Learning is the key!

Wow! What an amazing first week of classes. This week has been filled with learning so many new things. My personal favorite was learning about plickers. This is a way to give quizzes and have them graded instantly. It is quick, easy, cheap and fun. Another think I learned about was the top tweets of the week. I really like this activity. It was kinda of difficult at first to find tweets about teaching, but once I found one interesting tweet that stood out to me, I found plenty. It was very interesting to read what people had to say about teaching and helpful tips that they also had to offer. I really enjoyed learning about topics and concepts. Before learning about topics and concepts, I didn't really know that they are two totally different things. Topics are like facts, they are more specific than concepts. Concepts are timeless, abstract, the big idea, universal, and transferable. In other classes I was never taught that there was such a difference between the two. After this week, I fell more confident with the information that I learned.

The article that I read was from, We are Teachers and written by Elizabeth Marshall. This article is about changing the way that you talk to your students in the classroom can change the classroom culture. Sometimes teachers can find themselves becoming upset with students who act out during a lesson just because they don't want to pay attention or participate. This can cause the teacher to find themselves struggling to find a way to find better classroom management. This type of situation can be fixed by the way that teachers talk to their students. This article gives seven strategies, and examples of how to talk to kids so that they can learn. First, describe the problem. Describing the problem can be less accusing so it doesn't sound like you're being rude and bossy. Yes, as the teacher you need to have authority over your students, but explaining to them what they are doing wrong rather than yelling and getting upset, can allow the students to fix the problem rather then act out. Second, give information rather than insulting or judging the student. Give them facts and the students will be less likely to be defensive and more likely to change their attitude. Third, offer a choice, this give students the chance to learn to control their own behavior. Don't threaten or boss them around, give them choices to work with and let them decide. Fourth, say it with a word or gesture. "Sometimes a single word is more powerful in encouraging students to think about a problem and come up with a solution on their own." Fifth, describe what you feel. Try to describe your feelings without attacking or insulting, and the students will be understandable as to why you're asking something of them. Sixth, put it in writing. Sometimes students don't understand things when they are being told to them, but they can better understand it when it is written so they can see it. Lastly, seventh, be playful. Try being funny and think of cool things, like a song to sing, that will grab their attention to do when they begin to misbehave or act out.

This article was very interesting to read! I enjoyed reading it because it was very helpful and informing. This is something I worry about being a future teacher. I worry that I wont handle a situation the right way or I might say something that will be harmful, not helpful. This article gives strategies to help with situations that teachers face everyday in the classroom.

This article relates to standard 1 of the NCTCS. Leadership is very very important in the teacher profession. This article has leadership written all over it, because it gives perfect examples on how a teacher should lead their classroom when students are acting out and misbehaving. Communicating with students in a positive way can also impact the actions of students in a positive way.