Built for Learning

This blog assignment came from Mrs. Kallas's blog, which you can view here.

What is your ideal learning environment? 

     After watching Will Richardson's TED Talk about the changing face of education, and thinking about my ideal learning environment, I came to the conclusion that my ideal classroom would include low lights, with many lamps and lights hanging. With low lights, it creates a calm and soothing tone, rather than being bright and loud. Based on my experience as a student, I tend to enjoy classes more when they are darker, with little lights and lamps. 

   An ideal classroom would also consist of tables for the groups to work together. Especially in kindergarten, it is crucial for the students to be able to work with their group members. Even if doing an independent assignment, students enjoy sitting with others, rather than sitting alone, isolated from others.

Length: In my ideal classroom, I think that 45 minutes per subject is an ideal time. 45 minutes gives the teacher the opportunity to teach many things, and get through everything, yet the length is not too long for the students to lose interest and stop paying attention.

To evaluate my students, I think that the ideal way to evaluate them is to teach them the topic, and then give them assignments, both group and individual, for them to work on in order to gain full information on the topic. After the assignments, next I would assess them by giving them a quiz or test to make sure they understand all of the information. Even after testing them, I would often review them to refresh their memory, so they do not forget the lesson.

Click here to visit Classroom Architect to design the floor plan of your classroom

Click here to visit Scholastic for another classroom design website

Learning Activity

     This following blog came from Mrs. Kallas's website which you can view here.

     For my first class activity, I am going to teach an activity that covers the topic of recognizing the amount of objects in a small group. For this, I created an activity that goes well with kindergarten math, involving counting.

    While I brainstormed an idea for this activity, I created a Board Builder on Discovery Education, which gave me many ideas for different projects. You can see my board right here, and you can view the screenshots of it below. 

     The activity that is shown below will help students practice recognizing the number of objects in a group, without having to count each of them. After recognizing the quantity, they will have to be able to identify and match it with the number of that quantity, which will also be shown in tally marks and dice dots.

Materials: 

1. Blue paper
2. White paper
3. Colored card stock
4. Velcro 
5. Rubber Cement
6. Scissors

Directions for Counting Activity:

1. Draw 78  raindrop shapes on blue pieces of paper
2. Draw 12  clouds on white paper
3. On each cloud, write the number, and show the tally marks and dice dots. For example, ( IIII, 4, and *4 dots*) 
4. Cut out the raindrops
5. Use glue or rubber cement to attach the raindrops to colored card stock.
6. Laminate the card stock and clouds
7. Cut out the clouds and attach a piece of velcro to the back
8. Attach the opposite piece of velcro to the card stock                

     The main idea of this activity is to teach the students to recognize a quantity, and match it with the recognized numbers or tallies. This activity is easy for kindergarteners, because all the students have to do is match each cloud with the correct number of rain drops. 

Find the Treasure in Teaching

This following TAFE blog came from the prompt on Mrs. Kallas's blog. You can view it here.

Click here to view the TAFE webpage

    Ahoy, matey! My recent TAFE experience was one I will never forget. Through this experience, I gained many treasures such as learning to cooperate with other group members, and learning how to be efficient and successful in such a short period of time. I competed in the Ethical Dilemma Competition with my fellow classmates, Emily, Lauren, and Lindsey. Below is a picture of us at the TAFE Region XI Conference at TCU on October 31, 2015. 

      In our competition, we placed first in our region. After all our hard work, I would not change the competition that we chose. I think the Ethical Dilemma was a great competition involving real life dilemmas. In doing this competition, I think it was helpful in preparing us for our future teaching careers.

      Although we were successful in our competition, we also encountered a few obstacles. Some which involved coming up with a final solution based on the many opinions of our classmates. Another obstacle was the fact that we had a small amount of class time to finish preparing for this competition, since the regional competition was extremely early this year. However, I also enjoyed many things about this project. For example, I enjoyed getting to work in a group, and design a creative presentation to compete with. I also liked the fact that this was a chapter competition, for we got to hear the different opinions and solutions from multiple points of view.

   

     If I had to do this project all over again, I would put more time and effort into our presentation in order to perfect it even more. For state, I will be sure to memorize all of my lines to create an even more professional presentation for our judges. I am extremely excited for our trip to state in the end of January of 2016.  To prepare for State, we are going to work to improve our presentation by gaining knowledge and opinions from different educators in our district. Below are a few more pictures from our trip to the TAFE Region XI Conference at TCU on October 31st. 

My First Day as an Intern

This blog assignment came from Mrs. Kallas's blog which you can view here.

What a fun day it was for the first day of my internship! For my first year internship, I have been placed at Walker Creek Elementary in a kindergarten classroom, and I could not be more excited about this year! I got the great opportunity to have Mrs. Darden as my mentor teacher this year, whom has been teaching for 10 years as of this year. Click here to view Mrs. Darden's web page. 

Mrs. Darden

First Day: 
     For my first day going to the classroom, I prepared myself by creating an "About Me" poster that I could use to introduce to the students. As I designed my poster, I prepared myself to answer a variety of Kindergarten questions. At my field site, I wore jeans, Converse, and my 3/4 sleeve Education and Training intern shirt. I made sure to look professional, however not too fancy for my first impression. When I arrived at my classroom I was feeling very nervous, for I had not met any of my students, nor my mentor teacher before. I was scared to find out what my little kindergarten class would think of me. When I  walked in, I introduced myself for about five minutes and used my poster to share a little about me, and like I had guessed, I was asked many random questions, as well as told random facts.

    After I introduced myself, I helped the students do a fun activity based on the book they were read, "Brown Bear, Brown Bear, What Do You See?". After they finished their activity, they had explore time, giving myself a chance to sit and talk to my mentor teacher. Thankful for this opportunity, I got to introduce myself to Mrs. Darden, and we got a chance to get to know each other a little better. When I left my classroom, I was upset that it was already time for me to go, yet I was filled with joy and excitement for this coming Thursday that I get to go back, as well as the whole year ahead. One thing that I am most excited to do this year, is to get to know each of the sweet little kindergartners in my class. After being with them for only one day, I could already tell that they are extremely bright and sweet, and I can't wait to form closer relationships with each of them.

Reading Rocks!

Click here to view the assignment for this blog.

The Jolly Postman

Janet and Allan Ahlberg

• The Jolly Postman is a great book to entertain young children. The book consists of a postman that goes to many well known character's houses, to deliver them each a separate letter. Not only can the reader see which fairy tale character's are in the book, but they also get to see the exact letter that was received! This book is extremely entertaining, for the readers get to open the letters relating to each fairy tale, and read them on their own.

• This book is great for reading aloud to young children between the ages of K or 1-3 because it has many pictures and 3D letters to entertain the children, as well as well known fairy tales.

Key Words:

1. Glee

2. Giant

3. Thimbleful

4. Palace

Higher Thinking Questions:

1. Did the story follow a type of sequence or order?

2. Could you predict what would happen next?

3. Who do you think would write to the three bears, or Cinderella? (Ask before opening the envelopes)

4. What other fairy tale character could have received a letter, and who would it have been from?

Activity: Write a friendly letter to a fairytale character not mentioned in the book, and ask them a question.

1. Read the story to the students.

2. Discuss other fairytale characters as a class, write them on the board.

3. Give the students a piece of paper to write the letter.

4. Tell them the assignment, given the ideas already discussed and written on the board.

Click here to view a website full of activities and cut outs to go along with the story. 

What Do Teachers Make?

Based on the prompt from Mrs. Kallas which you can view here, I believe that teachers make a world of difference to many individual students. 


After reading the poem, What Teachers Make by Taylor Mali, my opinion is that....

• Teachers make students work their best, to prove to them that they are capable of doing many things they could not even imagine. Without a teacher that pushes students to their very best, students would never yearn to learn, they would slack off, just trying what they know they can accomplish. 

• On the other hand, teachers also make students dream, they introduce them to new ideas which cause them to consider many opportunities, and hope for things they would have never even known about before.

• Teachers also make something impossible, possible. By encouraging students to strive forward and not give up, teachers open up a student's mind to try and explore new things.

This is where I find the Treasure in Teaching:

This next assignment I got from Kallas's blog, which you can view here.

"It is the supreme art of the teacher to awaken joy in creative expression and knowledge"

-Albert Einstein 

Click here to view the TAFE web address.

Welcome to my blog!

This is my first year of being an Education and Training Intern at the Birdville Center of Technology and Learning, therefore it will be filled with many interesting adventures, so follow and join me throughout the year as I explore the wonderful career of teaching!