Completing Our Learning Journey!

We are finishing the semester of Methods of Teaching. It is exciting and sad at the same time. I enjoyed learning new methods and strategies how to teach students. I never realized how many methods there actually is. I have learned how I can differentiate my methods to help work with each students' individual needs, for each and every lesson.

I realized that every student can be involved in the lesson, not matter what disadvantage they may have while trying to learn. It is so important to accommodate for each and every child so that everyone has an opportunity to obtain new information and skills. I now no that most of the time accommodations can be made using technology. There are so many devices and programs to use to help students learn material by presenting it in different ways.

I have noticed a change within myself since the beginning of the semester. I feel more confident with all the work I have put into lesson plans of different types. I have learned how to make lessons fun while still adhering to the standards. Also, I have gained confidence through teaching at fieldwork. 

I have grown as a person and as a future teacher. I have a new outlook on how to work with elementary students. I have seen what works and does not work because of peer suggestions and from what I have tried during my fieldwork. It is amazing to find out what actually goes on "behind the scenes" for a teacher. I have learned from creating my lesson plans how much preparation goes into just creating a lesson based on one idea or skill. Teachers must stick to standards while addressing the needs of all the students to create a fun lesson that helps students learn. 

This semester has been tough. This class especially challenged me. The challenge feels good, especially now that I look back and realize everything I learned through my experiences. The hard work is worth it. I learned so much about how to be a great teacher while presenting students with different technological experiences to keep them interested. The work has paid off. I have learned so much about how to be a great teacher who reaches out to each and every student. This journey has been very far from what I expected. I cannot believe how much I have learned in class from doing my assignments and learning from my peers. I will take what I know now to the rest of my classes and to when I have my own classroom.

I feel that this diagram really describes what learning needs to be about. Students should work together, think critically, and come up with different options to solve problems. Of course, technology must be incorporated too. This will help create an environment for students to flourish. These skills will help students throughout their lives. I think it is so important for every teacher to realize how students learning has evolved and different approaches need to be taken to help each and every student do their best.

Working with SIM

The social interactive method (SIM) is a lesson plan that can be used for cooperative learning (CL). We learned about the five characteristics of cooperative learning, which are positive interdependence, individual and group accountability, group processing, social skills and face-to-face interaction. By using this lesson in the classroom, you are helping your students to create relationships and help students learn how to work together to achieve a goal. To learn about CL, we taught each the different characteristics to each other. This helped me to get an in-depth idea of my one characteristic. I also learned more from my classmates then just being lectured or reading something about CL. 

We did an SIM lesson plan for peer feedback. I like that we had to reflect on our own work and others work to make changes and help make our lesson plans better. Working with our peers to fix and adjust our lessons helped me. They were working on the same project and had ideas that were creative and interesting. This was the point of cooperative learning and the SIM lesson plan.