Blog Week 6

The article is talking about teachers need to personalize their teaching to engage students in the classroom. The Author believes that if the teacher will personalize their teaching styles, the classroom will run smoother and the proficiency of students will increase. They mention using guides used by other teachers, games, interactives, and videos. This article is helpful because it lists links for teachers to follow to get some ideas of how to implement this new idea into a classroom. The article also mentions that once the teacher has set up a new program, it will be less stress on the teacher. The weakness of this article is that it doesn’t use any insanely solid facts or sources to back up their claims.

https://www.thetechedvocate.org/how-to-engage-elementary-students-through-personalized-learning/

10, Mathew Lynch, et al. “How to Engage Elementary Students Through Personalized Learning.” The Tech Edvocate, 2 Nov. 2018, www.thetechedvocate.org/how-to-engage-elementary-students-through-personalized-learning/.

Blog 5- Argument and Audience

              In this article, they use the argument that parents have a major impact on their students education. When parents are involved in their children’s studies and classroom, they can encourage their children to get engaged in their education. This also gives parents the perfect opportunity to see their children in the classroom first hand and know how to help their children succeed. They mention that the best way for parents to help their children is by creating a good environment at home and encouraging their students to learn. To prove their credibility, they used sources from appropriate studies from Ingram, Lieberman, and Wolfe. The audience is directed to teachers on how to best help their students learn from parents at home. The audience is stated when the author introduces himself as a person who cares about children and wants to help solve the gap between parent involvement in education.

 “Parent Involvement in Elementary Education Essay - 3255 Words.” StudyMode - Premium and Free Essays, Term Papers & Book Notes, 2008, www.studymode.com/essays/Parent-Involvement-In-Elementary-Education-186838.html.

https://www.studymode.com/essays/Parent-Involvement-In-Elementary-Education-186838.html  

              This article talked about engaging students by working through dead time. Dead time is when kids stop paying attention and “zone out” so to speak. The article gives 10 reasons to help involve students in classrooms. Some of these include mind warm-ups, student collaboration, mixing up teaching styles, and create team work tactics in a classroom. The audience for this article is obviously towards teachers. It is explaining to teachers what they can do to keep their student engaged in lessons and help them find ways to better their teaching skills. An example of this audience is in the introduction of thee article. The author writes about how normal it is for teachers to physically see their students zone out and fall into that dead time of a lesson. This specifically states who the audience is, and gets teachers hooked into the article because it is something that all teachers have experienced before.

Frondeville, Tristan D. “How to Keep Kids Engaged in Class.” Edutopia, George Lucas Educational Foundation, 2009, www.edutopia.org/classroom-student-participation-tips.

https://www.edutopia.org/classroom-student-participation-tips

Assignment 4 Exploratory

Throughout America’s history, the education system has changed immensely. From small, all level schools, to allowing girls to gain an education, to creating a public school system, to creating a common structure, the idea of what form of education is the “best” is always changing and growing. As of today, America’s most current education system consists of elementary schools focusing on math and science to compete with the rest of the world. The common core is a heavily structured program, leaving very little time for teachers to incorporate their own ideas and adapt their schedule to best fit their students needs.

              As any good teacher knows, every classroom is different. This means hours of scheduling and planning creative ways to get kids to learn as best as they can. The problem then, is finding the time to help these students. That is where engagement methods come in handy. Finding new ways to engage students in the classroom is essential to success not only in the classroom but in life in general. Many life long skills are developed at young ages in kids in elementary schools. When kids are taught to be attentive, respectful, cooperative, and determined in a classroom setting; they take those lessons without them as adults.  

Assignment 3, Slide 2 Background Info

So why does this matter? Well first off, college drop out rates have reached a staggering rate of 50%. 50% of college students are dropping out of school. What does this tell us? That America’s education system is failing some kind of way. Chances are, we can trace this back to when these students were children in elementary schools. The root of this issue can be traced back to when children first become students, and the habits and skills they develop when they are young.

To combat this issue, the National Survey of Engagement was created in 1998 to assess students and see how they become engaged in classrooms to become life long learners. Their mission as the National Survey of Engagement is to obtain “meaningful quality improvement”.  

 Sources:

“Student Engagement.” Wikipedia, Wikimedia Foundation, 17 Oct. 2018, en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Student_engagement.

“NSSE - National Survey of Student Engagement.” NSSE 2008 Results, The Trustees of Indiana University, 2019, nsse.indiana.edu/html/engagement_indicators.cfm.

Assignment 2, Slide 1 Student Behavior

Good behavior in a classroom is essential for maximum learning for students. Good behavior in a classroom gives teachers the chance to engage students and help them learn to the best of their abilities. These disruptive behaviors could include talking during lessons, walking around the classroom, sniping remarks, and cheating. What can stop these disrupted behaviors then? According to Carnegie Melon University, creating engaging lessons coursework will help prevent these behaviors and help students learn more. This creates a ripple effect that helps students learn can prevent some of the common behavior issues we see in classrooms today.

When students are passionate about a topic, they are eager to learn new things! Picture a kindergarten aged child in their first year of school. When kids are this age, they do not think by labels because they don’t understand how to label people. They play with all kids in the playground, regardless of their race or social status. They are excited about learning and don’t compare themselves to other students who adults deem as “smarter”. They are passionate and excited about learning and experiencing new things. What changes as they grow up and go throughout America’s education system? What stops them from becoming an engaged learner?

Our job as educators is to teach children. It is a teacher’s responsibility to get a child excited and eager to learn new things. There are many ways to do that, which we will discuss throughout this presentation. These ways include movement, music, motivators, behaviors, engaging lessons, and real life applications.

Sources:

Reports of problematic behaviors are on the rise nationally, not only in the classroom but in society at large (Kowalski, 2003).- https://www.cmu.edu/teaching/designteach/teach/problemstudent.html

Introduction to Engaging Elementary Students Assignment 1

Podcast URL: https://www.podomatic.com/podcasts/bedleybros/episodes/2018-10-12T20_30_47-07_00

This semester I am planning on researching ways to get Elementary students engaged inside the classroom. I plan on being a teacher and I feel like this research will be very helpful to me in the future. A few ideas I have found in my research thus far is to take sketch notes, integrate movement into the classroom, and use engaging lessons and worksheets. My podcast I have chosen is about sketch notes and how they help kids learn.

I will be writing an explanatory research paper.