In-Class Portfolio

Bio-poem
Graphic Organizer
Lesson Cover Page
Lesson Plan
  Venn Diagram handout 
  Venn Diagram model
  Power Point model 
Rubric

Annotated Website List

Annotated Website List:

Starfall

• Student Interactive Learning
• Students
• Preschool-2nd Grades
•  Reading and Phonics

Starfall is an interactive website that helps children learn to read by using phonics. This website includes games and read alouds which highlight the words as they are read. This is a fun website that children will have a lot of fun with while learning along the way.


Fact Monster

• Student Resource
• Students
• 1-6 Grades
• All Subjects

This website includes easy to find facts for all subjects. It also includes fun games and quizzes to see what you know about the content your searching, or to see how much you've learned from the website. Fact Monster also has a reference desk where you can use encyclopedias, dictionaries, almanacs, atlases, and timelines. This website also includes "how to" information as well. This is a fun and easy to use website for students.

Teacher Vision

• Teacher Lesson Plan Resource
• Teachers
•  Lessons for grades pre-k to 12th Grade
• All Subjects

Teacher Vision is a great resource for teachers to use to get ideas for lessons in any subject in all grades. This website provides printouts, graphic organizers, classroom management tips, first day of school activities, calendars to show teachers what holidays are coming up in each month and many more resources for teachers. This website is packed with useful information and materials for teachers and I would highly recommend it.     


The Teacher's Corner

• Teacher Lesson Plan Resource
• Teachers
• Lessons for All Grades
• All Subjects

The teacher's corner is a great resource for teachers to find lesson plans and other online resources for lessons. This website entails a lot of helpful information such as bulletin board ideas and tips, print outs, lesson plans, a book nook which lists great books teachers have used, a teachers lounge which allows teachers to connect and communicate with other teachers about things that work well in their classroom or things they are struggling with, and several more helpful materials. This is a fantastic website so go check it out!


National Geographic Education Beta

• Teacher and Students Resource
• Teacher and Students
• All Grades
• Science and History

This website can be used by teachers and students of all ages. It has everything, games activties, fact finders, virtual maps, homework help, videos, ways of getting involved in the world around you and many more great ways for students to learn all about different topics relating to science and history. This website is also great for showing your students what's going on around the world and how they are similar and different to the cultures around the world.


Share My Lesson

• Teacher Lesson Plans
• Teachers
• All Grades
• All Subjects

This website is a great resource for teachers made by teachers. This is a place where teachers can go to share and comment on lessons they've used in their classrooms. Share My Lesson has many lessons for all subjects and all grades, and you can view teacher's comments on how useful each lesson they used was or what they would change or add based on their experience with it.


Cool Math 

• Student Interactive Learning
• Students
• Ages 13 and older
• Math

This website is filled with fun interactive games for students to practice their math skills on. This website also has other great resources for students to go to and practice their math skills. There is also a section with overviews of each content area in math, as well as provides a link to the Massachusetts math standards and much more.


Fun Brain

• Student Interactive Learning
• Students
• Kindergarten to Eighth Grade
• All Subjects

Fun Brain has everything! There are math and science games, book read alouds, comic books, mad libs and many more fun activities. This website has matching games, word games, number games, and puzzles. Students will have a blast on this website while practicing multiple subject area skills.


Time For Kids 

• Student Resource
• Students
• Third to Eighth Grade
• Science and Social Studies

Time For Kids is a fantastic website that is full of tons of information. This website informs students about current news that is going on all over the world, and includes pictures and videos with their stories. There is a section about student reporters which shows kids acting as reporters traveling to different places and interviewing important people. This website also includes a homework helper section which helps kids create flash cards, gives them tips on grammar, and gives them tips on how to  write an A+ paper. I would highly recommend this website!


Scholastic For Parents

• Teacher and Parent Resource
• Parents and Teachers
• Preschool to Sixth Grade
• All Subjects

This is a wonderful website that includes a lot of helpful information about child development. This website breaks down the steps of development and what goes on in each. Scholastic for parents includes a lot of useful information on helping your students in and out of school. There is a section for homework help which lists the best ways of helping your child through their homework. This website also includes a news and blog section for teachers or parents to comment on things they learned or find helpful or just to communicate with other parents or educators as well as many more useful resources.

Dialogue Poem

My Dialogue Poem with Kim :)

Too Dumb for Complex Texts?   
    I feel children are taught single tasking by either parents or teachers. Most children lack focus and are always all over the place and parents and teachers are always trying to pull them in and have them do one thing at a time. Multi tasking on the other hand as I just kind of explained is natural. Children are born with a lot of curiosity and need for adventure and are all over the place when they’re younger. As they get older they are taught by mostly teachers at this point that they need to focus when being taught something so they can fully understand the new material. Today technology is adding to students’ lack of focus by students constantly going on the internet and being directed to a million different places. The internet is all about grabbing a person’s attention which causes students to become use to jumping from reading to reading, and not fully indulging into one particular text to either relate to what they’re reading or find deeper meanings within the text.
     I agreed with a lot of the things brought up in this article. I feel students are not pushed hard enough with what they are reading and that a lot of times teachers are making their curriculum easier to increase graduation rates or to just move students along to the next grade. I believe this dumbing down of reading begins in middle school around fourth and fifth grade because teachers are expecting students to know how to connect to a text and find deeper meaning because that’s suppose to be taught in third grade. Fourth grade teachers don’t feel it’s their responsibility to re-teach it or waste time reviewing it because they have enough curriculum they need to get through, and this causes students to lose this reading skill because their memories are not refreshed and there for can’t be built on or strengthened.   

Wordle

Wikipedia, Friend or Foe?
      I feel Wikipedia is a friend if used correctly. This article has shed a new light on Wikipedia for me because I have always viewed it as this unreliable source that anyone could go on and add things or take things away. If Wikipedia is explained correctly to students and taught in a way where they are analyzing things they read before they take them to heart, then I feel it is a great resource to use in the classroom. Using reading and writing when working with this resource helps students become analyzers and evaluators of what they take in, which builds their critical thinking skills. Showing students how to find a fact off Wikipedia and then go and check its resource shows students not everything they read is true, and the research of the writer is very important to see if their work is credible or not. This skill can also be used with all different kinds of writings and also shows students how easily it is for them to be misguided and believe something that’s false.  

8/6/12: Technology Autobiography

    Growing up I never used the computer but I did love watching television and playing Nintendo. I remember becoming obsessed with playing Nintendo and my parents would use that to their benefit and take it away as a punishment. Besides that I have never been interested in technology and I just recently have realized how much not being tech savvy is hurting me. I began becoming some what interested in computers when instant messenger came out, I was in middle school and it was purely for social reasons. When using instant messenger if I wasn't talking much to anyone I would walk away and do something else and wait for responses. I became familiar with computers because I would always be on them for school work so when I wasn't doing homework I wouldn't want to be near them. I first got a cell phone in eighth grade and briefly used face book towards the end of high school and beginning of college. I still have a face book but I only use it for the pictures.

    When it came to writing I loved it. I had multiple journals starting from when I was still in elementary school. I used writing as a reliever of stress and just getting out what was on my mind. I feel growing up journaling caused me to love pen and paper as much as I do. Whenever I have needed to write a paper I would always have to write down an outline or my thoughts before I even thought about going to the computer, unless I needed to research something. This reminded me of the articles from the other night when they were discussing how the way you get your thoughts down effects how you write. Since pen and paper have always been the most comfortable for me I feel I am able to get all of my thoughts out and in a clear and orderly fashion.   

    To be technologically literate one knows how to use technology with ease and if becomes unsure of something they are able to figure it out quickly. I on the other hand can get lost in trying to figure out the format of an APA paper for an hour. I feel I am unable to measure up to the technology demands a teacher is faced with and I am finally seeing the detriment of becoming technology savvy, which is giving me the aspiration to finally get on the band wagon.  In the future when facing technology demands I will try and do them on my own but I feel if I can’t figure something out I will ask a fellow teacher for help. I do see this as a problem because I don’t want to bother other teachers with simple technology problems and make myself look unintelligent.  I find I become frustrated very quickly because I am fairly clueless about computers and I don’t know where to begin when fixing a problem. The best way for me to learn about new technologies is listening, seeing it modeled and practicing with the new technology myself as much as I can.