Although I am only in my second year of the education program from my past teaching experience and form my current pre-practicum work with my partnering teacher at a local middle school I have started to gather my own personal insight into what my teaching philosophy might be. What I believe in more than anything when it comes to being an educator is that teachers have to understand and acknowledge that every child contains their special types of āsmartsā. Teachers cannot generalize students and their learning as every child acquires knowledge at their own rate and way. It is the students with their unique āsmartsā that make us teachers rethink our personalized teaching views and make us grow as educators. I have gained this insight from observing and being a teacher-model to my pre-practicum students where this incredible experience has shown and taught me how different teachers manage various classes and lessons. Being in a classroom setting first hand has given me the chance to use the techniques I have observed while beginning to form my teaching style, a style that is a mix of the former favorited teachers of my past and the future teacher I wish to one day be.
Author: kirbyjarvis (Page 6 of 9)
Of my three academic years studying at the University of Victoria, I have taken a variety of courses that have guided me to be in the education program. This is a list of the following prerequisites I took and needed to be apart of the elementary education program and also the current and future courses I am registered in. The vast selection of courses ranges from all first-year science courses to my passionate education classes, each class valuable in its own way.
Elementary Education:
EDCI 250: Elementary Field Experience Seminar I
EDCI 302: Literacy and Language in Elementary or Middle School
EDCI 305A: Drama Education as a Medium for Learning I
EDCI 306A: Music in the Elementary Classroom
EDCI 336: Technology Innovation in Education
EPHE 310: Physical Education for General Classroom Teachers I
ED-D 301: Learners and Learning Environment
EDCI 300: Mathematical Processes
EDCI 303: Historical and Philosophical Foundations of Canadian Education
EDCI 307A: Arts in the Elementary Classroom I
EPHE 310: Physical Education for General Classroom Teachers II
English:
ENGL 135: Academic Reading and Writing
ENGL 146: The Literature of Our Era
Science:
CHEM 101: Properties of Material
CHEM 102: Environmental and Physical Chemistry
PHYS 102A: General Physics I
PHYS 102B: General Physics II
BIOL 186: Physiology and Cell Biology
Canadian studies:
SOCI 103: Canadian Society
CS 102: Introduction to Canadian Contemporary Issues
Math:
Math 109: Introduction to Calculus
Math 161: Mathematics for Elementary School Teachers I
Math 162: Mathematics for Elementary School Teachers II
Electives:
EPHE 143: Multidisciplinary Foundations of Physical Activity
PHIL 201: Critical Thinking
PSYC 100A: Introductory Psychology I
PSYC 100B: Introductory Psychology II
HLTH 251: Healthy Sexuality
Below is an example of an entire lesson plan, more specifically a lesson plan for a cartwheel lesson of a greater gymnastic unit. This lesson plan includes an introduction, learning objectives for the students (the psychomotor, cognitive, and affective aspects), a warm-up game, a stretching component, a demonstration/task analysis, the body of the lesson, a cumulative activity, and a cooldown. A proper lesson plan should be detailed enough so a teacher on call or anyone reading this would be able to have enough information to prepare and perform the lesson asked.
The research I have found about the advantages of using gamification in the classroom has been continuous across the areas of the web. Research shows that gamification can provide students with their
first beginning aspects of what life of an e-learner looks like, as this is the future for education it is beneficial for the student that teachers begin this process early. The main advantages I found involving gamification as a form of e-learning are:
- Gamification increases learners’ engagement by holding learners’ attention and motivating them by giving them a goal to reach. Also increases learners engagement by turningĀ students from passive observers into activeĀ participants
- Makes e-learning for fun and interactive by making their learning not just informative but also fun and engaging. Gamification also makes students believe they are an integral part oftheir learning, allowing to feel they are invited to learn more and play and not forced to by their teachers and the curriculum.
- Improves knowledge absorption and retentionĀ whether or not learning is virtual or interactive the goal . is always the same; to instill knowledge within your learners. Gamification in learning can improve knowledge absorption and boost retention by blending endorphins and the awareness of real-world benefits
- Gives learners the opportunity to see their learning in real-world applications by showing these students how their choices within the game result in consequences or rewards. If they succeed they move on to the next level, if not, they are not rewarded and must redo the level. Gamification in this sense is allowing them to witness these applications in a fun and risk-free environment that prepares them for when they do venture off into the real world.
- It enhances the overall learning experiences for kids by getting them excited about learning where they will be able to actually acquire this information at a higher level of retention. Even a subject matter that may not in a usual teaching atmosphere “speak” to the students can be absorbed more easily because learners are actually enjoying the process and are actively participating.
Tonight I finally had the guts to cook (for the first time) chicken! I realized pretty quickly that to marinate and cook chicken it doesn’t work if the chicken is rock solidly frozen. I looked up multiple ways of how to defrost chicken and found various methods, one suggested leaving the chicken out for hours to naturally defrost,Ā another said to place the chicken in the sink and let the warm water defrost it (this seemed like a ridiculous waste of water) and finally some just told me to buy chicken and cook it right away. These were all not very helpful as I was hungry and eager to begin my cooking right away, I ended up phoning my mom who told me that she always puts the frozen chick in the microwave for 3 minutes to defrost it and this works just fine. Unforutuently, the wet chicken juices kind of grossed me out, so I ended up putting it in the microwave for 6 minutes which when I ended up taking the chicken out again I found out that I had pretty much-cooked half of it… This slight set back only depressed me for a few minutes and I got right back to cooking. The marinating process was easy, simply just mixing the seasoning together, rubbing oil on the chicken and then spreading the seasoning evenly over both sides of the chicken. I chose to follow advice from the blogĀ https://www.recipetineats.com/ That recommended putting the chicken in the oven at a higher temperature for a shorter amount of time, thus allowing the chicken to keep its juiciness without drying it out. The ending results of the chicken seemed at first to be slightly concerning as the marinating substances I used ended up bubbling and burning all over the pan HOWEVER the chicken ended up being perfectly golden and cooked all the way through only in the oven for 20 minutes. The chicken ended up tasting so freakin good and I have already made it 3 more times since I originally wrote this blog.
To begin today’s class we started with changing our environment from Macluarian to the video conferencing room in Clearihue buildingĀ where we were met with a 51st-century experience of a room that contained dozens of mics, sound-absorbent walls, and cameras that had the power to find the speaker in the room and zoom in on them talking. We attempted to have a video conference lesson however technology does fail and sadly we had to say goodbye to our virtual teacher. We had initial questions that made us think about pedagogical and modality approached practices. We were asked to compare face-to-face interactions with online ones to try to think about why both are important, beneficial and why people have different opinions on both methods.
Why is face to face experience important in class?Ā
-Face to face interaction allows students a mutual understanding with the teacher
-It makes the students feel more engaged and forces them to stay alert
Should an instructor’s preference override students’ accessibility?
-I think it depends on the teacher’s values if they believe that their pedagogy rules over students accessibility then they may think that it is up to the student to adapt their own lives to attend their class in the way the teacher prefers, and sometimes this isn’t physically or mentally possible for the student.
Should Modality bias exist?
-Yes
Comparing face-to-face classes and online programs you can relate them to the levels of exclusivity, segregative, integration and inclusivity aspects.Ā According to the diagram shown, face-to-face instruction can be seen as exclusive as it does not allow the chance for everyone to attend and learn. A segregated comparison would be having the same class in a face-to-face version and an online version. Inclusion comparing these two pedagogies is having either virtual conferences or using one of the robots that allow for artificial movement and being there. A major question that we need to think about as future educators are how can we destruct modality bias to seek what we want to achieve (inclusion and learning)
Another pretty cool thing we got to see and learn about today was a cool little robot man who has the ability to move around a class while projecting an image of the person controlling the robot from a different area. This robot was very neat as it allows for an inclusive classroom environment for students who may not be able to attend because of mental or physical reasons.
Also, It was very cute and we had the opportunity to scare lots of bystanders.
For this blog, I am going to share the resources I discovered in order to teach myself a little bit more about what gamification is. I used a multitude of online resources to try to find the most basic definition of gamification possible and the answer I found that spoke the most to me and made the most sense was:
“The application of typical elements of game playing to other areas of activity, typically as an online marketing technique to encourage engagement with a product or service”
However, this is the simple definition of gamification in general, not when gamification is applied to education specifically. The research involving gamification relating to education was pretty broad as what was considered “educational” and what aspects were said to be “gamification” specifically. The research that we discovered stated that the gamification of learning is an educational approach to motivate students to learn by using video game design and game elements in learning environments. The main goal found to be in implementing gamification in classrooms is to maximize enjoyment and engagement by capturing the interest of learners and inspiring them to continue learning.Ā
Ā
It is now the 2 weeks of learning to play “Fast Car” on the ukulele and my fluidity in playing the intro to the song hasn’t changed much. It is still difficult for me to progress smoothly through the picking pattern and to match my tempo to the tempo of the actual song. One of the most annoying things I am finding it how I can play the strumming pattern and the chords at a tempo I am happy with, however, I cannot change tempo just when the song starts getting easy so I am finding myself having to play the strumming annoyingly slow to match my introduction. Another issue that has been a longterm one throughout all my ukulele playing is I seem to have a hard time controlling my fingers and getting them to go where I want them to. I believe this is partly due to lack of mobility of my fingers as they are quite small and lack the ability to stretch, but also, I find myself looking gat them trying to move them and they simply refuse. This may be an issue of beginning the ukulele or could be a legit mobility problem (needless to say I searched this problem on the web and couldn’t find an answer that made me happy). At this point in my learning, I only have a week left until I have to submit my video, this concerns me slightly because I feel like compared to my progress on “Riptide” my progress on “Fast Car” is kind of pathetic. I know that I am still just beginning to learn the ukulele and that picking is extremely difficult especially when adding in singing and strumming later on. Yet, I have 10 days to improve and try my best to reach this goal so there is no giving up now. I am starting a new plan of action by practicing each picking sequence and change on its own until I am happy with the tempo and consistency, and then after strumming them all together. I hope this will help me feel more confident and agile in the picking patterns and will also lead to the strumming sounding a lot more fluid. I will post my final reflection blog the night before the final evaluation to see how these next few days go, hopefully, I will see the progression I want.
Being apart of the education program, you get a lot of opportunities to experience teaching opportunities whether it be in front of peers or by going out into the field and teaching children. I go the opportunity to teach a grade 7/8 dance club practice with peer candidate teachers and it was our job to create an appropriate lesson plan that we could use for our teaching. The lesson plan we created is simple, it is an across the floor combination that combines 3 main skills of dance, turning, footwork and flexibility. We chose to create a very diverse assortment of exercises because of the skill level of the class. All of the students apart of the club were beginners and by branching out from usual combinations we were able to appeal to the skills of more learners. Alike the other lesson plans we had a warm-up activity, the demonstrations/task analysis of the combinations, our body of the lesson which was the learning of the combinations, the cumulative activity of participating in the across-the-floor combinations and finally our cool down.
T’was the night before reading break and all through the kitchen pasta shells were stuffing filled with ricotta and spinach. Based on my pretty incredible poem you might be able to tell what I am cooking up tonight… that’s right SPINACH AND RICOTTA STUFFED SHELLS! Now the back story behind this inspiration is quite a windy one, it started with a post I saw on Instagram, which led to one of my friends recreating the same recipe, which led to my tasting of my friend’s delicious meal, which ENDED with my looking up and making the recipe myself! It was a fairly easy recipe to follow however was pretty time consuming and as a person who lives life in the fast lane it did make me kinda annoyed waiting so long. I began by cooking the big pasta shells and cooking the spinach and then mixed all the other ingredients together. It was very messy filling the shells but since in the recipe you end up pouring the remaining sauce over in the dish it wasn’t a big deal in the end.
I pretty much copied the recipe exactly, however, with my friend’s advice I put a dollop of pesto on each little shell to add some tasty flavour! In the end, this recipe was ridiculously tasty and my only possible change next time would be maybe making the pasta with beef, just to add some protein.
Recent Comments