Week 5 (Formative Assessment)

This week’s resources were very interesting to watch and learn about.  The formative assessment idea is something I never really thought about but learning about it makes a lot of sense.  The idea of using pre-assessment test to determine how you are going to teach your lesson is a genius idea and I am shocked I have not heard of this before.  I have taken pre-test before classes, but I never realized the importance of them or even the reasoning behind them.  Having students take a test to show you what they already know, will really help a teacher focus more on which kids are struggling and with what areas they are struggling.   I also like how the teacher in the video included two self-assessment questions to the student’s assignments.  “what did I do well?” and “how can I get better?” are the two questions that can help the students see where they stand in the class, and what they might need extra help with.  Then I learned about all these formative assessment apps, which makes life a litter less stressful for teachers. The other video talked about how some apps work and how they can help organize all the teacher’s information and data they collected.   These apps are easy to use and help teachers keep the scores and use easy to read graph to get a good overview of how the class may be doing.  The video also mentions how technology helps with communication between co-works: not only sharing curriculum ideas, but also allows the teachers to share the student’s assessments between their other teachers.   As a physical education teacher, I will have to pre-test me student in a more physical aspect and set goals to get better.  There is also a National Physical Fitness test that I will have to use to asses all my future students. 

Week 4 - Flipping the classroom.

Reading this week resources was very eye-opening because I very really thought about what is put into creating a test.  Bloom’s Taxonomy did a very good job breaking up the details that we as teachers should be using to create a quiz or test. Giving the six steps of thinking and even breaking those down into even more detail helped me understand the concept of each category and organize my thought of how I would create a test.  Starting with the first step of being able to recall and remember something like the terminology of muscles is very important for my students to grasp before I could move onto teaching them what those muscles do.  As a physical educator, I know that learning the anatomy and physiology of the body is important to understand how the body works.  Helping my students understand what they are eating and how they are moving and how it affects their body will help them develop self-knowledge about themselves, this jumps all the way into abstract knowledge, more specifically metacognitive.  Having my student learning by using this taxonomy system I think would be greatly beneficial in my future classroom.  
I also think that constructivist learning is another great concept I can incorporate into my future classroom.  This makes me think of the storytelling idea, how making those personal connections really helps the students remember the information better.  As well as the whole flipped classroom idea, I think that is brilliant.  Having the student learning about the sport or activity that we will be doing prior to doing it will allow the class to participate in the activity longer, which in return permits the children to be active longer while in their gym classes.  I like how this approach, gives the students the most out of the time given per period.

Week 3- Digital Story!

I love learning about the history and science of storytelling.  In this week’s resources I read a lot about how the brain retains information better when it can relate to something personal.  I know that when I am trying to obtain new information, I try to find a personal connection to help me remember what I am learning about.  Teaching a lesson by personalizing it shows the children/students that the teacher is passionate about the topic and has experiences within the subject matter. 

Watching all the digital stories from the alumni students was a very fun way to not only learn about the topic, but also a little about the person.  I enjoy telling my personal stories to others, especially stories where I gained new knowledge. I think Digital storytelling would be a great way to be able to save those stories and pass them along to future generation. 

I am very excited to learn about creating my own digital story on a future lesson I would like to teach my students.  Being a physical educator and not having that classroom layout, teaching concepts/lessons might be a little bit more challenging.  Showing a quick five-minute digital story before a unit may help the students understand the topic; I think that this would be a great way to start each unit and allow the students to relate with the subject matter.

WEEK TWO RESOURCE IDEAS

I WAS VERY AMAZINED BY EVERYTHING I WAS READING AND LEARNING ABOUT IN THESES RESOURCES FOR THIS WEEK. I THOUGHT THAT THE GOOGLE TRANSLATE FORMULA FROM GOOGLE SHEETS WAS THE GREATEST THING EVER.  I KNOW THAT WITH MY FAMILY COMING FROM POLAND ENGLISH WAS NOT OUR FIRST LANGUAGE AND IT WAS DIFFICULT TO LEARN.  MY PAERNTS AND GRANDPARENTS STILL STRUGGLE WITH TRANSLATING WORDS AND I THINK ONCE I SHOWED THEM THIS TOOL THEY WILL SEE HOW EASY IT COULD BE WITH THE RIGHT RESOURCES.  IT WILL ALSO HELP WITH COMMUNITCAITON THROUGHT OUT THE WHOLE FAMILY BECAUSE I CAN SHOW THIS TO MY COUSINS AND THEY CAN SEE THE TRANSLATION THEY NEED WHEN TALKING TO GRANDMA OR GRANDPA.  

ANOTHER THING THAT I REALLY LIKED FROM THIS WEEKS RESOURCES WAS LEARNING ABOUT ALL THE DIFFERENT TOOLS THAT ARE OUT THERE, LIKE THE TEXT TO SPEECH, READ ALOUD, VISOR, OR THE FLOATING MAGNIFYING CLASS.  I NEVER EVEN THOUGHT ABOUT SOME ONE THESE TOOLS, BUT I CAN SEE HOW GREATLY THEY CAN HELP STUDENTS WITH DISABILITIES.  

 THEN MY FAVORITE THING THAT I GOT OUT OF THE RESOURCES WAS THE “MOVE IT” TOOL.  I REALLY LIKE THIS TOOL BECAUSE I DO HAVE A SHORT ATTENTION SPAN AND GET VERY DISTRACTED.  WITH THIS TOOL HELPS ME REGROUP MYSELF EVERY SO OFTEN.  WHEN THE "MOVE IT" SCREEN COMES UP ON THE MONITOR YOU MUST DO AS IT SAYS AND MOVE IT. I LOVE THIS IDEA BECAUSE NOT ONLY ARE YOU GETTING THAT MOVEMENT IN, BUT BY DOING SO YOU ARE INCREASING YOU BLOOD FLOW.  INCREASING YOUR BLOOD FLOW HELPS YOU THINK BETTER AND EVEN FEEL BETTER. SO, GET UP AND MOVE IT!

Why I want to become a Teacher.

I have always had a heart for children; as a child I would care for my baby dolls and then it turned into my cousins. Once I turned 12, I started babysitting for money and I loved it.  In high school I decided to take some child care class, which taught me a lot about the teaching.  After high school I did not know what I wanted to do, so I started to take a few general courses at the community college.  After a few years of still being undecided, I finally choose to get my Associates in Child Care.  Since the program changed as I was about to graduate, I ended up receiving my Associates in Science. Before I even received my diploma, I was hired to be a preschool teacher for a center in New Lenox.

I have been at this child care center for the last four years and about a year ago my co-workers told me about this Adult Studies Program here at Trinity.  Once I investigated it and seen that they had a Physical Education Program I was all in and applied that day.  Sine I was a P.E. leader my senior year of high school I always had this career as a gym teacher in my head, but I never found a good program that I could afford or motivation to complete something like that.  With my help of my co-workers in finding Trinity and the motivation from my boyfriend, I was able to find the life that God had envisioned for me and I was to take the first steps in living up to my purpose .