C4K Summary for February

C4K #3
Matt's Blog- 2/22/15 -The First Time I Went Fishing
This week I was assigned to Matt.  In his blog he talked about how it was his first time going fishing.  He had such a great time, he went with his uncle and cousin.  He talked about how scared he was at first on the boat and how they made his paddle by himself.  He was so excited because it was his first time catching a big fish.

I introduced myself saying Hi Matt, my name is JeNyia Rocker and I think you did a great job on explaining your first time fishing. I love to go fishing as well, it’s so relaxing. It’s good that you had your uncle and cousin with you, to experience your first time fishing on a boat. You sounded so excited because on that day, you caught your biggest fish, I would have been the same way.

C4K #4
Per 2 Victor's Blog-2/28/2015- Black History Month
This week I was assigned to Victor.  In his blog he talked about Russell Wilson, an NFL football player.  How is now one of the best quarterbacks in the NFL and his team, the Seattle Sea-hawks have been to two super bowls and won one of them with him as their leader.

I introduced myself saying, Hi Victor, my name is JeNyia Rocker and I think you did an excellent job on Russell Wilson. He is a great football player. I love the way you explained what position he plays and what team he is on, just in case someone didn’t know. I also like how you said he fights through whatever challenges he faces.

Project #7 Part B

To My Students To My Parents

Blog Post #6

What do you learn from these conversations with Anthony Capps?

From watching the videos between the conversations with Dr. Strange and Anthony Capps, I must say that they taught me a lot from watching every single of of them.  I really enjoyed seeing and gaining more knowledge about Project Based Learning.

 

In Project Based Learning Part 1: Experiences of a 3rd Grade Teacher and Project Based Learning Part 2: Experiences of a 3rd Grade Teacher , Anthony Capps gave me a really good understanding on what Project Based Learning was to him.  On his video, he gave a pretty good example of one of the projects he did in his classroom. It was when the students were assigned to write letters to the Congressmen about women fighting in open combat.  He did this for fun, but also for written, reading, and social studies skills.  To me, it seems like the students enjoyed themselves, as well as Anthony.
iCurio and Discovery Education are both online tools for the students.  One is an tool that allows students to search the internet safely and the other one lets the students put up a video that goes along with whatever they are searching.
From watching The Anthony- Strange List of Tips for Teachers Part 1 ,I learned that some teaching tips will be very useful for me in the near future.  Teaching can be a lot of work,  but it can also be exciting at the same time.  The most important tip is you have to have a true love of learning.

Project #8 Book Trailer

Giraffes Can't Dance

Project #7 Part A

My Sentence Is... My Passion Is..

Project #3 Presentation

Blog Post #5

What are Personal Learning Networks (PLN)?

 Personal Learning Networks (PLN) are about making connections and building personal relationships with teachers, school administrators, university professors, and experts around the world.  Mostly, just sharing ideas/resources, collaboration, and learning.  

 How can they help you as a teacher?

PLNs can help teachers by collaborating online and using a range of social media tools to build their own personal learning network to interact with other educators.

 How are they formed?
How can you create your own PLN?

 Their are so many ways to form your PLN.  You can do that by finding information, people, and conversations on the internet about subjects you are interested in.  For example, on the Personal Learning Network page, they mentioned a couple of things.  One of the post stated, "Among educators, Twitter is the most popular social microblogging tool. The posts are short and easy to skim, and because following someone on Twitter is not a reciprocal relationship (unlike friending on Facebook), it is easy to create a custom group of people to follow.  Twitter has been the most powerful tool in the growth of my personal learning network from a half-dozen teachers in the English department lounge to thousands of educators around the globe."  Once you have came up with new resources for your PLN, two websites you can use are Symbaloo or Netvibes to help organize your PLN resource.

Who will be the first additions to your PLN?

The first additions to my Personal Learning Network will be educators in my field of study, which is Physical Education.  I will also add my instructors and follow some of their people as well because I am open to ideas that would help me in my future.

 

 

 

Blog Post #4

What do we need to know about asking questions to be an effective teacher?

When you prepare for class, make up specific questions that you will ask the students or that you think they will ask you.  Doing this will increase participation and will also encourage active learning.  The resources that were given, to help me figure out the answer to this particular question gave me a lot of thought on how questions should really be asked. 

In the post, "The Right Way to Ask Questions in the Classroom" by Ben Johnson, it mainly focuses on how the teacher was asking questions to see if the students understand what they just covered and then just moving right along is really not enough.  To fully get the students undivided attention, you have to be excited in what you are talking about and call on them to make sure they are paying attention.  When asking certain questions, it's not necessary for all of your questions to be directed to one person, give all of the students a chance, because you don't want to embarrass a student if you continue to call on them and they may not know the answer.
                                           

Another resource I enjoyed reading was "Asking Questions to Improve Learning", which had some different strategies for asking questions and how to respond effectively to them.  A few examples of them are when planning questions, always keep in mind your course goals, aim for direct, clear, specific questions.  When in a class discussion, do not ask more than one question at once, do not interrupt a student answers, and develop responses that will keep the students thinking.  While I was reading these examples,  they really stuck with me because some I was familiar with and some I didn't know of.

After reading the posts and watching the videos, I feel that they were a very helpful tool for me.  Going back to the main question, "What do we need to know about asking questions to be an effective teacher?"  I have an idea on how to handle it.