Week 3- Incorporating Literacy in Content Areas

I have many years experience in 5th grade math. I was often seeking ways to pull in literacy into my math classroom. I pulled in writing through math writing prompts, I saw some amazing writings come from my math students. (as I only taught math all day) Then, I would try and get a book to share with the students to tie our math concept to a book. And there were times this was tricky, but often I was able to get help from the library and get a great book to help bring the two together. The last, probably, three years teaching 5th grade math I ended the year with each of my classes recreating Math Curse.

We would read the book, I always changed the teacher's name to mine- and the science teacher's name to ours. The kids LOVED that! Then we would brainstorm ideas for our book. Each student would have a page they were responsible for writing. They were asked to come up with a math problem of some sort for someone to solve, and the answer had to be given upside down at the bottom of the page. Students would have to have other students check their problem and the solution before they could publish. This was a lot of work- but in the end, very worthwhile! Once the books were completed, I would create a cover page and place them in the school library for all to see!

Anytime I could pull out a book and tie it to a lesson, the students enjoyed it. They often get too narrow minded and think that I only "know" math since that was all I taught. However, I also knew how to read and they thought that was pretty neat!

Not only pulling books into math, but reading strategies for word problems into math was something I often tried to accomplish. Anytime I could cross over with the ELA girls, I would. As it made students realize how it all goes together!

The diversity came in my assignment, with the actual pages created. Some of my students were creating multiplication and division problems, others simple fractions, and others addition and subtraction problems. I knew their abilities, and pushed from there. If I had a stronger student, and every time I did, try to create a basic problem... I would tell them to make it more challenging. My struggling students, I would help brainstorm ways to make it not so overwhelming. I asked students to make the problem multi-step, and my lower students would hear that and panic. After working with them, they would see it is was something they too could handle!

Wiki 1 vs Wiki 2

The two Wiki's I have chosen are: Mrs. Anderson's Wiki and Mrs. Ibrahim

Both Wiki's, unfortunately, appear to be created by students from previous years. However, I am impressed by the work that is displayed and the work on behalf of both teachers. Both sites contain information and work varying in all subject areas. I am most impressed that BOTH teachers have student work posted ON the Wiki. Mrs. Ibrahim's students even had a lesson about not using first and last names. I am seeing student writing pieces, but students are only calling one another by first name and last initial. I am looking back at my teaching in second grade, I think I failed to ever discuss the importance of this to my students. But it is standing out to me right now!

Mrs. Ibrahim also has pictures of her actual classroom displayed throughout some of her pages on the Wiki. There are also pages where students are creating, it appears collaboratively, and there are some unfinished pieces. However, I like seeing this. That shows me that the work was not done prior to sitting down at the computer.

Both teachers used different Wiki sources. Mrs. Anderson used  pbworks.com and Mrs. Ibrahim used wikispaces.com. The wikis are both easy to navigate, however Mrs. Anderson's seems more easy to the eye. I almost think it might be more student friendly. I am more impressed with her work and organization. Students each have their own introduction page with work completed by them linked. Each introduction page has a word cloud describing the student and a Voki.

Seeing both of the Wiki's listed, I have another goal for myself! I would love to have a class Wiki!



I can't help but share this AWESOME Wiki- it is a great teacher resource page!

Week 2 Technology in MY Classroom...

I have found myself taking on new adventures and avenues the last couple years professionally and honestly it is totally out of my comfort zone. However, looking back it has been a FUN and educational ride! I am getting more confident with a variety of ages of students, along with their capabilities in the classroom. I from my jump from 5^th to 2^nd to now 1^st, I know students are eager to get technology in their hands. I feel I am very comfortable with finding something interactive for the SmartBoard, or a great new app for the iPad, or even a new site for the desktop computers. I even took on a new avenue with Twiducate last year, with second graders!

My focus is the Internet and Communication Tools facet. I want to see the lines really open up with not only students, but also parents. Late in the year, last year, I created my own “hashtag” on Twitter. I do not feel many parents followed me on Twitter. (According to my email notifications, none of my parents started following me.)  I am challenging myself to Blogging this upcoming year. Blogging inside the classroom with students, and blogging outside the classroom with parents is my personal goal for this upcoming school year.

Using blogging in a first grade classroom will have its limits, in the beginning. I feel after I get it up and running we will have a blast and it will be an awesome tool. I will be teaching handwriting and math to my homeroom and math to another set of students. I hope to have students reading a daily blog, and asking them to comment. I could post the “daily math question” (a word problem) for example, and students could reply below with their answers. I could even offer an incentive for finding a friend’s mistake. (a wrong answer) As I become more familiar with my new curriculum I am certain I will see many more options for blogging.

My main focus in August will be blogging with parents, and making parents aware. I want to blog about the week, and even give individual praises throughout my posts. In giving personal praises I hope to get the positive feedback and parent interaction. Currently, as you see, I am using Blogger. It seems very user friendly, and I plan to continue with it. I tried out WordPress the first week of this course- and an hour after playing and navigating, I found myself back to my original blog!  

Thoughts about Week 1

"Technology to Enhance Literacy".... as I think about the course title I am excited to see and use first hand the variety of ways to embed technology with literacy. Literacy, the ability to read and write. There are countless ways to teach reading and writing, however it is not fitting for all students. I am excited to see and explore options. As it is not fitting for all students, it is also not easy (or fitting) for many of our parents. As I continue through my teaching career, I am finding many of my parents are struggling readers. I hope to build a comfort with some new tools throughout this course that not only reach my students, but also parents.

Throughout a previous course, we were encouraged to use Twitter. I have to admit, I have not been on Twitter much since. But I do have plans to go back, once I start preparing for the year ahead in greater detail. However, I created a hashtag for my parents this past year for them to follow me on Twitter. I am uncertain if they actually used or saw any of my posts from #MeurerNews on Twitter. I did always have the information available on my weekly newsletter. With that said, in the same course, we used Blogs to post our weekly discussions. I did enjoy seeing the variety of Blogs and being able to interact via Blogging. I hope that this upcoming year I am comfortable enough with Blogging- that I can share a Blog with parents. The level of interacting may be more inviting and welcoming.

I also took a leap, that I know you all are aware of, but I took on using Twiducate in my second grade ELA classroom. It was a HUGE hit. The students were writing and never realized! I learned there are some major keyboarding and typing skills that need to be addressed before I could start assessing their writing. They were not capitalizing words that should be, but then the next day would ask how to make a capital letter. So going forward I have learned I need to conduct mini-lessons about these things I take for granted. All in all, I would use the program again. It is free and easy enough for second graders to navigate!

My expectations are wide open. I just want to walk away from this course with new ideas to bring back to my students, new comforts to introduce to co-workers and parents. I am currently uneasy about Wiki's, so I am hoping (as I see we have one assigned) that I build a level of confidence with Wiki's!

I am walking away from week one really enjoying the link provided: Learning About Blogging FOR Your Students. 

EDET573 Launch

A new MET course has launched! You will begin to see posts here for EDET573! I was able to transfer my elective from my previous Master's degree, and therefore was able to take off the last 8 weeks.... time to get back in the groove and finish this degree!! We only have a few more classes girls, we've got this!

Week 7

Throughout this eight week course I have had many "first" time experiences. The one experience that I see myself continuing professionally is Twitter. I have had a Twitter account for over a year, but have been inactive. It has been nice to have "Twitter Assignments" to force me to become more familiar with Twitter.

I contributed to my first Twitter Chat. The chat experience was neat, for the fact that I was instantly interacting with educators across the country/world from the comfort of my living room, and the cost: FREE. I have to say that Twitter has opened my eyes to a new world. I still have a hard time knowing how to search for things, but with time I think I will get that figured out.

I created my first Twitter Hashtag for my parents. Seven weeks ago, I had no clue what a "hashtag" was, I am not an expert yet but I do know I have one to share with parents! I have posted a few reminders for parents, I am not sure they are fully aware. However, I have the information posted in my weekly newsletter asking them to follow #MeurerNews.

My biggest accomplishment, as you are probably tired of hearing about, is Tweeting in my classroom through Twiducate. Just when I thought "my students" were too young- they are LOVING IT! They are typing and to them that is NOT the same as writing. They are getting more comfortable with the use, so I am ready to "up" my expectations. But all in all, this 8 weeks has been very rewarding to me professionally!

I definitely see myself Tweeting in and out of the classroom in the upcoming years!

Twitter Chat #2ndchat Wednesday Night

Well... if I can remember- I think I just found my new Wednesday night assignment! I have a list of at least four resources I want to look into. 1) Cybershape Quest 2) screenchomp.com 3) Chromville 4) Mad Libs app

I think Twitter Chat is something that you have to do maybe two, three times before you can say you are "great at it". I definitely and thankful I was at my computer for it!! Neat to network instantly with teachers of the same grade level but states away. Pretty impressive. The things I saw tonight were pretty neat. Something I didn't mention, but have heard of before, is kidblog.org. Here I think Twiducate is something to brag about- looks like that would be an awesome tool to look into as well. Kids blogging, that sounds very real life for our students of 2014!

All-in-all... I plan to go back to #2ndchat! Glad we had this assignment, it pushed me out of my "comfort zone" with Twitter!

I have included a screenshot of my chat, as I thought it was part of our requirement. I have to say I started out in just Chrome at Twitter... the someone recommended to someone else to use TweetChat, and I took their advice. However, it didn't seem to stay refreshed as quick as Twitter.com. Anyways- good luck!!