Being Tech Savvy Can Make Everyone Happy

Although it is only Monday, this week has been quite overwhelming already!  As the two semesters of expectations seem to be starting to overlap, it only adds to the list of things that need to be completed by the beginning of January.  From discussing the portfolio requirements to checking out current teacher website pages, I am starting to brain storm different ideas for these tasks.  One of my main concerns is going to be trying to figure out a way to incorporate technology into my lessons. Observing how my CE uses technology, the use of technology was based off of an award system.

However, my challenge is going to be figuring out a way to incorporate technology on a daily basis.  For my research piece, I found this article on Edutopia.org that talked about different ways teachers use technology in their lessons daily to engage all students.  This article discussed several tips on how to implement technology within different assignments without it distracting the flow of the lesson.  I want to make the use of technology in my classroom just another regular routine for my students.  I think the students could greatly benefit from using technology because it doesn't limit their application or exploration of knowledge. This article talked about giving the students the choice of their assignment.  I have heard of the project based off of Google's idea, "20 Percent Project", which allows the students to use different resources to create a project expressing their passion.  However, one of my favorite ways that teachers implemented technology into their lessons, is at the end of a lesson, they had a slide for questions and answers that allowed the shy who were afraid to speak or ask a question in front of the class to still participate.  I will most likely use this next semester during student teaching, because I have a couple of students who are like this.

For additional information and some more awesome resources, check out this post: https://www.edutopia.org/article/empowering-special-education-students-technology-kathryn-nieves

This article and blog post mostly relates to the NCTCS four because it is the teachers responsibility to understand their students and help take their interests and turn them into learning experiences.  It is also the teacher's job to accommodate for their students with whatever they need in order to see them succeed.  

Look!!!! A Squirrel

As the weeks throughout the semester continue to fly by, I am trying to learn as much as possible about my CE, students in the classroom, and all of the routines implemented by my school.  A topic that keeps coming up in my CE and I's conversation is how we can reach the student's who just do not have the motivation and determination to give all of their effort when learning.  As I had my first observation last week, this is a topic that came up as well concerning one of my students in one of my groups.  My professor suggested that I switch around my seating chart for my small group instruction and have the more distracted, off task students sit directly in front of me to hopefully help this issue.

We all have those students in our class who just cannot seem to focus for more than two minutes at a time.  I often get really frustrated with having to constantly redirect their attention back to instruction. Some of my students have been put on behavior plans to address this very same problem.  My CE is constantly thinking of ways to reduce the amount of time she spends having to redirect the students' attention back to the focus of the lesson. She has taken the time to know how her students learn best, and so she has been able to incorporate rewards or consequences that are based off that particular student's interest. Which this, in return, helps the student to stay motivated to stay on task throughout the day. This week, I found an article on Edutopia that gave helpful tips on trying to help reach these students that I plan on sharing with my CE.  I found them to be really simple, yet very effective.  It talked about breaking up instructions into smaller sections.  Having the students create short checklist and this will help them to stay motivated to complete their assignments.  This is something so simple, yet has been proven to help students who struggle with staying focused.  Another tip that was given was to have the students set goals.  Maybe the student sets a big goal that will be for the week, or the entire day and then have them set shorter goals to help them reach that big goal.  I want to see if this would help some of my students in my class and am definitely willing to give these tips a try!

This blog post relates to facilitating students learning by having to know the strengths and weaknesses of your students in order to best address their issues.  Every student's situation is going to be different, and that is why it is important for the teacher and student to work together so the student can be successful and enjoy their learning experience!