Videos

                      In Video 1, Sandra Jenoski started on day 1 with routine and practice for 6 to 8 weeks. After the 6 to 8 weeks, the students were supposed to be more independent. She said that if you do not spend the first part of the class letting the students know your expectations,  they will be confused and not know what they should be doing or what you expect them to do. Voncille Ross said you should establish a learning community with the students beginning with circle time. This would develop respect between the students and teachers. Shaina Martinez said to listen to the students. Students will appreciate you taking an interest in them. You should make the students feel comfortable so they can share with you. Ilene Miller said when choosing groups you should take time to consider your options and make sure all children are involved in learning.

                The classroom management may differ  because of the ages of their students. The learning community works well with the younger students. The secondary schools,  have less time so it would be hard to have a learning circle before every class.  Shaina Martinez’s students, because they are older, just want to be listened to and respected.  The students should be involved, so that they can be part of the learning community and so they know what is expected of them.


            In Video 2, the advice is to get to know as many types of students as you can to be prepare din your classroom management.

Bullying

Preble High School here in Green Bay has several student led groups that work on preventing bullying. The Gay Straight Alliance helps foster acceptance of sexuality. The leadership group helps demote the existence of bullying of any kind. If students feel they are being bullied they should talk to their teacher or another staff. Bullying is not tolerated. Cyber-bullying is addressed in the class Challenges of the 21st Century. Cyber-bullying is also addressed in newsletters. Here's an example of  a Preble newsletter that addresses bullying and cyber-bullying http://www.greenbayprebleonline.com/assets/newsletters/2010%20December%20new%20nl.pdf
Many of the teachers talk about it with the students as well. This it the most effective way to get the message across to students.

Classroom Management

As teachers we should have procedures for everything! Making a list of all the procedures we should have could be quite long....
- playground, hallway, entering classroom, lunch count, sharpening pencils, morning meetings, bathroom breaks, assistance with work, putting away (everything), lining up, lunch time..etc.

Procedures are best when they are school wide if they are locations that are used outside of the classroom (playground, hallway, lunchroom) should have universal rules. P.B.I.S. suggests using Cool Tools to create these procedures as well as reteaching steps in the case that a student is not following the procedure.

Here is an example of Eisenhower Elementary's PBIS Cool Tool for the hallway

Teaching Examples:
-use voice volume 0
-students stay on the right side of the hall
-maintain personal space (one arm's length between the student in front of him/her, keeping hands at your side and feet to yourself).
-appreciate art work with your eyes only.
-quiet waves to say "Hi"

Student Activities:
1. Take the class to the hallway and model for them what it looks and sounds like to follow the 8 steps listed above.
2. Role Play: Provide students an opportunity to practice walking in a line in groups of 4, while the rest of the class looks to see if they are correct. Use compliments to reinforce correct behavior.
3. Use of non-examples such as teacher talking, looking behind, hands on wall, etc. Ask students which steps were missing in the examples

Follow Up/ Reinforcement Activities
1. Verbal praise from staff
2. Teacher prompts/cues targeted skill when difficulties occur in order to shape the desired behaviors. (EX: "show me line basics. Excellent job! I knew you could do it!)
3. Review the skill weekly and where it can be used (coming in from recess, on the way to lunch, going to gym or music, etc.)
4. Teach to new students as they arrive throughout the year.

Global Education Resources

www.epals.com

This site is great! Many of the projects are applicable to early childhood. It would be fascinating to use these to collaborate with children from a different culture. I'm going to suggest we do something with this for the after school program at Eisenhower. I like the "The Way We Are" one because it's a topic Kindergarten and First Grader's discuss on their own. Plus it has a Spanish option, which many of the students at Eisenhower speak.

www.iecc.org

This is not actually a site. However, IECC can be found at http://www.friends-partners.org/CCSI/penpals/iecc.htm. I prefer epals to IECC. IECC is similar to EPals in that it connects students to other students elsewhere, but ePals has more options.

www.thinkquest.org

This site seems useful but I was unable to register to see it's options. I took the "tour" and saw that it has projects and competitions.  When I am able to register, this will be an interesting site to explore.

Convergent Education

Kurshan says. “I think they’re learning the way we work in the business space. If there’s something you don’t know, you’re finding it, and you’re doing a lot more critical thinking and problem solving. At the moment, kids may be learning more outside of schools than they are [inside them].”


This quote stood out to me. "At the moment, kids may be learning more outside of schools than they are inside them." I believe this is changing. In my field placement and my job at Washington Middle School, I saw technology being integrated into their classroom. The science teacher I was with for my field placement had a generic version of a SMART board and used it to engage the students. In all my education courses so far, we've at least touched on an aspect of technology in the classroom. This shows that our future teachers are being well trained in how to use technology. 


As the textbook says, we are living in a flat, global classroom. Our job as educators is to make sure students learn how to find information, so that they can find it on their own, rather than memorize it. I was intrigued by the site the article talks about (www.jason.org). I searched the site and found many interactive games and simulations that would be interesting to students. I didn't see any that would be applicable to early childhood, however in case I change my mind in the future, this is a good site to know

My Blogging Experience

I think the idea of having blogs in the classroom works well. It makes all my responses easily accessible on one page. The blog questions are all relevant to the course. The only issue I have is that it would be nice to see what other students are saying as well. In the future, I could use a blog to communicate with parents. I will be student teaching Kindergarten for the full semester (and hopefully finding a job teaching Kindergarten), so I probably will not have the students keep their own blogs.

Assistive Technology

http://www.specialed.us/autism/assist/asst14.htm

This site discusses how to use AT with children who have autism. One of the things they mention is the talk pad. The talk pad records voice so the child can play it. The site gave the example of using it for a child who can't remember the routine for snack time. The snack time routine is recorded and when it is snack time the child plays it to remember.

http://www.cesa7.org/assistivetech/documents/ATintheEarlyChildhoodClassroom.pdf

Cesa 7 suggests some pretty simple AT for the early childhood classroom. One of these options is the Big Keyboard. This keyboard has brightly colored keys that are larger than normal. This could be used for all early childhood children who have trouble finding the key they are looking for, or whose fingers hit the wrong key.