Reaction to Blogs!

Amanda, I couldn’t agree with you more that we as teachers need to put ourselves in our student’s shoes. I think it is important to remember what it once felt like as a middle school/high school student ourselves in order to be more effective. Let’s face it; students have so much more going on in their lives then attending our family and consumer science class. But it is our job to use class time as effectively as possible.

Kim, I enjoyed reading both your articles. I’ll make sure I’m not one of those teachers who don’t know how to use PowerPoint! Technology is ever changing and it is our job as teachers to stay current, by doing so, our students will not only take us more seriously they will use us as a resource. I also found our second article helpful in that students want more freedom in the classroom to expand their learning. This also gives students the opportunity to tap into their own creativity.

Beki, I also enjoy when professors give me a choice. I have a paper due next week and we were given two options. I don’t know why but I feel so much better when there are two choices to pick from. I think as a society feel we have the right to choose and we don’t feel restricted. From a student’s perspective, they will have more excitement towards learning if they aren’t always being TOLD what to do.

Giving Students Ownership

1. Educational Leadership. Today's students have an exciting outlet for creativity and collaboration at their fingertips. As a result, students have shorter attention spans and it makes the job of the teacher that much more difficult to keep students engaged. So what do we do about this? The author of Educational Leadership suggests ways to instill ownership of learning. Some possible ways include, providing relevant curriculum material, using technology appropriately, offering choice learning projects, making learning active, and allowing students to move at their own pace. Teachers are also urged to instill student accountability. Some possible ways include teaching study skills for independent learning and learning new professional skills.

2. What students want from teachers. Students were asked for a time they felt in charge of their learning at school, when they were working not just for a grade but because they were excited and interested to learn. Some of their responses included: feeling they are taken seriously, being challenged to think, respected, given responsibility, and feeling they are important.

So many students feel high school is just a stepping stone to something bigger. Every student is in charge of his or her learning. How hard we work in school and take charge of our own learning experience depends on our goals in life. It is important for students to set goals for themselves and to work to achieve those goals but it is more important for a teacher to make students feel the most comfortable and feel they have the ability to succeed at whatever they may encounter.

Giving Students Ownership

1: Consider School from a Students' Perspective
As teachers we need to put ourselves on the opposite side of the teachers desk to make sure that we are being effective. It is important that me make sure we grasp our students attention, and that we are able to maintain it throughout our lesson. If we believe most students will better comprehend the information by doing hands on activities or group work, then it is our job to facilitate learning in such a way.

2: Choose activities that prepare students to learn
It is important that you use yourself as a tool and resource in the classroom. Showing confidence, leadership, and assurance in the material is key to successful teaching. Pair share, group work, and classroom activities will facilitate deep processing of information. If these things are done, the learners will obtain the best results and be the most successful in your classroom.

Giving Students Ownership

There were 2 short articles that I found interesting.

1. Modern Students-According to the article, students aren't learning because they're not prepared to learn and because teaching methods are not up-to-date. Students are not always held accountable for their learning; teachers should give students more choices, hold them more accountable, and update their teaching methods to use technology appropriately. Another way to give students more responsibility and accountability is to put them into smaller learning communities.

2. What Students want from Teachers-Students want more freedom in the classroom to expand their learning. These freedoms can include more open discussion and debates on a variety of topics and more room for creative expression on projects. A good way to do this is by giving students choices, with some limits, so that they can feel more in control of their learning.

Giving Students Ownership

The two suggestions for giving students ownership of their learning that I found to be really helpful were "offer choices to engage students" and "choose activities that prepare students to learn".

First, I always appreciated when teachers or professors gave me, as a student, choices as to which projects or activities I could do. I think that this undoubtedly gives the student a chance to take ownership of their learning because they are able to do what interests them the most (which can be quite difficult). Also, as a teacher, this gives us a great insight as to what our students can strive the most at.

Second, choosing activities that can prepare students to learn is absolutely vital when educating students. They must be able to relate the lessons to real life and its importance in real life before they will take much interest to it. As they realize that the information we're trying to teach them can better prepare them for life after high school, they will most likely try to learn more about this topic.

Giving students ownership of learning( Part 1)

www.ascd.org/SearchResults.aspx?s=Giving%20students%20ownership%20of%20learning&c=1&n=10&p=0 You will need to type in this hyperlink.
http://r.smartbrief.com/resp/ndjkdrizkJsRlTCiaWrlFgjE
Sign up for ASCD Smartbriefs.
Check out this website. ASCD is an awesome resource for teaching techniques based on research and doing "what works" for today's students. Each HDFS student ( fall 2008) will choose 2 of the most interesting teacher topics and will post a synthesis of the article on the Betty Lamp Blogger site. Each student will read and react to each of the blogs posted by your classmates. Be prepared to share your experience in class on Dec. 10. Based upon your experience with teaching literacy in the classroom, create a rubric to use with middle school or high school students who have been given a "blogging assignment." This assignment is due on Wednesday, December 10, the evening you will share your unit. Remember to bring a hard copy of your unit which will be placed in the HDFS Junior Units binder.

teaching

Yesterday, I taught the lesson that I prepared for the Child D. 2 classes. The lesson was an introduction to curriculum in nursery and preschools. I think that the lesson went pretty well; the first class was more responsive than the second class. It was interesting to see how different the 2 classes were when it came to different activities. For example, I started the class by playing a game of "strike-out" (it's the same as hang-man, I just didn't think that some of the professors would like the concept behind hang-man, so I called it strike-out : ) Anyway, the first class was really excited because they were playing a game. The 2nd class, after I was done explaining the rules, just sat there staring at me. I had to tell them that the game was not that hard, all they had to do was guess a letter. Then one person, very hesitantly, suggested the letter A. The students in the class are very intelligent- strike-out just did not seem to motivate them. Overall though, I think the lesson went well for my first time writing a lesson plan and then teaching it.

Classroom Management that works!

As your middle school FCS teachers get new students in the new marking period , pay special attention to the "systems" the teacher sets up to do manage students, the environment, lessons, assessments, discipline etc. Experienced teachers make it look soooooooooo easy. Teaching is an art and a science and good classroom management is 80% of good teaching. Check out the following website from ASCD and read what Ms. Devries and other professionals have to say about classroom management. http://www.ascd.org/research_a_topic/Education_Topics/Classroom_Management/Explore/Classroom_Management_Explore.aspx.

7th Grade

This semester I have spent my time observing Mrs. Slike a 7th grade child development and sewing teacher at Mechanicsburg Middle School. Mrs. Slike has a great relationship with all of her students and appears to use good classroom management skills. Next week the current students will be switching classrooms and moving to Tech Ed leaving Mrs. Slike with a new group of students until December. She will repeat her curriculum over and begin with child development and then finish with the students sewing project, constructing their own diper bag!!! Stay tuned for more exciting updates!!!!

6th Grade

6th grade
The classes that I observed is learning about their culture and heritage.
There are about 16 students in each class and about 7 different classes.

I will add more later :)

I have been working with the eighth grade teacher at MMS. Her content focus is on nutrition and budgeting. I am excited that I am able to teach nutrition, however, the budgeting aspect is not one of my favorites. Some of the information that she is going over is a review for me from when I sat in this class in eighth grade. I am looking at this as an opportunity to teach something that I would not choose to teach over the other different FCS topics. Budgeting is being wrapped up for the semester and the students were given a project to complete. They were given a scenerio of a person with their age, education, and marital status and were told to provide this person with a proper job, house, and a budget that would fit their income. This seemed to be a fun project for the kids and it really helped them comprehend the topic better because they had to critically think about what would work for this specific situation. While I am glad that I will soon be teaching the nutrition aspect of the course, I feel that it was beneficial for me to have sat in on classes about budgeting as well.

Check out this website

http://www.childdevelopmentinfo.com/

10/19/08-FCS Content

The teacher who I'm working with teaches the child development classes in the FCS department. I personally have not had as much experience in this area, so I'm kind of scared, but also really glad I have the opportunity to gain experience in Child Dev. before I student teach. On Thursday, two of the classes I was in were working on a unit called "Exploring the Body." The students were learning about the physical development of young children; for this unit, the teacher had a different student pretend to be the teacher for the entire class period each day. This was to help the kids prepare for next semester when they have a lab school in their classroom. The third class was working on projects that describe and explain 5 characteristics of pre-schools/child care centers. My host teacher gave me a text book to look at for the classes, which I really appreciate; it will really help me to catch up on the content the classes already covered, and prepare for what's coming up.