Survivng the 5th Grade

If you have read my other blog posts, you will see that my very first post was about how I was assigned to teach 5th grade this semester and how extremely upset I was and also took you through my first day of being in the classroom. Well, after almost 3 months of being in 5th grade, I can tell you that my initial fears and doubts were proved wrong! Fifth grade scaries are not so scary after all!

Throughout the semester, I taught four lessons; two in Social Studies, one in Mathematics and one in Science. Some went well and others did not but my students stuck with me even in the hard times and pushed through! But my feelings about this semester did not come from my lessons but my groups of students in general. Getting the experience of teaching 5th grade content was awesome and I learned a lot of new things but my students made the biggest impact.

If you read my first post, you know that before this I only had experience with younger grades (K-2). Whenever I thought about 5th or even 4th graders, I thought about big, scary, rude, not-loving, and basically over being in school. I felt that the younger kids still loved their teachers and respected them while 5th graders probably had gotten over that adoration of their teachers. Again, I was completely wrong in this thought. Not only were my kids sweet, caring, and willing to learn but they also grew extremely attached to me. So attached in fact that on my last day one student latched onto me and wouldn't let me leave, he had to be peeled off by the classroom teacher.

From this experience I now know that I am able to teach at a 5th grade level, by that I mean content at this level and being able to effectively go through a lesson with my students. And I also know that I can connect with students of that age group. I never thought this would happened but to be honest I almost cried walking out of that 5th grade class on my last day! Now, I have received my internship placement for next semester and I am back where I wanted to be in Kindergarten *yay!!!* but I will really miss those 5th grade kiddos and hopefully again someday I will have an opportunity to teach at that level.

 

Importance of TPACK

For my Educational Technology class this semester, we have learned a lot of way to effectively use technology in our teaching. Of course in today's world technology is a key part of our everyday lives so it make sense that technology would be too! One of our main and final assignments for the semester is a little thing called TPACK. Now, if you're like me you may never have heard of this before. This was brought up all semester but I never really had a clue what is is. In simplified terms, it is basically a lesson plan or a way of thinking that helps you organize a lesson in a way that ensures that you implement technology. If you still need more help this article breaks it all down!

So, you still might say "Why is this so important?". Well in my own words I am going to explain why I think it is important. I asked that same question in the beginning of this because it seemed like a lot of work for a simple outcome. However, in the long run it was really worth it! Our professor broke it down for us into steps. We had to think about what we wanted to teach, how it connected to technology and Bloom's Taxonomy and Learning Theories (all the good stuff). It was basically a Six-Step Lesson plan with just a little extra thought behind it. In the end, completing this assignment helped me see all the different parts that need to be included in lessons- thinking about your students and how they can specifically benefit from your teaching. It is all good and well to think about using technology in your lesson but if it is not used effectively or in a way that will actually benefit your students, is it really being used correctly? This TPACK assignment helped me see that sometimes you can plan to use technology but if you don't map it out and think about all the ways it is tangled into a lesson, the use of it might just be a flop.

All in all, this different type of lesson template made me think about things I may have never thought about before. Technology is a key part of our learning today and it is important to be used in teaching so our students know better how to use it in the future! This means not just the teacher using the technology to present or make things but also having your students use it too!

 

Picture: TPACK Image

Using Infographics in a Lesson

I recently learned about using infographics while teaching a lesson. If you don't know what infographics are, infographics are graphic representations of information that help our students visualize an idea (Lamb, Johnson 2014). I decided to make a lesson using infographics and share it with my fellow teachers!

First I had to pick a topic or standard I wanted to teach. I thought something that would be really important to teach and easily displayed through infographics would be healthy living. So I went to the NCDPI and looked for standards. I decided I wanted to teach kindergarten. After looking through some things, I decided that I would teach the essential standard K.NPA.1: Understand MyPlate as a tool for selecting nutrious food and the Clarifying Objective K.NPA.1.1: Classify foods by groups in my plate. To look more into this specific standards you can click here to be linked directly to the page that outlines the standards for healthful living in grades K-2.

Since I knew that main goal was to learn about MyPlate, I used an online tool called Easelly to create an infographic with my own MyPlate. To see my infographic you can use this link:  https://www.easel.ly/infographic/y7ilz1.

My main goal of this infographic was to use it as a part of my lesson as the teacher. This infographic can be used to introduce the topic and what is to be learned and then can also be posted in the classroom for students to use as a references in the future. As for the students, since the main goal is to be able to classify food into groups using MyPlate, they will use the visual of the MyPlate as well as the information on the infographic to group food they know into the proper categories. They can also use this infographic in the future when making healthy eating decisions.

I thought this infographic was a helpful tool especially for students in kindergarten. Since they are so young being able to have a visual up in the classroom to see will help them create an idea in their head and help them remember the information.

Digital Literacy: What You Need to Know

If you're like me, you may have never heard of the word "digital literacy" before. In my Education Technology class we learned a few things recently about what digital literacy really is and what it means to be digitally literate. Not only did we learn what it means but we learned why it is important to teach students what it is; this was important for me as a teacher because in a world filled with technology, I would never want my future students to fall behind. So, here's everything you need to know about digital literacy!

The term digital literacy is defined as being successful in the digital world. It means that you are able to use technology to your advantage and create new things (using technology) based on your knowledge. Being digitally literate is beneficial to anyone because it gives you the opportunity to be able to use technology anytime, anywhere!

It is also important to teach children about digital literacy because the world today is filled with technology and we are expected how to use it. When they move on to higher grade levels (middle school, high school, and beyond) as well as the work force, they will be expected to know how to use all types of technology. Teaching your students about digital literacy and having them use technology in the classroom also helps them use and improve their 21st century skills which is a huge component of teaching today.

Overall, the main reason to teach digital literacy in the classroom is really so children know how to be safe on the internet. Digital literacy is about knowing how to use technology, but also how to use technology the right way and the safe way. So now you might be asking, "How can I teach digital literacy in the classroom?". Digital literacy is really taught through using technology, so integrating it into the classroom is as easy as letting your students have time on the computers, using Smartboards, and allowing your students to use iPads in the classroom. Of course it's not just as easy as putting the technology in front of them, you have to make the learning engaging as well as informative! For some ideas on ways to bring digital literacy into the classroom, you can read the article 15 Unique and Creative Ways to use iPads in the Classroom. 

Along with teaching our students the right and safe way to use technology, another key idea we have to teach our students is about copyright. Copyright means the protection of making copies or stealing another persons work. The word used to describe this in schools is plagiarism. Plagiarism is when someone takes someones work and claims it as their own. It has been found that most students that are plagiarizing do not even know their are doing it. It isn't always just as obvious as copying and pasting some other persons words onto your paper, it can be as small as not citing them in the correct way. We cannot just explain to our students what plagiarizing is and why it is not okay, to really teach our students we need to show them what it looks like. Most students today know that plagiriazing is not good, but they don't really know what it means. Since students use technology, they are getting most of their information from the internet and plagiarizing that information without even knowing it.


Both of these things are important technological pieces that need to be taught in the classroom. Our students need to know how to use technology the right way and see what happens when you use it the wrong way.

5th Grade Scaries

As a part of my teacher training at East Carolina University, I am required to go into schools each semester and either observe or teach for a certain amount of hours. This semester is my first semester being at an Elementary School for an entire day, but not just Elementary School but being in a class that is above the Second grade!

When I was first assigned to a Fifth grade classroom, I was not happy at all and honestly, a little scared. I really want to teach Kindergarten or First grade once I graduate and the thought of anything other than that made me terribly angry. After a few days of huffing and puffing about my situation, I turned it around and made it a positive one. I have no experience AT ALL in the older grades and this was my opportunity to gain some experiences. I started my first day with a very positive outlook.

My first full day in Fifth grade was on September 13, 2016. It was an early morning and I could see that everyone around me was feeling it too, from my classmates to even my Fifth grade teacher! The morning started off slow as the students eat breakfast when they first enter the class; it also happened to be picture day so that took up most of the morning. But the rest of the day picked up and actually flew by; it was two o'clock before I even knew it!

I will be at this Elementary School until the end of November and I will have the opportunity to teacher Social Studies, Math, and Science. In Fifth grade they switch classrooms for subjects; my main teacher taught ELA and Social Studies and the other taught Math and Science. I was excited that right away my main teacher let me go over their Social Studies homework with the students. This school uses a program called Studies Weekly to assist in teach Social Studies. The teachers receive booklets for every child weekly that they can use and fill in and all the activities are also online. My teacher told me that each student has their own account so they can go on and do the activities online as well.

Going over the Social Studies homework with my students was definitely the most exciting part of my first day. Since we are not yet teaching lessons, our teachers used this time to basically get to know us but also have us help them with busy work they had to get done around the classroom. In between making charts and cutting out paper, I was able to observe a Math and Science Lesson but that was about it.

Although I did not do much actual "teaching" on my first day, I did learn a lot. Fifth graders are a lot more self-sufficient than Kindergarten or First grader. This was a big difference for me because I am used to having to do almost everything for my students since I am mainly comfortable with grade K-2. Even though they are more self-sufficient this is when they start to act up more. With this being said I began to think about the fact that my classroom management skills that I have for the lower grades may need to be adjusted for these Fifth graders and specifically to the students I have.

I am really excited to have this experience in this new place and in a new grade! I hope that my Fifth grade students and I grow and learn together through this journey we will take together this fall.