Week 6!

Week six was another great week spent in Washington. It was Valentine's Day on Tuesday so we were able to play a Valentine's Day listening game, do worksheets with them, create a heart craft and pass out Valentines. It was a great experience because I got some really interesting ideas for when I am a teacher and will be celebrating Valentine's Day with my students. Something I really liked that I want to do in my future classroom is Mrs. Skeith passed out a Valentine's Day packet with different coloring sheets and activities that were educational. The kids were given a box of the Valentine's hearts. They had to open them and put them on their desk. Next on their worksheet they had 6 different larger hearts with "Greene" "Yellow" "Orange" "pink" "Purple" and "White" written on them. They had to put the candy hearts in the bigger hearts and sort them by color. They then had to write how many they had of each. For example if they had 5 pink hearts they would write 5 in the pink heart on the paper and so on. After they recorded all of their numbers, they were allowed to eat the candy hearts. The next two pages were filled with graphs where they had to do a bar graph and a tally graph of how many hearts they had. Then they had to look at the graphs and answers questions like "did you have more green or purple hearts". This was a fun activity that the kids enjoyed because they got to eat the candy after, but they were also doing bar graphs, math problems and solving problems all while having fun. This is definitely a resource I have made note of and will use in my classroom when I am a teacher. This activity falls under Teacher standard 3, Teachers know the content they teach. It falls under the category teachers recognize the interconnectedness of content areas/discipline. Mrs. Skeith connected multiple standards into one fun Valentine's Day activity for the kids. She could have given them all coloring sheets and a box of candy and made up the excuse that it was Valentine's Day, but instead she connected standards in with the activities they were doing. The student's probably did not even realize that they were doing work and learning because they were having so much fun figuring out how many hearts they had and coloring the bar graph.
  I have continued with my outside technology research this week and I have found the PBS website. There are so many educational games and videos for all ages and all subjects. This would be a perfect website for a teacher to have her students play on during center time. The teacher can tell his/her students what games and activities they would like them to complete for that day. It is something that students would have a lot of fun with because there are even video games on the website, however they are educational. In today's learner that we completed this week, we learned that today's students need to be engaged and they learn best with technology and this one website includes both of those aspects. This is the website if anyone wants to check it out! http://pbskids.org/games/