Oral Communication

Oral communication is one of the foundational tools that students learn to develop in schools at an early age. Oral communication is an essential skill to posses and it can have an impact to help improve other essential learning skills such as reading and writing. Communication can also make learning easier for students, and help students achieve their goals. When students become effective communicators they will become more confident in some of the roles that they are taking part in and will become less likely to hesitate answering questions or speaking up during class. Therefore, effective communication skills can lead to strengthening a student’s self-esteem, so that they are more confident in their learning abilities and will strive for higher standards in their personal growth and development.

As a teacher, we must reward verbal and open communication in the classroom because I believe that if a teacher does this they will notice an improvement in the class performance and achievement levels. If I am promoting open communication in the classroom, I hope that students are willing to participate in discussion and perhaps engage in debate.  Public speaking can help students develop their critical thinking skills, which can be used towards many different types of learning across the curriculum. By asking my students questions and having them participate in discussions and debates, I will be able to see if my students have retained the material properly or understood the specifications of the requirements on a particular task. If there is little feedback in their responses, then I know that the students possibly did not understand the information. Having an open communication with my classroom is extremely important because it allows the students to express any questions and concerns that they might have and it also give them the ability to assess where they are at in their learning and self reflect. For myself, it allows me to assess my students and provide them with feedback and support to guide them in the right direction to enhance their learning.

In our literacy class, we were asked to review an article entitled Debate: Where Speaking and Listening Come First. This was an excellent resource that discussed the importance of promoting public speaking and the ability of student engagement in the classroom. The authors suggested that teaching our students how to effectively communicate and debate in the classroom would boost student’s self-confidence and improve their critical thinking abilities. They also identify what debate looks like and sounds like in the middle school classroom environment and how debating differs from simple conversation. The authors also, provide teachers with strategies on how to engage their classrooms into student-centered activities, such as debating; the article also provides strategies on how to assess classroom discussions and conversations.  I think that this is extremely to teach our students these skills because often people do not know how to think critically when they engage in a conversation because it is not something that comes naturally to us, it is something that is learned.

                                           [Online Image].Retrieved from Giphy.com

Writing Strand

Writing Strand

Writing is one of the essential tools that students need to develop, so that they can be successful in the future, in regard to their education and their overall development in their daily lives and routines.  Students must learn to develop their thoughts and ideas and obtain the ability to express themselves in their writing clearly and effectively. Being an effective writer is extremely important because writing is relative to many other essential skills that students must develop at a young age, such as reading and communication. The Ontario curriculum has for overall expectations for the writing strand that focus on identifying learning needs for students at all grade levels in their classroom. As educators, we have the important role of helping our students develop their writing abilities so that they can communicate effectively and produce writing material that is comprehensive with original ideas that are critically thought-out by each individual.

In class we analyzed different strategies and techniques that teachers could use to assess their students growth and development within their writing. I really liked the idea of incorporating social media (and media literacy) into the writing strand for student development. The social media source that I thought was interesting to use for this task was twitter.  Twitter is interesting because it is a resource that only has a 140- character limit but it is something that can be used to gather information, generate idea, communicate, and organize a variety of different outside sources of media. 

The website www.teachhub.com/50-ways-use-twitter-classroom is an excellent resource for teachers because it provides them with different ideas on how to use twitter in the classroom. Teachers can take advantage of lesson ideas for their students that range from grades k-12 to incorporate twitter use in the classroom. One of the examples that I really liked was to use twitter to write reviews. If the class had to read a particular novel, teachers could have their students write up mini reviews on twitter and have their tweets link with the classrooms hash-tag, so that everyone can view the entire classrooms tweets. This task will build upon many different skills because it incorporates reading, writing and possibly even editing upon reviewing other individuals tweets.

                                            [Online Image]. Retrieved from Giphy.com

There are many critics of twitter but I think that it is a very interesting and unique resources. I can envision myself using twitter in the classroom because there are so many different things that you can accomplish with this resource, due to its versatility. There are many curriculum expectations that could be met with this resource but for the writing strand, in particular, I believe that twitter can be an excellent resource for teachers to assess student’s development within the writing strand. The only down side is can see to using twitter is perhaps, students not staying on task while they are working away on twitter but I believe that this could be remedied with careful teacher observation and limited time for tweeting during class. Overall, with these potential problems in mind, I think that twitter is a unique resource that teachers can use to engage students in the classroom, to develop and assess their writing abilities.

                                           [Online Image]. Retrieved from Giphy.com

Reading Strand

At a young age, it is very important for students to focus on developing their skills and knowledge to help them become successful readers. Reading is a skill that we consistently use in our daily lives and we want our students to be able to read with confidence and possess the ability to comprehend the information encountered and realize the relevancy of what it is that they are reading.  As teachers we want to install a growth mindset in our classroom to help our students realize the importance of reading. We have to convince them that reading can be a great source to dig into your imagination and discover new worlds and experiences that they may have no been aware of before. These experiences can help develop their proficiency and improve their reading habits with a little bit of practice.

The website www.readwritethink.org is a great resource for teachers to use to find many different sources and strategy guides to help teacher with their professional development to educate students with their reading comprehension. This site has lesson plans, printouts, strategy guides, videos, and professional library’s to assist teachers with all of their educational needs.

There are many expectations that can be met with this resource. I was amazing at how in depth some of these instructional plans were. I analyzed an instructional plan for supporting student comprehension in the content area of reading. This strategy guide takes a different approach to help students focus on what is most important in what they are reading and offer students meaningful ways to respond to and to make sense of what they are reading so students can engage themselves in reading with confidence. One strategy that they suggest to improve students reading comprehension is to have the students group in pairs and have them read silently or aloud. Then, once they both reach an agreed upon reading spot, they come together and ask each other questions and discuss what they have just read. I thought that this was a very effective strategy because it allows students to collaborate and reflect on what they just reading so that they can determine what is important and retain the particular information at a greater success.

Another strategy from this instructional plan that I thought was extremely effective was to have students reflect on what they have just read through informal writing such as writing a journal entry after they had read the specific content. It is important to have them write about what they have just read because the content is fresh in their mind and they are more likely to be able to express the information that just received sooner, rather than later. Teachers could also have the students write a few key ideas from the reading on a cue, so that can help students construct meaning behind what they are reading and practice with their cue cards. I can see myself using this strategy in the classroom because having students collaboratively reading allows them to recognize the text and communicate their understand of the text, which is an important part of reading expectations for students.  Also, this strategy helps students identify their strengths as readers and give them the change to work on improvement areas.

                                  [Online Image]. Retrieved from Giphy.com

Final Word

I can't believe this class is coming to an end. As I sit here in my final tech class I can say that I have learned a lot about technology in general and incorporating technology into the classroom. I think that it is very important for us as teacher candidates to learn about some of the many different technological programs, apps, and strategies for the classroom because technology is being integrated into our classrooms at a growing rate. I learned how to use many different programs like Powtoon, Google Slides, and Blogger which I feel I can comfortably use as a teacher. I am sad that this class has come to an end but I look forward to using all that I have learned in the future, when I become a teacher.

Week 4

This week will be the last week that I document for my Genius Hour and I must say, I’m really happy that I had the opportunity to do this because I know that if it wasn’t for this project, I would definitely not be doing anything like this because school and work consume the majority of my time. The fact that I incorporated this into my weekly schedule has proven to me that it is possible. I have already signed up to continue these classes, so I guess for progress I have remained committed to this, which I am very happy about!

Week 3

This week’s class went really well. I still came out of the class exhausted and sweaty as last week but I didn’t feel like I was going to puke, so I guess that is an accomplishment in itself. We did these leg kicks on the bag and I can really feel the soreness now. I think its because I was using leg muscles that I don’t normally but hopefully it will pass soon. I’m really enjoying the classes thus far, and I think that I will continue going to these classes once my Genius Hour assignment is complete!

Week 2

Today was the first session of my Kickboxing Cardio class and it totally kicked my butt but I feel great afterwards! The session was a little different than I had originally expected but in a good way. The class was definitely challenging and their were points during the workout where I had to take breaks. Today, I really got to see how out of shape I am because at one point I felt a little bit dizzy and thought that I may puke but I stuck with it and paced myself and survived my first class. Here’s to hoping that I can keep up in next week’s class.