MEAPS

This past week in my field placement the third grade classroom i am in started taking the MEAP. They did a section of reading in the morning that was supposed to take 70 minutes and ended up taking them about 2 hours. They still had another section of reading in the afternoon that same day, which was a lot shorter. I remember taking the MEAPs and how worried as a student I was to do my best. I do remember they took a long time to do, but I don't think they took two hours! That's such a long time for a student to sit there and stare at a booklet full of reading passages and questions. And if you happened to be one of the students who finished early you had to sit there quietly while reading. coloring or working on homework until all your classmates were finished. It's different seeing the MEAPs from a teacher's perspective instead of a student's perspective now. I think it's more nerve wrecking for a teacher than for the students because these tests determine how good of a teacher you are and how much your students have learned. I have realized through all my education classes how controversial these types of tests can be though because teachers are supposed to make learning fun and meaningful for their students and these tests hinder that a bit because teachers are becoming forced to teach to the tests instead of what they think is important for their students to know. It's important for teachers to teach life skills and things about the real world, which are not covered in a MEAP. If I was a student now, especially in high school I probably would not take the MEAP. It used to be that if you did well on it that you could get money to go to college, but that was stripped away so now it is just a test to see how well teachers are teaching. But it's not even a true test of that either! Another way needs to be figured out to assess students knowledge and teachers teaching abilities than through a MEAP or standardized test.

Technology Lesson

I am going to teach a lesson about the difference between rocks and minerals. Rocks are not the most exciting thing in the world and teaching science for many students can be quite boring, so maybe if some type of technology is involved students will enjoy it more and be more enthusastic about learning the material. I would want to use the flickr slide show or the digital story programs we have used. I know I have rock and mineral samples at home that students can look at and feel, but some of them are very small and not the 'coolest looking'. Maybe if I show pictures on a slide show of some really interesting rocks and minerals that the students will be interested in finding out more about them. Some misconceptions students have about rocks and minerals is that they are the same thing. When someone picks up a piece of quartz that it is a rock because it looks like one, when the truth is it's a mineral because it's made up of all the same material, while a rock is made up of different types of materials.

Digital Storytelling

Photo and video editing at www.OneTrueMedia.com

Digital storytelling can be very useful in a classroom. I was able to do a digital storytelling project in my TE 401 class already and it was a lot of fun to use. This can be something used all the time in the classroom to the teacher presenting ideas through a video they made or students coming up with their own stories to tell. This could be used at the beginning of the year to have students tell their story about who they are instead of having posters. this way students can be more creative and use any picture they want without having to worry that it will get ruined on a poster. This can also be used in a social studies/history class where students can use pictures and videos to tell the story about a certain era, battle or the life of a famous inventor. This allows the students to be creative and learn something new through the research they do and by watching other students stories. Digital storytelling can make teaching history in a fun way for the students instead of just learning dates and places. I loved how easy it was to use one true media. They make it really easy to upload videos, edit them and put your own music in your story. If you don't have music you can upload to the program there is hundreds of different songs to choose from. You can crop your picture, figure out the transition and decide how long you want each picture to show. There were a few down points on the program though. The only way you can put captions on your story and share it with others is if you buy the dvd or upgrade to the 'premium' account. I originally had captions in my story, but because I didn't have that premium account they are not showing. Also i did not see an way to audio record or talk in the story. I think this is another element that would be fun and key to use in a classroom where students can literally tell their story instead of writing it all out in captions or hope the students understand just by looking at the pictures. All in all I think digital storytelling can be very beneficial in the classroom, but it is important to find the right program that will work best for your projects in your classroom.

Learning Through Song

Earlier today I was listening to music and singing along with the bands, rappers and other singers knowing every single word. I am constantly listening to music and if I don't know the words to a song I really like or can't figure them out I look them up on the internet and learn them. I usually listen to the song while reading the words and they just stick in my head and the lyrics become really easy to remember. Even songs I haven't heard in a couple months or even a couple years I can still remember the lyrics the second the song starts playing. This got me thinking that there are so many people that are just like me, constantly listening to music, singing along to the songs and remembering every word. Learning lyrics is such a simple task, but for some reason many people have such a hard time remembering multiplication facts, dates of wars or scientific theories. If learning school subjects can be as easy and fun as memorizing lyrics in our favorite song we would be a much more intelligent generation. Maybe if we started teaching using songs that kids can sing they would remember more facts, concepts, dates, names etc... I remember in elementary school we used to learn different things through song. Many people can recall the song about the 50 United States or even our alphabet is a song!! It is easy to learn the alphabet because it's a song and I know so many people that would be able to sing the song about the states even though they haven't sung it in years! In 8th grade we had the opportunity to make our own songs about the Constitution by changing the lyrics of a song of our choice. We chose the song Respect by Aretha Franklin and I still remember the song we made. I have also heard of schools, typically charter schools, that are bringing song and music into their classroom to teach their students because they have noticed how easy it is for students to remember lyrics to a song, even if the song is educational and teaching about a school subject. If we bring music and songs into more of our classrooms maybe students will not only learn things in a fun way, but will retain that information for years.

Google Earth

This week I was able to explore a new technology, which I chose Google Earth. I have heard a lot about it and its features, but I have not had the chance to experiment with it until this week. I've seen my friends use it a few years ago  to find their homes or random landmarks and from what I observed it look confusing. This initially turned me off to Google Earth until I discovered how to use it this week. It is really easy to use and there are so many cool features to it! If you are in a state or area and you are looking for a golf course or a restuarant you can use Google Earth to find these things just with the click of a button. It also can be used to see diffferent places in the world that you have never seen or maybe will never experience. You can look at these places at a birds eye view or if possible go down to a level like you are walking on the ground! This can be a really cool way for students to experince the world instead of just looking at pictures in a book or atlas. Students can start of simple by looking up their homes or their favorite places in their town and through more time and working with Google Earth they can start to see things around the world. I am focusing in Math and Geography and if I were to teach middle school geography or geography in upper elementary I would let the students use Google Earth to show them the places they have been and the places they can go.

Slide Show

Copyright

Photo Attribution
Original Image: "Cinderella's Castle"
by: Devin Mulville
http://www.flickr.com/photos/mulvill2/5046309074/in/photostream/
Released Under an Attribution-Non-Commercial-Share Alike License
http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-sa/2.0/

This is a photo I took over the summer when I went to Disney World with my cousins, aunts, uncles and grandparents. This photo is licensed with Creative Commons. I did not know much about Creative Commons or copyrighting until my CEP 416 class. I have always seen the CC with a circle around it symbol and I thought it was like a trademark, so no one else could use it or copy it. Through this class I have discovered that Creative Commons has different types of licenses, such as allowing people to sell it or not, allowing people to change it or not and making sure someone gives you credit for your work. It makes it really easy for someone to create any type of restrictions they choose to put on their video, picture, music etc... I have found it to be very convenient because I can allow people to change my picture, but they are not allowed to sell it without my permission. The only drawback I have found with Creative Commons and copyrighting is when you have to cite whatever it is you are using. If you look at the citation below the picture, there is a lot for someone to have to type or write out to make sure it is cited properly. It is a necessary process though to give credit where credit is due and I am sure once I get used to citing different things it will become a faster and easier process.

Different Style of Teaching

I have been to my TE 401 field placement three times now and I am starting to understand what goes on in the classroom and observing how the students are learning. I am in a 3rd grade class and my cooperating teacher (CT) said that this class is one of the calmest she has ever had in 20 years of teaching. The students are mostly African American and Hispanic, and some have really big personalities while others are extremely shy. I just finished up giving students math assessments, so my CT can figure out what she needs to emphasize her curriculum and lessons on this year to help students get better in the areas that they didn't do as well. Basically I have not been in the classroom observing too much because I have bee out in the hallway administering assessments. I finished them up on Thursday and was able to spend some significant time in the classroom. The students are divided into groups and have 6-7 centers they have to complete each day and a couple of the centers they have to listen to cassette tapes and do a worksheet. Well I found out on Thursday that it's not a random person talking in these cassettes, but my CT made them and she is teaching the children through these tapes. This made me realize that I have not seen my teacher do any type of instruction yet and she has told me that the students rotate through the centers until 1:30 each day. So in doing the math this means that students would only be getting at maximum 2 hours of "live" instruction. I don't think it is possible to teach social studies, science, math and literacy in 2 hours of everyday. I have come to believe that the students are being taught through these tapes and this bothers me a bit.

Not all students are going to learn from hearing someone talk, while working on a worksheet and maybe looking through a book as a reference. Some students learn better from seeing a teacher instruct, taking notes and listening to the teacher talk. If there is some type of commotion going on in the classroom or a book is dropped to the floor and makes a loud noise the children on the head phones typically look over and are distracted from the tapes. They do not have the chance to go back and rewind them if they missed it because there are one or two other children listening in at the same time. The students end up missing important information and have no way of asking questions if they were to not understand something. This occurred on Thursday when one of the students was confused and did not understand what they needed to do and I could not help them because I had not listened to the tape. The only thing I could do was tell them to try to get through the tape one more time before they had to switch stations. It was very frustrating that there was no way for me to help these students, and there won't be any way to help them in the future unless I listen to the tapes in the morning so I know what is on there, just in case they need help.

When I discussed this type of teaching to my friends they asked me "If these students are being taught through tapes then what is the point of teachers?" I thought this was a great point because if every teacher adopted this teaching style teachers would really not  be needed. You would just need someone to make sure the students were listening to the right tapes and making sure they finished them every day. Teaching is supposed to be interactive. You are supposed to create meaning for the students to keep them interested and excited about learning. Students are supposed to be given the opportunity to ask questions, make comments or have discussions about the lessons or content. By teaching through tapes none of these qualities or aspects of teaching are being reached. My hope is that my CT is doing 'normal teaching' in the afternoons for those 2 hours, so the students are not just listening to tapes all day long. I am going to talk to her more about these tapes and hopefully go in on an afternoon sometime soon to see what type of teaching occurs then.





Photo Attribution

Original Image: "cintas cassette"

http://www.flickr.com/photos/chaos_nt/28240788/

by: chaos.nt

Released Under as Attribution-Non-Commercial-Share Alike License

http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-sa/2.0/deed.en