9-18-2012

Today in math, we had a guest speaker from NASA come and talk about the variety of resources NASA has to offer teachers.  I really enjoyed the variety of activities we were able to participate in, and hopefully use in our future classrooms.  I specifically liked creating our own aircraft and launching it from our seats. I know that many of the things I learned will be useful in implementing, both in my student teaching and in my own classroom.

Math Week 3

Today we were given the opportunity to work with a variety of websites that will be helpful in our teaching careers.  My favorite website was rubistar.4teachers.org.  Here we were able to create rubrics for our students effectively and efficiently.  I have hand written rubrics before and it took one to two hours to complete.  On the other hand, this website allowed me to create rubrics in minutes.  As teachers, time is our greatest asset. This website allows teachers to save time when evaluating their students.   I will definitely be using this website when I start teaching and assessing my students.

September 4th

Today in class we learned about spiral curriculum, how topics build upon one another as students move up in grade level.  As a teacher, I need to see where my students are in terms of their learning and see what my students already know before planning my lessons.  This is extremely important for me to remember, especially because students will never be on the same page.  I need to be able to modify and adjust my teaching for the wide variety of learners in my classroom.