C4K's for September

C4K Post # 1

For our first Comments for Kids assignment, I was assigned to a girl in high school. I didn’t catch her name. The classes  blog post was supposed to be about “Why they believe….” She went on to tell about her older cousin. He was gay, and his family wasn’t very acceptive of his choice. She went into detail of how she was raised Southern and in Church. Her grandfather was even a preacher. She explained some of the things that she was raised to believe. She stated that only the younger people in her family was there for her cousin, and the elders turned their back on him. He then decided that he was going to take his life, he told his family about this thought and they all came around and were acceptive of his decision. She then said that she started forming her own opinions and became open minded about her own thoughts instead of going by what she was raised up to believe. She also stated part of a bible verse in her blog. Her final sentence was “This is why I believe everyone should be treated the same.”

My response:

For my first  C4K blog post, I was amazed at what I had to read! I was in shock, to begin with I was scared to respond to her post! I was under the thought that she was only in third grade,  I couldn’t believe she understood so much at such a young age. I told her she very wise at such a young age. I told her that being open minded is a very good thing to be. I was also glad to hear her family decided to accept her cousin no matter what choice he made. I was saddened however that he had to say he was going to take his own life to get his family to support his decision. This is a different day in time. I explained to her that most of the time older people are more set in their ways than younger people. I later found out that this girl was in high school, I felt a little better about the situation she had encountered but it was still sad!

C4K Post  # 2

For my second comment for kids post, I chose Toto, his blog post was titled “Things I like and Things I do not like”. I really enjoyed his post because it reminded me of how simple life was when we were children. He liked football, tennis, and soccer. He liked hamburgers. He also liked pretty much every electronic device you could think of! His dislikes were tomatoes and a few other simple things! One was waking up early!

My response:

I let Toto know that I found his blog post because I was in the EDM310 class at the University of South Alabama. I told Toto that I loved his post! I then said Toto that we had a few similarities! I told him that I love football, and playing playstation and I didn’t like to get up early either! For my question to him, I asked, “how do you know you do not like tomatoes?” I then went on to tell him that I thought I didn’t like tomatoes, but it was because I would never try them when I was little! Now I eat them on my salads and sandwiches! I wonder if he decided to try them?!

C4K  Post # 3

For my third C4K assignment I got to see a blog by a  little Tongan girl named Efilona. The title of her post was “My Son is Naughty”. I did not know what to expect, but it turned out that Efilona had to make up a word problem for math! This is what she said:

“Jack and Ray were at the rugby. Ray’s team was winning

so Jack decided to give Ray a problem to deflate his ego a

bit. So Jack said “Did you know that today is my three

sons’ birthday?” “How old are they?” Ray asked taking

the bite. “I’ll give you a hint. The product of their ages is

36 and the sum of their ages is 13,” Jack replied. “That’s

no help,” said Ray. So Jack weakened and gave him

another clue. “O.K. My youngest son is very naughty.”

“Nothing to it,” exclaimed Ray and he told Jack the

correct ages of his sons.

How did Ray figure out the correct answer and what are

Jack’s sons’ ages?”

She also added a video clip of herself and a friend explaining the answer to the problem and how they came to their answer.

My response:
I first let Efilona know who I was and why I was commenting on her post! I told Efilona how great she did at making up her very own word problem. I let her know that many people don’t enjoy math and that she seemed to be very interested in the subject, and she should keep up the good work! I also complimented the video she put on her post, showing others the answer to her word problem she created. She did an amazing job. I told her to continue to excel in school and enjoy these last few months! I was really excited that she is so young and can already make a video and post it to her blog. Things that I am just now experiencing at the age of 26! I can’t wait to teach my students how to do these things!


C4K # 4

For my last C4K for the month of September, I was assigned to Maria. She is a student in Mrs. Ripps class in Madison, Wiscousin. Maria didn't write a blog post about Mrs. Ripp's Challenge # 3. Her last post is called Meet Maria. In this post she tells about her life and things she likes. I enjoyed reading this post, because I miss life being as simple as it is in a childs point of view. She loves to read!! I was so happy to read that. She has three favorite colors which are purple, black, and red. She lives to play and sleep. She likes to play with her brother and her cousins. Her last sentence is, "My favorite food is Mexican food." 


My response:

While reading Maria's post, I was so happy to see life from a 5th graders point of view. So simple! I miss that. I was so happy to see that she loved to read, I hope she carries that passion with her throughout her life! I told her that we had a lot in common. When she said what her favorite color was, she asked what was my favorite color?  I told her my favorite color was also purple, and explained that purple was my high schools mascot. I never liked it while I was in school, but now that I don't have to wear it all the time I love it. I also told her that I had two brothers and that they are twins. I also always enjoyed playing with my brothers and my cousins. I always enjoy to tell the kids that I like to sleep too! She ended her about me post with her favorite food, which is mexican. I told her that I worked as a waitress at a Mexican restaurant but my favorite food is Chinese food. She had very few interest to be in 5th grade, but I like how she said exactly what she liked and didn't let on that she had any dislikes. I also added that I hoped she had a great year in 5th grade!

Blog Post # 6

Asking Questions to Improve Learning



General Strategies for asking questions

• follow a yes or no type question with additional follow up questions.
•  aim for direct, clear and specific questions 
•  avoid leading questions which are questions that lead students to their answers.
•  when planning questions keep course goals in mind.
• only ask one question at a time
• when planning for class include notes on when you will pause to ask and answer questions.
• ask a mix of different types of questions. (closed or open)

3 Types of Questions

• Closed questions- can be answered finitely by either “yes” or “no.”

• Open questions- questions that will solicit additional information from the inquirer, they are broad and require more than one or two word responses

• leading questions- leading question is phrased in such a way that it suggests its own answer and therefore discourages students from thinking on their own

Responding effectively

• wait for students to think and formulate responses
• do not interrupt students' answers
• show interest in students' answers
• develop responses that keep students thinking
• if a student gives a wrong or weak answer, point out what is incorrect or weak.

Reasons to ask "open questions"

•   to assess learning
•   to ask a student to clarify a vague comment
•   to prompt students to explore attitudes, values, or feelings
•   to prompt students to see a concept from another perspective
•   to ask a student to refine a statement or idea
•   to prompt students to support their assertions and interpretations
•   to direct students to respond to one another
•   to prompt students to investigate a thought process
•   to ask students to predict possible outcomes.
•   to prompt students to connect and organize information.
•   to ask students to apply a principle or formula.
•   to ask students to illustrate a concept with an example.

Use Blooms Taxonomy- Bloom identified six types of cognitive processes and ordered these according to the level of complexity involved. you should combine questions that require lower-order thinking to assess students’ knowledge and comprehension with questions that require higher-order thinking to assess students’ abilities to apply, analyze, synthesize, and evaluate.

 Always refine your questions!!

Three Ways to Ask Better Questions

Good questions:

• make students think
• encourage participation
• improve caliber of the answers that students give and the questions that they ask

 

 
 3 actions to achieve favorable outcomes:

• prepare questions-  When you write out a question, you can make it clearer,  not just the wording, but clearer conceptually.

• play with questions- Playing with the question means leaving it unanswered for a while and using some strategies that encourage students to think about it.

• preserve questions-  Good questions can be kept. They can be  revised or refocused so that they accomplish the good question goals even more effectively

 

 

 

Questions are a great tool for teachers to keep their students involved in the classroom. Questions are an easy way to gauge what student comprehended from the lessons. We cannot assume that all students know the answers but we can give all students the tools to use to find the answers to all questions. This is why the question is more important than the answer. With the right question, we can win the interest of students. If we use the right questions as a tool to teach our students, the answers are unlimited, and they conduct their own activities to find the appropriate information to answer the questions asked.

When preparing for class teachers compose specific questions that they will ask their students. These questions will increase student participation and encourage active learning.

When teachers ask questions in the classroom, they are modeling a process that students can and should use themselves; encourage your students to use the questioning strategies to assess what they have learned, and to help develop their thinking skills.

 The right questions will let us know if the students do or do not understand what is being taught.

 

 

 

Project #8 Book Trailer

I chose "The Rainbow Fish" for my book trailer, it was my favorite book from kindergarten.

Project # 7 "This is My Sentence" and "This is My Passion" videos

Blog Post #5

Project # 3 Presentation

Blog Post #4

 

 

 

Before I read and watched these posts about podcasts I really didn't know much about them or how they could be helpful to students or teachers. Now that I have learned about them I believe they are a very effective tool that students seem to enjoy using. I believe that this would be yet another effective tool that we could use for a class projects. Podcasts can be a reliable source for any subject. It is always a plus that they can be used on the go. The first post I read said that podcast were made for the millennial generation which includes everyone that was born after 1980. Anyone in that generation hasn’t experienced life or world without technology or personal computers. They are used to innovated technology and spend countless hours using things like instant messages, videogames, phones, and television.

 

SO, YES TO PODCASTS!!

 

The Benefits of Podcasting in the Classroom by Joe Dal

 

Podcasts are new and relevant ways to excite students about learning. Podcasts started to trend when iPads and iPods started trending. Podcasts provoke effective ways for interacting with students outside of the traditional classroom. Podcasts can give instructions and show content for anyone, anytime, and anywhere. Podcasts allows different techniques and styles of learning in the classroom.  Students could record a lecture, play it back to themselves, and then listen to it again for a review. You could also make it more student oriented by using the Project Based Learning approach and have students write scripts and act the script out. They could even make a video for it! Podcasts makes students demonstrate a higher order thinking skill and they in turn gain more in-depth learning experience because they themselves are teaching concepts to others. Students could also record role plays in character making their learning more memorable. The process of creating and uploading audio files is easy. Teachers can upload podcasts to their blog, and since they are available anytime, this is great for parents to see what their student has been learning, and also if a student misses school they would be able to see what they missed! 

 

Students say that it was exciting and makes learning fun! The Principal said that when utilized appropriately it is very effective!

 

 

1st Graders Create Their Own Read-Along

 

I listened to the 1st grade students read their book "Dinosaurs after Dark" on their podcast, they even used sound effects to go along with their story. It was so cute to hear them read and change their voices to create certain moods. They also had more than one person reading, so there was a different child reading for each character in the book. I read that this teacher said it was so funny to watch the students want to re-record because their voice didn't sound just right. The students seemed to enjoy this and it was a very interactive way to teach them to use a podcast which is semi advanced for their age.

 

I believe that this activity would help many students who have trouble reading or speaking. When they hear what it is actually supposed to sound like they can mimic that until they can say it correctly.

 

 

Judy Scharf Podcast Collection

 

Podcast is a combination of broadcast and iPod. Podcast is a radio like talk show. It could also have music. Anyone can listen to a podcast via the internet using a computer or MP3 player. Podcast can also be downloaded from itunes. They are easily made and you only need a microphone, computer, and software. On this post, she explains podcast and gives links on how to create and use them. She also posted links to help with this also.

 

http://www.teachertube.com/viewVideo.php?video_id=100030

 

 

 3 simple Steps to Podcasting:

1. Record your content

2.Host your podcast, export it and make it downloadable

3.Publish your podcast!

 
Click below for a more in-depth explanation on how to podcast!

10 easy steps to create your own podcast

And of course, everything continues to improve, you can now "vod-cast" which is podcast with video!

C4T Blog Post

 

 

C4T #1

 

The teacher blog I was assigned to was Jenny's Learning journey. Miss Jenny She is the owner of the blog. On the first post that I commented on, Miss She was telling a story about one of her students names Tatiana. She had just finished instructing her students on how to leave comments on their friends post on their class blog. They had twenty minutes left in the school day so she let the children choose an activity while she recorded stories for their class movies. She heard Tatianna shout Miss. She! "You've been snapped!" Her response was, "Show me!” Her student had picked up a camera and "snapped" a picture of Miss. She. Miss. She called this intelligent learning or even porous learning because Tatianna had taken the knowledge she gained recently in the classroom to create something of her own, which was the picture of Miss. She.

 

My response:

In my response to Miss. She, I told her how sweet this story was. I know as a teacher that you get excited when a child takes things into their own hands. The students are learning to use more advanced devices at younger ages now. I told her that my daughter loves taking pictures and she is only 3! I liked how Tatiana said she took a picture of Miss She. She shouted "You got snapped!! I told Miss She I liked the way she responded to Tatianna because she glorified her for her skills instead of getting on to her for doing something she wasn't supposed to be doing. She may have sparked an interest in photography for Tatianna, just for glorifying her work.





C4T Post # 2

 

Miss. She hasn't made a more recent blog post since the last one I commented on so I went back to her blog and commented on an older one. In this blog Miss. She was telling everyone that her classroom was chosen to participate in an experiment where her class received two iPads. She told her blog readers that she downloaded new apps for her class to experiment with, and that would help them with many of their academic subjects. They would also be able to play games and things for fun rewards! She also explains some of the ways in which her class uses the iPads to do extra work and activities that would follow class curriculum. Miss. She even used the iPad as a behavior controller!

 

My response to Miss. She:

 

I told Miss. She that I was happy for both she and her students for being chosen to experiment with iPads in the classroom. I let her know that I too thought iPads were great educational tools, and I hoped that the experiment went well and they were able to keep the devices. I also think it was a great idea for her to use the iPads as a reward for the student's that were well behaved. I also stated that I thought because the students are getting to play on an electronic device they will love to spend time playing the games and using the apps, and because it was an electronic they would probably take away more knowledge because it is interactive and they can enjoy it more! The possibilities are endless!

Blog Post #3

Peer Editing

 

Peer editing is a teaching technique in which students make compliments, suggestions, and corrections to help someone of their own age improve, revise, and edit their own work.
When peer editing you should always stay positive. An easy way to stay positive would be think about how you would feel while your work was being edited. Always start out with a compliment, next give suggestions, and then corrections. Many people are worried about other peoples' feelings instead of helping them improve the quality of their writing. Sometimes when writing, we simply over look things that "another set of eyes" would catch. Proofreading is one way to catch most of the errors on your own. I personally proofread everything before I submit it in for someone else to look at. I also often find that I missed an error afterwards. An easy idea for peer editing would be to read the article out loud first in order to catch any "easy errors". This would be a time to see if the grammar and punctuations are correct.

In our EDM310 class we will be critiquing our fellow classmates blog posts, which will be great practice since we are all working towards being teachers. Editing and correcting people will be something we will do often in that field. You should definitely decide which is the best way to give your suggestions to the peer you are editing for. There is no wrong way to do this, but you should always be sure that which ever way you choose does not embarrass or hurt the other person.


The following are some questions you could ask:

•  Did the author stay on topic?
• Were the sentences clear and concise?
• Were the sentences properly punctuated?
• Were there any grammar errors?
• Were there any spelling errors?
• Did the writer have good word choice?
• How were the details?
• Was it organized in sequence?
• Could it be more interesting?
• Are the sentences complete thoughts with subject verb agreement?

REMEMBER:

Stay Positive- try and make suggestions and corrections in a positive way.

Be Specific- give the author specific ideas on how to improve their writing.

Be Sure to use all three steps
1. Compliments
2. Suggestions
3. Corrections