Creativity Counts!

Click here to view this blog assignment from Mrs. Kallas.
Click here to view Sir Ken Robinson's TED talk.
Click here to view Sir Ken Robinson's website.

Creativity Counts

1. What is Creativity? Creativity is the ability to be imaginative and create original, artistic ideas using your talents.                     
2. Why does Creativity matter in Education? Creativity is important in education because it allows for the students to increase their individual creativity while growing up, rather than destroying it. Without creativity in school, all students would be similar and turn in the same school work, thinking that they are supposed to be the same as others. Instead, students should be taught to be different, independent, and unique.                                   
3. Have you ever been in a situation where you felt as if a teacher didn't let you be creative? Yes, currently in many AP classes in school, we are given projects with multiple requirements. Sometimes, so many requirements where we feel that we can not do anything our own way, because our teacher's idea of the final product is what the requirements say we need to do, not what we want to do. Being an AP student, I've learned that if there is a specific way for something to be done, it needs to be done that way.                
4. Have you ever had a teacher that let you be as creative as possible? Yes! Rather than my last answer, we have also had teachers this year that assign us projects with little requirements. For example, we recently had a "Selfie Project" in AP English. In order to do this project, we had to take extremely creative selfies that argue a certain topic. We could use whatever we wanted to, and take selfies of whatever we wanted to.                                   
5. How do we fix the problem(s) described by Sir Ken Robinson? To fix these problems, the school system should change by getting rid of required courses. The students should have many class options that give them an insight on many occupations. Once they figure out what occupation they may be interested in, they should only be required to take classes needed for that job. For example, I want to grow up and be a kindergarten teacher, so what is the point of forcing me to take Physics and Pre-Cal? That's right, there isn't one. Students should only be required to take courses that benefit their future, and courses that they will need in college. In doing this, students will be more focused in their classes, for it will actually interest them and benefit their futures.

Sir Ken Robinson

My State Teach Tomorrow Summit Highlight

Click here to view this blog assignment on Mrs. Kallas's blog.
Click here to view the TAFE Teach Tomorrow Summit webpage.

    On this past weekend, our state TAFE competitors all travelled to Houston, Texas for the state conference. Out of all the fun activities we did, and all the exciting adventures we went on, my favorite part of the conference was the breakout sessions on Sunday.
   I enjoyed the breakout sessions the most, because not only were there many to choose from, they were all very unique. In the sessions that I went to, we made teacher-created materials, listened to Dave Burgess, and learned about hearing and vision impaired students. This was exciting, for we all got to explore new things, while having fun with it.
    I would definitely, without a doubt, recommend this trip to all my classmates who did not get to participate. It was a great experience to reach deeper into teaching, and to get to listen how to become a better teacher. The whole experience was also exciting, because we got to get closer with our classmates, and meet new students from other TAFE chapters. Overall, our trip to Houston, Texas was an unforgettable time for the books! :)

All smiles during our fun weekend!

Fold it!

Click here to view this blog assignment from Mrs. Kallas

One more/less than...

• These two foldables cover a topic in the Kindergarten TEKS, which includes knowing how to identify one more and one less than a certain number.

Materials needed:

1. Any color (I used green) of printer paper
2. A colored marker (Blue)
3. A yellow highlighter
4. A pen or pencil
5. Scissors

Directions for "One more than...":

1. Crease one of the pieces of paper hot dog style (vertical) leaving an inch of room on the side
2. Fold the paper 
3. Draw 8 even lines across the flap, with about an inch in between each
4. Cut on the lines, but only on that one side of the paper
5. At this point, you should have 9 flaps on the front of your foldable
6. Starting at the top, write one more than (2) on the first flap
7. Behind the flap, write the answer (3)
8. Move down the foldable and repeat steps 6 and 7 for numbers 3-10
9. Highlight the word more on each flap
10. On the extra inch room on the right or left side of the foldable, write the title (One more than...)

Directions for "One less than...":

1. Crease one of the pieces of paper hot dog style (vertical) leaving an inch of room on the side
2. Fold the paper 
3. Draw 8 even lines across the flap, with about an inch in between each
4. Cut on the lines, but only on that one side of the paper
5. At this point, you should have 9 flaps on the front of your foldable
6. Starting at the top, write one less than (2) on the first flap
7. Behind the flap, write the answer (1)
8. Go down the foldable and repeat steps 6 and 7 for numbers 3-10
9. Highlight the word less on each flap
10. On the extra inch room on the right or left side of the foldable, write the title (One less than...)

Instructions for the students:

1. Start with the first flap, read it.
2. Once you have an answer in your head, flip the flap to check it
3. Repeat steps one and two for the rest of the 7 flaps

Knowing this information, the students should be able to easily identify which number is one more than or one less than a certain number. These foldables will help them speed up these concepts, and make it easy for them to practice. These foldables will also help them view the patterns of counting, and how counting is just adding one to each and every number as you go along.

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.