Blog Post #I- Chapter 4

          In chapter four it really opened up my perspective on educators and just really demonstrated to me how much more complex teaching really is. For this reason, I truly applaud teachers not only for the patience of dealing with children on a Monday through Friday basis but also for doing the planning out of every day. Personally I knew it took some sort of time and thought but this chapter really explained in depth what is necessary to plan a lesson and really demonstrated to me ways to better it as in comparison to when I was taught.

         First things first, in this chapter it emphasizes how important for a teacher to first decide on a topic to teach and what concept will be taught on the subject.  With modern technology teachers now have the availability to browse through hundreds and hundreds of curriculums to assist them in planning out a lesson. It is also important for an educator to keep in mind the importance of keeping up with the state standard and core curriculum, so an educator has a lot of factors to keep up with. In the end once a topic is decided is also essential to do assessments to children on the topic not only before and after but also during the lesson. This way the educator gets a glimpse of how much knowledge a child has on the subject and knows how to start off the subject. Also during to see if indeed the children are gaining knowledge or if the subject needs to review and in the end to see if the topic was indeed learned.

        Another great concept that was introduced in this chapter that I really found useful was introducing the lesson to students. The best approach I found for me was the Understanding by Design or as many may know as the backward design.  In this approach, there are three main stages to this design which are Stage 1: Identifying desired results, Stage 2: Determine acceptable evidence, and finally Stage 3: Plan learning experience and instruction.  In the first stage, it is basically identifying the topic and what questions shall be answered. The second one is deciding with evidence will be shown to the students to articulate with the topic that will allow them to gain more knowledge as well as continue to gain their attention.  Finally in the last stage is actually setting out a lesson plan complete with activities and time frame for the lesson.

      To sum it all up, once the lesson is successfully completes the only thing left to do is assess the students on the subject to see if the lesson was effective and if children learned the subject.  The most effective way to see if a child has indeed learned the subject is by having the children explain the topic to on another. For instance, have the students collaborate in a group and create a presentation using technology such as PowerPoint on a certain portion and teach to the rest of the class. This way the educator will have the ability to determine if the subject was indeed understood. Aside from this there should still be a test assessment for each child.  With technology though assessing children is easier because educators can use rubrics to help children and makes grading easier with electronic grading.                                                                                                                                                      

     

Resources: 

 Maloy, Robert, Verock-O’Loughlin,Ruth-Ellen, Edwards, Sharon A., and Woolf, Beverly Park (2013). Transforming Learning with New Technologies. 2nd Edition. Boston, MA: Pearson Education, Inc. 

Rios Moreno, P. (October 28, 2015) Technology created with Voki http://www.voki.com/mywebsite.php