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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.