"Helping Girls Unlock Their Leadership Potential"

Anne Obrien's Blog on Edutopia discusses the strong issue of women leadership and how to help young women build skills to help them become stronger citizens within our community. What I really got out of this article are the 4-5 ideas from Wake Young Women's Leadership Academy in North Carolina. As a teacher of middle school aged students I am always looking for way to help my students (especially my girls) to take on responsibilities and leadership roles within the class. I really liked the idea of taking articles about girls and women in leadership roles or just in the news to talk about and relate to. Also, the idea of book clubs for students and parents. My mom is included in many different book clubs and she seems to get so much out of the discussion with her fellow readers. I like the idea to help girls relate to characters without having to talk about themselves.

"What You Need to Be an Innovative Educator"

Edutopia: Terry Heick's Blog gives 6 basic thoughts when deciding how innovative you will be in your classroom. These 6 ideas can really focus you and your classroom. Last year it was all about keeping it simple in the classroom. "What do the students really need to know for that next level, to be good citizens?" We went so far as to break down the Common Core Standards and find the most important standards for our students. I know these will change from year to year depending on the students in my classroom, but having the ability to focus on the type of students and what they need versus what the curriculum says they need is hard but sometimes more important in order for your students to feel success.

"DictaNote-Speak to Create Documents"

Introduced by Free Technology for Teachers Blog by Richard Bryne I found the program DictaNote through Chrome to be extremely interesting. Last year I was faced with a few students who not only didn't like to write, but didn't really know how (in the fifth grade). After speaking with their Special Education Teacher, we were in need of a Speak to Text App or program for these students. DictaNote does just that using Chrome, which is being pushed into usage by our IT department. I am looking forward to testing this program out with my helpful fourth grade son before the summer's end.

"Parents Aren't Necessary for Students to Learn"

WOW! This article from Edutopia: Ben Johnson's Blog just blew me away. So many points that make complete sense about how parents are pictured and the complaints about how they aren't helping their students. I personally took this article to "heart" literally! At one point we are asked what is the most important...the "heart" of a student's learning is their teacher and the support of their school. I am sharing this with my building as I am writing this because everything I read was the exact image of my building. I know my students want to learn and use that information to be better people. I just want to spread that knowledge through my halls!

"Tools for Teaching: How to Transform Direct Instruction"

Edutopia: Rebecca Alber's Blog really breaks down what we all go through during our summer months. How do we make our units more student-driven instead of teacher-driven. I have always tried to build lessons and units that use a combination of student and teacher activities in order to keep that "discovery" up to my students. Using the thoughts from Alber's Blog I can better see how to extend my student activities. I also really liked the idea of not introducing the topic right a way, but have the students experience it first and "play" with it, then introduce what they were experiencing.

"RADCAB-A Website Evaluation Framework for Students"

From Free Technology for Teachers, Richard Byrne gives us a short introduction to RADCAB website. I currently have a personal (paper and pencil) program that I use with students when evaluating websites, but after looking into this site I might have made a new friend.

radcab.com

"Creating a Positive Climate and Culture: How Inclusive Schools Promote SEL"

This article is from Edutopia written within Maurice Elias's Blog. I really liked the ideas of how to have positive experiences with including all students. Currently our school takes a couple of days in the spring to participate in a program called "Count Me In." Every grade K-6th have a specific lesson to learn about "visible" and "invisible" disabilities. I believe these lessons are the ones that truly need to be taught throughout the school year because students need to remember we are all the same no matter what and we should all be treated the same.

"Old School or New School, Keep Parents Involved"

This article from Edutopia from Lisa Mims's Blog gave me quite a few ideas about how to keep in-touch with my parents. I do many of the suggestions during the school year, but need to keep on it all year round. Sometimes I get so busy that I don't get to passing on information as timely as I should. This year I plan to keep a classroom website where I can have better communication with my parents and students.

"Teacher Burnout: You're Not Alone"

This article comes from Edutopia: Nicholas Provenzano's Blog. It is at this time of year that I start planning out my year. I am shopping for ideas and materials needed, but it also makes me think of the stress from the year before. Last year, I started teaching fifth grade again after a two year stint in second grade. I had to get used to a new classroom, students, and a partner teacher who wasn't happy about the changes going on. I get that "burnout" feeling just thinking about it, but Nick gives you a little pep talk within this article and also get you thinking about developing a PLN (personal learning network) with social media. Going out and looking for others like you can help that "burnout" feeling be less consuming of the great teaching that you are doing within your classroom.

"Create Picture Stories with Phrase.It"

Free Technology for Teachers~Richard Brynes
Blog: 7-11-13

phrase.it/

Great idea to use with struggling writers. They upload/use pictures and add speech bubbles. Students can create "comic-strip" like stories. I find that students that struggle with writing in paragraphs can still get their stories out using pictures and conversation bubbles.

"Incorporating Reading Across Curriculum"

Fifth Grade Dugout~Stephanie
Blog: read 7-11-13

Stephanie introduces the resource from DePaul University's Center for Urban Education site. This resource can be used when working with the Common Core Standards. Stephanie even gives screen shots of her favorite pages. This site has readings that work well for all subjects that will help students practice those skills needed to become successful with these "new" standards of expectation. I found this blog when looking for some fifth grade help (as I am a fifth grade teacher). Her blog as of today only had a few postings, but I look forward to follow her and try out some of her ideas.

RSS Feeds: Chapter 5

Richardson's thoughts on how to use RSS feeds with students got me thinking about our MAISA Writing Unit: Informational Text and the Persuasive Essay Unit. Last year I worked with students to find information about topics that interested them or that they knew about but needed more strong evidence on. With working lately with RSS feeds myself, I can see working with my students in developing their own collection on their topics. Though many of my students may not be ready for this higher use of technology, I could find a way to work with some of the upper grades in using RSS feeds within their classrooms.

Getting Inspiration

It has been a struggle to work through this class while using the summer to be with my family, but really taking the time to reflect on what I can do to make my classroom better has been the push I have needed. Everyday reading the RSS feeds, blogs, and looking for sites to share makes me think about how to manage my class next year. I look forward to trying many of the new techniques, I just hope that I am not putting to much on my plate again!

Moving from Teaching to Facilitating

I have read many resources about how to become a more effective teacher.  Every one of them basically said the same thing as the Edutopia: Great Teachers Don't Teach Blog by Ben Johnson Jun 28 2013. Johnson states that what he remembers most about the best teachers he has had is that they made the students responsible for their learning. Those effective teachers aren't the ones with the best lectures or the best power-point presentations, but the ones that get out of the way of their students. Effective classrooms are the ones where the students are leading the learning and the teachers are just facilitating, taking a back seat. I personally love to teach from the back of my room. You will never find me in one spot, but constantly moving. Maybe it is the TeachingADHD that I have but I really have my best moments with the students jump up and teach me. This past year I had two students come to me during Math class. They had come up with two different strategies to find common denominators and least common multiples. Their strategies worked for them and when they got to turn around and teach them...they found those strategies worked for others as well! I know I am still a little "wet behind the ears" in my teaching experience, but I do agree with Johnson that my students remember those lessons that they experimented, taught others, and could discuss with their peers.

Good ideas

Interested in finding ways to get your students more involved in the world around them? Every teacher I know looks forward to bursting the bubble that students are familiar with and learn more about the world beyond. Within Richard Bryne's blog: Free Technology for Teachers, he gives us the Best of 2013 So Far...5 Places for Kids to Learn About the News. This article gives us five really good tools to use with students independently or for current event lessons within our classroom. So long are the days of waiting for the Scholastic News to make its way to our mailboxes. These 5 sites bring the world to you within an instant.

Go Go News: www.gogonews.com
Teaching Kids News: www.teachingkidsnews.com
Youngzine: www.youngzine.org
CNN Student News: www.cnn.com/studentnews
BBC News Website's Day in Pictures: www.bbc.co.uk/news/in_pictures/

Enjoy! I know I will have fun exploring.

Richardson's FLICKR Chapter 7

After reading Chapter 7, I realized that were so many different opportunities for my students and my classroom to discover with this free site. I have used FLICKR within this Master's journey, but this chapter allowed me to think about other ways to involve my students. I am looking forward in trying many of the tips given within this chapter so I may introduce them next fall. I will post my experiments as I go.