Hey everyone! Welcome to my first blog ever! I don't know about you guys, but I am excited to create these blogs for CI 556. This might just be the first class that I am excited to wake up early for!
As someone who is not necessarily technology savvy, I am excited for this class so that I can learn about technology that will be beneficial for students. I enjoyed using Wordle and creating a word cloud about myself. It's funny because when I went to visit my first student teaching placement last week, they had a Worldle how to page that I was looking at. When I saw this page, I wrote the website down but had not had time yet to check it out because of graduation. Did you all enjoy graduation? Looking back, I wished that I would have went to both convocations.
Why am I talking about graduation you might ask for a literacy and technology blog? Well, it's hard to believe that we will receive our teaching certificates soon. I know that I am ready for my own classroom, but it is nice to be taking a few more classes to help me grow as a professional. I am excited to learn about literacy and technology because I feel that there is a lot that I can learn to keep up with the advancement of technology and today's society.
Within some of my blogs, I am going to share with you times in which I have used technology in the classroom. If you would like, you can share lessons about how you used technology for a lesson during student teaching. In my first placement, we read Brown Bear, Brown Bear, What Do You See? by Bill Martin Jr. and Eric Carle. After we read this book, I had the opportunity to read Polar Bear, Polar Bear, What Do You Hear? by Bill Martin Jr. to the class. For this small group, I wanted the preschoolers to try and guess the sound that each animal made in the story. To do this, I gathered sounds for each animal in the book and played them to the students before I read the page about that animal. The children loved trying to guess each animal by listening to the sounds they made. With some of the animals, the students were able to use their prior knowledge, for instance knowing what an elephant sounds like, to figure out which animal sound I was playing. I thoroughly enjoyed this lesson as well because I was able to effectively incorporate technology into the lesson.
Your lesson on Polar Bear, Polar Bear, What Do You Hear? sounds fun. Where did you go to gather the sounds for the animals? Younger children seem to really enjoy books when they have added sounds or music. When I was in my kindergarten placement I started to use music and sounds often in my read alouds because it captured the attention of my students. I like how you used this simple technology to enhance your lesson. I feel that sometimes when people try to add technology to a lesson they make it too complicated and forget that technology can be simple as well.
ReplyDeleteWhat a great idea! In my first placement, my teacher tried really hard all the time to get all students involved in the books, basically because of the high percentage of students with special needs. She would often stop and say "What color?" or "How many?" or "What's this?" She did this to all of the students frequently, so they knew that they should be paying attention in case she was going to ask them a question. It was so cool to see! It made me think about how she could have incorporated technology into these lessons the way that you did! I'm still thinking, but I'll let you know.
ReplyDeleteGlad you are (so far!) enjoying your first-time experience with blogs. I love your design - very creative!
ReplyDeleteI like how you thought of ways to use technology with younger students - great idea!! And it does appeal to different learning styles and you don't always have to do these big, time-consuming projects. Your description is a perfect example!