Wednesday 19 June 2013

Multimedia Presentation

For the final assignement in Ecmp 355 class, we were asked to make a multimedia presentation on what we have learned during the class. I decided to create a prezi for my presentation. Here it is! Hope you enjoy!

Tuesday 18 June 2013

I love my job!

As i've mentioned, I am working for the Summer Sports School in the science portion for the summer. The job is so fun. Yesterday we went to Mother Teresa school in Regina and did two experiements with the grade 6 and 7 students.

We first tried an experiement to do with density using water, salt and food coloriung. Each color of water had a different amount of salt in it and when added together slowly with an eye dropper, it was meant to layer the colors due to the different density levels. It didnt work the best when the children did it but when I tried it somewhat worked. I think the kids were rushing, as was I so it didnt work the best. This is what it looked like.

After this we made lava in a cup. We did this by putting water with food coloring on the bottom and then oil on top. After this you sprinkle salt on the top which makes some of the oil fall, creating a lava lamp effect. The kids really loved this experiment. Although this picture isn't done while the oil is moving this is what it looks like.
Lastly, today I got to make a poster explaining circuits a little becuase we will be working with the students on making their own circuit. It was pretty fun and I feel the poster turned out great!


Monday 17 June 2013

Stressing

Being in Education has the perk of not having to write very many final exams, if any at all. I've been fortunate enough that I haven't had to write any formal finals my third year at all and only had a couple in my second year. However, this semester I have to write a final for my other spring class and it is stressing me out. I feel I have completely forgotten how to study and feel unprepared for this final I have to write on Wednesday.

Most of the time I would say I love not having to write finals ever in Education, but at this time I'm wishing that I had  had at least a couple so that I could remember how to study effectively and feel confident that I was ready to write it.

Friday 14 June 2013

Summer Fun

This week I started my new job at the Sumemr Sports School which is organized by and held at the University of Regina. I am working in the science portion of the camp and have been going over the planned lessons and activities the last couple days. I am so excited for all of them and can't wait to see the kids try them out.


Next week will be an awesome week at work! Myself and the other girl running the science portion will get to test out a bunch of the experiements to ensure they work. We wouldn't want them to fail while doing them with the campers!

Today we checked out one of them since we had all the equipment for it. It's called vibrobots and the students get to create their own miniture, moving robot using batteries, a mini motor and an LED light. The kids get to decorate and plan them how they want and have races to see which can move the farthest and quickest. How fun?!

I can't wait for July 2nd to come around so that we can do all these fun activities with the campers. This will be an awesome experience for me to have when it comes to teaching since I will be explaining the science behind each experiment, and also will have all these ideas when it comes to teaching my own class! This summer should be a blast!

Wednesday 12 June 2013

Classroom Cooking

Something that I love to do with friends and family is cook. I think it would also be something that could be extremely fun to do within the classroom. There are so many different things that you could incorporate it into.

  1. Math- While cooking students would get to practice their measuring and maybe even some conversion skills for different recipes.
  2. English- You can have students practice their writing and reading skills by looking at recipes and having them write out their favorites to take home.
  3. Health- In health you can teach students nutrition facts and how they can create and cook healthy recipes.
I'm sure their are other ways that you can incorporate cooking into school subjects and afterwards I think it would be fun for students to be put into partners and do some type of presentation about cooking a healthy recipe. It would be fun for them to do a recording or cooking video explaining what to do while cooking the recipe and then maybe explain some of the nutrition facts or whatever else they learned about. This way you can incorporate student use of technology as well. I feel like it would be something that students would enjoy doing as it might not be common for students to get to cook in class as well as make their own instructional video for others to learn from.
Any other ways you can think of to incorporate cooking?

Monday 10 June 2013

Saving grading time

In this video, the speaker talks about ways to help save time when it comes to grading. This could be helpful when it comes to trying to keep grading at home to a minimum and keeping your evenings open for yourself.

I'm done. Now what?

Something that comes up daily for teachers is students who are done their work quicker than other students. Sometimes we don't know what to give them to do when they are done. Here are some ideas that could be used for students when they finish their work early and have some free time.

  1. Have an 'I'm done jar'. The jar can be filled with slips of paper that have different types of activities on it. The activities can be things that the students can do in the classroom either on their own or with a partner. It could be useful to have two jars for this- one for individual and one for group or partners. Some activities could be computer/ipad game, checkers, chess or other strategical or educational games. 
  2. Another idea you could do is have a bin with sections or a rolling cabinet with drawers in it. For each drawer or cabinet you can have a different activity for kids to do. Have two variations for each activity, one for students doing it alone and one for students with a partner or group. Students can then pick one of the activities or have some fun way for it to be decided like rolling a dice and doing the activity with that number.
  3. Another way to keep students busy when they are finished their homework is to have flashcards. Flashcards can be made to help students practice so many different things from various subjects alone or with a partner. Have flashcards for different things the students are currently learning in math or English and they can practice their skills whether it be adding, subtracting or grammar. 
I'm sure there are so many different options for students who have finished their work early. I feel like no matter what you have set up it should be educational for the students and be helpful when it comes to strengthening the skills they are learning. Anyone else have any thoughts or ideas on what can be done for those students who finish early?

Friday 7 June 2013

Gardening in the Classroom

My step sister and I have been working on planting flowers and different vegetables this spring and it made me think of how fun it would be to do this with a class during the spring. I feel like you could incorporate their learning in different subject areas into this type of project.

  • For science you can teach them about plants, their parts and what they need to survive.
  • For health you can teach about different food groups and go into what foods are healthy and connecting this to the vegetables they are growing.
  • For math you can discuss the space that plants need to grow by having students plan out how big to make the garden and how much of each plant can fit into that area. You could also figure out how much water to give each plant as well.
  • For social you can discuss how different plants come from different parts of the world and teach them where each plant they planted come from.
There are probably so many different ideas that could taught when it comes to planting and gardening. Can anyone else think of any?

Tech Task # 7: Cellphones in the classroom

The other day we listened to a session given by Liz Kolb. She talked to us about using cellphones in the classroom and gave us examples of how people have been doing this of recently. She gave us amazing ideas and tools that would allow a teacher to incorporate the use of cellphones in the classroom at different grade levels. She gave us ideas such as radio podcasts, recording oneself for presentations, for texting in summaries  of lessons or readings, or texting in answers to polls or questions. She gave us different ways we can use texting during the school year as well as during summer break. Liz also provided us with various sites to help us with this task. Here are a few of the ones I really liked:

  1. www.hipcast.com 
  2. www.wiffiti.com 
  3. www.remind101.com
  4. www.ipadio.com
  5. www.polltogo.com 
I think that the idea that I would like to try the most is the Qrcodes. I feel like this would be a fun way to incorporate the use of cellphones into every subject area, and it also gets students away from just reading textbooks. Some ideas that I would like to try with Qrcodes are:
  1. English: For spelling I think it would be fun to have Qrcode on the spelling list that provided students with the verbal pronunciation of the word along with the definition and spelling of the word said out loud. This could be helpful for those students who are auditory learners while they are studying for tests.
  2. Literature: A fun idea for this would be to have a Qrcode on the books you have in the classroom. For each book there could be a description of the book from a students point of view. This could help students find books more quickly. Another idea for Qrcodes on books could be comprehension questions verbally read to them. They could then either record their answers or write them down which would be a way of assessing whether or not students are understanding what they are reading and to what degree.
  3. Math: For math class a Qrcode could be useful for test reviews. If you are giving students some type of review to do for a quiz or exam  to take home you can have a Qrcode at the bottom. This allows for the students to do the review then use the Qrocde to check their answers and the work that is needed to get the answer. They then know if they are doing it properly or not.
  4. Social: For social,it would be cool to have a worksheet with Qcodes on it that will take the students to a site with extra information or even pictures or videos that help explain the concept that they are learning about.
  5. Health: For this subject, you could have Qrcodes connected to different posters or sheets that take the students to sites about healthy food or the body. It could go to diagrams of the body and have videos of how the body works. It could also have videos on friendship or bullying when those topics are being discussed. 
  6. Physed: This would work well for if a teacher wants to do a circuit during gym class to allow students to work on the skills they are learning. There could be a piece of paper with a Qrcode on it for each station. It can take them to a video that shows what they will do at each station and how to do it properly.
  7. Science: This would be fun for showing students how different things work. It can be connected to different videos of experiments that are online or pictures. For example, when learning about lightning students could use the Qrcode on their homework sheet that shows them pictures and videos of lightning, then a video of an experiment that allows them to make their own lightning.
These are a few ideas I had for different subject areas. Anyone else have any ideas they can think of for certain subjects or topics?

Thursday 6 June 2013

Technology In My Class

Today I went and met my cooperating teacher for internship and had a tour of the school. The school is really small and the number of students is also very small. I will be teaching a grade 1 and 2 class with a total of 15 students in it. When I got to the classroom I will be teaching in I realized they are pretty up to pace with technology. The class I will be in has a t.v, computers and a smart board in it. I am really excited to use the smart board because I haven't had many chances to try them out yet. I feel like I will learn a lot about using them and plan on trying out a lot of new things on it.

I also realized that the school is very adaptive for students with various needs. They have a room with different materials or fidgets that can be taken to different classrooms or used in that room as well. They have different types of balls that can be used for seats and other gadgets that may help students focus or stay calm.

I am very excited to use and try out different things with the technology that is available to me as well as have the resources available for students who may need them.

Wednesday 5 June 2013

Resources

I was looking through Pinterest today and found this site. The site seems like it is a similar idea to Pinterest, but this particular section has lots of tips and helpful articles/tools for educators on how to incorporate technology, such as ipads, into the classroom. It especially looks at using technology when teaching students with learning disabilities. Hope some of you get a chance to search through it and find some great tools too!

Monday 3 June 2013

Teach Task 6, Part 2: ds106

The second tool I looked at after Alan Levine's session was ds106. I thought this was a fun site to use. It was pretty easy to navigate around and the assignments were interesting and fun to do as well.

The site would be fun to do with different grades, but it might not be as easy for younger students. The younger students may need more assistance, so either you need to do it with only a few students at once or have some older students in to help. Older students would easily be able to do these assignments on their own. It would be fun to do art projects and have students pick one of the visual assignments then have it printed. It would also be fun for them to experiment with the different types of assignments and the tools that they could use for them.

Here is the description for the first assignment I tried out.
  • Have you ever heard and song and a particular lyric stood out to you right away?  I think all of us have had the feeling at least once.  For this assignment use one of those lyrics that stood out to you and make it into a visual.  Use some kind of background that represents the lyric and place the lyrics over it in some way.  Be creative! But make sure that your visual product evokes the same kind feeling that the lyric of the song does.
Here is what I came up with!



And the instructions for the second assignment:
  • Color splash is a technique to emphasize details- you remove all color from a photo, and then restore original color to a single object, e.g. a green apple on a table. Think of the Girl in the red dress from Schindler's List.

    You can do this in a number of ways with photo editing software or using mobile apps. The answer lies in the Google
Here's what I came up with for this one!




Sunday 2 June 2013

Tech Task 6, Part 1: Five Card Flickr

After listening to Alan Levine's session from my Ecmp class on Wednesday, I took a look at some of the story telling/ story making devices he shared with us. The first site I looked at was Five Card Flickr. I though the site was really to use and pretty much any age could do this. It is very straight forward and allows for you to create a story in your own mind. The best part is that you can have so many different stories with the same five pictures.

This would be a great tool to use with any grade level. It would be fun to see what students would come up with for stories. You could either create the sequence of the pictures and allow each student to tell their own story or you could allow students to pick their own 5 pictures and create a story to them.

Here are the two links to the stories I created.

http://5card.cogdogblog.com//show.php?id=32086


http://5card.cogdogblog.com//show.php?id=32087

Stay tuned for part 2!

Saturday 1 June 2013

Fight against cancer


Last night was the Lumsden Relay for Life. So many people showed up from various towns and fundraising teams for the event. It was an awesome night full of great entertainment for an amazing reason. So much money was made to help find a cure for various kinds of cancer.


The Lumsden Elementary School teachers had their own team and area set up. I think it was a great idea for the school to put in a fundraising team and support the cause. Awesome job LES!