Assessment Chart

	Assessment FOR Learning	Assessment AS Learning	Assessment OF Learning
Who Is Responsible	Teacher	Students	Teacher
What Is The Information Used For	·        To understand what students are thinking ·        To know how to adjust learning plans ·        To know that steps to take next ·        To find out where students are at ·        Ex diagnostic assessment	·        Ex Self-assessment ·        Become good self-reflectors and self-monitors ·        To prevent misunderstandings ·        For students to learn how to judge their own learning	·        Assessment for decision making ·        Evidence to make judgements ·        For reporting, grading, etc ·        Often used the most ·        Ex summative assessment

Elements in Planning Chart

Here is a chart I created with my classmates which defines the different elements in educational planning.

Instructional Planning: Backwards Design                                       Grade Group:
ELEMENTS	GROWING SUCCESS MESSAGE	TEACHER CANDIDATE FRIENDLY LANGUAGE
Achievement Chart Categories	A standard, province- wide guide to be used by teachers to make judgements about student work based on clear performance standards.	The achievement chart categories include: Knowledge and Understanding, Communication, Application and Thinking. Each category expands across 4 levels. Level 4 being the highest and level 1 being the lowest. Teachers use the achievement chart categories for every subject, and every assignment and every test. Every rubric created uses the achievement chart to assess students work. There are general definitions under each and they expand as you go across the levels to what is expected from each student.
Learning Skills and Work Habits	The skills and habits that can be demonstrated by a student across all subjects, courses and grades and in other behaviour at school. These learning skills and work habits promote student achievement of the curriculum expectations. The six skills and habits are: responsibility, organization, independent work, collaboration, initiative, and self-regulation.	The six learning skills and work habits: responsibility, independent work, organization, independent work, collaboration, initiative and self-regulation are skills and habits that should be seen in all aspects of student learning and school life. Students receive feedback such as: Excellent, Good, Satisfactory and Needs Improvement in each course, grade and aspect of school life from their teachers. Students are encouraged to improve upon these skills and habits until the very end of the year in order to be the best overall student that they can be for themselves and their school community.
Learning Goals	Brief statements that describe for a student what he/she should know and be able to do by the end of a period of instruction	The goals a student should have by the end of an instructional lesson.
Purpose and Nature of Assessment	Assessment for learning-diagnostic assessment is used by teachers to determine what students already know; formative assessment is used by teachers to monitor students’ progress towards achieving the overall and specific expectations Assessment as learning-formative assessment is used by students to provide feedback to other students Assessment of learning- summative assessment is used by the teacher to summarize learning at a given point in time	Assessment for learning- diagnostic assessment is used by teachers to determine what students already know; formative assessment is used by teachers to monitor students’ progress in achieving curriculum expectations Assessment as learning- formative assessment is used by students to provide feedback to their peers Assessment of learning- summative assessment is used by the teacher to summarize learning at any point in time
Success Criteria	Standards or specific descriptions of successful attainment of learning goals developed by teachers on the basis of criteria in the achievement chart, and discussed and agreed upon in collaboration with students that are used to determine to what degree a learning goal has been achieved. Criteria describe what success “looks like”, and allow the teacher and student to gather information about the quality of student learning.	A list of learning goals that is to be met in order to be successful developed by the teachers. It is a way for students to see what they must do in order to achieve the necessary criteria.
Assessment Strategies	The process of gathering, from a variety of sources, information that accurately reflects how well a student is achieving the curriculum expectations in a subject or course. Teachers use a variety of educational assessment strategies and tools, which may include (but are not limited to) direct observation, portfolios, journals, rubrics, tests, projects, and self- and peer assessment. Oral interviews, learning logs, or portfolio	The ways that teachers can assess students to determine their knowledge of the material. It can be delivered through means like oral interviews, portfolios, journals, tests, and many more. They can be changed in order to meet a student’s specific needs.
Assessment Tools	Teachers use a variety of educational assessment strategies and tools, which may include (but are not limited to) direct observation, portfolios, journals, rubrics, tests, projects, and self- and peer assessment. Data from assessments, along with information from parents and others who have worked with the student, provide a detailed picture of the student’s learning needs.	Ways in which teachers can evaluate students’ progress and work.
Differentiated Instruction	An approach to instruction designed to maximize growth by considering the needs of each student at his or her current stage of development and offering that student a learning experience that responds to his or her individual needs. Differentiated instruction recognizes that equity of opportunity is not achieved through equal treatment and takes into account factors such as the student’s readiness, interest, and learning preferences	Ensuring that instruction is manageable for all students in the class regardless of individual differences and/or barriers and providing different avenues of learning for these differences.

Reading Fluency: The Key to Reading Comprehension

Introduction
     Welcome again to my readers! Thank you for taking the time to explore this educational blog which I hope is a wealth of resources for you. This post will explore a very important topic in literacy education that has been a topic of much discussion for many years, reading, with a focus on reading fluency. As literacy teachers we know that the goal for our students is to learn how to comprehend texts, but this cannot be done if the student does not know how to read fluently. This is because the student will have to place the majority of their attention decoding the words and grouping the phrases, rather than placing deep thought into what they are reading. Therefore, reading fluency becomes a crucial step that students must take before they are able to read deeply, a skill required for higher grade levels and for everyday life.

Reading Fluency: A Resource Overview
     As I was exploring this topic I found one particular resource which I found to be a deep well of knowledge on how to teach students to read fluently. It is a resource entitled Reading Fluency found through the Ontario Ministry of Education website where teachers can find a plethora of documents to help them in their literacy teaching. Here is a link to the particular article I am discussing: http://www.edu.gov.on.ca/eng/literacynumeracy/inspire/research/reading_fluency.pdf. It is such a valuable resource because it not only discusses what Reading Fluency is, but lists strategies and activities instructors can use to teach those strategies. It outlines the key elements of reading fluency as automaticity, phrasing, and expression. Automaticity refers to a person’s ability to recognize a word and immediately know its meaning. Phrasing focuses on the ability to assemble words together to understand the text. Finally, expression looks at being able to recognize visual cues in a text and how they improve the meaning of a text. 

Classroom Connections
     Perhaps the main reason to explain why Reading Fluency is such a helpful resource is because of its helpful ways to explain how reading fluency can be taught and activities I can use in my own literacy teaching. It can be used for older students if they struggle with difficult words, but I believe it is best suited for grades 4-6. For example, the article discusses the use of shared reading to demonstrate reading elements like expression, tone and rhythm, which is a practice I can use in my own teaching to show my students how to read a text. In addition, the article provides many activities to teach students phonological awareness. Although students in grades 4-6 will have a good understanding of this, the activities like using tongue twisters to recognize the sounds of words. Finally, the article talks about the connection between reading fluently and writing. For example, a teacher can use word walls that students must incorporate into their writing which can help develop their ability to recognize and learn words.

Henn, Helga. "Fluency Checklist" (Online image) Retrieved from https://uk.pinterest.com/pin/192810427767414864/. 

Other Helpful Resources
     When I looked into this topic I discovered many other resources that can be assist the Reading Fluency article. Firstly, I found a website article which also discusses how to teach reading fluency entitled Developing Fluent Readers (found here http://www.readingrockets.org/article/developing-fluent-readers). Here you will find out what research says about reading fluently and some suggestions on how students should read in order to develop their fluency. It also works in a progressive manner where it discusses how to teach early readers, then how to change your teaching approach for the older students. Another article that I found was one entitled 5 Surefire Strategies for Developing Reading Fluency (found here http://www.scholastic.com/teachers/article/5-surefire-strategies-developing-reading-fluency) where it lists ways teachers can help students develop their reading automaticity. From model reading to a readers theater this resource helps teachers show how they can change the way their students read based on their needs. Finally, here are a couple videos from teachers who help explain how they teach reading fluency to their students.

  

Here is a video to show how a teacher can provide feedback to build on a student's reading ability.

How it Connects to Curriculum
     The purpose of learning the topic of reading fluency is so important to literacy teachers because it is so fundamental to the literacy learning of a student. In addition, it is listed as a necessary component of the Ontario Ministry of Education curriculum with specific expectations that need to be met. The main expectations that I believe are discussed by the resources listed above are: "automatically read and understand high-frequency words, most regularly used words, and words of personal interest or significance in a variety of reading contexts" and "read appropriate texts at a sufficient rate and with sufficient expression to convey the sense of the text readily to the reader and an audience." With the resources that I have presented here I believe teachers can find a wealth of information on how to get their students to read fluently.

First Post for My Assessment Class

      Welcome readers to my page on Assessment, Evaluation and Reporting! Here I will be writing about what I am learning in my Assessment course and my reflections on assessment in education. In class today we got a chance to discuss what our experiences have been like in our own education with regards to assessment. Here I will provide some of my own experiences and beliefs on the topic education assessment.

     Although I do not have many negative experiences with assessment in my school career that I can recollect, I do remember the teachers who put forth effort in their assessments. I remember as a student how frustrated I would be if I received a mark that I was not satisfied with and there was no feedback provided to help me understand why I got that mark. This was especially true for classes without concrete right or wrong answers, like English for example. One experience I particularly remember was a social studies project I put a lot of effort into, but got a grade significantly lower than I expected. I was more frustrated with the lack of feedback as to why I received that grade because the teacher would simply circle marks on the rubric. In this particular case it was not the grade itself that I was upset with, but the fact that I had no direction as to how to improve or how it could be corrected. However, this is not to say that I do not have good memories of being assessed. I remember one English teacher I had who knew that I struggled with interpreting texts would always be prepared to not only help me with an assignment, but would also provide a lot of feedback so that I could improve as a writer. I believe that this teacher made me a better writer because she took the time to show me how I can be better. Her assessments would be fair, but would also be graded based on whether or not I was improving and correcting my mistakes. Another experience I remember was when one of my teachers helped me in math through his assessments. This teacher knew that I struggled in math but always wanted to be better. So, instead of just simply marking an answer wrong he would take the time to mark down where in my work I went wrong so that I learned from my mistakes. As a result, I could learn from these mistakes and apply it to different questions on the same math topic to test my knowledge in the material. Due to his efforts, I got one of the highest grades in math that I had ever received and felt more prepared about math in the next grade.

            There is no doubt that my experiences with assessment have influenced my beliefs in it now, but I do not believe that this is negative if taken the right way. As with any experience, my philosophy is to learn from the positive aspects by incorporating it into my own life, and learn from the negative ones by reflecting on how it could have been handled differently. I applied this philosophy to my beliefs on assessment in order to construct my approach to it. Firstly, I believe that assessment should be fair and unbiased, meaning any student has the potential to do better or worse on an assignment and that grades should be determined by biases the teacher might have. I also believe, especially with regards to elementary grade levels, that assessment should come in multiple forms. For example, a student’s math grade should just be simply determined by their mark on a test, but through observation of their effort, participation in class, and ability to communicate the material in different ways. Assessment should also be descriptive, in that it should be made fully clear why a student received a particular grade. To me this is more than just rubrics, but clear explanations about why a student failed or succeeded at reaching a certain level. Finally, I think that the purpose of assessment is to show students how they can improve and monitor their learning. Sometimes I see some teachers just give a student a grade, but no feedback as to how to improve. In my opinion, I believe that this defeats the purpose of assessment and that students should always be taught what steps they can take to improve their abilities. All in all, as teachers I believe that everything we do should be focused on improving the education of our students and assessment is central to this goal when done correctly. I am eager and excited to learn about this important role that educators have. 

October 18 Math Reflection

     This week was another exciting week in my mathematics education where I was enriched with knowledge about how to teach mathematical concepts, but also how to be an effective educator. The concept that was focused on this week was rate, ratio, and proportional thinking with an emphasis on comparing fractions. Once again, my instructor gave tremendous examples at how fractions can be taught to children in a way that helps them visualize it and connect to real world scenarios. I remember when I was a student in the younger grades I was always interested in how the math that I was learning could apply to real life, and now I believe that this is integral to effective mathematics instruction. One particular example I enjoyed was the story of Mr.Tan’s broken piece of art that we put back together. In this activity students test their ability to visualize fractions through the broken pieces. In the picture below you can see how the different pieces represent a fraction of the overall piece of art. This would an interesting activity I think I could use in my practicum as an introductory activity to get my students engaged and to get their minds focused on math.  My instructor also began with a question that involved ordering fractions from least to greatest in a scenario that children could relate to. It is a great example of an effective question because everyone can begin, yet it can be altered in a way that can be challenging. Something that my instructor teaches that has always resonated with me is that effective questions have: “a wide base and a high ceiling.” This is a quote that I know I can take with me into my practicum when I am planning my lessons because it is an effective way to measure the effectiveness of the activity or problem I developed.

     

     The class was also one that revealed another important lesson for me as an educator, just because I was taught one way it does not mean that I should teach my students the same way. Unfortunately, I believe too many teachers today teach math in a way that they were taught, ways that were meant for computers not children. I found this to be true all too often when I was in school. Even to this day there are math concepts that I know how to calculate because I practiced the algorithm, but do not understand why. One example of this is in the picture below that demonstrates an algorithm for dividing fractions where instead of cross multiplying you simply divide the numerator and denominator. Here is just another example of how math can be simplified much better than the way it was previously taught. 

I believe that we owe our students the most updated information and not confine them to the way we were instructed. This represents the one theme that has resonated with me throughout this course; do not let the way you were instructed affect the way you teach your students. Hopefully, with this message, students today will think about math differently than we did. To end this post I will leave you with a video of Jo Boaler about the importance of being able to think about math in a conceptual manner. 

Final Technology Class Reflection

     I am saddened that I have completed my technology course during my Teacher Education, but it does give me a chance to reflect on what I have learned. To be honest I was not as open about using technology in the classroom as I should have been, but this course has changed my perspective. I have learned that using technology to enhance your lessons is not about just making it interesting, but it gives students an opportunity to get engaged with a lesson in a way that they want. I have been on a journey of personal growth where my comfort level with using technology has been greatly enhanced. I have also learned that you do not have to have a deep technological knowledge to be able to use technology in your classroom, but that there are many user friendly tools that teachers can use as resources. With the right amount of time and patience there are a plethora of tools that I can know incorporate into a lesson to get students involved.
     My feeling towards technological education has changed because of the many skills I have learned throughout. Each time we complete a task or assignment I get a chance to learn a new tool and reflect how I can apply it to the classroom. I have learned about resources that I can use to have students discuss schoolwork outside the classroom using platforms that every student can see and also resources that I can use to teach outside the traditional classroom. I have also learned the importance of online safety and how to teach my students to remain professional in the digital world. I have also developed skills like learning how to code, write online, and using the online world to explore resources.
     All of this knowledge I am confident I can use in my own teaching practice. No matter what subject I am teaching I know there are different ways I can relay information and communicate with my students. I feel that this is important to know because knowledge about using technology in a professional manner is critical to know in the present day workplace, therefore my students must know this information in order to be prepared to enter it. In conclusion, I am thankful that I went through this educational journey. I believe it has made me a better educator and more prepared to enter the classroom with an arsenal of resources.

Week 5 Reflection Post

     It is almost time to reveal my TED talk and as I finalize my research for Genius Hour topic I am given the chance to reflect on what I have learned so far. However, I will not give up too much in this post because I will leave the real information sharing to my TED talk. Just as a reminder, my Genius Hour question is: what are the benefits of participation in extra-curricular school sports for students? I took on this question because I know there are a lot of skeptics who believe that sports are a waste of time or just simply something fun for students to do, but I have learned that this is not the case. I have learned that the benefits of sports for students are numerous, but I feel can be narrowed down into four main categories: life skills, physiological benefits, social benefits, and academic benefits. I decided to focus on the benefits outside of academic in order to broaden my scope because I found so much rich information about how athletics can support the overall development of a young person that I could not pass it up. Life skills like determination and perseverance benefit the student inside and outside of the classroom. I also got a chance to read about some adults who were surveyed about their experiences with athletics and got interesting responses about how they feel athletics developed them as a person. These responses revealed how they were taught skills as student-athletes that has been ingrained in their memory. I also found lots of interesting information about how sports promote a healthy school community by fostering school pride and giving students a reason to be excited about their school. Below you will find a learning object that I developed to display some of the key ideas that I found in my research. Stay tuned for my TED talk!

          This week has also given me an opportunity to reflect on what I have learned about using technology for education. I must admit that I have not always been open to wide uses of technology, especially in my teaching, but I have learned about so many tools that I can use for my students that I feel will benefit their education. Simple tools like the wordle page I made (as seen above) or powtoon can get students engaged and excited about whatever they are learning. One of my goals as a teacher is to get students to have so much fun learning that they forget they are doing it, and I believe this can be done using various technological tools. With all the knowledge I have gained I am excited to start my teaching using all of the tools and strategies I have learned!

October 3 Class Reflection- Working with Fractions

     This week was once again another interesting week in my mathematics education learning. Like other weeks the class would focus on a specific mathematical concept, but would reveal so much more about approaches to teaching math. This week we talked about fractions and what it so important about them. One aspect I believe is important to teach to students is how the concept that they are learning can apply to the real world. When a teacher does this, it reveals to the student the importance of what they are learning which I believes gets students excited about math. For example, since we learned about fractions this week I could use pizza as a demonstration of how fractions work. I could show the students that with the same size pizza you could cut it into smaller pieces, like 1/12, or make large pieces, like ¼. Either way by using this example students can see that the pizza never got smaller, it was simply divided up differently. Another interesting example that an educator could use is with a Hershey’s chocolate bar, as seen in the video below. Here you could have the students interact with the lesson and have something that will get them excited; I know I thoroughly enjoyed being a part of this lesson.

            This week we also got a chance to see how physical manipulatives can assist students in their learning of fractions. We got a chance the use tools like cut paper plates and blocks to show what fractions are, a portion of a whole. From the activities we did with these manipulatives I gained a plethora of ideas about how I can insert these activities into my own placement. Even though I am placed with a grade 7 and 8 class, I believe that some of the principles used in these activities can be transferred to more difficult mathematical concepts. For example, I could use these manipulatives to help my grade 7 students with multiplying and dividing fractions in complex equations. Below is a picture of some of the manipulatives we used.

Here is a fun introduction into fractions that can be used for the lower grades.
Here is a link to a website with some fun activities that can be used to get younger students excited about learning fractions.
http://www.education.com/activity/fractions/

            In addition to learning about methods to teach students about fractions, I got a chance to learn about how to ask effective questions. I believe that asking effective questions is one of the primary responsibilities as a teacher, but the questions must allow for deep thinking and discussion. We learned in class about some of the questioning goals that teachers should look for, such as evoking thinking, questions that allow for many responses, and has a parallel problem that can offer more reflection and discussion. Questions which achieve these goals allow students for deeper thought about what they are learning and makes them ask how it can be applied to their daily lives. Questions are also a helpful method of scaffolding, the idea that you build the student’s knowledge by making the tasks progressively more difficult. With questions you force the student to think more and help them arrive at their own learning on their own with the teacher as a guide. I believe that this type of learning is much more fulfilling for the student than any hints we could provide for them. 

Media Studies Blog Post

           Becoming Digitally Literate in a Digital Age

Introduction

     Let’s face it, the world is going through rapid change because of the digital world along with the new technology that accompanies it, and education has not been unaffected. Education has been altered by the introduction of new technologies which allow for many more avenues of information gathering and sharing. In addition, it has brought new forms of media which we constantly must critically interpret, but we also need to know how to communicate using these new forms with a language that differs from traditional writing. This means that there has been a category of literacy that has been developed from these changes and I believe that we as teachers need to be ready to teach what literacy means in the digital world. I would argue that we need to equip ourselves with this knowledge in order to better prepare our students for further education and the workplace.

The Definition of Digital Literacy: A Resource Overview          

     Due to the young nature of the topic of digital literacy much work needs to be completed in order to have a full understanding, but this is not to say that there are no resources available. One resource that I have discovered to be an insightful introduction into the topic of digital literacy is a blog post entitled The Definition of Digital Literacy. In the post it talks about how the digital world has created a new type of literacy and improved literacy by increasing our ability to analyze, evaluate and create media. It outlines what a digital literate person is able to do, like knowing different information sources or the pro’s and con’s of media forms. Finally, the resource gave a concrete definition of what digital literacy is and defined it as: “…the ability to interpret and design nuanced communication across fluid digital forms.”

            

Connections to Other Resources

     There are also other various resources which can complement The Definition of Digital Literacy. I believe these types of resources would be needed in order to gain a fuller understanding of the subject because this post is helpful, but I think could use some more depth. One example of this is a resource entitled 5 Opportunities to Amplify Your Writing ( Found here http://langwitches.org/blog/2016/07/07/5-opportunities-to-amplify-your-writing/) which educates those looking to become more digitally literate on how to write effectively in the digital world. This can aid in teaching media studies with a focus on digital literacy because it focuses on the writing aspect of digital literacy and how what tools can be used to improve it. There are also plenty of other resources which help the learner go deeper into the topic such as Dimensions Of Critical Digital Literacy: A Framework (Found here: http://www.teachthought.com/pedagogy/literacy/5-dimensions-of-critical-digital-literacy/) which is a blog post which teaches the student how to think critically about what they see in the digital world. This can give the topic some structure in order for the student to organize how they will critically analyze media. Below you will also find some other helpful resources to introduce the subject of digital literacy.  
Here is a resource to help think about digital literacy critically.

http://www.teachthought.com/pedagogy/literacy/5-dimensions-of-critical-digital-literacy/     
Here is a resource discussing digital writing.
http://langwitches.org/blog/2016/07/07/5-opportunities-to-amplify-your-writing/    

G., Marquita. (October 21) "Digital Literacy" (Online image) Retrieved from https://www.tes.com/lessons/qg8JPwD8OGMdxA/digital-literacy.

Here is an example of a word cloud a student made which other students could make to grasp the key words.
Connections to Ontario Curriculum

     One of the four major strands outlined in the Ontario Curriculum is media literacy which has a direct connection with digital literacy as the two complement one another. The Definition of Digital Literacy resource, along with the other resources outlined to complement it, I believe can help fulfill two of the overall expectations outlined in the curriculum. This includes the ability of students to: “Identify some media forms and explain how the conventions and techniques associated with them are used to create meaning” and “Create a variety of media texts for different purposes and audiences, using appropriate forms, conventions, and techniques.” Though the study of media literacy and digital literacy are not exactly the same, I believe that the study of digital literacy is important to media studies because students learn how to understand various forms of communication as well as have the ability to write them.

Connections to the Classroom          
     I believe that the resources outlined above would be best suited for grades 6-8 as an introduction into more critical thinking of the digital world. If I were to use these resources in my classroom I would assign the readings as homework and ask the students to be prepared to discuss it in class. I would then have the students gather in small groups to discuss what they think it means to be digitally literate. After the discussion I would ask that they create a flow chart to present to their other classmates. Next, I would have the students read another text that I have selected and ask them to point out the strategies the writer used to grab the reader’s attention as a method of lesson reinforcement.  

            Thank you for your time in reading this post! I hope it was helpful and insightful so that we all can help teach our students about literacy in this digital age. 

My Quiz

Here is an online quiz that I created to learn how to use this kind of tool for my future students. Attached is the video of the book that the quiz is testing on. Feel free to watch.

Week 4 Reflection Blog

     It has been another exciting week in my Genius Hour research and in my education of technological education. This week I have gone into more depth within my Genius Hour research question regarding the benefits of athletics for students. For example, I have learned more about the skills that one learns from participating in sports which can easily translate in the classroom. Skills like the ability to memorize, going through repetitions, and knowing how to learn helps in the classroom. I have also learned that it teaches students about competition and learning about how to work hard to be the best, something that is important to know in a competitive job market. This fosters a mindset dedicated to success which can motivate students to use that drive in the classroom despite the obstacles. On top of all this, there is also a plethora of research which discusses the benefits on mental capacity from regular physical exercise which is critical to overall wellness. Finally, I have also learned the other avenues for learning that sport participation opens up such as volunteer opportunities or chances to mentor other students in lower grades. This not only increases their social skills, but also gives them different experiences which can expand the mind.
     From this research I have learned how to become more organized and focused in my work so that I can create more concise ideas. I believe I must continue to improve this skill in order to continue to be successful in my research. This includes narrowing down the topics I want to focus on in order to create a TED talk video. From this experience I have also learned about how I attained some of the skills I possess through athletics. I now have a more thorough knowledge of how I can instill these kinds of skills to my students and players. In addition, I can now feel more confident in explaining to others about how athletics have many benefits for students who get involved. From this point onward I believe I need to create main points that I will speak of in my video and begin revising the research I have thus far.
     Here is an interesting video which outlines the research behind why sports are helpful to the body and mind. It not only provides physiological evidence as to how athletics can create these changes, but also about how  athletics can create a sense of community and help build relationships.

The Importance of Copyright

Hello to my readers and welcome back to my blog! This post is about the topic of copyright and its importance in our world today. Thanks to the internet people are able to share their creative works to those all over the world who wish to use it. However, this does not mean that those who use can do whatever they wish with that work in all circumstances, and that is what copyright is for. Copyright serves as a safeguard for your work so that it is not used in a way that you did not intend it to be used for, but sometimes copyright is seen as too restrictive so I learned that people also use Creative Commons. This allows the creator to control how they want their work to be used without having everyone ask for permission by establishing the purposes and restrictions they want placed on their work. One point I would want to get across to my students if I were to teach this topic is that the works of others are not their own therefore, they can not use someone else's work anyway they wish. I would teach them about how to know what is allowed with regards to use of the work of someone else and how to properly cite them so that they get the credit.Thank you for your time in reading this post!

Altman, Gerd. (2015, February 4). "Thinking Man". (Online Image) Retrieved From https://pixabay.com/en/think-thinking-hand-reflect-622689/. 

Ribeiro, Lucella. (2008, June 30). Children at School. (Online Image) Retrieved from https://www.flickr.com/photos/lupuca/8720604364/ 

Welcome Post

Welcome everyone!

     Thank you for taking the time to explore my blog! This post is to just welcome my readers to this blog in hopes that you will continue to follow me and my later posts. I am currently a 22 year old Teacher Education student with a variety of interests. One of my passions includes the education of children and the various ways to not only improve their learning, but how to get children excited to learn! One of the ways I believe this can be done is by having the students take control of their own learning and allow them to explore their academic areas of interest. Today I learned about Genius Hour which accomplishes this very goal. This idea allows the student to set aside a part of their day and conduct research on a topic of their choosing. It not only increases motivation and peaks the interest of the student, but also develops their education.
     Still confused? Here is a helpful video to aid in your understanding of what Genius Hour is.

     My educational philosophy has always been about developing ways to make learning enjoyable, interactive and engaging. I believe that technology is one way to accomplish this. We live in a digital world and children not only understand that, but are well versed in technological tools. Rather than allowing them to waste their time with these tools, I believe that these tools can be used to help children get excited about their learning through non-conventional methods. Although every child will not be one the same level from an academic standpoint, I believe in using a variety methods in order to maximize a child's potential.    
     Again, thank you for reading this post! I hope it peaked your interest and motivates you to explore this topic further if you wish. For more posts regarding topics like education and the use of technology in the classroom feel free to follow this blog, I hope it will not only be resourceful but entertaining as well. My aim for this blog is that it will be a valuable learning resource in the field of education and reveal more aspects of me as an educator.

September 27 Reflection

This week was another enriching week in my mathematics teacher education where I learned concepts that will alter my math teaching philosophy. The primary focus of the week was working with whole number operations and the algorithms we use in order to solve these operations. The more traditional approach to teaching these kinds of operations like multiplication or addition was to explain to students the most efficient algorithm and practice the process many times as a method of reinforcement. However, I have learned that this is not always the best method because it does not allow students to process the question in a way that makes sense to them. In my opinion, it is not only important to teach students the mathematical processes, but also help them understand why that process works. As Marian Small points out in her book Making Math Meaningful to Students, students should be encouraged to invent their own algorithms and use the ones that suit them. It is the job of the teacher to anticipate this occurrence and to ensure that the process used is one that can be effective for any similar question. Here are some examples that Marian Small provides for the alternative methods that can be used to prime factor numbers, the factor tree and the factor rainbow. 

Gill, Zachary. From Small, Marion Making Math Meaningful. (October 3, 2016) Factor Rainbow.

Gill, Zachary. From Small, Marion Making Math Meaningful. (October 3, 2016)  Factor Tree. 

This can also be demonstrated using multiplication, as shown in the picture below. 

Gill, Zachary. (September 27, 2016) 

From these pictures we can learn that there are multiple alternatives to solving equations and we as teachers need to be open to letting students explore these different avenues. Instead of focusing on efficiency, we need to equip our students with the ability to problem solve and learn about why mathematical processes work. 

On top of all of this information I also learned about how teachers need to educate students about why math is important. I believe that in order to get students to be focused and excited about math teachers need to show that math is meaningful to their everyday lives. I feel that another way students can get excited about math is to make it a fun experience! I believe that this can be done using manipulatives so students can see how mathematical processes work. It can also be accomplished through the use of educational games. For example, I got a chance to play Puppy Chase this week where the player answers fraction questions as fast as possible to get students to win the race. Finally, math can become a fun experience if the questions apply to events in their lives that they can relate to. In my teaching practice I like to create questions or use examples of math processes using the latest trends to grab attention. For instance, Pokemon Go can be incorporated into a math question so students have more motivation to solve it. Most importantly, all students need to know that they have the capability to excel at math if they place enough effort into it. Here is a fun video by a teacher who has grasped these ideas and made a presentation about how math is fun and meaningful.