Teachers Pay Teachers...a useful website for teachers or not?

Teachers Pay Teachers is a website where anyone, educator or not, can look at lesson plans, activities, worksheets, and quizzes to better assist children in all grades and all subjects. I just recently learned about this website and was very skeptical about the quality of work that would be on it. From further researcher, I learned that it is a website that is free for a standard membership and contains material that has been added by other educators. The work is either free or for sale at a low price. Once you download or purchase the lesson or worksheet you want, you always have access to it.

I currently began tutoring and I have found this website to be useful. I have found multiple worksheets that work well for the needs of my student and that he can greatly benefit from. All in all, I highly recommend this website for teachers, parents, and future teachers.

Teaching a Direct Lesson

As an educator, teaching your very first whole class lesson can be a little intimidating. While preparing to teach a direct lesson on the American Revolution to a 4th grade class, I realized the lesson plans that I had previously written weren't nearly as intimidating as this one was. In the past, I would write lesson plans but not teach them to a whole class.

During the planning and writing process, I learned how difficult it was to find ways to keep the students interested such as pictures, slide animations, and different assessment quizzes to give. When I heard that I must write three different lessons about the battles and events of the American Revolution, I was at a lose for what I was going to do. The direct lesson was pretty simple but tedious.

I feel that my direct lesson went pretty well. The guided notes were very useful for the 4th grade class to use and remember information. The class was also able to use these notes during the inquiry and cooperative lesson.

I really enjoy Kahoot quizzes so it worked out perfectly that I was able to create a Kahoot quiz for my students to review the information I had just taught them during the lesson. The children responded well to the Kahoot quiz and it was a useful tool to measure how the lesson went.

One item I can improve for next time is the amount I read off of the slide and the adding of more information that is not necessarily important but are interesting. I could also improve how much I walk around the classroom. During this lesson I mainly stayed toward the front of the room but I could have moved around more to make sure the students were on track while I was talking.

Fuhler Artifact Bag Article

The article begins by setting the stage to the activity that will be done in a hypothetical classroom. To create a sense that background knowledge and communication are important during the artifact bag activity, Fuhler quotes many other articles that express that each student will bring a unique aspect to this activity. Due to the children having unique backgrounds, the group discussions may be more enriching and allow others to express their feelings on the matter because the teacher has also made a safe environment for the children to learn and discuss.

An artifact bag is usually one you create and decorate to make more visually appealing and fun for the students. The artifact bag above may be one that is used in a professional setting. The teachers role during the artifact bag activity is crucial. When I create an artifact bag and have students look inside, I want to make sure that I am scaffolding their knowledge as stated by Vygotsky and Bruner. Scaffolding is when the teacher or instructor builds upon prior instruction to help a student solve a problem or master a new skill. As a teacher, it us also my job to model how the process of using the artifact bag should be done rather than verbally telling the students the different steps. By modeling for the students, they will most likely have better recollection on how to begin and the process. During my modeling practice, I will read and think aloud, ask questions as I go, predict what might happen or what the next item may be, and create a summary at the end of what I did and found.

For my artifact bag, I will have items that pertain to the American Revolution. To begin this activity, I will model for students how to carefully open the artifact in the bag and what type of questions they need to be thinking about. Following my demonstration, I will demonstrate how the students should be filling out the data collection sheet. This sheet is important because it gets the group talking about what they have found so far and what they expect to find.

This activity is very useful when creating a unit plan. When I teach this lesson, I will most likely conduct the activity during the end of the unit. This way the students have some prior knowledge of the time period and what events were taking place when this artifact could have been found. I will also gather many different articles for the students to read after looking at the artifact and different books. I may also gather some photographs to connect prior knowledge to the artifact even more.

Kahoot and other quizzes on the Smartboard

When I was in high school and at my two year college, we began using clickers as a method of assessing what students knew from a lesson that was just taught. This method was effective but not effective at the same time. Students who knew the answer would immediately click the correct button whereas you can sit for 5 minutes on the same question because one student has not answered. From class, we learned about a multitude of different free online quiz sites that we can use with our class if they have access to a computer or tablet. My favorite quiz site is Kahoot.it. I had never heard of this site before my social studies methods course but I find it very effective and fun. The website allows teacher or other students to create multiple question quizzes that range from easy to difficult and can be designed for any grade level. The website is interactive and easy to use. From using this quiz not only in my college class but in a classroom with 5th grade students, it is fun and the students seem to enjoy the "competitive" side of it. Kahoot is my new go to quiz creation site.

Explore Kahoot.it Here!

What Works In The Classroom- Fieldwork week 1 and 2

Recently we have begun working in a fifth grade classroom. From my observations of three of my classmates, I have found some items that work and do not entirely work in a classroom. One effective method in the classroom to get attention is to clap your hands in a certain pattern and have the students repeat this pattern to make them aware, without speaking, that it is time to be quiet and listen for a moment. Another effective method is to have the students work independently if the class loses focus when they are in groups. From week 1 and 2 of my observation I watched the students lose focus as soon as they were set up to work together. In many aspects of teaching, having students work in groups is usually a very crucial step in learning because it gives students an opportunity to teach one another and share their thoughts more openly. One ineffective method I noticed was asking students to write down too much information. When the students were asked to write while the teacher was speaking, the students got lost and had a hard time following what was happening.

Dan Meyer Video

Although this is a video regarding mathematics, I feel that it is important for other subject types as well. In many cases, students have a hard time grasping concepts they read in a textbook because they are visual learners. I have found over the years that a student may have a deeper understanding for a topic if they are able to see what they are discussing being done or to physically hold the object. Although manipulatives are more commonly used in mathematics, subjects such as social studies can include hands on activities every day. For example, asking students to create a project to go along with the topic such as timeline is useful because the student can visually see the dates and events.

Dan Meyer also discusses how many items in textbooks are not exactly important. It is a valuable for students to understand what is important to remember and what is less important to remember for the future. Being able to teach and model for students how to properly obtain information from a textbook and how to figure out what is important and what could possibly be less important.

In my future classroom, I plan to use manipulatives for as many subject areas as possible. As a visual learner, I find it important to be able to see what is being discussed rather than just read about it. It is important for me to access as many different senses as possible while teaching because not every student is the same.