Skip to main content

Learning the Tools (BJ3)

For a second grade class, I feel most prepared for standard LAFS.2.L.3.4. This standard states that technology must be known for finding the meaning of unknown words; in a sense, it is the knowing how to use technology as a dictionary. Furthermore, this standard also ensures that students know how to change words from their root, but that they also know it is still, essentially, the same word. I feel very prepared for this standard because ever sense technology was implemented into my elementary classroom, this is something that my peers and I have been doing for a very long time. I can easily give my students the resources they need to use the internet as both a dictionary and thesaurus and give them practice worksheets of looking up words, defining them, and finding root words. Another standard that I feel comfortable with is standard LAFS.2.W.2.6. This standard uses digital tools to create and publish writing, along with adult help. I feel comfortable using this tool because I have worked with applications that creates these documents, like Word Processing, so I know a good bit about how to use it. On the other hand, I am not well versed in standard LAFS.2.SL.2.5. This standard uses Mystorybook.com. I am not familiar with the website or how a student would use it to show key ideas and details from a reading. I would need to be educated more on this standard.

In the second grade CPALMS Educator Toolkit, I am very excited for the Language Arts resource for students titled "Captain Capitalization's Treasure Hunt." This resource would be good for my classroom because I would do a lesson on capitalization during lecture time (of course adding some active learning), and then I would have the students do this game on their computers, assuming that the school provides students with this technology. The game is a scavenger hunt that goes through the rules of capitalization and has the players hunt to find the capitalized words. With the school I am shadowing right now, the students are provided with computers during school hours, so I am assuming that my classroom will be the same way. I look forward to this toolkit because it engages the students by taking them on a treasure hunt to find capitalization. Along the way, there are checkpoints that the students must do to finish the assignment. In my classroom, I would use this tool after my lesson to reinforce the skill.

From the newsletter design assignment, I learned how to work with less than ideal conditions. I am used to creating letters like this on Indesign, which allows for more freedom than Word, but I learned how to stay calm while getting annoyed with the limitations and working with what I am given. Nonetheless, I did become more comfortable with my skills in Word, so when I do need to use it for such situations, I don't have to keep clicking on tabs to find what I need; I now know where everything is like it's second nature. Next time, I can improve on this assignment by better judging how much space I should leave for each subject. However, I do feel like I did adequate on this assignment and utilized any of the white space I would have had. In my career as an elementary teacher, I will definitely keep using a newsletter in my career as an elementary teacher , and this assignment has shown me what will be the perfect information on my new newsletters. 

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Becoming a Digital Native (BJ1)

Using technology in the classroom is becoming more of a norm as the years continue on. As technology becomes more accessible to the common citizen, I believe that its availability influences teachers and students to use it in the classroom. Students are learning how to use a vital tool that will help them in whatever career path they choose, and teachers can use it to make the content more interesting for students and hold their attention for longer periods of time. Also, technology can fill gaps that teachers may have. Students always have questions that teachers do not know the answer to, and technology makes answers to those questions easy to come by. The ISTE standards for students and teachers are very realistic when relating it back to today's society. The standards are reachable for both groups, but they're not too easy to achieve. Each standard provokes thought and desire in people to want to absorb all that technology can teach them. Specifically, I find the teacher ...
Post a Comment
Read more

The End is Near (BJ10)

Out of the skills we have learned this semester, I am most excited to use my Excel and survey skills as a teacher. With the data collection tools that we learned in class, I already knew a little bit about surveys and Qualtrics because I had made some in the past. What was the most interesting, however, was the way that it interacted with Excel. I had no idea that a CSV file was translated into a spreadsheet, and I was even more surprised and grateful to learn about the different formula functions that I could do with the data. Specifically, I think that being able to find averages and percents will be the most helpful for me as a teacher, and I will not have to input it by hand. For example, I plan to teach the second grade, so I could create surveys for parents to fill out about the level of difficulty of the homework, how they feel the year is going, etc., and then move the data to excel t...
Post a Comment
Read more