A Book That Stands Out To Me

I absolutely love The Mysteries of Harris Burdick, by Chris Van Allsburg. This book is a series of illustrations with a title and a picture caption. The pictures do not go together, but rather they are all pictures out of different books that haven’t actually been written. This book is fantastic to use with creative writing. If you put up just one of the pictures, all of your students could write a different fantasy story based on that one picture and caption. It could be a really cool lesson in creativity to share all the different places students took their stories based on the same image. It could also be a cool character lesson to show that we all have different backgrounds and have had different experiences and even though we are seeing the same picture, we are all seeing it differently. We are all unique and none of the answers are wrong, just different, and really great to share with our friends.

My favorite image in this book is titled A Strange Day in July. The picture caption reads, “He threw with all his might but the third stone came skipping back.” The picture is in black and white. There is a boy who looks to be about eight years old and a girl who looks six or seven. You can’t see either of their faces because their backs are turned to us. You can see just a bit of sandy beach at the bottom of the page. There are large rocks in the sand and some wild grass sticking out here and there. The whole top of the page is water, and the sun is shining on the water so spectacularly. There are sun spots glistening all over the water so that you can tell is a sun shiny day. However, neither child is dressed for a day at the beach: the boy is wearing long pants and a long sleeved shirt. The girls is wearing a fancy light colored dress. It looks like she could wear it in a wedding or to church on Sunday. Both of their hair is shining in the sunlight as well. There is one rock hovering over the water. You can’t tell if it is skipping away or towards the beach. 

My Favorite Childhood Book

I have many favorite books, but I think I have to go with the Harry Potter series as my all time favorite. I can’t pick just one since the whole story is really what I love. I began reading these books when the third book came out and I was 11 years old. I really feel like I grew up with them since the last book wasn’t released until I was almost 20. I read my copy of Harry Potter 4 so many times that it is currently being held together with duct tape.

If you have been hiding under a rock for the past 15 years and haven't heard of Harry Potter, it is a series about an orphan boy who discovers he is a wizard and is shipped of to Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry to learn how to be a wizard. He often gets himself into trouble and comes face to face on many occasion with the most evil dark wizard of all time, He-Who-Must-Not-Be-Named, aka Voldemort. Besides Voldemort, he has lots of enemies and conflicts as well as some amazing friendships with the most peculiar of people.

The Harry Potter series is a wonderful story of friendship and perseverance and adventure. While the blockbuster movies did a good job, I still think they are nothing compared to the magic of the books. I have often heard of controversy surrounding Harry Potter and people not wanting their kids to read it because it is about witchcraft. I think that as long as we talk to our kids about fact vs. fiction there is no reason they can't read books like Harry Potter. 

Google Apps Reflection

I did not like working with the classroom 2.0 blog platform. It was one I was previous unfamiliar with and I found it difficult to use. Some of the more dominant blog sites I have found are more user friendly.

          There are so many Google Apps available that I definitely do not know all of them exist. The ones I have worked with extensively include Google Docs/Drive, Google Calendar and Gmail. All of these are used my entire school to help us be more productive. Instead of printing a million forms for the teachers in my school to use, we just put the form on Google docs and anyone who needs it can print it off. We also use the shared portion of the calendar to keep our work calendars aligned. I would like to work more with Google forms and Google sites. I have created both forms and sites to use in my classroom this year, so we shall see how that turns out. I am hopeful for successful immersion. I could also use a Google site to communicate with parents about what is going on in the classroom. I use my Gmail to send communication to parents weekly and keeping all of their addresses in a Gmail mailing list is extremely helpful.  

Differences in online vs traditional plans

Activity 3: Project - Finding Similarities and Differences between Online and Traditional Learning

Online Learning	Traditional Learning
Standards Learning activities Assessments Incorporates Blooms and Marzanos Lessons need to be more flexible Incorporate a lot of technology Independent work only No disruption of the lessons	Standards Learning activities Assessments Incorporates Blooms and Marzanos Rigid structure Technology not as predominant Can use group work Plan for specials and brain breaks and assemblies

I did my interview of an online student, not a teacher. So I do not have access to a specific online lesson plan. However, I have gleaned a lot of information about online lesson planning in my research of the differences between online and traditional school.

I think that there are a lot of similarities between online lessons and traditional lessons. There are probably more similarities than differences. I do feel though that there is a lot more “fluffy stuff” in traditional lessons. We need to teach kids procedures and put in brain breaks and account for fire drills and things such as that. But the heart of the lesson plans, the actual instruction is very similar. Many of the Marzano strategies are present in both types of lessons. Homework and practice are a little bit different in online learning, because the learning is occurring at home.

Online Student Interview

I interviewed an 8^th grade student of online education. Her name is Aspen and she attends Connections Academy online. She very much enjoys the online learning environment because of the freedom it gives her in her day to day life and studies. She also likes getting to sleep in every day. Even though she has more flexibility, she still has a daily schedule. The day begins for her at 8 or 9am. She works on classwork on her computer for much of the day and is usually done by 3 or 4 in the afternoon. She does have “homework” in that she has extra projects that she works on each evening. So her time constraint is very similar to a traditional school student. Aspen had never before been to a traditional school, so she has nothing to compare her online experience to. At the beginning of each school year, Connections Academy holds a picnic for all teachers and students to meet and mingle. There are also face to face end of the year parties. They do follow the same school calendar as brick and mortar schools. Other than that, she does not meet with teachers face to face throughout the school year. At the beginning of every school year, students at this online school watch a video tour of the “school” Internet platform. This gives them an overview of how the website works and what to expect during the school year. Because Connections Academy is a public school Aspen still has to take standardized state testing (CSAP/TCAP/PARCC.) She must go to a school building to take these tests, but only once a year. I was very curious about electives for online school students. Aspen said that she doesn’t get all electives, but she does do art. The school sends supplies to her house, she completes the art projects according to the directions online, and then scans and emails her projects to her teachers. The entierity of her workload is independent. Even though there are other students attending Connections Academy, there are never group projects or discussions involving other online students. I was very excited to find out that Internet schools do have field trips though. Students are brought to pre-determined places by their parents. There are not other students or teachers in attendance though. All in all, I was very surprised by a lot of what I heard about her educational experience. It works very well for her and I think that is great.