Project #8

Where The Wild Things Are

Written and Illustrated by: Maurice Sendak

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Dr. Strange gave us 2 different ways to make our own Personal Learning Network. I used Symbaloo. When directed to that site, I followed the simple steps required to make my profile.

What are Personal Learning Networks? “Is a set of people or tools you can call upon for help.” Dr. Strange sums what a personal learning network is in just these few words. The best example is twitter. This is an online social networking site that allows you to stay connected with your follows and allows you to send short messages to one another very quickly.

How can they help you as a teacher? By having the world at your finger tips this makes solving problems much easier. PLN’s help teachers in everyday life communicate find things out and also ask questions.

How are they formed? There are many different sites to create PLN profiles. Personal Learning Networks are used all around the world. One educator, Steve Anderson, is in connection with other educators on all the other continents.

How can you create your own PLN? There are many different forms of Personal Learning Networks. Some include Twitter, Facebook, different forms of text messaging and also ASCD Edge. (Professional Networking Community for Educators.)

Who will be your first additions to you PLN? In the future I hope to be able to connect with many other educators. I hope to be of help to some and also get help from some. I think this is a great way to stay connected to not only people in your own profession but other people around the world.

My Sentence Videos

My Passion Is...

My Sentence Is...

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What can we learn from these conversations with Anthony Capps?

Project Based Learning Part 1: Experiences of a Third Grade Teacher- This is YouTube video is an interview between Dr. Strange and Anthony Capps. Mr. Capps is currently a third grade teacher at Baldwin County Elementary School. He is no stranger to Edm310. He was once and student and also a lab professional before beginning teaching. Mr. Capps is also no stranger to Project Based Learning. In this short video he and Dr. Strange cover some very important topics for PBL. Mr. Capps states that some people think that projects are what is given at the end of a lesson after it’s been taught rather than it being a means to get them to learn something new. In this he also adds that it is extremely important to motivate the children and also most importantly they are driven by content. This meaning, the students know what they have learn by standards given to the school by the government. Specifically, one of the projects Mr. Capp’s makes his students complete is writing a letter to their congressman Jo Bonner. This helps with many different subjects and also covers the ACCRS.

Project Based Learning Part 2: Experiences of a Third Grade Teacher- This video, like the first, is also an interview with Anthony Capps. Another project Mr. Capps third grade class took part in was reading a science article that had to do with the problems in Haiti and also Afghanistan. So, the students had to put themselves in kids from there in their shoes. They were made to look up pictures, watch videos and also write about the things they found. This helped the students use the tools they already had while preparing themselves for the next step in the project. When doing projects like this you sometimes are taking a risk. In his class one of his students father served in Afghanistan. He was not okay with his son knowing specifics on these topics. This particular student did a different science project and it turned out just as well as the other. After all the projects were finished Mr. Capps organized a night for the students to show their parents what they had been studying and also accomplished in doing in so.

iCurio- Mr. Capps fills us in on iCurio and how he uses it in his classroom. In this video Anthony Capps explains that iCurio is an online tool that can serve many different purposes. This makes kids searching the internet very safe. In this students can search for information, videos and pictures in a safe and secure way. All of these things have been pulled and filtered for educational purposes. Another important and also useful feature includes storage units so when students find information they can save it and have easy access back to it. Another feature for iCurio is called historical figures. The feature helps you search by criteria. This helps narrow the search and also makes it much easier for students to find specific information about a specific place, person or thing.

Discovery Education- “If a picture is worth a thousand words, a video must be worth a million.” This is what Mr. Anthony Capps begins by saying. What he means by this is if you give a child something to read and pair it with a visual they will learn and understand so much more. Discovery education is another search engine that students and teachers use primarily on an everyday basis? This helps bring professionals in the classroom via video which is very important for people who may not know as much about a certain topic.

The Anthony-Strange lists of tips for Teachers Part 1- In this video, Dr. Strange constructs a list of 5 key tips for new teachers to think about. Also, in this video he interviews Anthony Capps a third grade teacher after just completing his first year as a teacher.

1- Really be interested in learning yourself. If you are not a learner you will not be a successful educator.

2- Teaching is hard. In education you don’t necessarily have to separate work form play.

3- Be prepared for surprises. Must learn to be flexible.

4- Start with the end in mind.

5- Make sure students are engaged.

Don’t Teach Tech- Use It- Technology is constantly being used all around us, but in some places it is still controversial. Students are very technologically savvy in this day and age. What he means by this is to not but this big project on students in one week. He suggests spreading things out over weeks at a time. In this, he may give one or two steps of the project one week and a few more the next week and so on and so forth until the project is finally completed. This helps the students figure things out for themselves, and also to learn a lot in the process.

Additional Thought About Lessons- Mr. Capps states the first thing to think about when planning lessons are how it fits in your year. What he means is in this lesson are you going to cover all of your content standards? Next, he points out how to devise unit projects. This step is to make sure things flow and that everything previous is a stair step to the next lesson being taught. Mr. Capps also asks, “How are you devising your week so that you can get everything done?” This is also a very important step in process of making lessons. The next part o this process is making sure to look at the daily lessons. In order to make sure you can get everything done on a daily basis.

Project 3

Blog Post 4

“What do we need to know about asking questions to be an effective teacher?”

According to Webster’s Dictionary a question is a sentence, phrase or word that asks for information. A matter or problem that is being discussed: a subject or topic.

Questions, Don’t Teachers Ask Them?-I must be honest, this has never crossed my mind. In Dr. Maryellen Weimer’s blog post some very important questions are covered. I have not always wanted to be an educator but when I did think about teaching students asking me questions never really seemed to stick out. Also in Dr. Weimer’s blog posts she suggests preparing questions, playing with questions and also preserving good questions.

Prepare Questions-Dr. Weimer states that she asks questions to her students without giving them an adequate time to prepare. She now admits that this was often frustrating for her and her students. After reflecting on this she wanted to find a way to make this a lot less stressful not only her but also her students. She now realizes that more prepared question are much better for her and her students think through and answer.

Play With Questions-I’m sure I wasn’t the only one in school that was given a question and wanted to find the easiest and shortest answer that could answer the given question just to get by. In fact, I believe that many students think this way at some point in their school career. This yes, is the easy way out, butt ultimately could end up hurting you in the long run. Dr. Weimer suggests making the students think more logically. He also suggests using a board with a question already on it when the students enter the classroom.

Preserve Good Questions-Educators are encouraged to ask questions for any reasons. One of those reasons could include making students think in depth and also think for themselves. Maybe, in some instances, even make critical thinking decisions. This will help students in the future with many life changing decisions.

There are no Wrong Questions-In the video Dr. Strange assigned us to watch Dr. Chesley takes on the question “Are there wrong questions?” In the video she states there are two types of questions, those being, an open ended question and a closed ended question. What she means by this is a closed ended question she expects a yes or no answer and sometimes a reply. By open ended question Dr. Chesley states this is more of giving information but not necessarily getting an answer to a specific question.

Questions, Yes, Of Course Teachers Should ask Questions- As an educator asking the right questions at the right time can be very critical. It is very important to know what questions to ask. In high school I thought my teachers just thought of questions to ask students, little did I know the thought process behind the questions being asked.

C4T summaries

In EDM310 I was assigned a general studies teacher named Silvia Tolisano. The title of her blog and website is “Langwitches”. She updates this page on a very regular basis. From the page you can tell she really enjoys all aspects in the blogging world. The first post I commented on was titled “Blogging Beyond One Classroom” from the name I’m sure you can guess it was mostly about kids that blog in middle school and preparing them for the high school world. What made this post most interesting were the many parts and differences from middle school to high school. The most common problem the middle school children are having most trouble with include posting illustrations. This blog post kept my attention the whole time and left me wanting to know more about the always changing blogging process.

"Collecting Quotes for Future Blog Post's," in this post Mrs. Tolisano is giving a brief tutorial on how to save quotes to use for not only future blog posts, but they can also be used for other forms of writing. This is a very interesting blog post and will be very help to me and I am sure many other people who run across this post. ONe of the sources she uses is CoCmment in Google Notebook.

Teacher Tom

I was assigned the teacher Tom Hobson. Mr. Hobson is more commonly know as Teacher Tom. He is a preschool teacher. In his latest blog post he covers the importance of students being independent and not relying on their parents or teachers to do everything for them. One example he gives is when his preschoolers come in and their parents are holding their lunch boxes instead of them doing it for themselves. In many different ways Mr. Hobson points out the importance of responsibility for young children. He states this is also a priority in teenagers lives as he is a father to a teen. He claims, "the more rights she assumes, the more responsibly she behaves."

"This Is Child Abuse," was the next very interesting post I read by Teacher Tom. This post is mainly about the many standardized tests that are required for preschoolers to take. Yes, standardized tests for a 5 year old. Clearly, in this post Mr. Hobson is not happy with these required tests. He gives many links to examples of other schools around the nation with these same requirements. He is not the only person so outraged about this topic. Many parents are petitioning to start their own kindergarten in that area for the 15-16 school year. This seems to be a very hot topic around Woodland Park, and only seems to be growing.

Blog Post #3

What is Peer Editing? - The word peer is most commonly known as someone around the same age as you. Editing is when you revise or make changes to something. There are 3 steps in the peer editing process. Step one- use compliments and always stay positive. Step two-make suggestions about how to make their writing better. This could also include word choice, using detail and organization. Step three-making corrections. When making corrections in peer editing always look for punctuation, grammar, the use of proper sentences and most importantly spelling. When peer editing always remember to stay positive, be very specific about what you are editing and also and complete all three of the above steps listed.

Peer Edit with Perfection- Peer editing can be a lot of fun done in the correct way. In this slide show it shows different ways to stay positive, be specific and using the three steps of compliments, suggestions and corrections are also used. When peer editing always stay positive. Maybe tell them what they did right before immediately jumping to what needs to be corrected. This technique could also be used in the compliment step. When peer editing it is also very important to stay specific and that the reader knows what you are trying to tell them to make their work better. Word choice, using detail, sentence structure and topic are also every important things to check while peer editing.

Writing Peer Review- peer editing is not meant to be used as a mean technique. It is supposed to be very helpful to the writer. Word choice as the editor is also as important as the writer’s word choice. There are many different ways to peer edit in the wrong way. Always remember to stay positive, make suggestions and follow the well known three steeps. The steps include being, using compliments, making suggestions and also helping correct the mistakes. While using these steps the peer editing process has been known to run much more smoothly. These steps are used nationwide and in many class rooms around the world.