Blog Post #19

Summarize a Story 

This lesson is about creating a summary. The video provides a short story and then it provides an example on how to summarize it. I liked this video because it had animation for children.

I had never heard of TED-Ed until this week. It was interesting to find videos on Youtube about my final project. For my final project, I chose to focus on summarizing because the students always have a hard time with this skill when they take the state test. My project is about teaching students to summarize and I was very impressed that I found a kid-friendly video on demonstrating this skill. I thought TED-Ed will be an amazing tool to use. There are many ways in which TED-Ed can be used in the classroom.

            The first idea for using TED-Ed will be for students in the 4^th grade for a Science lesson. In this case I would have my students find a video about the topic for their science project. I would then have them ask questions in the Think section, include resources in the Dig Deeper section, and create some discussion questions that the other students can answer. Another lesson for this same grade level and subject would be for students to look for videos on certain experiments made at the end of the unit. The students would be placed in groups and they would have to do an experiment. They would then find a video related to their experiment.

            The second idea that I have for using TED-Ed would be to teach my students about a certain topic. In this case I would use it for a 2^nd grade Language Arts lesson. I would show the videos to my students as a whole group and have them answer the questions. I would also divide them into groups and have them create a discussion question that the rest of the groups can answer.  

            My third idea would be for a 3^rd grade Math lesson. For this lesson, I would give each student a math problem that they would have to solve. I would have them solve the problem and find a video where the problem is being solved too. I would then have them find other resources so that the rest of the students could see the options.

            These are just some of the ways in which we can use TED-Ed with our students.  This is a great resource that can be used to teach or for students to show their learning. This would be something familiar for them because students usually already know how to look search for videos on Youtube.

Blog Post #18

I had recently discovered Google Photos when I saw that my phone’s memory was low and I needed to free up some space. I was able to erase the pictures and they were saved in my Google Photos. I really love that the photos are now uploaded and that it creates videos. 

My first idea for using Google Photos in the classroom would be for them to create an album. I would use Google Photos for a 3^rd grade Science lesson. I will assign a topic as we are finishing a unit. The students will be responsible for taking photos and uploading them to their album. An example would be heat. They would have to take pictures of things that give heat. They would have to add a description explaining what is happening in their picture. Another idea for this same grade level and subject would be to have students create an album based on photos they take when making experiments. Students would take pictures of the materials, steps and then show final results. They would be asked to add a description where they explained what they were doing.

My second idea would be for students in 2nd grade. This lesson would be for Language Arts. Students need to be able to summarize. I think using Google Photos would be a great way of doing this. I would have students take pictures or find photos and do a retell of the latest story we have read. I would have them add a description to each photo so that I would be able to assess that they understood that a summary doesn’t include every single detail that happened in the story. I would do this lesson at least 2 a month.

The third activity would also be for Language Arts but for students in 5^th grade. In this case I would use it for finding synonyms. I would give each student a word. They would be responsible for finding synonyms. They would then look for pictures of those words and create an album. They would have to order the words meaning least to most. For example, if the word was mad. They could use words like upset, angry, irate, furious, and enraged. Then they order them to show the pictures from where the person seems a little annoyed to enraged.

            These would be some ideas for using Google Photos. I think using Google Photos in the classroom would be engaging for students. Most of them love taking selfies, and this is a great way for them to use it for their education.

Blog Post #17

Lost Love

My album tells the story about a young woman who loses the person she had planned to marry. It tells us how she had to recover in order to be happy again.

Blog Post #16

50 Writing Prompts for All Grade Levels

The first article I found was about writing prompts that can be used for all grade levels. This article is divided into three sections where it includes writing prompts for high school, middle school, and elementary. This article was appealing to me because at my school they are always explaining how we need to push our students so that they can be able to write well for the STAAR test. Writing is a critical skill that students need to master in order to succeed. I thought that some of the prompts were a tad bit hard for my kindergarten students but they were appropriate for older grade levels. One of my favorite prompts at the elementary level was, “I wish my teachers knew that…” I thought this would be a great opportunity for the students to share their deepest fears, hopes, dreams, or secrets. I believe this prompt would open the door to build a better relationship with the students.

The middle school prompts are more open to explain issues like gender, bullying, ethnicity, etc. One example of a prompt I found would be interesting to read about was, “Is your ethnicity an important part of your identity? How so?” This is a question that will provide students with the opportunity to dig deep down and analyze. A prompt from the high school level that caught my attention was the following, “What causes racism?” This question is of vital importance because it gives students the opportunity to analyze their feelings and maybe research past events to determine what they think causes racism. These are important prompts that can provide the teachers with a greater understanding of how the students think. It also provides the opportunity for addressing any misconceptions that may exist. Overall, I enjoyed reading this article because it gave me stupendous ideas to use in class. 

6 Techniques for Building Reading Skills 

The other article I found in Edutopia described techniques to build reading skills. The techniques mentioned include making annotations that will increase engagement and increases comprehension. Some of the following are: asking questions, chunking, summarizing paragraphs, and even drawing pictures. Another goal is to appeal to the senses. Reading aloud to students and verbalizing the questions can be beneficial because students need the skills modeled because sometimes they don’t know how to ask the questions. Another suggestion the article emphasizes is setting goals. In order to do this, students need to evaluate their reading skills and ask themselves questions. Other suggestions include giving students different text lengths, giving them the opportunity to choose what they read, and by assessing their skills whether in a formal or informal manner. This article gave me ideas that I can use with my class to build their reading skills.

 

Blog Post #15

Blog Post #15

Using LiveBinders was a new experience for me.  At first I had a hard time adding new content but once I got the hang of it, it became easy. Now that I’ve seen how you can bookmark websites and includes all sorts of videos, images, links, etc. I can see how useful it can be in the classroom. The first idea for me would be to use this binder as a teacher. I could keep track of activities and ideas especially when using the videos. This could easily be shared with other colleagues. I would especially use this binder for Reading. It would be for kinder and I would create a binder for the letters of the alphabet. Each tab would be a different letter. The tabs would have two sub tabs; one for the videos for that letter, and the other for other resources or books for that specific letter.

My second idea would be for students in the 4^th grade. This would be a lesson targeted for Science. In this case I would divide my students in groups and they would have to create a binder on a specific topic. I would use this as a type of assessment for them after we finished with a unit. Each group would research information, and activities for their topic. Then they would share their binder with the rest of the class so that the students could learn more about that specific topic.

My third idea would be for students in 5^th grade for Social Studies. This would be a final project. Students would be given a specific question about a topic that has been discussed. They would need to create a binder with the information that supports their points of view in regards to their question. Students would be able to create tabs and include the resources, websites, images, videos, etc. I think this would promote interest in students because they are already online most of the time and they enjoy sharing what they found on the Internet. This would be a way to engage the students in sharing their discoveries.  

I think LiveBinders is a great way of bookmarking websites so that we don’t forget where we found it. This is useful because you can have sub tabs within a tab and put more resources related to that topic. I could easily see myself using this with activities for the different units.

Live Binder

My LiveBinder is about resources that I have used for teaching different skills in kinder. They include videos and songs about the letters and numbers. It also includes websites that I use for my students to provide extra practice.

My LiveBinder

Blog Post #14: Final Project Idea

For my final project I would create a lesson for the 4^th grade level. I would like to create a Language Arts lesson and focus on the TEK (6) Reading/Comprehension of Literary Text/Fiction. Students understand, make inferences and draw conclusions about the structure and elements of fiction and provide evidence from text to support their understanding. Students are expected to: (A) sequence and summarize the plot's main events and explain their influence on future events. I decided to focus on this lesson because every year after we receive our scores for the STAAR test, it is determined that we are lacking the skills in summarizing. We have seen students struggle trying to determine what to include in the summary.  

The learning goals for this lesson would be for the students to learn how to determine if their information is an important event that needs to be included in their summary. The other goal would be for the students to be able to sequence the events of the story, and therefore, understand and be able to explain how those events all have an influence in future events.

This lesson will be designed to focus on main ideas as an introduction so that students can avoid including information that does not belong in the summary. I will tap into their interests by focusing on stories that they are familiar with and that appeal to them.

For this lesson, I am planning on having students use Prezi so that they can summarize the main events of the story. I would also have them use Edmodo to communicate with me as well as with their peers. Another Web 2.0 tool that I would like to include would be Twitter. I would include Twitter because I think it can help them summarize since there is a limit to how many words you can have.