Jamestown iPhoto

Here is my first iPhoto Presentation. It's also on YouTube if you want to watch it on a larger screen. It is about Jamestown and the English settlers' voyage from England to America. It is meant to be used as part of an introductory lesson at the beginning of a 4th grade unit on Jamestown. The information included in my iPhoto presentation correlates with Virginia SOLs VS3a-c. While the video itself does not contain all of this content, I would use it as an introduction to get students interested in the lesson and given them a visual to reference during the rest of the unit on Jamestown. The information students could learn from this 1.5 minute slideshow include the reasons why the Jamestown settlers came to America, a general idea of where Jamestown is located, and an introduction to the concept of the Virginia Company. After showing the slideshow, I would teach each of these concepts in more detail.

One idea for how to use this slideshow in an introductory lesson would be to show the slideshow and then have the class create a KWL chart listing information that they know about Jamestown(from the iPhoto presentation and from previous knowledge), questions of what they want to know more about (for example, what was the Virginia Company?), and then later in the unit, things that they have learned. This would encourage students to think about what they have just seen in the slideshow and make connections to the bigger picture of English settlement at Jamestown. It would also give the teacher an idea of what students did or did not understand from the iPhoto presentation and create a good transition from the iPhoto presentation to the rest of the lesson.

For the music in my iPhoto presentation, I used the song "The Virginia Company" from Disney's Pocahontas:

In sixteen hundred seven
We sail the open sea
For glory, God, and gold
And the Virginia Company.

For the New World is like heaven
And we'll all be rich and free
Or so we have been told
By the Virginia Company...

Here is the list of references for the pictures and music in my presentation (I meant to put it at the end of my iPhoto presentation but didn't remember until after I exported it and then there is no way to add another slide, so I'll just put it here instead):

References

Bermuda history [Virginia Company picture]. (2007). Retrieved March 21, 2010, from http://www.bermuda-island.net/INTRODUCTION/History.php

Brits at their best [3 ships picture]. (n.d.). Retrieved March 21, 2010, from http://www.britsattheirbest.com/freedom/f_time_17th_century_1600.htm

Free US states clipart [Outline of Virginia]. (n.d.). Retrieved March 9, 2010, from http://www.cksinfo.com/geography/usstates/page3.html

Image galleries. (2007). Discovering Jamestown [Godspeed picture]. Retrieved March 21, 2010, from Jamestown-Yorktown Foundation website: http://www.whro.org/jamestown2007/imagegalleries/English/album/gallery.html

Jamestown Settlement [3 ships picture]. (n.d.). Retrieved March 21, 2010, from Jamestown-Yorktown Foundation website: http://www.historyisfun.org/Jamestown-Settlement.htm

Map of the journey to Virginia at Jamestown Settlement. (n.d.). Retrieved March 21, 2010, from http://www.flickr.com/photos/edcabic/3908506648/

The Susan Constant on flickr. (n.d.). Retrieved March 21, 2010, from Creative Commons website: http://www.flickr.com/photos/_cck_/3347068339/

Tripadvisor.com [Discovery picture]. (n.d.). Retrieved March 21, 2010, from http://media-cdn.tripadvisor.com/media/photo-s/01/50/ae/20/jamestown-ship-discovery.jpg

YouTube: Pocahontas soundtrack - Virginia Company [Music]. (2009). Retrieved March 29, 2010, from http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fcLK-nPc7-w

What Makes a Good Teacher?

What makes a good teacher? A kind, caring, and patient personality? A desire to make a difference in the lives of his/her students? The ability to motivate students and present content in a way that is fun and engaging and will make students eager to learn? Being an expert at content knowledge? A combination of some or all of the above? And can people learn how to be effective teachers, or is teaching a natural skill or instinct that people either have or don't have?

A few days ago, I read the article Can Good Teaching Be Learned from the March 2010 NY Times Magazine. This article addresses several current issues related to education, including some of the characteristics that make an effective teacher and how school systems can "create" better teachers. Click here to view this article on nytimes.com (the article has a different name online, but it is the exact same article as in the magazine). As the article points out, individual teachers can make a difference in the lives of their students. I certainly believe that, and that is one of the main reasons that I want to be a teacher. According to the article, researchers have actually proven the significant impact that individual teachers have on students' learning; numerous studies about which factors most affect and improve student learning have shown that

"Every factor under a school's control produced just a tiny impact, except for one: which teacher the student had been assigned to."

So if we know that the quality of a child's teacher influences how much they learn, then the question becomes what can school systems do to get better teachers? One aspect of teaching that is emphasized in the article as a characteristic of good teachers is classroom management. As the article explains and as we have discussed in my classroom management class this semester, a teacher cannot effectively teach a lesson (no matter how good that lesson is) if the he/she does not have control of the class:

"Students can't learn unless the teacher succeeds in capturing their attention and getting them to follow instructions."

I have also seen the importance of good classroom management while I have been observing and helping in different elementary school classes this year. As mentioned in the article positive reinforcement, modeling, and giving clear step-by-step instructions, all seem to be very effective, especially in early elementary grades. In each class where I have observed, the teachers have had different systems and strategies for managing their classroom and the classroom management systems varied depending on the personality of the teacher as well as the needs of the students in the class. I don't think that there is really any one best way or that one way will necessarily work for all teachers or with all classes, but some ideas that seemed to work well and that I would like to incorporate into my future classrooms include:

• Commenting on what a certain student(s) is doing well in order to encourage everyone else to do the same - for example "I like the way Sally and Bob are sitting quietly...". I have noticed that this technique can be very effective in getting a class of 5 or 6 year-olds to pay attention and listen to their teacher or to me.



• Class reward systems for good behavior - here are 2 examples that I really liked:
  
  1. Awarding points to each table when students do something good, such as everyone at that table working quietly on an assignment or being the first table to clean up and all sit down quietly. The teacher used tally marks to keep track of each table's points on the board and then the table with the most points at the end of the day/week received a sticker and got to have the class Woody doll sit at the table for the next day.
  
  
  2. Class marble jar - whenever the class as a whole did something good, the teacher added a handful of marbles to the jar and then when the jar is full, the class gets to vote on a special treat.

• A "talking signal" that is made like a traffic light and is used to tell students how loudly they are allowed to talk at any given time (the picture below is from Mrs. Nelson's Class web page, but I have also seen this idea used in one of the kindergarten classes that I volunteer in on Tuesdays and Thursdays)

My Podcasting Experience and Educational Benefits of Podcasting

Today I finished making my first podcast. The process was very time consuming and somewhat frustrating, but now that I am finally done, I am happy with the final product and I think it might be something that I will use in with my classes in the future. My podcast is about George Washington and while watching, kids will travel into the past and visit the time when George Washington lived. The "time machine" makes a total of 4 stops: 1732 - the year when Washington was born, 1740 - George Washington's childhood, 1776 - the beginning of the war against England, and 1789 - the year Washington became President. In correlation with VA social studies SOLs K.1a, 1.2, and 2.11, my podcast emphasizes George Washington's role as an important leader for helping the Americans win their freedom from England and then helping to create the new nation and explains that this is why he is often called the "Father of Our Country". The podcast also defines several vocabulary words, including past, colony, and hero, and would be a fun way for kids to review a unit on George Washington or the colonial/Revolutionary War era.

Overall, the podcasting experience was not as hard as I thought it would be. It was definitely very time consuming, but I think the process will go quite a bit faster the next time I do it now that I know what I am doing. The biggest challenge I had while creating this podcast was finding access to a Mac computer to use Garage Band (the software program our class used for making the podcasts). Another issue was the click, click, click sound that my uncle has informed me is the metronome sound. I originally had no idea what that even was, but I have now figured out that the way to prevent this sound from being part of all voice recordings in the podcast is to hold down the "Apple" key and the "U" key to toggle whether or not the metronome is turned on BEFORE you begin recording. Once the recordings have been done with that sound turned on, however, there does not seem to be any way to get rid of it. And unfortunately, because of my limited access to the Mac computers, re-recording the entire podcast with the metronome turned off was not an option. So, my podcast has a little clicking sound as "background music", but for the future (and for any reader's information too) I have learned how to avoid this from happening again by making sure that the metronome is turned off before starting to record. The final challenge came when I exported my podcast to iTunes last night and discovered that it was twice as long as I thought it was. Since our assignment was to make a podcast that was 3-5 minutes long and my podcast was now 6 minutes, I decided to try to shorten it. In the process of doing this, I also figured out how to "delete and move" a section from the middle of the podcast so that I would not then have to drag each individual part to the left - and that discovery saved me a lot of valuable time.

I think I probably will create more podcasts in the future. They are certainly a great tool to be able to use in the classroom and since they include both pictures and sound recordings, they are a good way to reinforce concepts for both visual and auditory learners. I think it would also be fun for my students to make their own podcasts as well. When I was searching online to get ideas for my podcast, most of the podcasts that I found had been created by elementary school students - and some of them were really good too! For example, here are links to a podcast about butterfly life cycles made by 1st graders and to Radio WillowWeb, which contains over 30 podcasts created by 1st through 5th grade students at Willowdale Elementary School. As we have discussed in my technology class, elementary school students would be excited to be able to record their own work and then post it on the class web page or blog. This would also be a good opportunity for parents to see what their kids are doing in class. Having students create podcasts at the end of a unit would be a great way for the teacher to assess what they have learned about that topic. By the time they finished making their podcasts, the students would also have a good understanding of whatever subject their podcast is about.

"If you lived with George Washington" Podcast

Here is my first podcast. It is about George Washington and is intended to be used in teaching VA social studies SOLs K.1a, K.2, and 1.2. Click here to listen to my podcast!

First Grade Science Fun

This week I was home for spring break and I spent a few days helping in a first grade class at an elementary school in Williamsburg. It was a lot of fun and the kids were SO cute! The first graders were finishing up their science unit on matter this week, and we did several fun activities about solids, liquids, and gases, including making root beer floats, "cooking" Jello, and playing with Oobleck.

Yesterday we made root beer floats and talked about how the ice cream is a solid, the root beer is a liquid, and the bubbles that appeared when we poured the root beer on top of the ice cream are a gas. Then the class made a T chart listing different qualities of each type of matter and wrote a short story about what type of matter they would like to be - for example one little girl wrote, "I am air. I am a gas. I would like to be air because then I could go flying through the sky" Another student wrote, "I am root beer. I am a liquid. I want to be root beer because I could drink myself". Then this morning the kids helped their teacher make Jello and talked about the powder (a solid) dissolving, the steam rising from the boiling water, and the Jello solidifying and changing from a liquid into a solid while it was in the refrigerator. These were both simple (and yummy) activities that provided real examples of the different states of matter.

Another science activity that we did this week was the "Oobleck" experiment, which is based on the book Bartholomew and the Oobleck by Dr. Seuss. I read this story (which is VERY long) to the class while the teacher covered the tables with paper and got ready for the kids to play with their own Oobleck. In the story, the king is bored with the sun, fog, rain, and snow that usually come from the sky so he orders his royal magicians to create something new to fall from the sky. The magicians comply with his request, and their new creation is a green sticky goo called Oobleck, which eventually gets stuck to everything in the town and creates a big gooey mess. The Oobleck continues falling in bigger and bigger globs until the king finally realizes that he has caused the whole problem by asking for this goo and then admits his mistake. As soon as the king says the simple words "I'm sorry", sun comes out and the Oobleck disappears, adding a moral lesson to go along with the science experiment.

This gooey green slime is easy to make; all you need is water, cornstarch, and a little food coloring. Click here for a recipe for making Oobleck. The 1st grade teacher had made the Oobleck ahead of time, which seemed like a very good idea with young children. The Oobleck was a little messy, but the kids thought it was really cool and we managed to keep it mainly on the paper covering the tables. We discovered that Oobleck has properties of both liquids and solids at the same time. Like a liquid, it molds to the shape of the container that you put it in and if you hold it in your hand it will start to drip. If you press quickly on the Oobleck with your finger, it will be hard like a solid and your finger will not go into the Oobleck. Here are links to 2 Oobleck lesson plans that I found online:

• Discovering the Properties of Oobleck
• Oobleck cooperative learning activity

These lessons are designed for upper elementary students, but they could easily be adapted for use with 1st or 2nd graders as well.

These activities were all a lot of fun for both me and the students. The kids learned a lot about matter and the activities seemed to increase their understanding about the different states of matter. I will definitely consider doing all 3 of them with my own students in the future.

Welcome!

Welcome to my blog! I am an education student at University of Richmond and I am creating this blog as part of my technology class. During the next few weeks, I will be posting some of my technology projects, as well as writing about my experiences observing and volunteering at various elementary schools.