Project #15- Lesson Plan #3

Healthy Teeth Lesson Plan
This lesson plan is about encouraging 4th grade students to take good care of their teeth on a daily basis. This is a week long process for one hour a day. I am covering state standards from Science, Health, and Visual Arts. I have incorporated a video, an article and a quiz from icurio into my lesson plan.

Project #12 Part A

Blogpost #10

What can we learn from Sir Ken Robinson?
When I watched Sir Ken Robinson: Bring on the Learning Revolution I realized that I am going to school for the right profession. His lecture was very relatable and he was funny while he got his point across. He makes very accurate points towards todays generation. Robinson states that education needs to be reformed entirely and to do that we need to start brand new. Since we cannot start brand new, he says that we need to create new ways for education.
Sir Ken Robinson states that "humans make very poor use of our talents. Many people go through their lives have no real sense of what their talents may be or if they have any real talents at all." I completely agree with this because most people in today's world are not motivated and driven enough to find out what they are good at doing and they just settle for whatever is right in front of their face. I am not like this at all, I said that watching this lecture made me realize that I am in college for the right profession because Robinson explains that "If you're doing the thing that you love then time will take a different course entirely. If you're doing something you love, an hour feels like 5 minutes." This is called Passion. He defines passion as something that excites our soul and that it is different in every person. Whenever I go into the schools for my field service hours, this is what it feels like. The time goes by so fast for me because I am doing what I love, and that is helping children learn. Being in the schools has also opened my eyes to the teachers who really do not enjoy their job. If they do not enjoy teaching students what they need to learn and be successful then they are just waiting on the weekend to come around again. This is the kind of people that Robinson is talking about in his lecture. If they do not enjoy teaching then they need to find their talent and something that they like to do and stop holding the kids back from fully learning what they need to.
This lecture was my favorite lecture I have watched in this class so far. I have never been able to relate to a lecture so much until this one. I hope Robinsons lecture made some people realize that they need to do what makes them happy and figure out what their talents are. My talent is teaching!

Blogpost #9

What can we learn from Mrs. Cassidy??
Mrs. Cassidy tells us that we need to learn how to use technology in our classrooms even if we don't want to. She says that we have to change because the world is changing. "You are handicapping your students by not using technology."
Cassidy says that she made an online portfolio for her student's parents so that they could see what their child was doing in every subject on their own time. The students loved it also because they get to have an audience to look at all of their work and their audience could comment to them. "Technology is here to stay!"

Since the beginning of this semester when I started learning all of the technology I could use in my classroom one day, I have said I would have a class blog. I would also love to flip my classroom but I'm leaning more towards the blog so that my classroom parents will be able to see what their kids are doing and learning in my classroom. I don't think I will have any impediments with doing the class blog but I might with flipping my classroom just because the kids might not have a computer at home or the parents might say the kids don't need to watch my videos at home before the next day. I am not sure how I would handle this if I wasn't at a school where all of the kids are each provided a PC or Macbook; I most likely wouldn't even think about flipping my classroom. Some of the benefits I might anticipate are, like Mrs. Cassidy, letting my class communicate with people all over the world with a class blog. If I am going to benefit from flipping my classroom, it would be to save time in class by teaching the lesson in a video the night before class and spending more time on explaining and doing activities with it in class. The teacher will spend less time in front of the class and more time with the kids.

Lesson Plan #2 (Project 14)

My Health Lesson Plan

For this lesson plan, I chose to focus on Health Education and the 6 food groups. This lesson plan will be focused on for one week for one hour a day. It covers state standards from Health and Visual Arts for 1st grade. The whole purpose of this lesson is to encourage kids to eat healthier. The main questions my class will be focusing on is:
1. Why does our body need food?
2. Is all food good for us?
3. What can happen if we do not eat enough of the right foods?
4. Does eating the wrong foods affect our teeth?

C4T #2

Integrating Technology into schools
This blog post was about integrating technology into the schools. She says that she thinks it could be a good thing and gives all of these good examples of how you can integrate technology into the classroom. When I read the comments, they were all downing this idea and some people even arguing over it. I remembered back when I first started my EDM 310 class at South Alabama and Dr. Strange told us that "technology in the classrooms is what this course was all about; if we disagreed with this idea then we were too old fashion and the classrooms now days are all about technology." This shocked me because I had no idea that technology was already in classrooms. Now that I am halfway through this course I am all for technology in the classroom.

My Comment:
Hey Katrina! My name is Lauren Reid and I am an Elementary Education major at the University of South Alabama. I completely agree with this article. Technology needs to be integrated into the schools worldwide. Some people might not agree, but teaching kids how to use certain techniques with technology can prepare them for America's future jobs. In schools that have already integrated technology, the kids are blogging, making video's, and talking to other kids worldwide. I have not seen one bad thing come out of using technology in schools. The kids are more eager to learn, the absence rate has dropped to almost nothing, and the kids like to come to school because they think it's fun and that's the way it should be. Teachers who do not believe in using technology in their classroom should really open their eyes and look at the big picture. The world is not the same as it used to be, we are constantly evolving. I am completely on board with using technology in my classroom whenever I become a teacher.

Is Kindergarten too young to test?
This post was created by Holly Korbey titled: "Is Kindergarten too young to test?" The whole post is about how schools in New York are trying to make Kindergarteners take bubble tests and how nobody agrees with it. "According to the New York Daily News, multiple-choice questions and bubble answer sheets left New York’s four- and five-year-old students feeling 'bewildered,' and some in tears." The parents of the Washington Heights school denied this be given to their children and it wasn't given to them. This post completely infuriated me because I don't believe any Kindergarted classroom should scare the kids like this. I believe it should be a fun, interactive, and learning environment

My Comment:
My name is Lauren Reid and I am an Elementary Education major at the University of South Alabama. I think that the question "Is Kindergarten too young to test?" should not even have to be asked. When children are young, they need activities to open up their mind and get them excited about learning new things; it should not be taking boring bubble tests. Most teachers in today's world don't think about bettering the children's minds and they don't think about how every child learns in a different way. I think that it is good the parents are standing up and saying "no" to this nonsense. Classrooms need to be more interactive and especially Kindergarten classrooms

Project #9

Blog Post #8

Discovery Education
This is the best site I've found for teachers so far. I am student teaching in a 1st grade class right now and I love it, so I went under the teachers tab and clicked K-5 for my grade. The top link that popped up was called "Brain Boosters." I had no idea what this was so I clicked on the link to browse the Brain Booster library and I found myself looking at all of these different 5 minute exercises that I could do with my class. These exercises are divided into categories i.e(Categorization, Logic, Number and Math Play, Reasoning, Spatial Awareness, & Word and Letter Play). My favorite category was Number and Math Play because Math is my favorite subject and I love kid's math even more. I would love doing this with my class a couple times a week because I feel like this will improve their thinking strategies more and more every day that we do a new one. Some of it is critical thinking and some of it is logical thinking and it would always be different exercises so they wouldn't know what to expect. I would probably let them work in groups if it is something they need to talk about with their peers. I chose this tool because it is a very creative and effective way to communicate as a class and hopefully the kids would enjoy it. I might try some of these with my 1st grade class I am overseeing this semester and see how it works out.

Project #13

Lesson Plan Created by group San Francisco for Project #13

This lesson plan is for second grade science to understand space and planets better. This project is to be done for one week for two hours a day. It covers state standards from Science, Technology Education, Visual Arts, and Dance. My group went ahead and made an actual Lesson Plan instead of filling out all of those other forms.

Randy Pausch's Last Lecture

Blogpost #7

Randy's Lecture
The main argument of Randy Pausch was to never give up on your childhood dreams. He outlined all of his childhood dreams he had as a boy and told/ showed us step by step how he achieved these dreams successfully. He says "The inspiration and permission to dream is huge." This man was such an inspirational person to many people and now that I have watched the video, I can see why. I think he was more of a motivational speaker than a professor. "When you are screwing up still and nobody's saying anything to you anymore, then that means they gave up on you," this quote hit right in my heart and i'm sure it did to other people too. Randy talked about his failures before he got to the dream and he says that "Experience is what you get when you didn't get what you wanted." Anytime you are trying to get to your dream or something you want, there will always be obsticles in the way. "The brick walls are there for a reason: they let us prove how badly we want things."

Randy then goes on to his teaching years as a professor and tels all about his classes and projects they have done. Randy says that "the best gift an educator can give, is to make a student be self-reflective." This statement is so true, I hope that one day I will be able to do this in my classroom. At the end of his lecture he listed some of his main purposes of this lecture. He said that in life, we need to decide whether we are Tigger or Eeyore; never lost childlike wonder, it's what drives us, and to help others. I really enjoyed watching this because he was really such an inspiration to so many people and now he has inspired me to follow my dreams.

C4K Summary for February

Comic Website Review
My assigned kid to comment on was Samantha, her post was talking about comic sites. The site she liked most was Toondoo, she said it had many cool things to do. She signed in with her Google account and she could save it, even though it was hard to figure out. She could not figure out how to make the font size littler. Samantha also went on the make believe comics website, she liked that there were many characters and objects to choose from to put in her comic strip. She did not like the fact that it was black and white in color and that there were no real kids, there was a "mouse kid."

My Response:
Hey Samantha, My name is Lauren Reid and I am an Elementary Education student at University of South Alabama. I really liked your post, I learned something new from it. I did not know that there were sites to make your own comics with your own characters. The only thing I seen that should be corrected in your next blog post is to refrain from using the word “also” too many times. Other than that, Very good job! I look forward to reading some more of your posts. Lauren Reid

My New Baseball Bat
My assigned kid for this weeks C4K assignment was William. He named his blog "William's Epic Blog," which i thought was cute. He posted a picture of a baseball bat, all he said for the description was "I got a new baseball bat." There isn't much to summarize because that's all that was in this post.

My Response:
Hi William, My name is Lauren Reid and I am a student at University of South Alabama. I see you got a new baseball bat, do you play baseball on a team or do you just like to play baseball with friends?? I like your blog, I think you should provide a little bit more information when you post a picture. I would love to hear back from you! Lauren Reid

Text Versus Film
My assigned kid this week was MossyOak, I don't know whether it is a boy or girl; I'm guessing a boy. His topic was about reading books versus watching the movie. He says he likes reading the book more than watching the movie, even though he got lost sometimes while he was reading he still knew what was coming next in the movie. He says the movie was easier to follow and understand than the book. He said that there were plenty similarities between the two because the movie was base off of the book, but he didn't see many differences.

My Response:
Hey! My name is Lauren Reid and I am a student at the University of Alabama. I completely agree with you, I like reading books more than watching movies as well. Sometimes I get lost when I’m reading also, but when you watch the movie you do already know whats going to happen. Movies seem to leave out most of what I think are the big details. I hate it! Reading a book is better for you than watching a movie anyways. You have a great Blog Post, Lauren Reid

Book Project
My assigned kid this week was Claire L. She was writing her assignment about their third quarter book report, she done hers on "A Long Walk to Water." She says she chose to use Power Point because it would be clean and she could just scroll through and her viewers would get the meaning. I personally thought there should have been more color and enthusiasm about it but I could not have told her that because she is just now learning how to do all of that.

My Response:
Hey Claire, my name is Lauren Reid and I am majoring in Elementary Education at the University of South Alabama. I really like your background and your graffiti name at the top of your blog. I think that using PowerPoint to summarize your book was a very good idea. Your thesis statement was a little more like a summary than a one sentence statement. I think this was a good book to read though, sounds interesting. Good Job, Lauren Reid