Blog Assignment #11

What can we learn about teaching and learning from these teachers?

      Blended Learning Cycle Paul Anderson uses this cycle to mix different learning styles to help his classroom learn. The steps are questions, investigation/inquiry, video, elaboration, review, and summary quiz. With this blended learning cycle you as the teacher can get as creative as you want. Mr. Anderson even said he styled it like a video game at one point.
       Learning is Messy Brian Crosby shares a videos about the students in his classroom and

compares how they started off at the beginning of the year and how they progressed throughout the year. I loved his message in this video because it showed that if you try and really work with struggling students, then you can truly change their life around. He did many PBL projects with his students which help their overall learning.
      Making Thinking Visible by Ron Ritchhart is a book about changing the way we teach and learn in the classroom. He writes about how he would like to see schools stop basing intelligence off of test scores and instead base the intellectual development off of how a child plans, creates, thinks, and can actually be engaging with other students while they are learning. I have always thought that test scores never show the true potential of a person. I plan on using this idea of Ron in my classroom to see how my future students learn best and to check and see if they are grasping the concepts.
       Sam Pane 4th Grade builds a comic that is fun for the kids, but also a great learning experience as they talk about safety. I like this activity because the students are not only doing something that is fun and intriguing, but also learning quite a bit about making comics and writing along with many other things.
        Project Based Learning shows a school that does not focus on one subject particularly, but in fact on multiple ones. They are also using project based learning to create projects involving these multiple subjects. I like this idea because they are getting, what I think, a well rounded education on the difference of subjects instead of having a big focus on certain ones.
         Roosevelt Elementary PBL program really just sums up how I want to teach my future students. I am going for elementary education and hope that I will get the opportunity to get to use many of the ideas all of these videos showed.

Project #12

Smart board Tutorial

Project #4 C4T #3

Two Writing Teachers

#1 The Share Time
So this blog post I recommend to everyone, especially if teaching students to read and write is important to you, which is should be. So in this blog the author is giving out some wonderful tips to try on a classroom for when your students are writing and sharing their writing.  I told her how grateful I was for the tips and I'm not going to spoil any of them. Go check it out!

#2 Work Smarter
Once again this blog is blowing me away! In this post we are told some great tips on grading students papers. I plan on using these 7 tips for my students. Here they are 1.Turn off all noise. 2. Skim through entire pile. 3. Use rubric or checklist. 4. Be sure to give positive comments. 5. Go digital.
6. Plan instruction based on variety of papers. 7. Minimal marks for spelling. I commented saying thanks for the awesome tips!

Project # 6 C4K #2

C4K #4 Pixl's blog
Pixl wrote the most amazing chapter for a book she is working on. It is in the genre of sci-fi, which I love. Click on the link above and read please! I told her how much I loved it and that she should become a writer. I could visualize everything she wrote in this short chapter.

C4K #5 Cylie's Blog
Cylie wrote about some changes she would make to her school. Some of these changes were choosing her own classes and schedule, and even being able to start school later. I replied telling her about her great ideas and that choosing your own schedule would be amazing because you would get to take classes on things you are interested in.

C4K #6 Jenna's Blog
Jenna embedded 2 links to some pictures of a church and some animals at the park. She then described everything see saw. I told her that I was amazed about her linking the pictures and enjoyed her descriptions of them.

C4K #7 Sulieti's blog
Sulieti posted a blog about her trip to the museum about the Maori. At the museum they learned about the different foods and some new words. I told Sulieti that it sounded like the museum was fun and said how much I love museums myself.

Blog Assignment #10

What can we learn from Mrs. Cassidy?

1st graders in Mrs. Cassidy's class

Interview with Mrs. Cassidy part 1.

Interview with Mrs. Cassidy part 2
Interview with Mrs. Cassidy part 3

     There are many things to learn from Mrs. Cassidy. First, I want to express my admiration for how she brought technology into the classroom. I noticed that this was in 2010. Well I graduated from high school in 2009 and we were doing nothing even close to what these 1st graders were doing in her classroom. I hope to be at a school where my students will have access to their own laptops to use in the classroom and at home. This way I can get them to practice many of the things that Mrs. Cassidy had her students doing in her classroom. I hope that when I become a teacher I can incorporate blogging in my lesson plan while teaching my elementary students reading and writing along with many other necessary skills that they will need even at an early age. Another technological learning tool she had for her classroom was a webpage with links to educational games that her students had access to. I think this is a great idea, especially because most of the children I know, even younger than kindergarten, always have some kind of high tech device in their hands and are playing some game. This learning activity helps to spark their interest in education.

Blog Assignment #9

What can Teachers and Students teach us about Project Based Learning?

    In the video Project Based Learning for Teachers, by Tony Vincent, we are given a very helpful overview of what project based learning is. To incorporate PBL in the classroom, we must make a project with a purpose. This means not only must it grow knowledge, but it must mean something to the students. The students must address an audience to show what they learned or, better yet, teach other what they have learned. A driving question must be included, which is the question that their project is answering. Learning standards need to be identified as well so that you can be sure to stay with the subject matter.  Students need to be grouped together and brainstorm about whir project. Rubrics need to be used for evaluation. Deadlines must be met and students must focus on the process. And at the end projects need to be reviewed so that they may be refined if needed.
 Seven Essentials for Project Based Learning is a wonderful list to help a teacher put together a project for PBL. It states that "every good project needs a need to know, a driving question, students voice and choice, 21st century skills, inquiry and innovation, feedback and revision, and must be publicly presented." A need to know is chosen by the subject of the classroom and the level of the students.  A good driving question is one that portrays the main point of the project and focuses on solving a problem. Students get to pick how they are going to do their project along with learning 21st century skills like communication, critical thinking, and the use of technology.

 What Motivates Students is letting them have a choice in what they learn and how they learn. This helps get them involved and interested in learning.  Letting students share what they have learned about helps to give them a sense of importance. Being grouped together also will help motivate students because they get to share ideas and keep each other focused and on task.
    Ten Sights Supporting Digital Classroom Collaboration has 10 sights that seem to be pretty helpful. A few of these sights we use in this class. Titan pad and Google docs works a lot alike. They both are sights for storing and sharing documents. All Wisher and Corkboardme are very similar to padlet, the program we use in this classroom to do collaborative work. Today's meet and Skype are places "where students and teachers can meet and see only what needs to be seen".
    Wing Project:Crafting a Driving Question is a video that is explaining how to create a good driving question while also showing a group of teachers in the process of creating a driving question. I enjoyed watching the teachers brainstom over what question would work best for their project. its nice to see teachers doing this for a project instead of just the students! This helps make the projects fun and enjoyable and also helps teachers and students apply the learning standards to their projects.

Project #9

Video Book Commentary