Lil' bit of everything

Strategies:
The one strategy that I really liked from class was the "Written Conversation" activity. I used to write notes in class when I was in middle school, and I wish that they were still a thing! I feel like doing this activity just brings me back to my younger days and it makes me excited! I liked how it gets them off of the technology and makes them stop talking for a second. They get to work on their writing, while talking about things they have learned. I just think it's all around a good activity to use as an opener, a mid-lesson checkup, or a exit slip! (I couldn't really find an example but y'all know what notes look like!)
The other strategy I really liked was the "Quick Write" and the website we used to do this, www.padlet.com . I think it's similar to the written conversations activity in the way that it's a quick activity to do to summarize information and talk about what you've learned. If Ipads are something your classroom has, there is an app you can download, and you can use this activity pretty frequently. If not, you could totally do this on paper and set a timer for a couple of minutes and collect them. Maybe you can make a journal dedicated to quick writes if that's something you plan on doing often!
Some examples might be:
"If you were president, what would be the first law you would make?"
"What did you learn about the water cycle yesterday?"
"What was the turning point for the civil war?"


Thinking Maps:
So a lot of these a kind of similar. They are all ways of organizing information so it's nice and neat. It can also teach students ways to think about certain topics if they ever need something to help them organize information. I still use bubble charts if I'm going to write a paper just to give me an idea of the main points I'm writing about. Teaching your students thinking maps gives them strategies they can use for the rest of their lives. we see flow maps when talking about things going on in a company, and we see multi-flow maps when dealing with cause and effects. Overall, I think teaching students thinking maps is something that we need to do to prepare them for the future!

Strategies Take 2

The first strategy I liked from tonight's class was the Analogy Chart. I liked how it had you compare two concepts and it had you give a summary of the new concept. It also has you compare what is similar and different about the two concepts. It gives students a chance to relate a new concept, to something they already know. We can use these in reading, math, science, social studies, and writing. This would be a good sheet to help them brainstorm their writing topics for a paper.

I also liked the anticipation guides. I think this is a good way to test their prior knowledge, as well as what they learned after the lesson. We could use this in a math lesson plan to test if they knew the vocab terms before we learned them.

Start your engines!

This is my second class with Professor Steffes, and I am looking forward to learned more about how to teach reading in my classroom. I believe that reading is so important and one of more important building blocks at school, and in life. If you can't read, then life is going to be hard for you unfortunately. It's our jobs as teachers to not let our students fall behind and fall through the cracks when it comes to reading.
This week in class, we talked about three ways we can help our students with reading; the Jigsaw Activity, Frayer Model Strategy, and the Choice-board. For this post, I am going to focus on the Frayer Model Strategy (FMS).

This strategy looks at one single word. From that word, you have to state the definition, characteristics, examples, and non-examples. Doing this gives you a deeper understanding of that word, as well as answer any question you may have had about that word. I personally really like this approach and can see myself using this in a classroom. One way it could be used is by writing words, or by drawing pictures in each of the boxes to give students a visual. This gives students a chance to really think about a word and what they know about it. Here are some examples I found.