Blog Post 16: Final Reflection

C4T Summary #4

I commented on Larry Ferlazzo's blog. He post a new blog every day, several times a day. It was hard to go back and find the specific post that I commented on because there are so many that have been posted since then, but Mr. Ferlazzo does a great job keeping up with the latest news and involving familiar social media sites such as Twitter in his blogs.

I really like Julie Reuter's blog Student PLN's. I added her as a resource for my personal PLN. She introduces PLN's to younger students which I believe is a great idea because they can start building their PLN's from an early age. She had the fifth graders help the first graders which I thought was really sweet. When little kids work with bigger kids they look up to them, have fun with it, and learn so much more. It is very important that we have people to learn from, and I explained that I have learned to much from Dr. Strange in EDM 310. She seems really fun and very positive, and I really enjoyed reading her blogs.

This week I commented on Mrs. Sharon Davison's blog A Celebration of Learning. She is a Kindergarten teacher and finds creative ways to keep her students families involved in the classroom. For example, one parent could not make it so she used FaceTime and the student were able to virtually share her work through the phone. There are several creative ways to keep the parents involved, and it is very important they see what their students are learning in the classroom. Mrs. Davison states, "Bringing families together to celebrate and connect is what is important. Learning is for everyone."

Blog Post 5 Part B

I was not familiar with Personal Learning Networks (PLN's) until I started EDM 310. It was very new to me, and I found it very interesting, helpful, and creative. There are several ways to build PLN's, but I found a few different websites to be very helpful for me.

Pinterest, Twitter, and Blogging are great ways to begin PLN's. Pinterest allows you to search boards from other pinners, some are current teachers and students, and you can create your own boards. When I searched "Personal Learning Networks", I found all kinds of ideas. It was great for me because I was a beginner and just starting out. The more I searched, the more I was learning, and getting new ideas for myself and my future classroom. Twitter is a great resource because it allowed me to follow up on college-level teachers such as Dr. Strange and Mrs. Vitulli . These teachers are great resources and are always tweeting links that are great for adding to your PLN. Twitter is useful because you can post one thing and it immediately gets around and so many people around the world can see it! It is a great tool for learning and interacting with people around the world. Blogging has become very popular around the world and is great for building any PLN's. I am so glad Dr. Strange introduced us to blogging. For example, our weekly C4K comments. I love doing those because we get to interact with different students around the world and get to know them through their blogs. Our C4T comments are good resources because most of those teachers are also on Twitter and constantly blogging and posting links and articles that are helpful to add your PLN. I commented on Julie Reuter's blog Student PLN's. She introduces PLN's at a young age, which is a good idea so they can starting learning and building up their PLN.

Personal Learning Networks are really fun, and I am glad I got to learn more about them. I can not wait to add more resources to my PLN and learn so much more along the way through my teaching career. I cam so excited to watch my PLN continue to grow as I become more experienced with teaching and become an educator.

November C4K Summary

The kids blog we do every week is my favorite part of this class. I love being able to see what children are doing around the world in other countries. Their blogs are very interesting and creative, and it is so fun to see what they write about.

Week 1: Keanan was the first student I was assigned to this month. His blog was called the "Elephant Whisperer", based on the book. He described the emotions of the elephants from the book. I was very expressed because he understood exactly what was going on in the book. He made great predictions on what the elephants what do next. He was very open minded and did a great job on his blog.

Week 2: My next student was Channing. He listed four qualities of himself and his major one was dedication. I explained to him that was a good quality to have, the importance of dedication, how he will need dedication to be successful throughout school and his career.

Week 3: My student is Megan from Mrs. DeBuhr's class. As I was reading her blog, the first thing I noticed was her outstanding, strong use of vocabulary. She was using words such as stupefies, myriad, and ominous. It is the ending of her schools first quarter, and she has accomplished all of her goals. She says she focused really hard on all of her assignments and made good grades. Her new goal for the second quarter is to become a writer and live up to her full potential in writing. I am sure she will maintain to keep a steadfast mind, focus on school, maintain her good grades, and achieve her second quarter goals.

Blog Post #14

I chose Ken Robinson's The Importance of Creativity video. I believe creativity is very important and should be apart of every schools classroom. My process of picking out which video I wanted was looking at the title. Since I strongly encourage creativity in the classroom, I knew it was a video I would be interested in. I was right! It is definitely a very important, interesting teaching video.

As Sir Ken Robinson states, all kids have tremendous talents and we have a tendency to shut them down. He also states, "If you're not prepared to be wrong, you will never come up with anything original." I played this quote four times because I found it to be very inspiring. As students start growing older, they get embarrassed from being wrong and are becoming followers, not leaders. Instead of teaching our students it is okay to mess up, some education systems are teaching them that mistakes are the worse things you can make, and educating them out of their creativity zones. He also made a good point that every education school system around the world has the same subjects and mainly focus on math and languages, and at the bottom are the humanities and the arts. He used the example dancing. There is not a school in the world that teaches dance like they do math, and I believe that is taking them away from using their creativity.

I will allow my students to use their creativity in my classroom. I believe allowing them to do so will boost their self esteems, become more involved in the classroom, and become more fluent within the arts. What many teachers do not realize is that there are numerous ways to encourage your students to use their creativity and are able to include it in a math, reading, or science lesson. Humanities and Art is very important and should be taking seriously in the classroom.
I was a student who absolutely hated PE class. I despised running a mile around the football field, push up competitions, and being sweaty with the boys. It was just not my thing. I am currently taking HS 365, and I have learned to love PE and value how much it really helps our students. There are so many fun ways to incorporate fun PE activities such as jump roping, swinging, playing with the parachute, and racing on the scooters to allow our students to let loose and give them the exercise they need. Being in a classroom all day can get boring, and our students become tired and do not want to focus on their work, and that is where these fun, creative PE activities come in. I believe it boost our students creativity, and it is something all teachers should keep in mind.

Project #12 Part B

Blog Post 13

What are some effective ways you can teach Special Education children in the classroom?

1.) Watch this video: Teaching Special Education

2.) Watch this video: Tips for a Special Education Classroom

3.) Read this article: Effective Teaching Strategies for Special Education

4.) Write a post on what you have learned about to effectively teach Special Education students. Is it something you are interested in?

Growing up, I knew I wanted to be a first grade teacher. I had made my mind made up, and there was no way anyone could make me change it. My senior year of high school, I was a fourth grade assistant, and I was able to work with two special needs children. At the time, I was completely lost and had no idea what I was doing or how to work with them. As the year progressed, I was starting to understand how to talk to them, teach them, and explain things in the way they would understand. About a month or so in their classroom, the teacher relied on me to teach them everything they were falling behind on. They were becoming more dependent on me, which was completely fine, because I absolutely loved being able to help and teach those sweet students. I realized that first grade was not my calling, Special Education is. I did not want to graduate and leave those sweet, smart, hysterical children behind. I love being able to go back to my home town and see their sweet faces, and hear their stories of how much they love school and their teachers. It puts the biggest smile on my face seeing special needs children becoming such inspirations not only to me, but in the classroom. Yes, it can be a very challenging job, but it is definitely the biggest reward you can receive.

Teaching Special Education Mrs. Vogelsorg knew she wanted to be a Special Education teacher since she was in middle school. In this video, she admits that there are days when there is a challenge of small progress being made and days when they are all progressing. She says incorporating the Smart Board in the classroom really gets the students attention and it is a positive and fun thing for them.

Tips for a Special Education Classroom Krista Blessing is a Special Education pre-school teacher. She list very important tips on how to run a Special Education Classroom: step up your room and make sure you have adaptive materials for your students, be aware of children's responses incase a certain scent makes them upset, talk to parents to see what upsets the students and what makes them happy, and follow the IEP's.

In the article, Effective Teaching Strategies for Special Education, I learned many strategies for Special Education. It is very important that the teachers allow a break in-between assignments to let the students refocus and re-gain their concentration. Also, adding creativity to your classroom, lessons, and homework will help them become more advanced in the classroom.