Fireworks!

Well we just had our last class for Curriculum Planning and Development :( I can't believe it is all actually over! It's actually not as sad since I know next semester we will have Dr. Smirnova for methods. I have a feeling that that class will be just as challenging, educational, and informational as this one! That Russian dinner was amazing! I never had Russian food before but I really enjoyed it! I'm not the biggest fan of meat so I was happy to see that it was made of mostly greens! I also enjoyed the wine part of the dinner! It was a perfect ending to this semester. Eveyones Unit Plan looked amazing during their presentations! I know everyone worked so hard on them this semester so it was nice we got to present them to the class. It made it more special that we got to do it at Dr. Smirnovas hosue.

I feel like I did my field work for this class so long ago but it was actually only a month ago! I did my field work in a first grade classroom, and I have to say it is probably one of my favorite grades. I prefer the younger grades for a few reasons. I love the activities you get to do with them, I love how they are so excited to learn, and I just think they are so fun to watch! The teacher let me look through all the books that the school district gave her to plan her lessons around. It is nice to know that they give you outlines and that you don't have to create the whole year step by step. The class was very structured, and followed the same routine every day. It was nice because the students knew what to do next so they could just transfer smoothly into the next subject. I think my favorite part was their morning meeting. I went four mornings and each morning they had different fun activities. Something I saw which I loved was watching them go over their spelling words. Each student would say a letter and when the word was done the next student would say Sparkle! and then the next word would start. I just loved the interaction and team work of this activity, plus every other activity I saw in morning meeting plus throughout the day. Overall, I loved observing first grade, but maybe next time I will observe the older grades to get a feel for them.

Overall, I enjoyed this class. Aside from all of the hard work and long nights, I took so much away from this class and have enjoyed every class. We have learned so much and have had it taught to us so that it is drilled in our heads so I highly doubt I will ever forget the material!

Communities!

I figured I would split up my posts so they don't all drag on! So the past few weeks in class aside from Microteachings we have been focusing on creating our Unit Plans. I am very happy that for the past weeks Dr. Smirnova has let us work on our Unit Plans in class. It is nice knowing that you have her plus fifteen of your classmates there if you have any questions. My Unit Plan Wiki is all about learning about Communities. I focused on first grade since I love the younger grades. At first I was overwhelmed because by looking at all different curriculum planning websites I noticed that 1st-3rd grades all learn about communities. I was nervous because it seemed like they all ran together in the areas each grade covers. My first intention was doing my Unit Plan on communities around the world, which moved to Communities around the United States, but then after even more reserach I realized that I would rather focus on the Individual Community. Boy, am I happy I did. I am really enjoying researching all these fun activities that students can do in class to learn about their communities. I am looking at all these websites such as Webquest, Discovery Education, and Brainpop. These websites are great ways to find out what students are learning in these grades and what type of activies these grades learn through. For my starting activies I have also been making books through Tikatok and videos on Xtranormal which are awesome websites which allows you to make your own digital books and movies, two websites that Dr. Smirnova have brought to my attention for group presentations and my microteaching. All in all I am looking forward to going over to Dr. Smirnova's house for our group presentations and our big Russian dinner! It should be fun, can't wait!

Wikis, Vokis, Diigos and more!

Wow, I have not posted in a month!!! I have been so consumed with my Unit Plan that I haven't had the chance! Well since last time I posted there has been a few Microteachings which everyone has done an amazing job on! First off Veronica and Heather S. did a great job giving their Microteaching on grabbers and anticipatory sets! I loved the Voki that they played. I think it is a great way to grab student's attention since it is something more then just the teacher lecturing the class. The next person to Microteach was Amy who talked about resources. She showed us a website called Diigo which is an awesome site which keeps track of all the websites you use. The one thing that caught my attention on this website is that you can use stickynotes and highlighters on the page itself. I think it is awesome that you basically have a notepad on your computer. The last people who gave their Microteaching was Sally and Kelly M.! Sally and Kelly talked about our Wikis pb works and our presentations! I can't believe that the semester is almost over! I feel like all the information that we learned in this class is going to help all of us in our future teachings. Every piece of information we have learned is already helping us with our Unit Plans. I can't believe how much planning goes into a Unit Plan. I knew it was a lot of information but before this class I had no idea how many little pieces of information come together for the big picture! This class has made understanding this whole process a lot easier than I thought and I am very grateful for that. I am also grateful for everyone who is in the class. I feel like we all get along so well and help eachother out and that is soemthing that is very important to have in a class. I am just glad that I didn't have to go through all of this alone!