Week 8 Blog

Hello, friends.

We are almost halfway through. Praise the Lord. This week we have been working on SAMR and TPACK. I had actually never heard of these acronyms before this class. TPACK talks about making the heart of our teaching the combination of technology, pedagogy, and content for the benefit of the student. It is all about making the learning for the connection of the students. SAMR talks about the different levels of technology in a lesson and the process of enhancing that technology. These acronyms are definitely going to be applied to my unit, but they will also be applied in my future classroom.

During my research this week, I found a couple good things to help with literacy and problem solving. I really love the app Toontastic. It allows students to create their own stories, characters, and it even allows them to do a voice-over of their stories. It allows students to work with the beginning, middle, end of stories. It also helps them to understand the attributes of a story such as theme, main message, details, etc. For problem solving, I found a great pdf from readingrockets.org. I will post the link below. It gives strategies for students to solve problems. One of which is a four step process.
1. Understand the question
2. Select a strategy
3. Apply the strategy.
4. Check the answer or work.

This may seem simple to adults, but to children problem solving is not always an easy task. For help in the classroom with this, they suggested that you give students a problem of the day every day. It allows them to first think about the problem and consider the solution, pair up to discuss, and share with their classmates why they think the answer is what it is.

http://www.readingrockets.org/content/pdfs/promoting-problem-solving-skills-in-elementary-mathematics.pdf

I will use both of these in my future classroom. Both of these resources connect to Standard 4: Teachers facilitate learning for their students.

Here is your weekly dose of encouragement and Jesus, guys. In this stressful time, it is important to remember that we can rejoice daily, and give thanks to the Lord because he is worthy. He is worthy no matter the circumstance. I am thankful this week for his sovereignty in my life. I challenge you to find a reason to rejoice and be thankful this week.

Stay strong,

Mallory

Week 7 Blog

Hello, friends.

Week seven has been interesting. It feels as if we are slowing our intake of information and starting to increase our utilization of that information. At the beginning of the semester, it seemed that there was so much information to process, but now we are applying all of our learned knowledge.

This week at Washington Elementary was amazing. I got to read a chapter of Junie B. Jones, play short vowel sound bingo, and help students complete their workbooks for the chapter. We all gathered on the carpet in the floor to read the Junie B. Jones book. I loved being able to read to them because I LOVED those books when I was their age. I also liked helping them figure out the questions in the workbooks. I loved being able to answer their questions and challenge their questions with questions. It gave them an opportunity to think.

During my Teachscape training for EDUC 306, I learned about Vocabulary Development. I learned that students learn more vocabulary indirectly than directly. This was interesting to me because while the reading of novels, passages, and other literacy things are important the majority of a student's vocabulary comes from indirect learning. I think that it is so important to have meaningful conversations with students and answer their questions. I also think it is essential that teachers communicate in ways that students can understand. This often means finding a different way to communicate the same idea. This aligns with Standard 4H. "Teachers Communicate Effectively" If a student cannot understand what you are saying, they will probably not understand the vocabulary word or topic that you are trying to get them to understand. I realized I said something to a second grader that was probably of her head. I rephrased and said it in a different way, and she seemed to connect with that.

For my research this week I have found some great resources.

I am researching how to challenge my students, and I think that starts with some self-reflection. I found this great free graphic on Teachers Pay Teachers. I did not make this!  It allows students to evaluate themselves. It also works on the student's goal setting. When students set goals for themselves, they are more likely to challenge themselves and take responsibility for their learning. This way it is not just me presenting a challenge before them. This is something that I will incorporate into my classroom.

https://www.teacherspayteachers.com/Store/Teachingisagift 

For my literacy research, I found a great website. http://www.footsteps2brilliance.com/ 

This website offers bilingual options for English and Spanish. It allows for great parental involvement, and it offers a range of ages from pre-k- 3rd grade. I thought this would be a great resource for not only school age parents, but for parents of pre-k too. This would be a great thing to have in my classroom. It provides different games, books, and songs for students to enjoy.

For my words of encouragement this week, I have chosen the following picture. I absolutely love old hymns and old gospel songs. One of my all time favorites has to be "It is Well." No matter what is going on in my life I can truly say it is well with my soul. God has saved me and redeemed me, and there is nothing else I could ask for in this life worth more than that. So, with that said, it is well with my soul, friends. I hope your soul is well, too. 

Week 6 Blog

Hello, friends.

I simply cannot believe that we are already in week 6. Time is truly flying by.

This week in SSED 307 we have been focusing on Learning Experiences. it is interesting to me how each learning experience builds toward the final performance task. Learning experiences give teachers and students the opportunity to learn together and see where the learning will need to go next. I look forward to exploring learning tasks that can enhance student learning.

When I walked into my classroom on Tuesday, the students were actually working on a Valentine's Day worksheet. They were supposed to make as many words as they could out of the letters in Valentine's Day. Then, they took a break to get the wiggles out and they went outside for recess. I got to meet a new student in my class, and he was very sweet.

Speaking of sweet, it was Valentine's Day and there was candy and treats GALORE. I remember when I was a young child, enjoying V-day so much. Everyone brought their sweet candies and cards. My students loved being able to give out cards to their friends, and it was a great thing to see them interacting with one another. It is great to see the learning from lessons, but often students learn from their peers, too. It was organized chaos, and I loved EVERY.SINGLE.MINUTE.

For my research this week, I have found some interesting and helpful tools for the classroom.

For literacy, I found the app Bookcreator. It allows students to create their own books to read and share. I think that this is a great way to have students be creative, and they can become authors! It gives students a way to have options as well for their stories and books to be as elaborate or as simple as they would like.

I have also been researching how to challenge my students. I think a neat way for students to also create and explore different avenues of learning is to do a mind map. It is a type of graphic organizer. It would work great for problem solving, and I think it would be valuable in a discussion forum.

The next picture is an example of a mind map. 

I found this great resource from https://litemind.com/what-is-mind-mapping/ 

These two things can help in various ways in my future classroom. I think that they would be helpful to my 21st century learners in a way that they allow them to create. I learned from my Today's Learner project that today's learners love to create and collaborate. Both of these resources could be done in groups or pairs. 

Both of my resources connect to Standard 4 of the NCPTS. They also connect to the sub-standards "Teachers integrate and utilize technology in their classrooms." and "Teachers help students develop critical thinking and problem solving skills." Bookcreator is an app that students could use on an ipad and the mind-mapping could be used for a variety of HOT skills. 

This is not an easy major. Every week we go into schools where students may not receive the love, attention, and care they need. It is our job to love them through those rough times. Be corageous, my friends. It is not easy, but it is worth it. Teaching is not a job for the weak. Be strong and have no fear. The creator of the universe has you right where you are supposed to be. 

Stay encouraged, friends. 

Mallory 

Week 5 Blog

Hello, friends.

This week our class went to Washington Elementary to meet our students. It was a great experience. When I walked in to my assigned class the children were working on math. They used manipulatives and it seemed to really help them grasp the concept of subtracting and adding three digit numbers. I look forward to working with those sweet students. 

In SSED 307, we have been discussing performance tasks. I learned that performance tasks are different from learning experiences. In our unit, the learning experiences are supposed to prepare our students for the performance tasks.

During this week, I continued my research involving technology resources. I actually learned about the website newsela.com. This website allows for differentiation not only in English but in Spanish as well. This will be a great asset to my future classroom when I want to engage students at the appropriate reading level. 

https://newsela.com

I also have been researching activities to include for my students when it comes to higher order thinking skills. Since I also found newsela.com this week, I thought it might be neat to a find HOT skill activity that goes with current events. The questions below invite students to think outside the box. All of these questions will require students to give different answers than their peers.

This will apply directly to my classroom because all my students can continually learn to develop in their HOT skills. I loved these task cards because they could work for a variety of stories and they would be a great way to get the day started.

Under standard three of the North Carolina Professional Teaching Standards, there is a section that states teachers should make learning relevant to students. Both the news website and the current event task cards allow a teacher to bring the world to their classrooms.

I hope you guys have a wonderful weekend.

Be encouraged,

Mallory

Blog Week 4

Hello, friends!

I cannot believe that we are in the fourth week of classes. It feels as if time is flying by. This week in SSED 307 we are working more persistently on our units. We are learning about guiding questions and critical content and skills. Before we talked about guiding questions, I had no idea the level of depth that they include. I learned that there are three levels of guiding questions and they are factual, conceptual, and provocative. The factual questions test the student's basic level of understanding of the topic in question. The conceptual questions allow a higher level of thinking to be involved, and the provocative questions give students a chance to voice their opinion as there is no right or wrong answer. I am excited about using these questions to guide my students into asking thought provoking questions about important issues.

In my outside learning and research this week, I have been looking into technology tools for literacy that can be incorporated into my future classroom. There was a wonderful tool called Get Epic. This is an online library that is free for educators. It has great resources such as articles and book collections. It even has Spanish books. This is a great differentiation tool for teachers with ESL students. I encourage you all to check it out.

https://www.getepic.com/app/ 

I have also been learning about ways to incorporate Higher-Order-Thinking Skills into my future classroom. I found a great article about incorporating technology in lessons to stretch student's minds. I think it is interesting that we have used almost all of these in SSED 307. It talks about using one minute videos, podcasts, infographics, screencasts, and five photo stories, to help students explain and explore their learning. 

https://thejournal.com/articles/2012/09/24/5-mediarich-lesson-ideas-to-encourage-higherorder-thinking.aspx

These both connect to Standard 4 D& E. Teachers integrate and utilize technology in their instruction. Teachers help students develop critical thinking and problem solving skills. Both these tools relate quite nicely to the NCPTS. By having an online library for students, it allows for students to be exposed to technology, and it helps them know its proper use. By expecting students to explain what they have learned it forces them to be creative and think outside the box. I can use both of these tools in my future classroom. 

I love the quote above. Our work matters every day. Take pride and joy in that. 

Stay encouraged friends, 

Mallory