Do Schools Kill Creativity

I saw this video a little while ago and thought it was relevant. So the question is; Do schools kill creativity?
I think it depends on the teacher, I have been in classrooms where the teacher is monotonous and children are literally falling asleep, but i have also been in classrooms where teachers bring excitement to their students and their students are given the opportunity to be creative.
I believe ICT’s give students the opportunity to be creative and display information in creative ways. This itself is a great reason to include ICT’s into the curriculum.

Planning for lessons

I have just finished the lesson planning activity in this weeks learning path and i thought that i would share my points with you guys. These are just a few brainstorming points so feel free to add anything to my list! One of the greatest things about using ICT’s to blog what we have done is the sharing and collaborating which is possible through blogging. 

So here are my points! 

• You need to know the students you are planing for
• You need to know to content you are planning to teacher
• Questions should be developed 
• Time guidelines
• You need to know how you are going to make sure students are getting what you are teaching (formative assessment)
• Step by Step instruction
• Language used specific for the subject and age group
• How students work together
• What resources are available
• Any interruptions to the lesson (assembly etc)
• Think of possible students responses
• Create own resources (worksheets, etc)
• Does what I am teaching relate to the curriculum
• Do I have teacher helpers?
• How do the students learn best (group work, individual?)
• Learning needs of the students
• Differentiation
• What behavior management should I include withing my lesson

Like I said, feel free to add you own opinions. 

Prac

The count down for prac has officially started. Only 19 days until we are all in the classroom with real students rather than hypothetical ones. Just like Sophia, I find my self being concerned about prac, not only because it is a scary experience but also because my last practical experience was not a good one at all. I know I shouldn’t let one bad experience terrify me for this one but my emotions aren’t as rational as my mind. 

Being able to to integrate ICT’s into my teaching will be hard as well I think, especially if I am at a school with limited resources available for the students to use and engage with. What do we do if this happens to us? How can we pass our prac if we can’t actually have access to technologies?

Life Cycle of a Platypus

Life Cycle of a Platypus

I though this was also a really good resource I used for my lesson plan. I like it because it is interactive and students need to think logically bout what they will do next to help the little platypus’ live. I think this would be an engaging and educational lesson that all students can participate in. I actually did this myself and I thought it was quite fun. Hopefully other students will agree. 

I hope this has helped you guys. Good luck to everyone with their assignments and lets hope we all pass with flying colours. 

Just found this really good video on frog life cycles. I decided to use it for my unit plan for year 4 science. I just thought I would share it with you guys just in case you could use it for your assignments. 

I finished my unit plan today so now all i need to do it write my 500 word justification and then I have completed the second assignment task. I cant tel you how excited i am to have finally completed this task!

Smart Classrooms

I was scrolling through the the web when i found a document from the Education Queensland web site. I found one like in particular really interesting to read it starts off saying that “Smart Classrooms is a comprehensive strategy for digital education in Queensland state schools.” it then says further down the page, “Smart Classrooms provides direction for harnessing the learning and business potential of ICT now and into the future.” I just found this interesting because when I have been in school some of the teacher I  have spoken to really don’t think the government is doing their best to make sure students get these opportunities in their classrooms. Its a shame really because the concept of Smart Classrooms is quite good and in theory would do wonders to help children learn at their full potential. 

Until next time-

Standard Elaborations

To create a meaningful assessment task, teachers need to be able to find and access the standard elaborations for the subject and year level they are teaching, for example Year 4 Science. They then have to modify the rubric given to suit the task they are completing in order to give students accurate marks for reporting at the end of the term or semester. I found it extremely easy to not only find but also interpret the rubric given to teacher by the government. I think it is a great idea to have resources like this one to be accessible to teacher because it not only has most of the work done for them it also makes writing up assessment less stressful and time consuming. I used one of these elaborations for my assessment task for assignment two and found it extremely useful in writing my personal rubric. 

Until next time.

Learning Path

Finally after struggling for over an hour I have completed the learning path for this week. So where do i go next? Assignment two! My assignment needs attention and therefore i will probably spend the next few hours completing the backwards design on it. It is looking pretty dismal but hopefully it will look better by the end of this lesson. 

On another note. I found this weeks learning path to be quite helpful in regards to assignment two and how it should be set out. I also like that there is less and less work that needs to be done each week, this leaves me with more time to spend doing other course work and completing assignments. Although I’m not sure why there wasn’t a course barometer this week. That is unusual. 

Until next time-

Blooms Taxonomy

For assignment two we are meant to use a pedagogical framework that will help us develop question in regards to our essential questions section of assignment two. To my surprise i had no idea what this meant. At first a friend said to use The Five E’s as an approach. I personally wasn’t sure if i wanted to use this approach, I later decided that i was going to use Blooms Taxonomy instead. Blooms has been drilled into us since day one of starting this primary education course and hence i am very familiar with it and how it should be used. This makes me think that it will be a lot easier to complete this assignment knowing I will be using an approach that I am very familiar with. 

Until next time-

Australian Curriculum

This post from another student surprised me at first because I have always found the Australian Curriculum really easy to use and helpful when it comes to planing for my lessons when I was on prac. Sarah writes that whilst she found it hard to begin with, this week has made it easier for her to comprehend and use some of the extra parts of the curriculum. It makes me wonder, why do some people find it harder to comprehend one thing but others find it easier to comprehend the same thing?  I personally know Sarah and I know for a fact it isn’t because of her intelligence level as she is an extremely smart student. Maybe it is just the way we think about things.

Until next time.