Reading all that I have for this course, I have truly been able to self-reflect on my personal teaching theories and how they impact my students. I now realize that having my students take an active role in their learning is of the utmost importance. I would be doing my students a disservice by simply standing in front of them and teaching with lecture, pencil, and paper. Times have changed and so must my strategies.
Having said this, I have not fully embraced the constructionist learning theory within my teaching. I am happy to say that the classes I have taken at Walden have opened my mind to things that I never thought possible for my first graders. I am excited about teaching again!
This year has brought the idea of implementing the use of the internet and my new flip camera to our science unit on Weather. My students will be able to access the computers in our classroom to find a city of interest for them. (Prior to this, I assigned cities randomly.) Once they find one, they will begin to track the weather for that city. (Excitingly enough, it could even be a city in another country!) I can then show my students how to make a line graph in Word that they can personalize to their liking. Imagine the possibilities of my students finding interesting pictures that they could cut and paste to their project. As a culminating activity, students could dress up and give weather reports to be captured by my flip camera and posted on our class website. Although we have just begun this unit of study this week, I am more than excited to start this project! I am hopeful that my students will find this more engaging than just reading about weather as well as also opening other avenues of interest for them. If I am excited just thinking about it, I believe that my students will be even more excited about actually doing it!
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I am from Western Pennsylvania and our weather here this year was not conducive to a great summer, or as fall just began, (it was 38 this morning and never broke 60 all day)it seems
ReplyDeleteas though it may be an early winter here. I love your project with kids because I love the outdoors and so much of what I do depends on weather. I find myself checking the weather is cities all over this country and others as well. I am convinced I would love Mexico City, seems as though it is always sunny and 75, yet nice in the evenings, and when I get irritated with our weather, I look for Irkutsk in Siberia and I smile. I believe your kids could produce a weather report that you will be proud of and have fun learning about it in the process. I think you convey the real power behind the theory as well, excitement. It really feels refreshing to come up with such ideas.
Amy and Virgil That might be a fun aspect to include in the weather assignment to get students even more engaged. Find the lowest temperature on the planet today...the wackiest weather today...the largest hailstones that ever fell...the snowfall in Antarctica that day, etc... In any case, students construct the question and get and understand the answer...real constructivist learning!
ReplyDeleteI love the idea of finding the lowest temperature, the wackiest weather, etc... Especially since our weather here in California doesn't vary as greatly as other areas. I will definitely use this in my unit!
ReplyDeleteAmy, I love your idea for your weather project. Last year, I taught fourth and we covered weather as well. The thing I love most about the project (besides giving the students control over their learning) is that you can incorporate so many standards from multiple subjects. Sounds like so much fun. I might "steal" it and share it with my colleagues. Great post!
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