Maria+Awad

CAST Reflections

It was interesting taking the learning inventory survey. I learned that my primary learning style was, “The Tactile/Kinesthetic” Learning Style. It made sense to me and it clarified my need to incorporate “hands on” learning for almost everything that I need to do in order to learn and master any process. One instance comes to mind, when I was long term substituting in a Special Education classroom. I had to teach my students the concept of “Fractions” and it was a very difficult subject for them to understand. In Special Education, one has to modify any lesson or study to the needs of the students. The lesson that I got was not helping, so with the help of my origami skills and tactile abilities the lesson was a success and it made it clear in a very three dimensional way to my students how to use fractions with ease. The survey results stressed to me that all learning styles should be used when teaching, because one has a variety of students and learning styles within their classroom. The CAST website had a wide range of helpful ideas and strategies and would be a great tool for the classroom.

I insisted that my children have rest or quiet time when they were young - especially during the summer months. This cartoon really hits home with me! media type="custom" key="19380948"media type="custom" key="19381334" Tecnology Standards

Virtual Field trip on "Whaling" The virtual field trip on "Whaling", was a wonderful experience. Students will find it rewarding because they can personally interact with the site through, "The Hunt for Knowledge" and "A Whaling Adventure" parts. The process of creating a virtual field trip would be an enriching one, both for me and my students. It is a bit complicated and a time consuming process. Yes, it is, Maria, and it takes a bit of time to make the activities of the virtual fieldtrip fit within the curriculum guidelines. However, I think that virtual fieldtrips can be rewarding experiences for students who may never be able to visit the places they study about - perhaps a fieldtrip would serve as a motivation for the student to aspire to visit the site(s) someday in person. The information in the New Bedford site was presented very well and provided useful information throughout. My knowledge about whaling was minimal before taking this virtual field trip. After viewing it, I came away with so much. One of my favorite activities was the knot tying demonstration; students would benefit from such an enriching and fun activity.



Behaviorism Glog

A key factor of " Behaviorism" Theory in the classroom is, drills. Drills help a student gain proficiency of their skills. With technology, review of content is widely available. There are a multitude of websites (i.e. coolmath4kids, Brainpop, e.t.c.). Behaviorism is very helpful in the classroom, especially in Special Education, where repetition and review of content are pertinent teaching tools, in order for a student to achieve mastery in any given subject. Malcom Gladwell proved that behaviorism is a means to reach expert levels with his book, " Outliers" ( 2008). Where among other things, ( opportunity, perseverence and luck), he emphasizes, that it took most successful people, over 10,000 hours of practice and repetition to achieve mastery and expertise in their chosen field.

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Final Project: Author Glog

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For my final project I chose to create a glog for an author study. The author is Leo Lionni. In second and third grade, students are introduced to the different people who create the books, the authors and the illustrators. By helping students create their own glogs to show what they learned about their chosen authors, they will have the opportunity to understand how to access information from secure sites on the internet and incorporate it into their work. The school library is the ideal place to implement the use of technology in the curriculum. The use of multiple commuters is readily available, eliminating time limitation problems due to computer lab access. Creating a glog also complies with Maryland Teacher Technology Standards and the Voluntary State Curriculum by allowing students to: **VSC: 5.0**
 * 1) Access, evaluation and processing information effectively.
 * 2) Using technology effectively and providing the opportunity to interact electronically.
 * 3) Using technology to communicate information in a variety of formats.
 * 4) Design, implement and access learning experiences that incorporate use of technology in the curriculum-related instructional activity to support understanding, inquiry, problem-solving, communication and collaboration.

Share Findings/Conclusions: Students will be able to follow an inquiry process to share findings/conclusions in an appropriate format to support written, oral, and multimedia information products and evaluate the products and the processes in an ethical manner. a. With guidance, organize and display findings/conclusions in a variety of formats, including the use of technology. b. With guidance, design layouts that communicate content effectively for intended audiences. c. With guidance, apply appropriate design criteria, which include universal design principles, to the content and layout of the information product. d. With guidance, use technology to present findings/conclusions in a variety of formats.
 * 1. Use a variety of formats to prepare the findings/conclusions of the information need for sharing. **


 * VSC: 4.1.b **

( [|**http://www.mdk12.org**] )
 * 1) Plan and organize ideas for writing by using an appropriate organizational structure, such as, chronological or sequential order, comparison and contrast, cause and effect
 * Complete an idea by providing topic, support, and concluding sentences

The goal and ultimate objective for this project will be to encourage students to become self-motivated and develop strategies to locate and organize information with the use of technology. By the end of this lesson students will be able to use credible search engines and websites to complete their glog for their author study. The materials used for this lesson would be: The computers, Glogster.edu, search engines for students ( Grolier, World Book, C.E.R.F), paper and pencil.

In order to help students achieve their goals the teaching should be done by modeling each step of the process and giving students easy to follow instructions throughout. Present the glog of Leo Lionni (author), to students and explain all parts that they will work on:

Biography, images, 3 books, references and how to link all that to their glog.

Students will be working in pairs and will be asked to create a folder on the appropriate drive in the computer. Usually the S: drive, where they can keep pictures, sites and phrases that they will use in their glogs.

The following Rubric can be used to assess student work.

Name: Grade: Possible || Points Earned || Biography || 3 for 3 supporting details 2 for 2 supporting details 1 for 1 supporting detail ||  || 2 for 2 books pictured 1 for 1 book pictured ||  || (i.e. video, text, image) 2 for some formats 1 for one format ||  || 2 for citing 2 references 1 for citing 1 reference ||  ||
 * Criteria || Points
 * Content
 * Books || 3 for 3 books pictured
 * Glog Design || 3 for variety of formats
 * References || 3 for citing 3 references
 * Total || 12 ||  ||