Week 4 complete!

This week was our last week that we will be in the classroom for both Tuesday and Thursday. Next Tuesday we get to make our first trip to Washington for Social Studies Methods and I am super excited. We do not have an exact plan when we show up to the class, so I am excited to be thrown into it and see what great experience I will receive from it. 

  This past week we focused on our unit plan and went over parts that we need to be working on. We have our standards picked out and have been working on our generalizations and guided questions. We had the opportunity to look at a completed unit plan which was very helpful because it gave me a guideline of what is expected from us for the unit. 

    Something that I found on twitter this week was a quote from Dr. Martin Luther King Jr that said "The function of education is to teach one to think intensively and to think critically. Intelligence plus character-that is the goal of true education." I think this is an awesome quote because it is what we have been talking about this whole semester so far. We don't just need to teach our students facts and information that they will forget the next day, but we need to make education fun and something that students want to do. We want our students to think critically and be able to make decisions. Building someones character while teaching them is the key to success. To do this, we as teachers have to make the classroom a safe and welcoming place where students can grow and thrive and become successful citizens of the United States. This would relate to NCTCS  teacher standard 2. "Teachers establish a respectful environment for a diverse population of students" under the category of "teachers provide an environment in which each chid has a positive, nuturing relationship with caring adults." To do this in my future classroom, I will make sure my lesson plans are based on concepts and not on facts. I know that I did not learn or want to memorize places or dates when I was in Social Studies, so I will not do that to my future students. I will integrate and use themes that will excite and interest my students. 

   I have been preparing a list of technology resources that will help me to be successful in my future classroom. I will then turn the list into a website that I can share with my classmates and coworkers. It will be a very helpful tool that can be used to improve education and help create successful and intelligent students. The resource that I found for this week is a website called epic for kids. This website has hundreds of online books for every grade and every subject. On this website you can create assignments and quizzes to go along with what you read or watched. It is more interesting for the students because it can be read on the smart board so everyone can see it and hear it .Then to test if the students understood what was read to them, you can have them take the quiz or complete and assignment at the end of the book that was read. There are also project ideas that are included in some of the books. This is a great way to take reading to a new level where the kids can enjoy reading!

This is the website and I suggest that every teacher signs up for this account!

https://www.getepic.com/app/search