Blog #6

For your week 6 blog, please take a few minutes to reflect on your experience as either a teacher or student in the first (and/or second) lesson plan presentation. Did it make your reflect on your own future teaching? Technology tools in the classroom? Any other thoughts from the experience?

 Today I got to participate in the first of our classes group presentations. At first I was a little worried because sometimes stations don't work out as well in real situations as well as they do in theory because of timing but I think that this group did very well with the stations. I was engaged the whole time and had a lot of fun coloring (one of my favorite things to do) our own hurricanes and getting to name them, doing the crossword puzzle (a favorite past-time of mine), do a computer game that was fun and educational, and doing a packet. I think that all of these activities were age appropriate for the age of kids that they were pretend teaching. I also think that having us draw and name our hurricanes was really creative and entertaining. Also, I learned a lot about hurricanes that I never new before so that was cool.

The groups use of only four computers made me think about how to use a limited number of computers in the classroom without using computers as the main focal point of the lesson. I think that the group did this very well by their use of stations and it gave me an idea of how I will be able to use limited computers in my future classroom. Even though the group only had four computers to use, they still made the lesson fun by having a coloring and crossword station. An ineffective way a teacher might have tried to do the same lesson would be if they had tried to have the crossword puzzle, packet, and  the computer game on the computers. Instead, the group though ahead and used the computers to find or make the packet and to make the crossword puzzle but they printed them out ahead of time so that the students could do it at their desks. I think that this as a very good example of thinking ahead and using their limited technology to their advantage, I will have to remember this when I start my teaching. Overall I really liked their lesson and I think that they did a great job for being the first group to present.