Saturday, July 29, 2017

MAT 671 assignment 3A


One event during my education where I was inspired to perform was as a fourth grader during an oral language competition. I memorized a poem titled “My father’s hands” it was a long poem. I love poems so It was easy for me to memorize and I did ok reciting it, but I was nervous in front of a crowd. I still like the opportunity I had to recite the poem and take steps in overcoming my stage freight. After that experience, I was at ease in assignments that required me to present in front of the class.  


One event during my education that completely deflated me was in college when I had to create a power point and present in class. During my beginning years of college, I had no idea about technology or how to even begin to create a power point. The assignment was stressful and overwhelming. Once I completed and presented my assignment, I was glad that I did not allow the assignment to defeat me. I completed the assignment well and was grateful that my professor had us complete an assignment using this tool that I currently use frequently.


From my experiences as a student, I think I will encourage, guide and offer learning opportunities that will help my students take educational risk. I want to provide learning experiences that are new to my students and help them feel confident in completing the assignment.





                    

Thursday, July 13, 2017

Learning style surveys




Hello, my name is Ana Nunez, I love being part of a child's learning experience and I hope that my teaching strategies and learning opportunities offer fun and engaging experiences for my students. I try to make my lessons appropriate, and take into consideration the different learning styles of my students. To meet the needs of diverse learners, I get to know my students and learn their strengths and areas of need and create lessons that are engaging and that my students can relate to and be active participants.

After taking the several surveys, I discovered that my personality was of a facilitator, my teaching style was of a facilitator and my learning style was collaborative. I think my personality and my relationship with my students will be one of open communication and problem solving. I like to get to know my students and find solutions to help them better understand a concept and master a goal. I think my teaching and learning styles will help my students feel confident in asking questions, using their critical thinking skills and communicating with their peers in group learning. The different teaching strategies I will use, will help diverse learners and help my students be successful.


Saturday, July 1, 2017

Annotated Bibliography


MAT 670 Assignment 4.B

Book choice: Gregory, G. Kaufeldt, M. Mattos, M.  (2016). Best Practices at Tier 1 Daily  Differentiation for Effective Instruction. Bloomington, IN: Solution Tree Press.

After reviewing my classmates book, I noticed that I was the only one who chose this book, as a course book choice. There are many books out on the market that cover best practice strategies, but I chose this book for the variety of strategies. There are three authors that contribute to this book, with education backgrounds. There are 7 points that are covered in this book; collaborative core instruction, creating brain friendly environments, finding each student’s learning sweet spot, developing a powerful core curriculum, differentiating instruction, using data to inform instruction and the last is building cognitive rigor, depth & complexity. Each of these topics is thoroughly covered and emphasize on good teaching practices. Each topics offers tools and strategies that teachers can use to help in their teaching and to help students be successful in learning.
I enjoyed reading the information in this book and using it as a course book throughout this class, I would highly recommend reading this book for the useful information that it contains and how it pertains to education and teaching practices. 


Sunday, June 25, 2017

5 Project based learning strategies

1. Create PBL content lessons that meet the different learning modalities of students. Provide a variety of experiences that address learning styles such as; sensory, visual, auditory, tactile, and indoor/outdoor experiences.

2.Individual (PBL)- Allow students to individually explore, investigate, record and communicate results. Allowing individual experiences helps students to use their problem solving and critical thinking skills.

3. Peer Pair (PBL)-  Allowing two students to work on a learning experience together, helps students improve their communication, interaction and problem solving skills. Peer pair also encourages constructive feedback within peers.

4. Small groups (PBL)- Create small groups to complete project learning. Groups of 4 students, allows students to collaborate and interact. Small groups give students the opportunity to communicate and delegate portions of the group work.

5.  Create PBL  content lessons to the interest of the students. Proving lessons that pertain to the interest of the students helps students to retain the information and relate to it. Students will use their knowledge of their interest to complete the learning experience.

Sunday, June 18, 2017

 Reading Comprehension strategies.

1.      Read Aloud - reading a book to a group of students and discussing characters, events, or new words in book. Giving students the opportunity to listen and discuss the book will help students comprehend the reading material. Having a discussion and asking open ended questions helps students use their critical thinking skills.

2.      Computer/headphones- Allowing students to listen and follow along on a computer read aloud, allows students to get a visual of events happening in book and the opportunity to hear the pronunciation of new words. Computer read-aloud allows students to read independently.

3.      Small group- Allow students to communicate about the book just read. Give students a large post it poster paper to write down about characters, events, new vocabulary, the plot of story, and their thoughts or opinions of book. Small groups allow students to participate in cooperative learning, peer communication and interaction.

4.      Dictations- Allow students to write down, draw or talk about what they have read.  Allowing students, the opportunity to independently recall, retell and describe events in a book will help them to comprehend the reading material.

Monday, June 12, 2017

5 sources for Academic vocabulary development

1. Introducing new books into the classroom and discussing novel words within the books is a good way to introduce new vocabulary.
2. Ready Rosie is an app that models learning activities for parents to engage and interact with their child to support their learning.  Language and interaction is modeled through videos. This app shows parents how to support their child's learning, expand their language and offers video modeling for  different ages such as; baby, pre-k, and elementary.  https://www.readyrosie.com/
3.   Teach first website offers many resources to review and implement into the classroom that will help students develop and expand their vocabulary. http://www.teachersfirst.com/vocabulary.cfm
4. The website Reading Rockets is a good source to use that offers teaching strategies in many areas of reading. There is suggestions of reading material, videos and also offers resources for parents.
http://www.readingrockets.org/article/top-10-resources-vocabulary
5. Vocabulary.com is a website which intended audience is students, educators and everyone. This websites helps teachers who teach 5th grade and up by offering a teaching tool to enhance their students vocabulary development.

Introduction/academic vocabulary development

This webpage was created to offer helpful resources and information about educational topics. One area of development is vocabulary development. Vocabulary development as defined by Wikipedia, as " a process by which people acquire words". Vocabulary development is needed for student to understand the meaning of words, language, conversation and other written or verbal materials that students  may be exposed to. " A limited vocabulary can create a major barrier to success in the classroom." (Gregory, p.2637, 2016). Finding and using the best strategies to help students build a strong vocabulary should be a goal for all educators.



References
 
Gregory, G. Kaufeldt, M. Mattos, M.  (2016) Best Practices at Tier 1 Daily Differentiation for   Effective   Instruction. Bloomington, IN: Solution Tree Press.


Sunday, May 14, 2017

Differentiated teaching and learning activities




In my preschool class room, I try to make the learning content engaging for all my students. I try to incorporate music, movement and a sensory experience in all my lessons. I feel students need to be able to move, hear, touch and explore what they are learning. Using this approach helps me to reach the different learning styles of my students such as my; visual, auditory and tactile learners.  An example of a lesson I taught was when I was teaching my students to identify and write their name. I used magnet letters to have them identify letters and spell out their name, and shaving cream on the tables to have them write out their name. I also hide letters on the playground for students to explore and find the letters in their name. With the different experiences offered, I could reach different learning styles.


Introduction

Introduction


Hi, my name is Ana Nunez, I have been teaching preschool for 16 years. Before being a preschool teacher I was and instructional aide at a local elementary school for 5 years. I enjoy teaching and offering learning experiences. I hope to make my lessons, fun and engaging for all my students.