Project #10

Blog Post #12

C4T Summary #3

The teacher I was assigned to is Mr. Ken Halla, a history teacher in high school. His first post really interested me because it was a great way to engage students in the lesson you are about to teach at the beginning of class. It really caught my attention because we were just talking about better ways to engage students in the classroom. He said in his colleagues class, the teacher told the students to tweet him the biggest hurdle facing George Washington when he started his presidential term. This allowed students to be engaged before the lesson even begins and they are using Twitter which is a great PLN. I commented on his post and told him why this post interested me so much and that I would have to pass it along to my class.

Mr. Halla's second post was very short. He said many people do not think about the woman who have served in the wars and that they are overlooked. He then gave a website to show the occupations some woman had and said that this particular website would help you to properly teach about them. I commented and said that I am guilty of overlooking the women in the past and will have to check this website out.

Here is the site:

Women in the Civil War

Blog Post #11

Of course throughout this class we have learned the advantages of technology use in the classroom. In Back to the Future, by Brian Crosby, he gives some pretty scary statistics about second language students and how it is difficult for them to learn our language. It is scary to think about teaching kids who are from a different country and only knowing the language of which they were born into. Watching Mr. Crosby use technology such as blogging, wiki, and other online tools helped them be able to explore the countries and listen to that of their native language while also learning the English language. This was a very clever idea that I would definitely pick up if I was to ever teach a second language student.

Another key thing that I have learned from taking this class is that engaging your students is very important. When trying to get kids to have fun while learning it is important to engage them and get them excited about what it is they are about to do. It also makes it easier on you as a teacher and much more enjoyable for the students. In Making Thinking Visible, Mr. Church gets his students to create headlines about what they are about to learn and after they learn the topic in more depth, they are able to go back and change their headline and explain why they would change it. This allows the students to think ahead and then research the topic and go back and change their headline based on what further information they found out. Also in Sam Pane 4th Grade, Mr. Pane engaged his students to create a superhero to protect and help keep out bullies and hackers on the internet. He engaged them by quoting the movie Spiderman and then had them discuss in groups internet safety. This allowed the students to get excited about the project they were about to do while still learning the different things they need to be aware of on the internet.

We have learned a great deal about Project Based Learning this semester in class. PBL is a great way to keep students interested and be able to work collaboratively on projects that have to do with the subject they are learning. In the video Project Based Learning, that word engage is used again. Clearly it is very important to engage your students before they actually start a project. In this video there are 3 classes that are blended together into one big class (History, English, and Computer). A lot more is able to be accomplished and students are able to work on their work by having more time and improving their skills on PBL.

Overall from these videos I learned that engaging your students is very important. Above I have stated the many ways engaging your students can be successful for your classroom. It draws them in and actually makes them want to be there and learn. It makes them think outside the box and look further for information about the particular topic they are learning.

Project 14 PBL Learning Plan #2

For project 14, we created a lesson plan for second grade English and Language Arts. Each students will be assigned a partner, and after discussing lessons on types of stories, characters, main points, and characteristics, as well as reading Officer Buckle and Gloria, each group will make a Prezi presentation. In their presentation, they must include a summary, pictures, and details about the characters, among other things.



Lesson Plan

Calendar

Rubric

Checklist

Project #12 Smart Board Part A

C4K Summary for October

Katelynn was the first kid I was assigned to for the month of October. She blogged about a picture that her friend Alice painted for her using her favorite color blue. She told Alice that is was the best paining she has ever seen. I told Katelynn that I also liked the painting and that I love the color blue as well. I told her how nice it was for her to compliment Alice the way she did.

The second kid I was assigned to was Riley M. Riley blogged about things she didn't like. She said that she didn't like how teachers made her blog and she wished she could just blog on her own when she felt like it. Along with that, she didn't like not being able to pick what was on the lunch menu or how you couldn't play more sports at recess. The last thing she said was that she didn't like working with people that weren't her friends on group assignments. I commented and told her that I too wish we could have picked what was on the lunch menu at school and play more sports in gym class. I told her how we were assigned random groups for classes, but that some of the people can turn out to be your friends if you just get to know them. Last but not least I wished her luck on her blogs and told her it's not so bad.

The third student I was assigned to was Zachary who is in first grade. Zachary posted that he liked to play with Jacob at school. I commented and told him that I was from Alabama and I too like to play with friends at school.

My last student was Finau from New Zealand. He blogged about the ways you can answer a multiple choice question. He said you should read the question, solve the problem, choose the answer and if it's not correct you can start again. I commented and told him that another way you could answer the question would be to mark out the answers that are least likely to be correct and don't make sense. Just a helpful tip!