Teachers Have Rules Too

This week as one of our class actives, we are required to find a online article from The Best of Ontario-Educators Daily. This online daily newspaper is created by Doug Peterson who has a large online presence when it comes to teaching resources. The article that I chose to use for todays activities discusses the 15 Rules of Great Teaching.

I found this article to be very interesting to read through. I like it because it's a good reminder to us as teacher candidates to not get so overwhelmed with the demand of the curriculum and to remember those specific ideas of planning with a standard in mind.

The rules that are outlined in this article are:

http://bit.ly/1T6Ak2Z

1. Start Small
       --> Definitely important because it helps us to understand that we don't have to have everything perfect from the beginning. Starting off slow allows the students to find goals that will be attainable.

2. There is one one way
       --> Important to remember because it every students has their own ideas and learning styles

3. Trust the people around you

4. In leanring, curiosity is everything
       --> I find this one in particular important because I am such a strong believer in what students can learn from inquiry and passion based learning. Learning through this style of teaching allows students to learn by doing and see first hand how something is affected or crated.

5. Experiment, experiment, experiment

6. You don't have to start planning with a standard

7. Teaching is always changing
       --> Another important concept. There is always new research and innovative ways of teaching. There is never a dull moment in the world of teaching, those who love to teach love to learn!

8. Be concise

9. Know your Pedagogy

10. Help students ask great questions.
       --> If you are going to teach using curiosity how do expect students to learn anything if there are no probing questions to guide and facilitate their learning?

11. Be interesting
       --> There are so many resources, there is no excuse for simple boring worksheets

12. It's not about you

13. Love your content

14. Be your students' biggest cheerleader

15. Learning should disrupt

These are all great 'rules' to keep in mind as we are about to head into our teaching Block 1!


Genius Hour Update/ Weekly Class Reflection

This week in class other than the learning objective we also discussed multiple different ways of using the web in our classroom. One really interesting one that could be used for teaching students about synonyms. The tool that could be used is Wordle. Here is an example of a wordle that I created about my genius hour topic.

Another activity that we created for class this week was a trailer for our genius hour. I really enjoyed making this video in iMovie. iMovie was very easy to use because it has templates available that allows you to change the words and customize it without starting completely from scratch. Check out my video!!!