Class Reflection #6

Friday I had the opportunity to go to the library with my class and watch the librarian use the Smart Board. It was interesting to see how the students responded to it. It seemed like the students were more engaged because they wanted a turn to write the answer on the board. She also read the class a book using the camera projector. This was the first time I've been able to see how these things work in a classroom setting.

SMART board presentation

Here is the link to my SMART board presentation. The NETS in this activity are: II,IV,VI. For this presentation I prepared by walking through the project on my own, and testing out the links to make sure they worked. Turns out one of the links did not work so I changed it to one that does. I also wanted to make sure I knew where all the correct tools were to use my presentation.

As a class we will read the question at the top of each page, then I will ask for a volunteer to come up and choose the correct answer. This will involve drawing a shape around the correct answer, moving a check mark to the correct answer or writing the correct answer in. Learning will be assessed when we talk about which answer was correct and why. The only change I made to this project was the broken link. This will make it better for my students because they will now be able to see an actual picture rather than just read the broken link name.

It was good to be able to do my presentation in front of the class and see everyone else's presentations too. I was able to see things that worked well and that the class liked along with some potential snags. It seems a big problem that kept occurring was making sure the board was centered, also several people including myself had problems dragging things across the board. I guess it becomes more natural the more you do it with your class, but it just doesn't seem like the easiest thing to use. Also a lot of the time if you are using it, you are standing in front of it and have the projection on your face which is distracting. I think if I were to use it in my classroom I would always control it from the computer, but let the kids come up and touch it.

Dare to Dream Classroom Technology

I read the blog Dare to Dream. This blog was written by a woman named Barbara who is an administrator in a Pre-k through 8th grade school in Los Angeles. On her entryNo Longer Content to Surf the Top of the Waves She talks about using video games in class which she describes as an "incredible tool for deepening the student thinking and learning." She says she used the video games in 6th grade social studies during her lesson on ancient civilizations. they looked at "SimCity, SimSocetiy and finally decided on CivRome, which starts with the early development of city-states as a means to deepen the students understanding about building cities. Suddenly the students were no just reading about the choices others had made but they were planning and making choices." this got me excited to be in her class just reading about it.

In another post called Instant Messaging for Class Makes Student Thinking Transparent she talks about using instant messaging in class. She sets up a group chat with for the students and herself to participate in. the students are able to chat with each other online which is valuable for several reasons 1. you have a transcript of what the students are thinking 2. the classroom is completely silent. 3. she can input advice whenever she wants and make sure the students are on the right track before it is too late. what a great idea!

Web 2.0 in the classroom

I found a lot of interesting sites today in class. One of them is a great tool that can be used in the classroom called assign a day. Through this web page you can creat a calendar with assignments on it for students to view. It is free which is great, and I think it will help the students to have an interactive visual that they can use for their homework assignments. It is also a great tool for parents who want to see what their child should be doing for homework. Another webpage that was really fun was willowweb. This is the website for Willowdale Elementary school which has radio for kids by kids on the site. It even has radio from other countries. It is a great way for kids to listen to other kids and even participate in recordning thier own radio podcast. Another site I found was called Ta da. This site is an easy to do list that can be great to use either by yourself as a teacher or for your students so that they can see what assignements will be due next.

Class reflection # 5

Last week at Chain Lake we made Valentines holders for Valentines day. It was a lot of fun. Parent helpers came in and we broke up into small groups. I was in charge of making sure my group got their holders made correctly. I loved being able to work one on one with the students, meeting the parents, and looking at the final results. I had a group of all boys and was afraid they would not listen to me, but they were great listeners and thier holders turned out great!

Class Reflection # 4 Google talk/ Skype

Google Talk/ Skype are other great ways to incorporate technology into the classroom. With the use of these you can make free calls to anyone over the internet. This would be a great thing to use if you wanted to interview someone in class who could not take the time to fly all the way out, like an author for instance, or you could use it for fun, like using it for show and tell. Either way I will use this in my classroom.

Class Reflection #3 Smart Board

I remember last year in my math class my professor used the Smart board on a regular basis. I think the Smart board can be effective, but in that class I feel like it was more of a distraction than anything. I remember there were a lot of problems getting it to do what you wanted and the set up time was so long that he lost the attention of everyone. In that class I vowed never to use the Smart board in my class because it was not an effective learning tool and it looked big and akward. Now that I have seen more of the things the Smart Board can do I am more excited about using it in my classroom, but I think I will only use it on special occasions for special lesson plans, not on a daily basis.

Class Reflection #2

I am observing in a third grade classroom, I've been going once a week for about 5 weeks now. It is really fun to be helping out with the class. Last week I had the opportunity to help out in the first grade class. When I came in the students were drawing pictures for thier friends. One of the little girls was drawing a dress and she told me she wanted to be a fashion designer when she grew up. While I think being a fashion designer would be fun too, it made me kind of sad that children in first grade are already so focused on image and beauty. I hope that when I am a teacher I can help them see the things that really matter in life.

Assignment #2

1. Class Activities- It is important that in an elementary school classroom you are not always lecturing the children. They are full of energy and long to get up and do something. I looked for websites that had fun learning games and activities for kids to participate in, to make learning fun! The website Classroom Activities was loaded with good resources. A great resource they had was the link to a web page called Ask A Geologist where students are able to email their questions to a geologist who will write back to them. I could use this in a geography lesson. Another great resource this website had was a link to the Web Museum where students can look at famous artwork online. I would use this for an art lesson.

2. Advice For New Teachers- I am new at teaching and therefore do not know everything about the field. I think it is important to get as much advice as possible from people who have already walked down the road so that you don't make the same mistakes someone else already did. People on these sites have some good ideas and advice on how to make things more efficient. Some good advice I found was from Ten Tips for New Teachers, they suggest sending a thank you letter to everyone at your cooperating school. I did not think of that before but it's a good idea and I'll definitely be doing it. Some other good advice is from Teacher Tested Tips that has good ideas for how to give class jobs as well as what kinds of jobs to use.

3. Fund-Raising- Schools always need more money. Honestly I'm looking forward to fund raising with my class. The more money you earn the more field trips you can go on, the more projects you can do, if there are kids in your class that can't afford everything, you can provide for them, and you can buy special rewards for you class once in a while. You could even donate the money you raise to a person or organization in need. Fund raising is no longer selling cookies door to door, there are so many fund raising activities that can teach the students to work together and help out in the community. A good idea from Top Ten Fundraising Ideas is to sell potted flowers, they say to buy them from a nursery, but I think it would be more fun to have the children grow them in class, that way we could make a science lesson out of it as well. A second idea from that website is called a community Fingerprint-a-thon. I had never heard of this before but evidently you can have the chamber of commerce sponsor you , the kids do all the work and when it's done you can make 10-15 thousand dollars!! More information at The Kid Safe Network.

4. Science Experiments- Science is my favorite subject so I look forward to doing a lot of experiments in my classroom. I think hands on experiments are very important for students to retain information and the more creative am, the more likely my students are to catch my enthusiasm for science. An experiment from Agricultural Experiments suggests comparing the amount of vitamin C in fruit. I could also tie that into a health lesson. Another experiment that sounds like fun is from Home Experiments it's called exploring acids and bases with red cabbage. I could use this experiment for a health or science class as well.

5. Classroom Management- It is extremely important to know how to manage your class. If you do not have techniques for how to keep a controlled class atmosphere, you will quickly loose control altogether. The site Simple Rewards, Amazing Results had some great ideas for free rewards for children who behave. For instance you could reward them with a special inside lunch, a longer recess or a special seat. A good idea from Practical Classroom Tips for Teachers is setting up a point system where each period is worth 20 points if you have to remind your students to be quiet you subtract 5 points, but if they are quiet on their own you give them 5 points.

How I could use the SMART board

I thought what we did in class was a great idea for how I could use the SMART board in my classroom. I could make my own or use one of the pre-made templates so that the children in my class could count camels for instance, and put them into piles, or add fruit and vegetables. The great thing about the SMART board is how interactive it is. instead of looking at a picture with 3 apples and 6 bannanas they can actually move the apples and bananas into piles and count them up as they move them.