Making Content Meaningful

Visual Connection:

Theory to Practice:

Instructional Strategies and Technology: The technology that has been used to enhance the students learning is computer lab time, the teacher's personal device, and a smart board. They use the smart board and the teacher's device for math, writing, reading and to do lessons. Computer lab time is educational games that teach them to type, math, writing, and reading games. They make concepts clear and more meaningful as they get to touch and physically get up and do something so they can interact and learn that way. Also it is more fun and makes students want to participate more abundantly then when a teacher is just talking and reading out of a textbook and having students follow along and answer questions. Interaction= more successful learning for every student even if they aren't the one doing it themselves they encourage and help the student who is doing it up front. The teacher really heeds to supporting the student's diverse learning academic and linguistic needs by finding and even making activities that have made every student successful in learning what they need to get out of that activity or lesson that they learn with technology.

Practice and Apply: The teacher provides countless opportunities for the students to practice new concepts taught with many practice problems and games. For example, in math they learn the lesson in the book and then go through practice problems to grasp the concept and then there is usually always a game that they work together in groups or as a whole class to reinforce what they have learned in the math lesson that day. The materials that are used are work books, colored pencils, flashcards, and the big white board. The language domains integrated going on with the math example, the students write down the math essential question, read along in the lesson with the teacher and each problem, and listen to others when they answer and explain how they got the answers, and lastly speak out loud to fellow students in their groups and help one other figure out the problems.

Critical-Thinking Skills: The tasks are demanding in order for the student to learn the concept taught and they are effective as the students are required to think outside the box in order to figure out the answer to specific problems. The teacher uses lots of varieties of questions to promote critical thinking by rephrasing the question, adding examples to the question, and having students make up the questions themselves and having their fellow peers answer them.

Reflect:  The way that students are grouped together efficiently to help one another and be more successful has impacted me to do it in my future classroom. Technology is essential in classroom when used in the correct way and at the correct time and used effectively and my experience so far has taught me tools that I can use and have had time to come with ideas of my own to helps students know how to use it themselves and really integrate it well into a curriculum. Even though it is first grade, critical thinking skills are very effective even though they are very simple it is giving them steps and prepping them to get into more depth of critical thinking later in junior high and high school more easily and this is something I really want to apply into my future classroom.