Wk.3 Lighting a Spark

What others are saying: Bonita

Sun, 25 Apr 2010 16:01:38 -0400

SJ4987
Bonita This is great. Consider what you do as a contribution no matter what the outcomes are. Keep up the good work. Many appreciate what you do but don’t know how to express it.
SUNDAY, APRIL 25, 2010 - 03:57 PM

Liz Dalton says:
April 21, 2010 at 11:11 pm
I am at a brand new high school and it has been very interesting and fun opening a new school. Everything has been new. I use to teach at a jr. high and now I am at a high school so all the curriculum is different. I teach 6 different classes so I have started 6 new programs just with my teaching. It is always interesting starting something new, you always figure out new ways to make it better. That is what I discovered about my action research. Now I have done it once, I know how to change it to make it better.
I was part of starting the first Family, Careers, and Community Leaders of America Club at our high school. Again we have new ways of making the club better.
I am the assistant swim coach at our new high school so I was part of starting a new swim team. The head coach knows everything about swimming and I know more about teenagers. Together we balance the job to make a pretty good swim team.

I am our Career and Technical Education department head so I was part of establishing our department with many different CTE teachers. It takes a lot of compromise, because we all teach different subjects, to make a smooth running department.
pril 23, 2010

sj4987 Liz
This is good. I like the saying, " Team work make the Dream work."
Keep up the good work because you are truly making a difference in the lives of others.
Sunday, April 25, 2010 - 02:16 PM

Blog 3 A Reflection

Fri, 23 Apr 2010 17:05:51 -0400

As an educator I always felt that teaching came with learning from the learners. I would always tell my students that we come to school to learn and that I teach to learn from them. Having dialogue with students always helped me with what I would teach and how I could get the point across with out loosing the students desire to learn. I the past two year I’ve taken professional development courses that somewhat coached into changing the way I teach. Let my classroom become a village for learning. I didn’t know how to carry the plan out because of some of the discipline problems and students taking it as an opportunity play in a learning environment. I do believe that students are their own driving force when it comes to learning. My classroom setting consists of learning groups with students helping each other. I start my lesson with what’s called an essential question and the students take over. Before closing the lesson the students are asked to answer the essential with a demonstration if possible. I don’t want you to be under the impression that this always work because it doesn’t. But I do believe students have a lot to teach to educators.

The different studies that I have encountered with Full Sail University over the past nine months have helped me a whole lot in the classroom. I have expanded the learning environments and incorporated it with technology. Children love to create and show off what they create. I have them to create digital stories in math about what they learned. I have them to take pictures and help them with creating Podcasts. Children are learning to be fluent with their multiplication facts by creating raps and using Garage band to create sound and beats to go along with their creation. I’m enjoying what I’m learning and so are my students. My next goal is to get them ready for the technology fair that takes place in February.

The classroom-learning environments have everything to do with a student’s success. PlE offer students a platform for learning and make them accountable for what they learn. One of the PLE learning might be a blog this can be incorporated for students to share what they learned with other peers. PlE is encouraging students to become publishers. They can archive their personal reflections and some of their digital captions with hope of inviting other students into their learning world. I think that PLE is something that should take over the way educators teach and develop lessons. In the book Brain Based Learning it focused a lot on how we learn and how the brain is at work. I believe that all children can learn and offering them the opportunity to bring with them the things that will better assist them in their learning is a good place to start. The book also discussed how science and doing science experiments lesson help with some of the critical thinking skills students need to be successful. We remember more of what we do and when we can create we can carry learning up a stairwell of knowledge.

Blog 2 An Experience Introducing a new Program

Fri, 23 Apr 2010 16:45:26 -0400

During a professional learning meeting, I was the presenter. I put all of my notes into a PowerPoint presentation. I started out with an icebreaker, which went very well. I turned on the computer and waited a few minutes and nothing happened. I checked the power cords to make sure everything was connected. I got so nervous I started sweating, my partner said, “let’s just do this without the PowerPoint presentation”. I know I had to come up with something very fast so, what I decided to do was to take the presentation into another room. We moved the presentation into another room and it went very well. The lesson I learned from this is to check out everything at least a day or hour before. If I had done that then I could have planned another location before hand.

Blog 1 Wk. 3 Lighting a Spark

Fri, 23 Apr 2010 16:40:07 -0400

Lighting a spark. This was a powerful reading something that makes you think about the times you thought something didn’t go over as well as you thought it should have gone over. I have had situations during my teaching years when I thought my lesson did not go over well and how I really felt like I not only wasted the time of myself but that of my students as well. I have had student to say to me, “Mrs. Jordan that was a good lesson”. I would think for a minute what mad that child say that. Was that to make me feel better?

When we think our students are not paying attention to the lesson we get upset and try to bring their focus to the lesson by asking them to repeat what you just said. To your surprise, they can repeat word for word what you said. The thought of them repeating what you said bought a spark to you mind.

I can reflect on times when my students have come back to me the next year with excitement sharing with me their experience in my math class and how it has helped them to become good math students. We always look for spark but we should always give sparks to others. It is more blessing to give than to receive. I try each week or daily going out of my way telling a teacher or student how great something was that they might have done. We did a book study on filling buckets and I think this story is all about filling someone’s bucket at the same time someone is filling your bucket. I remember receiving an email from my daughter one day thanking me for being a good mother. She also thanked me for pushing her and telling her never to give up on things in life. You life and your future is what you make it. No one else can make it for you; you have to make it for your self.

To me a spark is like the light that you see when you see a beautiful colorful butterfly and how it flapped its wings right before your eyes.