6 Weeks Left!

I can not believe there is only six more weeks left until the end of the semester. Just thinking about it and all the work that we have due in the next six weeks stresses me out.
 This week in Washington we had the duty free lunch where we let the teachers have a break and we watched the students in the cafeteria for their lunch time. The teachers were very appreciative of this so I am glad that we had the opportunity to give them a break. I liked how each table had a red, yellow and green cup on it. The red meant the students could not talk, yellow meant they could talk quietly and green meant they were able to socialize. When they first got to lunch they were all on red so they could focus on eating before they started talking. As long as they behaved, they would be at green by the end of their lunch period. I think this is a great idea and will suggest it in my future school. The student do not have a very long lunch and many of them get distracted and run out of time if they are not focused on eating. This is a great tool for time management.
  This week we have also been doing an edTPA boot camp and we unpacked the tasks in class today which was very helpful. This was very beneficial in preparing us for our own edTPA lesson plans. Even though they are long and a ton of work, it will only help us in the long run when we have to do edTPA lesson plans during student teaching.
  For my outside technology resource, I researched about an app called "iLearn United States." This is a great tool for students to learn about each state and where each state is located on the map. It also gives facts about each state including the capital, state nicknames and more. After you learn and practice your states, you can then start playing the games. In one game, you have one minute to see how many states you can name. This is a good tool to assess how well you know where each state is located. The good thing is, each time you play, you can try to name more states and hopefully show progress. If you got 6 states the first time, set a goal to get 7 the next time until you can get more and more each time. You can also upgrade the app by paying only $0.99 to get pronunciation of each state, be able to section off the map so students can focus on one part at a time, and include spelling as well. This is a great tool to use for formative assessment. Teachers can see if students are learning their states by how well they can name, label and spell them. This relates to NCTCS 4, Teachers facilitate learning for their students under the category of "teachers integrate and use technology in their instruction." Instead of giving students a paper map to sit there and memorize, why not make learning fun and let them play a game to learn their states. We are in the 21st century, and need to realize that how students have grown up now is different from when we grew up, everything is based around technology. Below is the link that describes the app.
https://edshelf.com/tool/ilearn-us-states/