Blog #4

I chose the standards for Kindergarten, one being exploring digital tools and producing/publishing writing both alone and in collaboration with peers. I feel confident that I would be able to implement this into my classroom. One of the suggested tools were the Smart Boards that are used in some classroom. I have had experience using them, some of which when I was in elementary school myself, and there are many ways I can think of to incorporate it into my lessons. They could work together to trace letters on the board during centers. There are also many online resources I ca use to help my students interact with each other and grow in their reading and writing skills.

A resource I found for Kindergarten Math is "Curious George - Blast Off!." In this interactive game, students help Curious George launch a rocket by counting backwards to the lift off. The numbers are displayed in colorful shapes on the screen, sometimes in order and sometimes mixed up and spread out. The student is instructed to select numbers biggest to smallest in the correct order so the rocket can launch. It starts with the student counting down from three, and works up to them counting down from ten. I would use this tool in my classroom to help my students with their counting, and it is also supposed lay the groundwork for learning subtraction later on. I think this resource is particularly useful for kindergarten students because it uses a familiar character, which can increase their interest in using the tool. It also features a fun objective, getting to launch a rocket, as well as employing fun shapes and colors to keep them engaged. The whole time they are being guided through the activity by a scientist in the upper right corner. She reads the name of the number the mouse is hovering over, and helps them navigate from the end of one level to the beginning of the next.

As a teacher it is important to be a proficient at searching the internet because it can be a great help in planning lessons and finding unique ways to engage students. The skills we learned about this week were super helpful, and I only had known about a handful of them. As a teacher it is important to have all of those tools at one's disposal so they can better prepare to teach their students, and prepare fun and engaging lessons. Something that I use that we didn't learn about this week is scholar.google.com. By placing "scholar." in front of the Google address, it refines searches to only scholarly articles. I have used this many times to help my write papers and to find trustworthy, well researched sources to gather information from.

"Rocket" by cuibonobo is licensed under CC BY 2.0