Have you ever wondered why teachers start every lesson with a
Warm up/ Introduction/ Do now?
An activity such as a Do Now brings your students into focus and activates prior knowledge. Introductions prepare students for what they are about to learn in class, or simple stimulation of the brain. This is the time where students can write about current issues and discuss their opinion on Here is a creative and reliable website you may want to check out on Do Now's using twitter! It also gives you a tutorial on how to set up a twitter account, which is very helpful.
Artifact Bag Continued...
After reading an article on artifact bags and listing some facts that may help in making your own; as a class we had the opportunity to become a historian for the day. Our professor created two different bags for each of the groups. Inside the bags were four different artifacts. We were asked to identify the items and then eventually figure out who those objects belonged to. My group was given the following objects: 1. Birth Certificate 2. Khohloma (Russian wooden spoons) 3. Gzel-pronounced jel (white and blue porcelain) 4. Diploma- AN award for someone who contributes to science education
Trying to figure out what each artifact is!
Birth Certificate
Khohloma
After careful research and common sense, my group was able to put all the items together and recognize what we were looking at. Everything just happened to be items from my professors past! The bottom of the porcelain bird said made in Russia. This allowed another one of my group members to look up Russian linguistics and figure out that the old piece of paper was a birth certificate. My professor is originally from Russia, and came to the US in 2000. Since she was born in Russia, her birth certificate was hand written in Russian with her maiden name on the top. The wooden spoon and fire bird symbolized apart of her culture and past, and the diploma was an award she received for her generous contributions. This activity was extremely rewarding. I was able to look at an object carefully and try and figure out by myself where it came from. This made me hungry for knowledge, because I wanted to know all the answers. Artifact bags are such a great way to open up the beginning of a unit or chapter. They inspire the children and make learning fun! *The FireBird Since I was three years old I have been in love with Ballet. For a large part of my life I would eat, sleep, and breathe ballet. Therefore, when I heard the firebird being referenced, I immediately knew the fable. It made me feel really good about myself because I was able to make that text to self connection. That connection will also help me remember the lesson for a long time too because it resonated with me.
Here are a few things teachers should think about before they start their artifact bag project!
What is an artifact bag? An artifact bag is a cleverly designed bag with a special unknown item from the past inside. The students job is to look at the object and figure out what it is and where it came from. This project will help students increase their reading comprehension skills and also their interest in history.
Here are 5 tips on how to use an Artifact Bag
1. Get the students excited for the new project they are about to discover! 2. Use a journal to keep track of everyday you work on the artifact bag. This allows the student to deepen their new learning. 3. Make sure you provide useful books to help the student identify their artifact. 4. If you do end up using books, please be aware of the culture of your students. Mirror books and window books are recommended. It is important to make sure that your students are able to make text to self connections. If they are able to do that then learning will be harder for them. 5. Advocate nonfiction and fiction books with the same historic focus so that students will be gaining expository information along with their narrative text. This allows the student to become more involved in the topic and makes for great group discussions.
Identify four goals or purposes for the study of history. In the U.S., "History helps to prepare students for responsible citizenship, further learning, and productive employment in our modern economy." 1. Socialization is a process where a student begins to accept and support his or her culture. 2. Countersocialization forces people to examine their personal and social beliefs and analyze the problems of their nation and world. 3.Learning about the origins of the nation and its struggles to grow physically, politically, and economically. 4. Prepare students to become citizens.
What is economics to you and how would you teach economics in the classroom?
If I had to define economics, I would say it's the study of knowledge dealing with production, consumption, and revenue. There are a few ways I would teach economics in the classroom. One effective way to teach economics in the classroom would be to use the BizWorld foundation's program, and to make as many realistic references to the real world as possible. (In class, we went over this powerpoint: if you copy and paste it into your search bar, it will take you to the site.) https://docs.google.com/presentation/d/19w_PV6x_iBhDtqnx2vR63EMTZt3hQhXC4ay0hCFebKo/present#slide=id.p In the power point, it discusses the definition of economics and some ways that are recommended to teach this dry topic.
It is important to use collaboration and cooperation during group processing. Working with your group and teaching your students both require collaboration and cooperation in order to function properly. *In class we also learned how to use books in the classroom when presenting economics. My group was given three different books, A Chair for my Mother, Frannie's Fruit's, and The Story of the New York Stock Exchange.
These two books are more acceptable to be read allowed in class for first and second graders. They teach supply and demand in simple ways as well as an incentive to save money.
The Story of The New York Stock Exchange is on a reading level for 4th-6th graders. It teaches children the history of the stock exchange. A highlight of this book was George Washington giving a speech on Wall Street. In my classroom I would photocopy certain pages from the book that correlate with my lesson plan and hand them out accordingly.
Sweden's Newest School System Has No Classrooms The environment teachers choose to engulf their students in effects the way they learn. In Sweden there are these new schools called Telefon schools. These schools encourage independent and collaborative work including group work. The only requirements to be accepted into the school are for the parents to pay taxes, and for the students to have ID numbers. These classrooms look as if they do inspire thought, but I'm not sure if I agree with the lack of structure. Everyone has to take into consideration that some children with special needs must be in a structured and well organized environment. I'm not sure where the teachers come into play with this structure, because they are not shown in the pictures, therefore I do not think I could teach in a school such as this one.
New Classrooms in Sweden
As contradictory as this sounds, if it was mandatory for me to teach in an environment such as this one, I would definitely make it work. As far as grading, I feel this would involve the teacher performing a lot of assessments, but not as much teaching because it seems technology was mostly being used. I feel as if this school would be a great place for students to go after school to finish homework and expand on their imagination.
I have never used twitter before so I decided to google the definition of it to get a better understanding. The definition I found was, a very popular instant messaging system that lets a person send brief text messages up to 140 characters in length to a list of followers. Also a series of short, high-pitched calls or sounds.
In the classroom technology is taking over, and there is nothing to do to stop it. Our job as teachers is to master technology and keep up with the latest inventions. Twitter can be used as a social networking website, and also an educational reference. There is this great blog that introduces 60 ways to use twitter in the classroom. http://www.teachthought.com/social-media/60-ways-to-use-twitter-in-the-classroom-by-category/ After reading this blog, I would like to highlight a few of my favorite points about twitter. These are some of the few tips I would use in my classroom.
1. The first one I found useful was the bulletin board. That sounds extremely helpful. I would love to be able to wake up and only have to check one means on technology. Sometimes I find myself checking my email, school account, and other means of technology to figure out what is going on in class. It would be nice if everything was in one location.
2. Silencing blurts- this idea is genius!! Instead of a student calling out, they can tweet what they want to say instead of disturbing the class. This also teaches the student self control. 3. Parent Communication is also a really great idea. This is an easy way for parents to stay in touch with the teacher, and they can also keep up with the activities in class. This is great for parents who cannot make it in time for parent teacher conferences or work abroad. 4. Twitter recaps is my favorite way to use twitter. This sounds like the most effective out of all 60! This is a fun and exciting way for kids to listen to their teachers. Putting little facts every day on twitter to just review the day is great review. 5. Following historical figures sounds really neat as well! What a cool way to learn about history. 6. Vocabulary building on twitter is a wonderful resource too. This is a great way to for students to write out a sentence using a new vocabulary word. This will help them succeed and later on with SAT's.
Before I show you our movie, I'd like to tell you what happened earlier that day. Barbara( Executive Producer from Hudson Hype Productions) and I went to another class to introduce our fellow students to Biz-Movie. The other class was using another Biz program called BizWorld. Their project was a bit different from ours, but the same lessons and vocabulary were applied. The students using Biz-World created businesses that made friendship bracelets. I had the opportunity to go around and spend 30 biz bucks on a couple of friendship bracelets as well. After everyone went around buying bracelets, we had a discussion about what company was the most effective. Most of the professors agreed that the selling point for them was the fact that they could buy a bracelet and give to a charity at the same time.
Biz-World and Biz-Movie are programs used to make students realize the information they are learning can be used in the real world. Barbara and I showed the class our commercials and then sold tickets to whom ever was interested in our movie. Barbara had 6 people interested in her movie, while I had 16 interested. The other class really boosted the Revolution Ladies ticket sales.
I also want to thank Alyssa for making the template for the tickets. They were simple, but effective. Exactly what we needed!
*Our assignment was to make a 1-5 minute movie about the American Revolution. The trick to making this movie was to make Social Studies fun.
After all of our hard work, the movies are finally done!
This time my group, Revolution Ladies went first. This is our movie:
I think we all did such a wonderful job! We all agree that the movie is outstanding. It's amazing what a great job we did, because none of us have never used Imovie before.
Hudson Hype Productions took a different approach on this project. They decided to make a movie trailer to try and encourage students to read a book about the American Revolution. Nice job everyone!!!
At the end of the day we made a profit of 57 biz
bucks. We had to subtract: salaries, copyright, production of a commercial,
ticket sales, production of a movie, an enhanced data package, ticket supplies,
an additional character, and the 20% of the stock we sold. This movie was a friendly competition and the Revolutionary Ladies won! I'm so proud of all my group members. We all did an amazing job working together to get the job done.
Hudson Hype Productions and Revolution Ladies
Time to celebrate! We all did such a wonderful job! On to the next project :)
Today is the Biz-Movie commercial launch! After a few nights of hard work and dedication. My group was able to create a commercial that went along with our logo-- Educate, Entertain, Engage. On our google docs, we all posted pictures of the materials we were going to be teaching, and we also met up in the library to go over music while working more on the story board for our movie. At the end of the day we had a lot of fun and put together an amazing commercial!
Revolution Ladies Hard at work!
When we entered class, our Vice President of Finance (Samantha) handed in a total of $10 towards production. We had to pay 5 biz bucks for our salaries and then another 5 biz bucks for the actual commercial. Finally it was time to show our commercials! There was some anxiety in the room when we found out some members of the Division of Education were going to be sitting in for the day, but we quickly remembered this is a great thing to learn from and should be honored they took time out of their busy day to support us. Here is Hudson Hype Productions Commercial (our competition):
They did a great job using a very interesting program! The commercial really targeted adults and teachers, and they were definitely spot on! Well done Hudson Hype Productions! Revolution Ladies Commercial:
Our commercial was meant to target 4th graders and teachers. The goal we were looking to achieve was to make history entertaining for children to watch, instead of documentaries that often put students to sleep.
Me
My group
I hope you enjoyed our commercials and stay tuned for our movies! You won't be disappointed.
By this time we have decided on a Company name and motto! We all threw around a bunch of names and ideas. We decided to go with the theme of our movie. Since the movie focused on the Revolutionary War, we based our name on that, and finally decided on one! Our company name is Revolution Ladies and our motto is Educate, Entertain, EngageWe held elections as well! Lauren: Executive ProducerSam: Vice President of Finance Alyssa: Vice President of Sales and MarketingLindsay(me): Vice President of DesignEmily: Vice President of Production Now it was timeto make a logo. We all decided on a fist to reference a revolution and then a ribbon underneath it to put our logo in. As a group we thought this image really fit what we were going for.As my group continues with Biz-Movie, our new assignment was to create a sales pitch to make businesses invest in our company and buy stock. If a company buys stock then we will be able to have enough money to fund our money and commercial. Lauren and Emily were our brave volunteers who presented in front of the company representative and spoke very highly of our the Revolution Ladies. They were able to encourage the company to buy 2 shares of our stock. Now we are left with 80% out of a possible 100%During the presentation we introduced each other and our jobs. We also showed the representative our poster(which can be found below), a story board, and a presentation of our stocks. This made the representative eager to help our company. They understood our company was very organized and on top of their work.
We currently have 1 biz buck for starting the company, 5 biz bucks for handing in our employment applications, 4 biz bucks for dressing nicely, 6 biz bucks for a good start, 50 biz bucks for the two shares we traded, 5 biz bucks for dressing nicely, 4 biz bucks for being on time, and 3 biz bucks for our story board. We have a total of 78 biz bucks! Now it is our job to create a commercial and a movie!
This week we started working on a project called Biz-Movie. We were randomly placed into groups of 5, and from there we were handed booklets with instructions on how to start. My group was made up of Lauren, Emily, Alyssa, Samantha, and I. Then I set up a Google Docs page for all of us to put our ideas on. The page would allow all of us to communicate without anyone feeling left out. That night for homework we were asked to fill out a job application, look over vocabulary, and complete a pre-assessment. This clip and website will inform you on what Biz-Movie is :) The BizWorld Foundation - Programs Our ultimate task is to learn about economics, create a commercial, create a movie, and manage our own pseudo business.
Today, we took the time to revisit technology in the classroom. In the clip you are about to watch, you will see a girl who is extremely resistant to using the internet for academic purposes. Find out what she thinks of the internet by the end of the clip!
Personally, I really enjoyed this short clip. It was really great to hear the students explaining their experiences with certain technology inside and out of the classroom. All of the students explained how the internet can be educational as well as used for entertainment purposes, and that is extremely important. I learned a few things from this clip too. I have never used or experimented with twitter, therefore, I cannot comment about anything yet. I still have some research to do on how it can be used in the classroom. I enjoyed the one girl who brought up her air pollution project in China. She was able to bring in all this information from both China and New York City while comparing the two very easily. I thought that was really nifty.Youtube is a site I am not very fond of for educational means. I dislike the idea of posting videos to Youtube, because there seems to be a lot of cyber bullying on Youtube specifically. The people who post the videos are not always receiving constructive criticism, and that worries me as a future teacher, because I do not want to be the reason why my students are emotionally scarred. Nevertheless it is a risk that students are willing to take. The very beginning of this video was an incredible reality check and it made me realize some of the things young adults do now a days are silly, but we do them anyway, because that is what we are used to. In the classroom, I would use technology a little differently then those teachers did. I would use a site called Schooltube. This is a more academic friendly site than Youtube. There are a variety of videos from both teachers and students. Most importantly these videos are made just for kids, so they make the information more bearable to sit through.
Our little class is made up of 10 students, there are 9 women and 1 man. We were asked to write a series of rules that we wanted enforced in our classroom. Classroom rules are essential no matter how old you are, it is impossible to be too old for a little respect. As each of us posted to the forum, we saw a lot of similarities and differences! The similarities we kept and the differences we discussed. In the end we came up with a final product!
Many of us agree that these rules are absolutely perfect! It is important to respect not only your professor, but your peers as well, because learning is a big game of give and take.
"We try our best," is specifically important, because we should always strive to achieve our best, and if it is not our best to keep on trying. "We are a team," is significant in this class since there is a great amount of group work. We all must learn to mesh with each other and be open to sharing ideas. If we do not learn from our mistakes we will continue to make them. Our class is looking to grow and learn everyday! The most important part of team work, and working on becoming a teacher is to celebrate not only your success, but your classmates success as well. It is less threatening being in a class full of people you trust, instead of strangers. Take that extra moment to give constructive criticism and learn from someone else's experiences.
Today, Dr. Smirnova introduced the class to a new website called wordle.net. That night, I was asked to go home and think of a fun fact that makes me unique. This technique also helps the professor remember who you are during the first couple of days. I decided to list a few of my favorite things in my first wordle!
I made a Wordle about some of the things I am good at :) Wordle is very easy to navigate and fun to use! I recommend using this site to make your own neat project some day :)
Before I started this class I had a certain professor tell me this class was going to be too much of a challenge for me. It is my job now to prove them wrong. I know that I have the ability to excel in this class, and in anything I do. On the first day we discussed how school is different today than when I grew up. Children are now called, Digital students of today. They are constantly finding new ways to feed their growing minds. We watched a certain video that explained how technology is a big part of today's learning.
When I was little I did not spend 3 1/2 hours a day online. My mom forbade me from using the computer for more then 15 minutes because I was told it would rot my brain. My parents also told me that the more I was on the computer the less I would play outside and use my imagination. It is very interesting to see technology in a bright light instead of something negative!
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