapped around the lamp, and the next thing you would hear was CRASH! My sister broke at least three lamps and the stories still get told to this day!!!
With only one phone, you had to patiently await your turn to use it! If you were waiting for a call, you had to wait until the phone was free! There was no call waiting until I was in high school. Even when we finally did get call waiting, I think half the time I wouldn't get the message of who called!!! That's what happens when you are the youngest sibling!!! I believe I was in high school when we got our first cordless phone. That was a day to remember! My parents gave us the lecture on not dropping it because it was a luxury and they were afraid we would break it. The day we got call waiting was a day that you could hear cheers in the neighborhood! We still only had one phone, but the fact that we could receive a call while someone was on it was a big deal!!
We also only had one T.V. Being the youngest meant I didn't get to watch what I wanted very often! But as I get older, I appreciate the fact that with one T.V., that meant the family spent more time together in the same room. I still remember all being huddled in front of the T.V. when the space shuttle crashed in 1986. Today, most families have multiple TV’s with everyone in different rooms watching different shows!
We also didn't have email! We actually wrote letters to friends who didn't live nearby. We even had pen pals in school! We would keep in touch with another school through letter writing! Today if you ask a young child what a pen pal is, they most likely wouldn't know!!!
Back in college, a few of my friends got pagers! It didn't mean the person would call back right away, because they needed to be near a phone, but it was a step forward in technology! I got my first cell phone when I graduated college back in 1996. It was gigantic!! It was a flip phone and supposed to be used for emergencies only.
When I was in college we had a typewriter, which is how I typed all my papers. We used the library and encyclopedias to research projects. I didn’t get my first computer until I was married in 2001.
Times have changed and we now have four TVs, one landline phone (which never gets used), two laptops and a cell phone. I am still amazed at how much my Iphone does and how small it is! I am hoping to add an Apple laptop and an Ipad to the mix eventually! It is hard to believe how we ever survived without these modern day conveniences!
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