Last Post!!!

It is hard to believe that I am already making my last blog post. Although it is impossible to sum up the year in one long post, I hope that reading this throughout the year has given you the chance to “peek into my classroom.” The kids are getting excited, and I am too. This is my last Fellow’s assignment to complete other than my comps paper, and I feel that I have to pinch myself to make sure I’m telling the truth. This year has been a year of growth and learning. I couldn’t have asked for a better first year teaching experience, and I know that the challenging coursework along the way has helped me to this point. In this post, I want to expand upon and reflect on one learning activity that I wrote about in my Technology Plan in August. As I reread the plan it almost seemed like a wish list, but I am proud of the learning opportunities that I have carried out involving technology.

In my plan, I talked about the hopes of my future SmartBoard. Now that I have it, I can’t imagine teaching without it and it encompasses each of Grappling’s technology uses. Each morning my morning message is neatly typed in PowerPoint with dazzling clip art and a few mistakes to help my kindergartners editing skills. This is the technology Literacy Use, but it demonstrates to my students the features of Microsoft Office products, and the convenience of typing.

I feel that the majority of my technology uses fell under the Adapting Uses category. In my plan I wrote about the literacy overhead center where students manipulated transparencies to rebuild poems, look for patterns, and practice rhyming. This center worked well, but the upkeep got annoying because of cleaning the transparencies, keeping it organized, and the constant upkeep of changing out poems and creating new ones. This is where the SmartBoard saved my life! (Not really, but it did help a lot) I then could create EasiTeach documents for my students to click and drag pieces of a poem, and rhyming words. A teammate also recreated our Pathways Trays that allowed my students to drag letters to build words. Another center highlight was a sight word PowerPoint that I found online. It had 217 sight words that flashed across the screen. Students loved to stand at the board and read the words; they would even make little competitions among their center groups. These interactions are the goal of literacy workstations, and are what I chose to do my action research on. In kindergarten, I feel it is extremely important to show that technology is all around us, nothing to be scared of, and can help us learn. I think that these activities also incorporated transforming uses, but more than anything they created a foundation for future learning.

These are just a few of the ways that technology was incorporated into my daily routines. I look forward to next year where I take the basic ideas of this class, and put more of them to use. This year, I got my feet wet, and now I am ready to dig deeper next year. Thank you for the facilitation of this online course. To all my fellow pal’s, we have almost made it…keep up the great work!

Is April long?

141 days of school! I have always heard teachers say that April gets long. However, being the young enthusiastic first year teacher that I am….I never believed them. APRIL IS LONG! Ha, not really when I think about it, but with MAP testing and no breaks the days do sometimes take a while. Teaching kindergarten, I do not have to worry about administering the MAP. However, I can argue that keeping 22 kindergarteners quiet and respectful to those who are testing is quite a challenge as well! Still…it is hard to believe it is April 15th, and there are less than 34 days of school left!

I am loving my team board and have found it particularly useful for showing united streaming clips for science units. You can download segments of videos that can explain photosynthesis or an insects life cycle much better than I can. The kids also love watching Magic School Bus….and being the teacher that never thought she would “show videos” to keep kids quiet has realized that it works!

I have also found some great websites with already made power points and jeopardy games. My kids love it, and it saves me time because I can alter a current PowerPoint and not have to spend time editing timing and technical issues. One already PowerPoint that I found has 214 sight words and it spends about 3 seconds on each word. THEY LOVE IT…plus, even kids who didn’t know the words at first are learning with the help of visual memory.

My mom is a school nurse and gave me a video that the state of Missouri has put out to encourage physical fitness. It is great on my team board and it gives my students structured wiggle breaks while teaching them about the importance of physical fitness. I am so happy that even though I am moving schools next year I will still have a team board. Happy spring everyone and enjoy the last 2 months of school!