I am a different person..

In the beginning of this class I did not know what to expect or exactly what we were going to be learning but everything that we learned has helped me to become a better teacher in so many ways. I am different mainly because of the fact that I feel much more comfortable teaching lessons, writing lessons and presenting anything in front of my peers. When it comes to me being a teacher, I have learned how important it is to make sure that you have the students attention. Lessons may not always be fun but if you can make them interesting and connect the lessons to real world situations then the students will be more than likely to get engaged in that lesson.
The thing that surprised me the most about this class was how much more confident I am with technology. I have to admit that before this class I absolutely despised working on computers for any length of time, but now I would be more likely to do things on a computer than I am to do things on paper. I have learned so much about the smart board technology (which with be critical in my teaching) and I even learned a lot about the Google docs. I did not think I would like Google docs but now I love it and I use that more than regular Microsoft word.
I think what has made the biggest impression while at the same time made me think and discover is the fact that we presented A LOT this semester. I am not always comfortable getting up in front of the class and talking about anything. I am sure that it really helped that we only had ten students in our class but I really enjoyed doing presentations and I looked forward to them when they were coming. By presenting to each other, it made us think a lot, we had to make sure that everything was perfect because the rest of the class was depending on you to learn the content. We had to teach ourselves a lot with the help from the teacher but I think that this helped us to reach higher levels of thinking more often.
When it comes to me and my own elementary school setting, I think what has helped me the most was the smart board. Before this class began I did not know anything about it. I knew it was there but I didn't realize all the potential that comes out of it. An entire unit could be taught through using the smart board and this is great because children love computers and technology and incorporating this into the lessons is vital. I know that I will be using a smart board in my own classroom to the fullest extent.
During my journey throughout this class, I can not say that one specific person helped me the most. Everyone in our class got along so well and we all made sure we were available to help each other out all the time. When we were confused about something, someone else would step up to make sure that we understood. I think that our class as a unit worked so well together and that made the experience in the classroom that much better.
I think the one thing that I was not sure about was the peer evaluation. I think that sometimes it is good to get each others feedback because two heads are better then one and my peers have been able to see things that I have missed and that helped me so much. Besides that I think that everything else should be graded by the teacher, mainly because she knows the content the best out of all of us so her opinion and feedback would be the most important.
Besides that one detail, I loved this class and it has helped me to grow from a student and has taken me another step closer to becoming a teacher.

Jigsaw and our groups

In class on Wednesday, our teacher, Dr. Smirnova was out due to her surgery on her finger. As a class we had to figure out what was needed to complete our assignment on the jigsaw puzzle. I think that we managed pretty well without a teacher there. We worked really well together and there was no problems and Ashley did a great job being in charge and figuring out what we had to do as well.
We made our groups for the jigsaw puzzle. My part of the group is to learn about how doing jigsaw and cooperative learning can help children with their social skills. So far, I have learned alot about how it helps the social skills. I think that some things are obvious, like learning how to talk and have a social interaction with their peers. But other things like having a self value because you feel a part of the group are not as obvious and I think it is important that my group understands how doing the jigsaw can really help everyone to work on their social skills in the classroom. I think this activity is hard but I am trying to figure out how to put it into a lesson. I dont think it will be too hard but we will see!
We dont have class again until after Thanksgiving break so it will give us a couple days to try and fix our IPM lessons and I know I will be starting to work on my cooperative learning lesson plan as well because I think that I really understand the concept of this.

..........Treasure Hunt....

I have to say that my Treasure Hunt has been the hardest thing that we have been doing in class this year. I dont know why this has been so difficult for me, its possibly that it is the fact (and I have said this before) that I am not computer savy at all. I am having a hard time trying to make the pages for this even though i have all the websites and information that I want to provide into the treasure hunt. It is starting to become very frustrating.
On the up side, I have been learning so much about cooperative learning and alll the different types up lessons that we can do based off this type of theory. Kagan is who I have definietly been learning the most from. I have learned about the jigsaw, the think-pair-share and many many more types of lessons. I know that we still have to write one more lesson for this class and I am so excited to do mine on cooperative learning that I have already started thinking of the content and the grade that I want to do my last lesson plan on!!

Learning about Cooperative Learning

Next week in class, me and 4 other peers will begin to help teach our classmates about Cooperative Learning/Social Interaction Model. I have been doing some research and looking up everything that I can find about this type of lesson that we are going to be working on next. I am nervous because I dont want to teach the class the wrong thing even though I know Dr. Smirnova will lead us back in the right direction.
What I have found out from these theorys is basically: the main definition is "thinking about thinking". This is the highest level of thinking that a student can reach. Basically, this theory is like a jigsaw puzzle. Each person gets a peice of the puzzle and they all become experts at their own section. By doing this, it puts a responsibility on themselves and on the group, they sink or swim together because each person needs to teach the rest of their group about the idea that they have mastered themselves.
This is a great lesson because the students really need to work together and not only does the social interaction model have the students attain higher levels of thinking but it works on their own social skills as well.

Treasure Hunts and Information Processing Models

The last class we have started to discuss working on our Treasure Hunts as well as our lesson plans for the Information Processing Model. I am excited for completing both of these tasks. I think the information processing model is really good because the students are able to attain higher levels of thinking. Sometimes the lesson plans can be a little more difficult to write because it is natural, as future teachers, that we want to teach the students by lecturing and making sure that they are on the right track; but it doesnt work that way for this lesson. We have to give the students a question and based on the questions, we give them some information and they have to teach themselves. I think this is good because when a student(s) teaches themselves something they are more likely to remember it. You know that they have remembered it when they can teach it back to you or explain it to you in their own words and by having the students create something at the end of the lesson, this is exactly what they are doing.

I have not started my own treasure hunt yet but it seems like a new and exciting but challenging activity. Everyone in the class is working with partners on this assignment but I opted to work alone. I dont mind this because sometimes its just easier this way and I dont mind doing the extra work either. My treasure hunt is going to be on metacognition which is basically "teaching about teaching and thinking about thinking". I am excited to start this because I really feell like I am going to enjoy doing this assignment!

Indirect vs Direct Lesson Plan

In class the last few days we have been going over the differences between Direct Lesson Plans and Indirect Lesson Plans. I really enjoyed doing Direct Lesson Plans but I know that this type of teaching does not let the students reach a higher level of thinking, but Indirect teaching does.
I really like the presentations that we have been doing because we are learning about Indirect Lesson Plans but we are learning by teaching through this method also.
Me and my partner Ashley had to give our presentation last Friday. We used the balloon popper on the Smart Board to have our classmates decide which words went along with Indirect or Direct instruction. Im really excited to be learning more about Indirect teaching because I love when the students are hands on and by doing this type of lesson the students get an opportunity to do this.

Wrapping it alll up perfectly...

Tonight we had to hand in our final copies of our Direct Instruction lesson plans. As much as I was extremely nervous in the begining about writing our lesson plans, by the end of it, everything that we needed was right in front of us so it was so simple to write. Im sure mine is not going to be perfect the first time around, but I am extremely happy with how my lesson plan came out.

We learned so much in the past few weeks about Direct Instruction. I learned that this is only to have the students attain automaticity and the teachers are basically dictating to the students. The goal at the end of a Direct Instruction Lesson Plan is to have the students to be able to spit the answer right back out to you barely even thinking about it. I really enjoyed working on my lesson plan on greater than and less than symbols because I think my lesson is enjoyable enough for my students to want to learn it but at the same time they are hearing the same things over and over and by the time they have reached the end of the lesson they most likely should all have reached automaticity.

I really enjoyed using the Google Docs with this as well because it made it so easy to talk to my teacher and make sure that everything was in place and be where it needed to be. I really like writing direct instruction because the students can show in so many different ways at all different times that they are learning!