Standardized Tests

Although I do not think that standardized tests are necessarily a valid juge of someone's knowledge, I do think that they should still be used in eduacation. These kinds of tests enable student's scores from all over the nation to be compared. Due to the fact that these tests do not actually affect a student's grade, they can give the student/their parents an idea of where they are at compared to other students. These tests can also show a student's progress over the years because these tests are given every year starting in elementary and continuing until high school. I feel like as long as these tests are being used only as a commonality to compare student's scores, then their purpose is justifiable. However, I do not feel these tests should be used to grade a student's knowledge or determine a teacher's salary. If standardized tests are used effectively, they can benefit the assessment aspect of education, therefore I do feel that they should still be used today.

Book Presentation

Even though our presentation didn't go exactly as planned, I am pretty happy with it turned out. I thought the material we wanted to present, along with the activity, and how we incorporated technology was very well tied to the book we read. Even though the activity may not have went very smooth, the whole idea of our book is that the internet can be distracting and I think this is exactly what our presentation showed. Not to mention, the much of the class was "distracted" throughout everyone presentations because some chose not to pay attention what so ever. I think that we presented the material well, but the time constraints really hurt us. I had thought before we went that I needed to give time after asking my questions that I had tried to make more complex than yes or no, but when I got up there to present, there really just wasn't a whole lot of time for that. I feel that much of our presentation couldn't have went better if we just had a little more time. I felt the activity, tweeting, and discussing was all very limited. However, the time limit was part of the presentation, so that's just how things go. Next time, I would make sure we have all our technological things pulled up prior to starting because I feel that mixed up the order of our presentation. I would also try and give my classmates more time to process the questions I was asking, but I feel those are very minor things for how the presentation went overall.

Motivation

     Motivation is a hard topic for me because I feel like a lot of the motivation I had throughout school has always been from myself. My parents have helped me understand how important doing well in school is, so whether or not my teachers motivated me, I still excelled in school. However, I know this will not be the case for all of my students. With that being said, I want to make sure my students understand the importance of excelling in school. This motivation may not come from within, but with my support, I hope to show my students that excelling in school is crucial for their future and they will be able to do that with my help. This could be the start of building their own self-efficacy towards school.
    One of the major things I will do to motivate my students is to keep them actively mentally engaged. By keeping the concepts I teach within their ZPDand connecting them to their schemas, I hope to make the concepts relevant to their life, which in return will help them want to learn. This will also help to keep my students from being frustrated with things they don't understand. By doing a majority of the learning in class and not assigning homework that isn't purposeful, I hope my students will have enough support and scaffolding that they can move forward at each of their appropriate paces. I will also use concrete examples and ask lots of questions to ensure my students are understanding what I am teaching.
     By showing my students how imporant a good education is and helping them move forward with their education, I hope they will be able to see how much I care to see them succeed. This will set a level of respect from my students to me and me to my students which will help motivate my students. I will also serve as a role model to my students by setting good examples for them to follow. I hope to build a good relationship with each one of my students individually which will give my students a better understanding of what I expect from them.
    I feel that by changing the beliefs of my students towards education, I can motivate them to learn. I don't think school has to be boring and hard. It can fun, engaging, and very worthwhile, but many teachers don't take the time to make it that. I hope by using effective strategies to motivate my students they will understand the importance of learning and strive to work hard at it.

Classroom Management

     A big part of successful classroom management, in my opinion, is keeping the students actively mentally engaged. I feel that if the students are actively mentally engaged, there is less time for behaviors that are considered inappropriate in the classroom. I plan on incorporating SLT and CLT into this part of my classroom management. CLT is obviously connected if I want my students to be actively mentally engaged, but SLT comes into play by allowing for discussion in the classroom. I find this to be a beneficial aspect of our 107 classroom and it's something I want to incorporate in my future classroom, but for slightly different reasons. I want to be an elementary teacher, therefore the discussions I provide for my students will differ. However, at this young age, discussions will be beneficial in a different sense just because providing young students with opportunities to communicate with their peers can help their language development. The big thing here though, is making sure the communication allows the to be actively mentally engaged, This can be monitored done by walking around the classroom (BLT), asking open-ended questions (SLT) and keeping concepts within the students ZPD (SLT). Another important aspect is making sure discussion is being done at the right times. You can use other students as concrete examples (DLT) to show students what appropriate classroom behaviors such as talking in an "inside" voice and talking at the correct times are by modeling these behaviors. By having little to no time for "down time" (CLT) I hope this will help my students stay focused and using appropriate classroom behaviors. Another aspect of classroom management is knowing when to hand out materials. (BLT) To me, this is a no brainer especially because I want to work with young students. Anything, can be used as a distraction to them, so I feel any type of material would need to be handed out after I have said everything I need to say as far as directions or etc.  Even at this young age, everything we do in the classroom can be made relevant (CLT, DLT) in order to keep my students interested and engaged. Just because something is hands on doesn't make it actively mentally engaging, but that doesn't mean there aren't ways to make concepts fun, but also actively mentally engage my students.

Group Lessons

Group 1: I thought you guys did a good job of providing concrete examples for your lesson. Also, this specific concept related to our age group very well. I think you guys tied the learning theories in very well, but i'm not sure everyone was actively mentally engaged in this activity. Everyone participated in the poll, but after that i'm not sure everyone was with you.

Group 2: I know your topic was homophones, but i'm not sure what your were teaching persay? I understand that you wanted to show that there are two different meanings to words that are the same, but I feel you just stated that and never really went any further than stating that. I do think everyone was actively mentally engaged in this activity though, so that went really well for you.

Group 3: I thought your presentation was good. You used the book you read as a concrete example and went more abstract by asking questions. However, for a 3rd grader, I feel active listening skills may have to be modeled more concretely in order for them to understand. There also wasn't alot of social interaction, but I do think a lot of people enjoyed your lesson.

Group 4: I like that you did an activity with physical movement. I think this can help get students motiaved or excited. I also liked that you shared with the group that this activity can be adapted for any age level easily. However, I don't feel the lesson addressed many of the lessons theories. There wasn't any social interaction, our schemas weren't changed at our age, and the examples weren't overly concrete.

Spelling Lesson

    My group chose to do a spelling lesson because we thought that misspelling words could possibly still be a problem for some of our peers. I think we were right in assuming this because it is true that a lot of people rely on technology these days to help with their spelling errors. I thought that some of the examples we showed did a good job of confirming these spelling issues.
    I think most of our peers were actively mentally engaged, however I kind of feel like no one really wanted to participate. So, next time I would probably come up with something a little more exciting. Also, I feel we didn't pose good questions because half the time we didn't get any kind of a response from our peers. We also thought our peers would have more explanations as to why words were spelled right, using rules or etc, but that didn't go as planned. I feel as if the only thing we taught was identifying correctly spelled words.
     It is difficult to make spelling words concrete, but rather than discussing them, we had our peers write them in order to make them a little more concrete. We used SLT by allowing each group to discuss their words and also allowing feedback on which word was correctly spelled and why. Lastly, we tried to reconstruct our peers schemas by correctly spelling/identify challenging words.

collegechat

     To be honest, when we were given the assignment to participate in a twitter chat, I wasn't thrilled. It seem overwhelming and I didn't feel I would get anything from it. I was also worried that I wouldn't have anything "intelligent" to add to the conversation. This is the reason why I chose collegechat. I felt that I would relate better to the topics that this chat discusses because although I am an education major sometimes I feel I don't have adequate knowledge about many of the smaller issues that arise in education today.
      I really enjoyed the college chat. I feel that is was also a good pick because it didn't move as fast as I feel some of the bigger chats would. I was able to keep up and provide relevant feedback because I am currently a college student. This chat wanted perspectives from current students, educators, parents, etc. so it fit really well for me. Some of the issues we discussed were lack of money, making cuts, three year degree programs, and legacies being more easily accepted into good schools. I liked being able to read the different ideas from people because it allowed me to look at a situation differently. Overall, I think twitter chat is a great way to acquire information on education topics. I plan on using it more in the future just to become more knowledgeable in my field.