Sunday, November 30, 2014

Project #4 C4T

kindergartenlife
by, Sharon Davison

Students in a classroom

On November 13, 2014 I left this comment for Sharon Davison on her blog post A Celebration of Learning: Engaging Families Inside and Out!:
"Hi Sharon, my name is Kela and I am in EDM310 at the University of South Alabama. I love your mindset and goal for getting families engaged. I think what you are doing is awesome and I am sure your students do as well. This is certainly a desire that I will pursue as a future elementary school teacher."
In this blog post, Sharon Davison explains why she believes encouraging family members to be active and engaged with students learning is helpful for children. She says that learning is an amazing opportunity to involve and engage others around you.

On November 29, 2014 I left this comment for Sharon Davison on her blog post, Being Grateful……:
"Teaching children the importance of caring and helping others is certainly a valuable, yet sometimes overlooked, lesson. There are so many things to be thankful for and having good teachers like you is one. Thank you for sharing." Davison starts this blog post by listing a few things that she is thankful for. One of the things that she is thankful for is her voice. She then goes on toexplain how she and her students are currently involved with a project based learning opportunity and how they are learning about empathy and helping others.

Tuesday, November 18, 2014

Blog Post #14

Teaching our children can be a profession: Column by Joel Klein
Published in USA Today on November 17, 2014

"We need a new approach to recruiting teachers."
- Recruit from the top third of our graduates
- Require a supervised internship for one to three years
- "national teacher examination" that tests mastery of pedagogy and content knowledge, akin to the entry exams now required for lawyers and doctors.
- establish standards/ provide mechanisms to remove incompetent teachers
- seniority should not matter


Recruiting from the top third of our graduates is a good idea. This guarantees that children in our society are being taught by the best. This will not only greatly influence the outcome from classroom and students but also increase college students desire to do better. With this in place, college students will strive to be the best and, simply, with that the outcome of graduates is the best.

Requiring a supervised internship of one to three years ensures that potential teachers are well equipped with the knowledge and experience with what it takes within a classroom. This is a great way for potential teachers to obtain the proper amount of field experience. Requiring this one to the three internship allows supervisors to come to the conclusion if the potential teacher is fit for the job or not as well. However, I believe that it would be more realistic to only require a one year internship with pay.

I completely agree that seniority should not exist within schools. I know from my past there were plenty of teachers who have been at my school for years who felt they could do whatever because they had been there so long. This type of teacher is sadly only hurting the students' education. By rewarding teachers on how well they perform in the classroom is a wonderful way to determine who stays and who does not when cuts are to be made.


Two powerful statements found in Teaching our children can be a profession: Column:
"We must change how we reward teachers."

"Professionalizing teaching means that excellence would be the guiding hallmark.Everything from education-school admissions, to course work, to
compensation and other employment rules, to self-policing would have to be realigned to this core principle. Such a radical transformation would not only
benefit students, it would also benefit teachers, who would be more successful and command greater public trust"

Sunday, November 16, 2014

Project #12 part B


Project: The 4 Seasons
Grade Level: Kindergarten
Standards: SC(K)9 Identify Seasons of the year. Describe seasonal changes in the weather.

Friday, November 14, 2014

Blog Post #13

What Did I Leave Out?

teacher using SmartBoard in class

What would be a helpful lesson to teach in EDM310?

I believe that having a lesson or a few lessons on how to properly use a SmartBoard would be extremely helpful. I plan on being an elementary school teacher and I know that I will depend on using a smart board almost everyday in my future classroom. SmartBoards are a great resource for teachers to have and provides endless amounts of tools to use. However, all of these tools and this great resource is nothing or not as useful as it can be if a teacher does not know all that it has to offer. In high school and a few college classes some of my teachers were able to use and incorporate the use of SmartBoards. Therefore most of the knowledge I have about SmartBoards simply comes from my past observations of teachers. If we had a lesson that was all about SmartBoards I beleive everyone would benefit a lot. Learning the tools and simple actions to make to use SmartBoards can really help. As an inspiring future teacher I desire to gain as much knowledge as I can about everything that I know will help me be a great educator.

Tuesday, November 4, 2014

Project #4 C4T (3)

C4T Comments4Teachers - Project #4

Summary of two blog posts on 21st Century Educational Technology and Learning by Michael Gorman.

The first blog post on 21st Century Educational Technology and Learning that I commented on was Online Learning for Inclement Weather… 25 Ideas and a Free Webinar. This blog post starts out by Mr.Gorman explaining how he. "worked with a team of amazing educators in the district to help plan and implement this initiative." What is the initiative you wonder? He is referring to the challenge of using e-learning to make up cancelled school days due to snow. Mr. Gorman then lists 25 strategies and ideas that he hopes might help other schools that plan to look at e-learning as a possible solution for school make-up.
This is the comment that I left for him: "Hello, my name is Kela Miller. I am a student in EDM310 at the University of South Alabama. I enjoyed reading your post on inclement weather and reading all of the 25 ideas that you have provided. If you would like, I would love for you to check out my blog: Kela Miller’s EDM310 Blog."

The second blog post on 21st Century Educational Technology and Learning that I commented on was Ten Engaging Digital Education Sites For Any Social Studies Classroom. For this blog post, Mr. Gorman's main purpose is to provide his readers whether they may be teachers of students with reliable and engaging digital education sites for social studies classes and research.
I left this comment: Hello Mr. Gorman. I must admit, I have never heard of many of the digital education sites for social studies that you listed and discussed within this blog before. "They all sound to be extremely informative and useful. You provided your readers with what each site has to offer and explained each site very well. I hope that you may visit my blog as well and thank you for sharing. Kela Miller’s EDM310 Blog."

Sunday, November 2, 2014

Project #14

For this project, we as a group decided to create a lesson plan for English and Language Arts for students in the second grade . During this lesson, students will be assigned a partner. After discussing lessons on different types of stories, characters, main points, and characteristics, as well as reading Officer Buckle and Gloria, each group will make a Prezi presentation. In their presentation, they must include a summary, pictures, and details about the characters.

Officer Buckle and Gloria book

Rubric
Lesson Plan
Calender
PBL Checklist