Job Fair

In class today, we had a mock interview. It was such a great opportunity to hear what the "principals" were saying and listening to their questions and their philosophy of teaching. It was a great opportunity to work in our group to develop answers to their questions and analyze their personal philosophy and develop ways we can adjust our classroom to meet their requirements. 

The first question asked was what your philosophy of teaching is?
I focused my philosophy of teaching around each individual child and the importance of creating a safe and accepting environment in the classroom.

The second question asked was what classroom management structure would you use?
I focused on the importance of students being aware of the expectations and rules of the classroom.

What personal attributes do you have that makes you the teacher you are?
I focused on being accepting, excited and being a life long learner myself. Having these attributes indirectly teaches children the importance of them.

I think this was a really important experience. It gives us the opportunity to see what principals are asking and looking for in teacher candidates. It also gives us the opportunity to hear everyone's answer and build on our own answers from that. We had the opportunity to speak about all the different methods of instructions such as direct, inquiry and cooperative and how we would incorporate the lessons into the classroom.

As a group we discussed how we would incorporate technology into the classroom and what are important aspects of technology. We all had different experiences regarding technology to share. It was great to hear everyone's experience so we could use those techniques in the classroom as well. I think technology is a wonderful tool to use in the classroom. It is a very engaging and key component to the classroom.

This opportunity really evolved us all as future teachers and prepared us all for our future interviews. 

Through the Eyes of a Woman

Make a list of famous people through out history....

1) Barack Obama
2) Abraham Lincoln
3) John F Kennedy
4)Donald Trump
5)Bill Clinton
6) Robert E Lee
What do these people have in common?

They are all males!
Can you name one female who contributed to the history of America?
It's hard to think of a lot of them isn't it?! Here is a brief list I came up with.

1) Susan B Anthony
2) Harriot Tubman
3) Eleanor Roosevelt
4) Rosa Parks
5) Michelle Obama

All of these women have impacted the world greatly. We often forget or never learn of these historical figures. In history books there are only very small portions dedicated to women and their accomplishments. We must teach the younger generations all the accomplishments and their influence on history.

I used this video in a past project to display the negative connotation that "like a girl" has. This reminded me a lot of this video and the stereotypes held against women.

Check out this Newsela article. It's great to introduce current event articles into the class!

Have you ever taken a quiz like this?

Have you ever thought of what your philosophy of teaching is? It's a lot to think about and a lot of aspects that contributes to that philosophy. I just took this awesome quiz that breaks down your philosophy of teaching into four categories; personal source, social interaction, information processing and behavior modification. While I was taking the quiz I was presented with a lot of really interesting questions that made me think. Some of the questions I felt very strongly about, and others I had never thought of or I was on the fence about.


Put your thinking cap on and check out the quiz! You might find out something new about yourself! View my results below and compare our answers, how are we different and how are we similar?

I'm not surprised my highest score is under social interactions. I'm a strong believer than to be a teacher you must have a passion for teaching and for learning. Teachers have a job that affect the child, those around them, and the society as a whole. Teachers have a huge impact on a child's life. Our youth is America's future. The teachers job is not only to teach the curriculum but to create a safe environment for every child to express themselves. Everyday I walk into a classroom I learn I am not the only teacher, each child has something to teach all of us. Teaching acceptance will create a class bond where everyone feels safe to share and teach. This safe bond, teaches acceptance of all. Acceptance is a life-long trait that carries on past the classroom.

Lakota

Think of all the Native American tribe names you know. Make a list.

 

Cherokee
Iroquois
Mohawk

 

Those are the only tribe names I know, and remember learning. I googled it out of curiosity and found out there are 566 federally recognized Native American tribes today. It's sad that we aren't introduced to all of these cultures.

 

In class we were given a list of 5 Native American Tribes. We participated in a jigsaw and created professional groups to research a single tribe. My group research the Lakota tribe. Prior to this research i knew absolutely nothing about the tribe and never even heard of them. I learned they are one of the Sioux tribes. This was a huge tribe in the West and controlled most of the land West of the Mississippi river.

 

We learned they originally populated all the Rocky Mountain ranges. White influence caused the Native American Tribe to move locations and their range became smaller and smaller.

 

The Lakota people adapted through time. They began as agriculturists. They were introduced to horses by Cheyenne people, which at this point they decided to give up farming and travel seasonal to follow the migration patterns of the buffalo.

It was exciting to learn all of these facts!
 

As a group we created a google slide show so we could all collaborate and add to the slide show. Google slides is a great tool to use during a presentation. Everyone can access it on any device and allows for communication between the whole group.

 

Designing the Test

A lot goes in to designing an assessment!

Learning takes place in students heads where it is invisible to others. We as teachers, must assess what our students can do with the material they have learned. Assessments can be formal or informal, high or low stakes, anonymous or public, or individual or collective.

Assessments answer a lot of questions for us as teachers, such as:

Am I teaching this effectively?

Should I reevaluate how I am teaching this lesson?

Should I reteach this lesson?

Should I move on to the next lesson?

Am I teaching to all the students?

All these questions are answered based on the results of an assessment, so we must be sure our assessments are effectively evaluating what the students have learned. We created a post assessment to assess our students after our Medieval Times lesson. Each group created five questions based on their lessons. My group created questions based on our lesson about merchants, markets, mud and towns. Our lesson goal is "The students will gain a better understanding of the process of buying and selling goods as a merchant in Medieval Times." We based our questions off of our goal to see if the students have mastered the lesson objective

Field Work Reflection

Teaching Social Studies and Technology allows teacher candidates to explore and teach social studies through the use of technology inside the classroom. The candidates work in a group of five and collaborate idea's to form a lessons to teach the class. As a group they explore technology based options that will assist in the expansion of their lesson. Collaboratively with my group, I created a direct, inquiry and cooperative lesson plan on Merchants, Markets and Mud in Medieval Times and taught it to a 4th grade class.

During my first experience teaching the class, I taught a direct lesson. This lesson focused on teaching the students about Medieval times, specifically the concepts of Merchants, markets, mud and towns during the Middle ages. The students goal was to learn the relationship between merchants and markets and the importance of mud in medieval times. During our first meeting I instructed the students to draw what they think a Medieval town would look like. To begin our lesson I had the students recall what they drew, and share with the class a little about their drawings. I then asked the students to compare and contrast their work with pictures of medieval times. The students came up with great ideas, this was a great way to introduce the lesson and tie in our icebreaker to the relevance of our lesson. I presented the students with a word cloud I created on Tagul. I asked the students to first point out words they knew, then point out words they recognized, and finally words they didn't recognize. This was a great way to quickly preassess students prior knowledge. The lesson followed the standard, “Key Ideas and Details: CCSS.ELA-LITERACY.SL.4.1 Engage effectively in a range of collaborative discussions (one-on-one, in groups, and teacher-led) with diverse partners on grade 4 topics and texts, building on others' ideas and expressing their own clearly.” I began by introducing the students to some common vocabulary words they will be seeing throughout the next few days. To introduce the terms effectively and hold the students attention, I introduced it in the form of pictures. I presented the students with a variety of pictures and asked them to explain to me what the picture is depicting. All the students were very engaged, loved viewing the images and sharing their thoughts.

I assessed the content that the students were learning throughout the lesson. I gave students a handmade sign I created as a tool to check for understanding. There were three signs a green one, meaning I understand or agree, a red one meaning I disagree or I don’t understand and a yellow one, meaning I am unsure or can you repeat the question. I made use of the color green, meaning go, yellow meaning slow down and red, meaning stop, and used the color icons rather than words for the students who need reading accommodations. I developed a slideshow that used minimal amounts of words, instead I used pictures to go along with the topic I was describing to accommodate to those visual learners. I assisted a student during our slide show who is unable to scribe, and a few that needed redirection. These students needed assistance following along, to accommodate their needs my fellow teacher candidates continued teaching the class at a typical speed while I worked independently with the students throughout the direct instruction. After our lesson we played a Medieval Matchup Game, the students were split into five groups containing three to four students each. I displayed the matching boards in the front of the classroom. One board in the front of the classroom displayed all the definitions. Each group of students received two index cards with a vocabulary word on it from the lesson. Each group had time to discuss what the definition was. Then as a group they came up to the definition board, found the right definition and then placed both the vocabulary word and correct definition on the Medieval Match-up boards. Two pairs struggled with one of their vocabulary words, we turned the discussion over to the class and asked them to recall on the pictures we displayed earlier in the lesson. As a class the students were able to conclude on a definition for each word.

Students were given an independent practice called Medieval Trivia. Students were instructed to start it now and finish it at home. This was our evidence that we successfully taught them the necessary content. We concluded our lesson with a post-it note exit ticket. Everyone filled out how they felt about what they just learned. We instructed the students that if they understood the topic very well, they must write down two facts that they learned today. If they felt okay about the topic, they were instructed to write one fact they learned and one question they had. If they were confused they were instructed to write down two questions they still have. On their way our they were instructed to place it on an emoji board. The emoji faces were used to symbolize their feelings about today's lesson. I used emojis rather than words to assist students with reading accommodations.

The following class session we taught an inquiry and a cooperative lesson to the students. We introduced the students to our Voki, Ms. Medieval. The voki presented a problem, she had recently discovered that all the books in the library about medieval times have been ripped up. The students must gather the book piece and figure out what or who it's discussing.  The students were asked to help her rewrite these books so a huge piece of history would not be lost forever. To accommodate students with auditory processing disorders or students who are visual or kinesthetic learners we provided the students with a typed letter from Ms. Medieval stating the same things she presented in her recording.

I divided students into groups of three to four forming five different groups. Teacher candidates were stationed at each group and helped facilitate the students through a scavenger hunt. Each group found and identified four clues. They evaluated the clues to form a person, place or thing in medieval times. I supported and monitored the students interactions within my group. I assigned roles to each individual student and allowed all students to review the clues and come to a group decision. After the given time and all groups are finished, I gained students attention towards the front of the classroom.

I expected students to present their finding in front of the class. I explained the behavior expected by presenters and the audience. The student reported their findings about the clues by telling the class what they discovered and what their final outcome was. One person from each group was assigned as the speaker, they were responsible to tell the rest of the class their clues, the conclusion they came to and explain the steps they took to come to the final result. As an independent practice students wrote a letter to Ms. Medieval. In their letters, the student were responsible for telling Ms. Medieval what they discovered on the scavenger hunt. The student were given a rubric and were graded based off thus rubric.

The lesson was based off of an introduction, introducing the topic to the class and giving direct instruction about the topic. The lesson developed through the use of Ms. Medieval when the mystery was introduced. Students were evaluated by their ability to evaluate and collect data based on the inquiry process. Students were given an independent task in order to check for understanding.    

Our cooperative lesson the students played the role of a merchant and created their own market. The lesson focuses on the students proving their knowledge of merchants and markets by engaging them in a cooperative group task to create their own market. The students will infer what other students in their class would likely buy, create a market and sell their goods as a merchant during the medieval times. The standard followed in this lesson is, “ CCSS.ELA-LITERACY.SL.4.1 Engage effectively in a range of collaborative discussions (one-on-one, in groups, and teacher-led) with diverse partners on grade 4 topics and texts, building on others' ideas and expressing their own clearly. ” The students were given a poster board, craft supplies, and a task to work in a group of merchants. Student created a poster advertising the goods they’re selling in their market. Students followed the criteria illustrated on the rubric. To prove mastery the students had to receive at least a 3 out of 4 on each section to prove their understanding, each student proved mastery.

I introduced the topic by reviewing the content. I explained to the students that they will be working in their merchant groups to advertise their goods being sold in their market. Teacher candidates joined groups to assist in student collaboration. To monitor cooperative learning I rotated from group to group making sure the students are effectively working together and collaborating. I facilitated individual accountability by explaining that each student has a specific role within their group. I made it known to the students that they each must complete their role effectively and are individually contributing to the success of the group.  I fostered positive interdependence by explaining how each role is very important when working together in a group. I explained to the student that each group member will have a specific role and you all depend on each other when working toward the common goal. I also made it clear that the success of the group is dependent on the participation of all group members, that each role is important in order for the group to successfully complete the poster. Group processing was facilitated by having the students work together in their small groups. The students, working together to achieve the same goal, are responsible for their own work and the groups work as a whole.  The students reflected on how their groups worked together on their independent practice assignment by answering the question “How did you and your group members work together to complete the poster?” Face-to-face interaction was encouraged by having the students working together and giving each student a role. During the face-to-face interaction the students provided feedback to their peers as well as encouragement and motivation. During this lesson the student developed multiple social skills. One of the social skills was working together and collaborating. Working together and collaboration requires listening, turn taking when speaking and cooperation among all group members. Another social skill the students developed is presentation skills. After creating their advertisement, they presented their poster.

As an independent practice the students deposited money into the market bank they wanted to purchase from. Students were also instructed to write on a ticket identifying their role in their group and how their group worked together to complete the task.

Teaching Social Studies and Technology allows the teacher candidates to explore and teach social studies through the use of technology inside the classroom. As a group I collaboratively worked with the teacher candidates in my group to create and execute two interactive lessons on Medieval Times. The students mastered the goals based on our lessons. We followed the steps of inquiry to form sequentially based lessons that would assist students learning the topics.

Artifact Bag

An artifact bag is a bag filled with mystery artifacts. An artifact is an item of cultural or historical interest. An artifact bag can be based around a person, era, place, or topic. It is a great way to introduce or end a lesson. It is interactive, exciting, highly anticipated and an engaging activity for the students. As a conclusion to our class unit on Medieval times, everyone designed their own artifact bag, and each professional group created a power point together. Check out my groups powerpoint about our artifact bags!

These are the slides for my artifact bag!

I chose to include a coin worth 1 shilling, a markets list of goods and prices and a utensil that was sold in the market. I based my lesson off of markets and merchants.

I included a slide about a great book I found that relates to Medieval times. The book Knights and Castles by Will Osborne and Mary Osborne is part of their collection, The Magic Tree House. Knights and Castles is a nonfiction fact tracker that accompanies the fictional book The Knight at Dawn. Jack and Annie return from Medieval Times and they are in search for and discover answers to many of their questions. These questions and answers are illustrated in the nonfiction fact tracker. The book contains up to date information, photos and illustrations. It is overall an exciting adventure filled book that introduces topics of Medieval Times in an exciting way.

While creating my artifact bag and choosing a book, I also was searching for interactive websites that the students could use so they can learn more.

Middle Ages for Kids is an interactive website that contains factual reading material on many different topics pertaining to medieval Times. The reading material is grade level appropriate for grades three and up. The website contains online quizzes that provide the correct answer at the end, maps, timelines and games. There is something for everyone! 

ET4ALL

Saturday, April 22nd Mount Saint Mary College held their first ET4ALL conference run by KDP. Here are a couple of pictures from the conference.













At the conference there were a variety of workshops to choose from. I chose to be part of the ThingLink workshop, which stretched into two sessions. I have used thinglink in the past to create an information college. A new feature on thinglink is its ability to use and create 360 images to create digital stories. Check out this link to explore a 360 example about Coral Reef Ecosystems! On the right of the 260 image, there are many other images available to explore. These are all samples that can be recreated and used inside your classroom!

I love thinglink because it is interactive and can be used by teacher or student. It can be used by a teacher to introduce a topic to an entire class, small groups or individual students. Pins can be created on the image that can lead to different images, blurts of information or lead to different websites or videos containing information. The possibilities are endless!! Students could even use thinglink as a way to present about a topic they have been studying.

Another amazing tool that was introduced to us is an app called street view. I instantly LOVED this app and have been taking any possible opportunity I have to use it. It's a free app that can be downloaded on Apple or Android phones, tablets etc. It allows you to explore different locations all over the world and view 360 photos people took of those locations. This is a great tool to use in a classroom. One way to use this in a classroom that I thought of is during a history lesson, if you're teaching about Mayans you can virtually travel to Belize and see 360 images of the ruins today. It's interactive and exciting. 

I suggest all my readers to download thinglink and street view and check out what they have to offer and see how you can incorporate it into your classroom!! 

Tech Savvy

How tech savvy are you?

Take the quiz and find out!

I scored a 69%, "You might not know everything, but you can almost always figure it out. Worst-case scenario all you need is a little time and your good buddy, Google." What's your score?

I don't consider my self to be very technologically inclined, but both science and social studies methods has allowed me to interact with a variety of different technological tools that will assist me in my future career. Technology is increasing in its importance as the years go on and it is crucial to include in a classroom. It is also a wonderful tool to use in the classroom. I'm very impressed with how much I have learned thus far and how many amazing tools I've found.

I consider technology to now be a huge part of who I am as a teacher. I have used and continue to find uses for many different online applications that are interactive and engaging inside of the classroom. 

Check out this article explaining the importance of having technology in a classroom.

Collaboration

What does collaboration mean to you?

Collaboration is just a word holding a definition until a group of people make it mean something! To collaborate is to work together as a team, discuss ideas, and achieve a common goal.

Group projects has always been something I dreaded doing. I always ended up being the one stuck with all the work while no one else said anything. I remember my first semester in college I was assigned a group project and presentation. My group all exchanged numbers and planned to meet up in the library on numerous occasions. I was the only one to show. I ended up completing the entire project and presenting in front of the classroom by myself while my group stood to the side and then thanked me after class for pulling together such a wonderful project. Everyone got an A because of my work. I was furious and hated group projects since that day.

When I heard we had to do a group lesson plan and teach as a group I became very nervous. After meeting with my group I felt completely different. Everyone had such great ideas to contribute. We all had the same common goal in mind and would do anything to achieve it. We always showed up for group meetings, we met after classes, before classes and even had a Sunday pizza dinner together while completing our planning. Everyone contributed evenly and we all came to mutual agreements. Everyone had different experience that contributed to our lesson and made it better. It was great to work with such awesome future teachers.

Working together

Today I completed my Inquiry and Cooperative lesson! Check out the entrance of our medieval town!!

Today was a little more challenging than my direct lesson plan. The students were much more excited and engaged due to the type of lesson. I used a website called bouncy balls as a method to control students volume. The website picks up the volume in the class which controls the bouncing of the balls. Setting a limit on how high the balls can bounce will create a volume limit for the class. I think this is a great website but it must be implemented continuously for students to respect it.

For my Inquiry Lesson I introduced the students to Miss. Medieval. I created Miss Medieval on Voki. Voki is an amazing tool that allows you to create a virtual speaking person. I had the Voki introduce the problem to the class. The library has lost all of its information on medieval times and we must find it all! The students were asked to go on a scavenger hunt and find items that belong in medieval times. Students were asked to write a letter to Miss Medieval to inform her of what was found. Here are some samples of the students letters!

For the cooperative lesson plan everyone became merchants! The merchants had to partner up as a group of four to create a market that would sell the most goods. Here are some examples of the students market signs!

The students were very creative when making their signs and loved the experience of how markets really worked!

Merchants, Markets and Mud

Today we completed our first direct instruction lesson! During our last class we talked about medieval times while we did our ice breaker activity. All the students came up with such amazing ideas of what it would look like to live during this time. Students drew themselves, what their house would look like and many other things! To check out these pictures view my blog titled, "Our first field experience". I showed the students some pictures of medieval times and asked them to compare and contrast their pictures. The students were very engaged and were ready to learn.

I introduced a word cloud to the students. Click the link to view my word cloud. I am a big fan of using tagul. Tagul allows you to create a word collage and create it to form any picture. I chose to make my word collage a castle to fit the theme of medieval times. It is a good method to introduce a topic. I asked the students to point out words they recognized as well as words they didn't recognize. This allowed me to pre-assess students prior knowledge and identify gaps in their knowledge.

I created red, yellow and green signs to check for students understanding. The red flag means that the students need help and we need to review the material, the yellow flag means we need to slow down and the students need some assistance, and the green flag means they understand the material. Through out the lesson I would pause and ask students to raise their green yellow or red flags signaling to me their level of understanding.

At the end of the lesson students collaboratively worked in groups to complete a matching activity. I created two posters, one with vocabulary words and one with the definitions. In groups students formed a definition for their vocabulary words and matched the words and definitions on another poster.

On the way out students filled out an exit ticket. If the students felt confident in what they learned today they had to write down two facts that they learned. If they felt okay about the topics they learned, they had to write one fact they learned and one question. If they were still unsure about the topics they learned today, they had to write down two questions they still had. On the way out they stuck the post-it on the emoji board on the door and matched it with the appropriate emoji face. Any remaining questions the students placed in our wonder box.

Our first field experience

Tuesday we began our first field experience!

As an ice breaker activity we had the students draw a picture of what they think it would look like if they lived in medieval times. Some students drew themselves, castles, knights and horses. Every picture was different and depicted different visions each equally creative as the next. Here are some examples of pictures the students created!

On the back of these pictures we had the students write one thing they know about medieval times and one thing they want to learn. The answers were very thought out and the questions were very creative. Here are some of the responses I received!

During this time we played two truths and one lie. The game is a great and fun way to get to know each other. You have to think of two truths and one believable lie about yourself, and everyone else must guess the lie. It's a really funny game and gives you the opportunity to learn mutual interests. The students had a great time and we all learned so much about each other. I can't wait to begin teaching on Tuesday!

Icebreaker

Ice breakers are SO important to introduce a class. In order to get to know everyone we all created "digital me" projects. This project served more than one purpose. Along with learning things about people, you also learn what you have in common with others, you learn many different digital applications and what/how they can be used and you have the opportunity to practice speaking in front of a class.

Check out my digital me project! I created my project on Tagul. Tagul is an awesome easy to use website. Tagul is a website that allows you to create a word collage. All you have to do is type in the words and choose the shape or picture that you would like the words to appear in. This is great to use as an introduction to a lesson and test of prior knowledge. The teacher can ask the students if they recognize or know any of the words displayed in the word collage. This will assist in testing the students of their prior knowledge. Tagul is also great to introduce yourself to the class.

In my Tagul I wrote my name, descriptive words that match my personality and words of things I am. Here are a few examples of what i wrote; I am kind, dependable, a teacher, a daughter, a sister, a traveler and a learner. One of the most important words I wrote in my word cloud is "autism". My brother was diagnosed with Autism when he was three, ten years ago. This diagnosis has drastically effected my life in ways I couldn't have imagined. My brother has been my inspiration and has taught me more than I could ever teach him.

I chose my word cloud to be shaped as a sun over the ocean because of my love for traveling. I have traveled to 12 different countries and 7 different states in the past two years. I love seeing different places and trying different things.