Meet my new Nephew

For my Animoto project, I chose to make a quick slide show of my nephew, Sawyer Rowdy. I was amazed at how easy and fast it took to create this project and how it would be used to introduce myself to my future students and their parents.

Video Tools

I watched "A Vision of Students Today" from the 7 videos every teacher should watch list, and felt that I could relate very well with the message of the students. As a college student, especially this year, I have felt like I need 30-hour days to keep up with work, similar to the students who conducted the study. That being said, I feel like that more applies to secondary school students rather than primary aged students who I will be teaching. Yes, teachers must do more than put information on the black board, but I feel like it is easier to do this when your able to have your students attention for the entire day.  Most of the complaints in the video were from a lack of communication between the teachers-students and the teachers-teachers. A simple fix is to make sure as teachers we are always communicating and listening to others around us including our students.

When looking at the other tools listed in this lesson, I chose to write about one I liked and one I didn't like. Starting positively, I felt like the "Math A Tube" would be a great resource to offer parents. Many times they want to help, but are rusty when it comes to math that they haven't had to do in several years, This site gives examples, practice problems, and much more.

The Site I didn't care too much for was the History Channel site. Don't get me wrong, I love the History Channel for entertainment, but anymore the shows they create have little historical or educational value. Because of this, their website serves as an advertising tool to see these shows and their merchandise and therefore I did not find it as an educational tool.

Dr. Dolittle Preview

The book I will be introducing is Dr. Dolittle, by Hugh Lofting. I feel like this book would be appropriate for students in grades 3 or 4, as it as an easy to read text and occasional illustrations to support the text. Although fictional, it does offer some insight to reasons for resentment of white explorers in Africa, as the king explains how he was mistreated by past explorers. I would also like to read in as a setting up tool for a compare and contrast essay between this and the movie. The differences in the two are drastically different and serve as a great lead off point as students new to comparing and contrasting will be able to see clear differences. 

CCSS.ELA-Literacy.RL.4.7 Make connections between the text of a story or drama and a visual or oral presentation of the text, identifying where each version reflects specific descriptions and directions in the text.

CCSS.ELA-Literacy.W.4.9 Draw evidence from literary or informational texts to support analysis, reflection, and research.

  

Voice Thread for Literacy and Writing

Black Star Bright Dawn Sequel

For this Voice Tread project, I created it with my 4th grade literacy group in mind. As a group, we read the book Black Star, Bright Dawn. Now that the book is done, I thought it would be neat to create a writing assignment where they write a mini sequel to the book with a specific focus and direction. We will use Voice Thread to post, discuss, and brainstorm possible ideas to write about. I feel like Voice Thread is a great tool for this because it allows real class dialog outside of the classroom. Students can get feed back from multiple people that time in class doesn't always allow for. 

CCSS.ELA-Literacy.W.4.3 Write narratives to develop real or imagined experiences or events using effective technique, descriptive details, and clear event sequences.

CCSS.ELA-Literacy.SL.4.5 Add audio recordings and visual displays to presentations when appropriate to enhance the development of main ideas or themes.

Lesson Plan

"What Season Is It?" LP

Above is a link to my WebQuest lesson plan. The lesson is a weather lesson that I did with my first grade students that involved them making observations and discussions about what they wear in different seasons. The lesson helps students explore the differences between the four seasons that we experience in Indiana. I thought WebQuest was easy to learn and use. It offered examples and everything is very easy to find.

Audio Podcast

For this podcast assignment, I chose to read off the back cover of Tuck Everlasting by Natalie Babbitt. The reason for doing this is because I'm co-chair of our campus's Kappa Delta Pi chapter, and as part of our literacy project is to create a library in Riley's Oncology center 'Teen Room.' All of the members selected books to read, then we created trailers to motivate the teens to read the books. I thought this would be another tool we could use, if they were too ill to watch a video trailer for fear of getting nauseous, having an audio only file would be a nice substitute. I could get the rest of the chapter to make these podcasts and have them in one location for the kids to locate them as they choose a new book.