In class today there was a presentation on growth and development. This is an interesting topic, especially as someone who is considering teaching middle school. Students will be going through a lot of changes during this time and it will be important to take these into account as I plan my teaching.
We did an activity where we were given a part of our body and asked to share something that we like about that body part. This was a great activity to do especially with the messages that kids often get from the media about body image.
There were also a couple of thematic units that were presented today.
These included topics of:
Identity
Overcoming Adversity
Self acceptance
Finally, there was a great activity that I want to remember to do with my kids. It involves finding a partner and having them be your buddy. When body parts are called out, you must find your partner and touch your body part to theirs. For example: foot to elbow, knee to back, ear to ear, etc. This was a great activity with lots of fun and laughing!
Thursday, May 5, 2016
Sunday, April 17, 2016
Friendship
Friendship is something that children sometimes need guidance through as they navigate grades k-12. Learning about healthy friendships is important for students and without loving and true friendships, students are likely to have a greater difficulty navigating social life in school.
The following are some things that I learned in class to help students:
Teach students about true friendships
Often, kids don't know the difference between a true friendship and one that is more fake. It is important for students to know that friendships are mutual where both friends put in effort to the friendship and benefit each other.
Activity involvement
Getting kids involved in activities is really important. By doing this, they can find friends with similar interests.
Friend role model
It is important to be a role model to children when it comes to your own friendships. By having good friendships yourself, students can see what a healthy friendship is and learn from the friendships that you have.
These are three major take aways that I got from this portion of the presentation, but a few other things that are important are having service to others, having honesty and tact, talking about boundaries, and having empathy towards others. Overall, all of these are important in their own ways to developing and maintaining healthy friendships and relationships and kids can learn a great deal from this information to help them socially and emotionally.
The following are some things that I learned in class to help students:
Teach students about true friendships
Often, kids don't know the difference between a true friendship and one that is more fake. It is important for students to know that friendships are mutual where both friends put in effort to the friendship and benefit each other.
Activity involvement
Getting kids involved in activities is really important. By doing this, they can find friends with similar interests.
Friend role model
It is important to be a role model to children when it comes to your own friendships. By having good friendships yourself, students can see what a healthy friendship is and learn from the friendships that you have.
These are three major take aways that I got from this portion of the presentation, but a few other things that are important are having service to others, having honesty and tact, talking about boundaries, and having empathy towards others. Overall, all of these are important in their own ways to developing and maintaining healthy friendships and relationships and kids can learn a great deal from this information to help them socially and emotionally.
The Feelings Scribble
This activity relates to emotional development and helps students build a self awareness of their own and others' emotions. It starts off with a simple scribble drawn with a dark color. This scribble is likely to have various spots that students can color in and add different colors to.
We picked colors that represented different feelings including
- Sadness
- Anger
- Happiness
- Anxiousness
- Love
- Fear
Then, after coloring in our scribble, we had a chance to think of a variety of questions that relate to what we drew such as:
- Look at the different colors, why are some next to each other and some far apart?
- Is there one color that there is a lot of? Why?
- Did you have a harder time coloring some of the colors than others?
Overall, this was a great way to get students talking and sharing things about their emotions at a deeper development and I think that the activity is worth while.
We picked colors that represented different feelings including
- Sadness
- Anger
- Happiness
- Anxiousness
- Love
- Fear
Then, after coloring in our scribble, we had a chance to think of a variety of questions that relate to what we drew such as:
- Look at the different colors, why are some next to each other and some far apart?
- Is there one color that there is a lot of? Why?
- Did you have a harder time coloring some of the colors than others?
Overall, this was a great way to get students talking and sharing things about their emotions at a deeper development and I think that the activity is worth while.
Emotional Development
In class, we listened to a presentation on emotional development. Emotional development has some major components to it when we think of the students. These include self awareness, social awareness, self management, peer relationships, and responsible decision making.
One thing that we discussed to help students build self esteem and develop emotionally is the self portrait. This self portrait consists of a silhouette of the student where they write out things that they like about themselves on it. Then, the whole class gets a chance to go around and add to the positive comments that you made about yourself. This is a great activity to do in class that I see myself using in the classroom to help build self esteem esp. for middle schoolers.
One thing that we discussed to help students build self esteem and develop emotionally is the self portrait. This self portrait consists of a silhouette of the student where they write out things that they like about themselves on it. Then, the whole class gets a chance to go around and add to the positive comments that you made about yourself. This is a great activity to do in class that I see myself using in the classroom to help build self esteem esp. for middle schoolers.
Found Poetry
Found Poetry is a great activity that I enjoy doing. It is simple and a fun way to add a bit of creative writing into the study of a book or story.
The link below shows a found poetry piece I made in my ART 300 class.
https://sites.google.com/site/johnschielart300001/projects/visual-poetry
We chose to type our found poetry, but I think that it can be more worth while to fully create something visual from it so that students can benefit from more ways than just one. This is something I will use in my future classroom and maybe I can even find a way to incorporate it into mathematics!
The link below shows a found poetry piece I made in my ART 300 class.
https://sites.google.com/site/johnschielart300001/projects/visual-poetry
We chose to type our found poetry, but I think that it can be more worth while to fully create something visual from it so that students can benefit from more ways than just one. This is something I will use in my future classroom and maybe I can even find a way to incorporate it into mathematics!
Cognitive Development
In class, we learned about children's cognitive development. Cognitive development deals with information processing, perceptual skills, language learning and other aspects of brain development.
One of the most interesting things I found from this information presented is that how long our minds are developing even through our early 20's. We discussed the effects on alcohol, drugs, and stress on our system as we are developing. It is amazing how much our minds are changing throughout adolescence and keeping this in mind is important as we become teachers to students in middle adolescence.
During this presentation we were also asked to show what we had learned from it with a drawing. Students were able to present and share their drawing with the class and it was fun and interesting to see the different perspectives that others took with their drawings.
One of the most interesting things I found from this information presented is that how long our minds are developing even through our early 20's. We discussed the effects on alcohol, drugs, and stress on our system as we are developing. It is amazing how much our minds are changing throughout adolescence and keeping this in mind is important as we become teachers to students in middle adolescence.
During this presentation we were also asked to show what we had learned from it with a drawing. Students were able to present and share their drawing with the class and it was fun and interesting to see the different perspectives that others took with their drawings.
Ice Breaker Fun
Shoe Activity
In class, we did a great activity that I can see myself using in the future as an ice breaker. Each student was instructed to get into a circle and toss their shoes into the center. Then students were each asked to grab 2 shoes that were not their own and find the person who is the owner of each shoe.
By doing this, it gave students a chance to mingle with one another and meet each other. Once the students met, they were asked to introduce themselves and share with each other what their favorite kind of shoe is and why.
By sharing this question with one another, you can really learn a lot about someone by their favorite kind of shoe. For example, my favorite kind of shoes are running shoes because they take me everywhere and I put hundreds of miles on them. Some people had favorite shoes like work boots or sandals which say something about their personality as well.
In class, we did a great activity that I can see myself using in the future as an ice breaker. Each student was instructed to get into a circle and toss their shoes into the center. Then students were each asked to grab 2 shoes that were not their own and find the person who is the owner of each shoe.
By doing this, it gave students a chance to mingle with one another and meet each other. Once the students met, they were asked to introduce themselves and share with each other what their favorite kind of shoe is and why.
By sharing this question with one another, you can really learn a lot about someone by their favorite kind of shoe. For example, my favorite kind of shoes are running shoes because they take me everywhere and I put hundreds of miles on them. Some people had favorite shoes like work boots or sandals which say something about their personality as well.
Sunday, April 3, 2016
Class on 3/31
During this class, we talked about identity. This is something that I often have trouble talking too deeply about as I am not always very open with people I do not know too well. We did a really great activity where we answered a variety of questions related to our own identity, wrote the answers on a sheet of paper, and then crumpled and threw the sheets of paper into the center of the room. We were then instructed to grab a random sheet and share the responses on it by moving to one side of the room for a YES answer and to the other side of the room for a NO answer. By doing this, people's responses were anonymous, but it also gave us a really great visual of our class' demographics. I will definitely use something like this in a future classroom.
Class on 3/17
In class we did a variety of activities. One of the main ones that I enjoyed was the one minute book report. With this activity, we were asked to give a summary of the book in just one minute. This was an effective technique as it helped us to summarize concisely.
We also made word clouds in class and created iMovies as well. Here is a link to a great website to make word clouds on:
http://www.wordle.net/
This is something that you can do with a book, story, or even chapter in a different subject other than reading that can be incorporated into class.
iMovie trailers were a fun way to get us active in the use of technology and creating in a different way. Using the iMovie trailer was a bit frustrating though because of the exact template you need to follow. However, this may provide the appropriate structure for students to complete a project.
We also made word clouds in class and created iMovies as well. Here is a link to a great website to make word clouds on:
http://www.wordle.net/
This is something that you can do with a book, story, or even chapter in a different subject other than reading that can be incorporated into class.
iMovie trailers were a fun way to get us active in the use of technology and creating in a different way. Using the iMovie trailer was a bit frustrating though because of the exact template you need to follow. However, this may provide the appropriate structure for students to complete a project.
Class on 3/10
In class today, we separated into literature circles and discussed the first section of the stories that we read. The literature circles are a great technique to use when teaching because you can vary the reading level for various groups. This is a technique that I would definitely use. We all have responsibilities for the book such as discussion director, passage picker, vocabulary, and more can be added depending on the amount of people in each group.
We also did two activities. One was called Values Cards and the other Stand in Silence. These are both great community building activities in which students can get to know one another. I have already used the Values Cards multiple times since class with my residents and with the other Resident Assistants that I am on staff with. The premise of this activity is to sort a list of values into most important, somewhat important, and not very important. Then have discussions about the most important values. After that discussion takes place, narrow down the most important values to simply four core values. Then have another discussion about these.
Finally the Stand in silence activity was a way to get us thinking of things that we've been through that we have in common. If a phrase applied to you, you were asked to stand (if you felt comfortable) and it was a great way to share things about each other in a safe space without judgment.
We also did two activities. One was called Values Cards and the other Stand in Silence. These are both great community building activities in which students can get to know one another. I have already used the Values Cards multiple times since class with my residents and with the other Resident Assistants that I am on staff with. The premise of this activity is to sort a list of values into most important, somewhat important, and not very important. Then have discussions about the most important values. After that discussion takes place, narrow down the most important values to simply four core values. Then have another discussion about these.
Finally the Stand in silence activity was a way to get us thinking of things that we've been through that we have in common. If a phrase applied to you, you were asked to stand (if you felt comfortable) and it was a great way to share things about each other in a safe space without judgment.
Thursday, March 10, 2016
Class on 3/3/2016
In this class, we did a variety of activities that could be used when reading a book with a class. One of the activities that really stood out to me was doing three snapshots of the story where group members are instructed to create a "snapshot" of what is happening in the story.
In the first half of Touching Spirit Bear, we came up with a variety of snapshots to "act out". These included a snap of us standing in a circle with Cole on the outside, a snap of Cole beating up Peter, and a snap of Cole being attacked by the bear. This was a great way that we could summarize our main take aways from the story.
Another activity we did was hold a question and answer of all of the characters in the story. Students were each assigned a character. Those characters would then stand in the front of the class and hold a Q&A where students could come up with any question that they wanted to act out. The one thing that I really did not enjoy about this activity is that if the kids do not know the character well enough, they can confuse their classmates and give inaccurate descriptions of the characters.
In the first half of Touching Spirit Bear, we came up with a variety of snapshots to "act out". These included a snap of us standing in a circle with Cole on the outside, a snap of Cole beating up Peter, and a snap of Cole being attacked by the bear. This was a great way that we could summarize our main take aways from the story.
Another activity we did was hold a question and answer of all of the characters in the story. Students were each assigned a character. Those characters would then stand in the front of the class and hold a Q&A where students could come up with any question that they wanted to act out. The one thing that I really did not enjoy about this activity is that if the kids do not know the character well enough, they can confuse their classmates and give inaccurate descriptions of the characters.
Sunday, March 6, 2016
Reading Vignette 3
The following is my 3rd vignette highlighting my experiences as a writer.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cyBunJ-N344
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cyBunJ-N344
Reading Vignette 2
The following is the second of my reading vignettes that shares of my experiences as a reader.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=O3Y-SvTs__A
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=O3Y-SvTs__A
Reading Vignette 1
The following is the first of my reading vignettes that shares of my experiences as a reader.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=L6kqv1RY1mg
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=L6kqv1RY1mg
Wednesday, March 2, 2016
Multiple Intelligences | Write Arounds | Character Profiles
We completed a variety of activities in class last week that I thought were valuable. The first was learning about multiple intelligences. We did this by each taking an inventory sheet to find out what our primary intelligence is. Then, we looked at various descriptors of that intelligence and wrote positives of it and some things that people may find negative related to that intelligence. We had the opportunity to discuss and write on chart paper to share it with the class.
The second activity we did was in relation to the book we are reading. We did what is called a write around. This was a great way to get writing dialogue going between students. We took pieces of paper and each answered a question related to the text. Then we passed the paper in a circle and had a chance to respond/react to that person's answer. This continued (in groups of 4) until we received our paper back. For students who may not like to participate orally, this is a really great activity.
The final activity we did was a character profile where we each picked a character from the story and drew them on a sheet of paper. With that, we were to answer various questions related to the character to add a well thought out description with quotes and information to back up our opinions about that character. This was a great visual activity that helped us envision the characters in the story.
The second activity we did was in relation to the book we are reading. We did what is called a write around. This was a great way to get writing dialogue going between students. We took pieces of paper and each answered a question related to the text. Then we passed the paper in a circle and had a chance to respond/react to that person's answer. This continued (in groups of 4) until we received our paper back. For students who may not like to participate orally, this is a really great activity.
The final activity we did was a character profile where we each picked a character from the story and drew them on a sheet of paper. With that, we were to answer various questions related to the character to add a well thought out description with quotes and information to back up our opinions about that character. This was a great visual activity that helped us envision the characters in the story.
Thursday, February 18, 2016
Thursday 2/11 Reflection
There are a variety of strategies that were used in class today that I really enjoyed that I could find useful in developing community and are effective teaching methods in the classroom. The following are the activities we did in class and some notes about what each activity entails:
Tea Party Activity
Quotes were taken from the book that we were reading and each person was given a different quote. We were instructed to read the quote and think to ourselves what the story might be about based on that quote. Then, we had a "tea party" where we each read our quotes to one another and after listening to as many quotes as possible, we were then instructed to develop an opinion of what the story would be about based off of the quotes.
Energizer - Alphabet
We were put into teams, first team to "spell out" the alphabet using all of the bodies in the group won.
Clock Buddies
This is a great strategies for creating pairs and groups of students. Students create a clock and mingle around the room finding a "clock buddy" for each hour on the clock. If you want students to have discussions, they can partner up with their "5 o'clock clock buddy". This breaks up the hassle of trying to find a partner or having someone left out without a partner.
Carousel Reading
Around the room were posters with topics that we might encounter as we are reading the book. We wrote on the chart paper everything we knew about that topic and did this in groups. We then presented it to the class to share what the whole class's knowledge of the subject was.
Plagiarism Free Summaries
This was my favorite activity from the class that really showed a good way to show students a strategy to avoid plagiarism. We took various short stories or articles and picked out about five to eight, 1-3 word phrases to pick out important parts of the article. Then we compared these words with people in our group. It was interesting to see what main ideas others picked out from the articles. By doing this it ensured that we would copy the words on the page and it was successful for writing summaries in our own words.
Tea Party Activity
Quotes were taken from the book that we were reading and each person was given a different quote. We were instructed to read the quote and think to ourselves what the story might be about based on that quote. Then, we had a "tea party" where we each read our quotes to one another and after listening to as many quotes as possible, we were then instructed to develop an opinion of what the story would be about based off of the quotes.
Energizer - Alphabet
We were put into teams, first team to "spell out" the alphabet using all of the bodies in the group won.
Clock Buddies
This is a great strategies for creating pairs and groups of students. Students create a clock and mingle around the room finding a "clock buddy" for each hour on the clock. If you want students to have discussions, they can partner up with their "5 o'clock clock buddy". This breaks up the hassle of trying to find a partner or having someone left out without a partner.
Carousel Reading
Around the room were posters with topics that we might encounter as we are reading the book. We wrote on the chart paper everything we knew about that topic and did this in groups. We then presented it to the class to share what the whole class's knowledge of the subject was.
Plagiarism Free Summaries
This was my favorite activity from the class that really showed a good way to show students a strategy to avoid plagiarism. We took various short stories or articles and picked out about five to eight, 1-3 word phrases to pick out important parts of the article. Then we compared these words with people in our group. It was interesting to see what main ideas others picked out from the articles. By doing this it ensured that we would copy the words on the page and it was successful for writing summaries in our own words.
Monday, February 8, 2016
Suicide Prevention Presentation Reflection
On Thursday February 4th, we had two speakers join our class to share information on the prevention of suicide. I believe that it is necessary for people to be trained at and listen to information regarding suicide with the great prevalence that it has in our society. For college aged students, suicide is the second leading cause of death. This is devastating especially because after hearing the presentation, I learned that suicide is preventable.
I learned multiple warning signs of suicide and to name a few, they included:
- Talking about wanting to die or wanting to kill oneself
- Looking for a way to kill oneself, ie. searching for/buying a gun
- Talking about being a burden to others
- Withdrawn or feeling isolated
- Sleeping too much or too little
- Increasing the use of alcohol or drugs
- Displaying intense mood swings
These are all things that I am now more aware of with friends/family members and I believe that it is important to say something if I notice any of these signs.
One of the things that I find so interesting about mental illness and suicide is that it is so rarely talked about. Going to a speaker like this is a great way to segway into a conversation with friends or family. It is frustrating how taboo or stigmatizing the idea of seeing a counselor is as well. I have gone to counseling many times myself and I was embarrassed at first to talk about it. Now that I have gone, I see so much value in seeking help when it is needed, even for things that do not necessarily concern depression or suicide.
I found it interesting that the night before these speakers came to class that Eric Hipple, a former NFL quarterback spoke on campus. I went to this presentation as well and found it heartbreaking to hear his story of his own suicide attempt and having to experience his son's completion of suicide. I had brought some of my residents to this presentation and it really opened up the door to a conversation about issues that we or our peers and families might be facing. I think that the more we talk about it, the more that it can be prevented and the more people who need to will seek help. It was an important conversation that we had and I hope that after seeing these speakers, the conversation continues.
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