Week 3

In week three things are really starting to pick up in my classes. I feel like I am really growing in all areas on my road to becoming a teacher. Life is really starting to teach me that things do not always go as planned but I am slowly learning how to just keep moving on and stay focused on my main goal. My main goal is to graduate in the spring of 2018 from Gardner-Webb with my degree in elementary education. Tuesday for class we traveled to Washington Elementary and met the teachers and toured the school, I had a great time and I am super pumped to be able to spend the semester helping out such a great group of teachers at a great school. Thursdays class we spent majority of the time talking about how to make generalizations between two concepts. This discussion really helped me to gain a deeper understanding of what a generalization is. We also discussed SMART goals and Lindsey started out with her goal and by the end of the discussion she had a completely different goal and I learned a lot while talking through the goals and I am excited to begin my personal development plan. We touched on edTPA at the end of class just a little bit and the biggest thing that stuck out to me was when Dr. Parker used Mallory, Colleen, and Megan and said edTPA wants to know how you helped the AIG student to learn, how you helped the "bubble" student to rise above the bubble, and how you helped the struggling student to rise up. NCTCS states that as a teacher I need to create a respectful environment for my students to learn and I believe edTPA has a direct correlation to that. Overall, week three was a success for me even after a few bumps in the road, I am still growing as a future teacher and I cannot be any more excited.

Week 2

This week I did a lot of learning about Concepts vs Topics. I learned that concepts are the big ideas of things and topics are small pieces within the concept. Outside of class while completing my assignments for week two I also learned how to make a voice over for my info-graphics and top tweets of the week. I will connect what I have learned in week two into my classroom by using the big ideas of things instead of small facts. Also, I will incorporate my new knowledge of technology into my future classroom. I will demonstrate leadership in my classroom because I am personally responsible for my students success on things such as concepts. I will provide a safe environment for all of my students by incorporating different things for all learning styles. I will radiate knowledge about each topic I teach by knowing the over arching concept of the facts. As a teacher, facilitating knowledge will be a part of my daily classroom routine by me knowing how to use technology and me knowing the difference between concepts and topics. I will reflect on my practice by recording how well my students absorbed what I had taught them for the day.

Welcome To Spring 2017

Today I began my Tuesday/ Thursday classes for the Spring 2017 semester. I am excited and nervous at the same time because in a year I will hopefully be student teaching. It feels as if I just started going to Gardner- Webb. Today was overwhelming with all of the information that I received but I am excited to continue on my path to becoming an elementary school teacher. In order to stay organized for this course, I have written all of the due dates from the course calendar in my personal planner so I can keep up with due dates.
Today I learned that Social Studies education is very important to teach your students. It is not something you just teach for a test. It is crucial to teach social studies for your students to become proper citizens in their community. I did not realize just how important social studies education was until I read the article. I am excited to learn more about Social Studies and how to teach it to my future students.