Teacher Appreciation Week song --Test Me, Baby! by Kelley Jo

Teacher, Teach Your students so that You Would Be Able to Learn From!

 There is a saying in Russia, "Teacher, teach your students so that later on you would be able to learn from them!"  I have just experienced a moment of bliss when Rebecca, my former student (graduated in 2005), came to my current graduate class and shared her phenomenal teaching experience in her second grade classroom.

The teacher candidates were blown away by what Rebecca had to say. She designed a prezi with the fragments of her teaching philosophy and her approach to educating, as she said not just students, but Human Beings! "Yes, Rebecca continued, there is a Common Core standards initiative you have to implement, the guidelines to follow...but there is also the CORE in you, who you are; do not loose it, apply your talents and skills to teaching your little human beings about life, instill in them a spirit of discovery, curiosity, sense of community, belonging, ownership and a sense of WONDER!" It was an amazing talk!
Below is the prezi  of Rebecca's talk with the pictures of her second graders and her WONDER-full classroom.



It was such a pleasure to see Rebecca and hear her creative ideas about teaching! She shared a lot to learn from! She was so inspirational and wise! It was an unforgettable experience!

This was a great finale for the course.

Global Education in Action

Global Education, global classrooms, global citizenship, global thinking -- these are new concepts of the current world we live. World is really becoming small with the new technologies and Internet. My Literacy and Technology class is participating in the global project, called Flat Classroom with July Lindsay, Vicki Davis and Lisa Durff. In the previous semesters I engaged my classes in the projects with Russia via Skype and WiziQ ("It's a Small world" The Moscow Institute of The International Relations); with Japan, China, Germany, France and Israel in IWE (International Writing Exchange Project), etc. It is exciting to open the doors to the world and expose students to different cultures, traditions, life styles and world view. Below is an example of a global collaboration between schools and students. Wikispaces and Glogster are used for students' interaction and project exchange.




PenPals2012 - home:

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BizWorld Programs at Bishop Dunn Memorial School

Since February 4th my three Social Studies methods classes were designing and implementing the lessons for the students of the three classrooms at Bishop Dunn Memorial School in Newburgh, NY. It was a great experience! In a way, it was an experiment. Instead of having the fieldwork in the end of the course, I started the semester with the fieldwork. Besides, teacher candidates were learning the content of the Bisworld programs and applying their new knowledge through designing 3 lessons each week: the direct instruction lessons to introduce and drill the new concepts; the inquiry lessons for students to explore and apply concepts they learned earlier in the new situations, and the cooperative learning lessons to engage students in creative tasks assigned by teacher candidates, bizworld-consultants. The three BizWorld programs were: BizWorld project in the second grade, where students were learning about economics, entrepreneurship via creation of friendship bracelets companies. BizMovie project in the 4th grade via starting movie production companies and creating movies. The third project was called BizWiz, in which older students, from 5th and 6th grades were exploring the investment strategies, investment trends and trading techniques. Below is the smilebox creation featuring the participants of the projects.

Create your own free picture slideshow

The Goal of Teaching is Learning!

http://flippedlearning1.wordpress.com/ 

The audio-article I found on the Internet supports my philosophy of teaching, it is about learning and placing the learners in the center of the pedagogical process, not about teaching.
Hear it for yourself!

Turning Learning Right Side up!

Reflective Writing: Academic Skills Crucial for Becoming Successful Teachers

In my teaching practice I have noticed that teacher candidates in general are lacking reflective writing/thinking skills. I introduced blogging in all of my classes to help future teachers develop these crucial skills and become reflective practitioners.  I like the Bloom's taxonomy levels applied to the Reflection practice. Below is the picture of these levels designed by Peter Pappas

I share the following examples of the reflective writing with the color-coded comments provided in the following resource:

Reflective Writing :: Academic Skills Resources, The Learning Centre UNSW

10 Ways to Use Lucidchart Online Graphic Organizers in the Classroom : Teacher Reboot Camp

I am a big fan of Shelly S Torrel's blog or FB posts about the new technology tools. Below is the blog post about the role of graphic organizers in effective teaching. Specifically, she introduces a new web 2.0 FREE tool called LucidChart Graphic organizer.

10 Ways to Use Lucidchart Online Graphic Organizers in the Classroom : Teacher Reboot Camp:

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