The Peanuts! My theme for this special year.

Peanuts Characters are sure to brighten up any classroom and put a smile on your students face! From the GIANT CHARACTER SNOOPY & DOG HOUSE Bulletin board to the peanuts border and trim. Reward your students with the peanuts awards and stickers. Students will love the decorations with the Peanuts Characters; Lucy, Charlie Brown, Snoopy, Linus, Peppermint Patty, Sally and Schroeder.

New Educational Era

   Students’ progress depends on a wide range of social and developmental competencies, such as the ability to monitor one’s own learning, persist at challenging tasks, solve complex problems, set realistic goals, and communicate effectively in many kinds of settings.

   This is a new educational era, where learning may become disassociated from age groups. Education can now be individualized and self-directed; educators become supporters who are primarily facilitators and mentors rather than lecturers. Educators work on distributed sources of content (virtual) and take place in a variety of physical settings.

   Teachers now days are looking for a different assessment, a different teaching method, documented by a portfolio of digital badges and real-world projects, rather than traditional grades or certificates. Yet, most schools continue to use standardized achievement tests, focusing exclusively on reading and math, as their primary means of gauging student progress with the existing K-12 education system.

   The world of education is currently undergoing a massive transformation as a result of the digital revolution. New technologies create learning opportunities that challenge traditional schools and colleges which allow all ages to pursue learning on their own terms.

   Educators should be able to adapt and incorporate the new power of technology-driven learning for the next generation of students. To be effective in this changing environment requires that the builders of the new education system understand the customization, interaction, and control of the technologies driving the changes in education. Education must provide people the knowledge they want when they want it and to support and guide them as they learn. Develop the ability of computers to give learners immediate feedback and to engage learners through simulation in accomplishing realistic tasks. And put learners in charge of their learning, so they feel ownership and can direct their learning where their interests take them.

   The vision of an educational system that can integrate all the different elements we see developing, is the key for the new educational era. But computers can carry out all the algorithms taught through graduate school, and yet mathematical reasoning is more important than ever. Therefore we should spend time teaching students to solve sophisticated problems using computers rather than executing algorithms that computers do well. Memorizing information is becoming less important with the web available, but people do need to learn how to find information, recognize when they need more information, and evaluate what they find.

Source:

A New Educational Era: http://vibrantlearning.aam-us.org/resource/resource-2/

A New Era for Educational Assessment: http://www.jff.org/publications/new-era-educational-assessment

Rethinking education in the age of technology: the digital revolution and the schools: https://llk.media.mit.edu/courses/readings/Collins-Rethinking-Education.pdf

Cross-Curricular Teaching or Phenomenon Based Learning

When professional educators combine their energies and reinforce the same deep learning, the stream of information is clearer for the student, the learning activities are more fluid, and the student's reservoir of knowledge and skill fills faster.

Education, now days, doesn't meet the deeper learning needs of students. Fortunately, it can be accelerated by consolidating teacher efforts and combining relevant contents. Cross-Curricular Teaching implies that students will follow a particular stream of inquiry to the headwaters, rather than simply sampling all the possible streams.

Educators need to understand and accept a few requirements:

1. Deep learning engages the whole student (and teacher), heart, mind, body, and soul.

2. It requires enthusiastic partners within students, parents, and community.

3. It requires intensive preparation. As the rapid development of society, teachers need to update their knowledge and way of teaching students.

4. Assessment must mirror learning. Teachers should evaluate students reflecting mastery of learning objectives rather than mere assignment completion.

5. Collaboration is necessary. Students must be taught how to collaboratively gain knowledge and skills in order to be expert learners and demonstrate their learning by applying and creating.

In order for all this to happen in a sustainable way in our schools, deeper learning requires that groups of teachers pool their talents, resources, time, and efforts to maximize coherence, relevance, and connections among the content areas.

Teachers should work with other grade level teachers and find common topics to prepare to teach subjects jointly rather than separately. Teachers must start collaboration with another teacher from a different department. The task of all educator teams is to provide a rich, rigorous, and relevant flow of knowledge and skills, and then find a way to lead the students to this water and then make them thirsty enough to drink deeply. Students and teacher teams focusing on learning deeply have the force to achieve learning beyond the traditional education dam and shoot out over the spillway to not only understand the torrent of available knowledge, but to also add to it in phenomenal ways.

The Blooms Taxonomy meant that the first step would be to seek knowledge, comprehend it, apply it in real life scenarios, analyze and further synthesize with other concepts and subjects. With Phenomenon Based Learning, this linear progression turns into a roller coaster ride, which has become a challenge for teachers and students.

The learner starts with a phenomenon or a real life scenario, analyses the linkages with different concepts and subjects, identifies the gaps in knowledge and understanding, seeks out that knowledge, comprehends it for each subject area and then synthesizes it. So essentially what was a process of construction has now been broken into deconstruction and then construction. First deconstruct the phenomenon into different concepts and processes, understand them and then reconstruct them into the original phenomenon and probably draw parallels with other phenomenon.

This educational methodology is more student-centered because they will do it in his or her own manner, the number of linkages and the pathway chosen will depend on their prior knowledge. Educators can use a number of resources and online platforms to engage their learners in a discussion on what subjects and concepts need to be learnt so that the phenomenon can be understood.

Phenomenon Based Learning is an opportunity to integrate the best of learner centrist approaches and it is the way forward as it is closer to how learning happens in real life, an unexplained phenomenon starts off an inquiry, becomes a lifelong pursuit and results in new knowledge and understanding. Phenomenon-based structure in a curriculum also actively creates better opportunities for integrating different subjects and themes as well as the systematic use of pedagogically meaningful methods, such as inquiry learning, problem-based learning, project learning and portfolios. The phenomenon-based approach implements a versatile utilization of different learning environments.

As an educator, I believe that a holistic real-world phenomenon provides the starting point for learning. Breaking down the dominance of traditional subjects and isolation of teaching is an opportunity to more fundamental change in schools. Integrated knowledge and skills about real world issues enhances teacher collaboration in schools and makes learning more meaningful to students.

Schools should teach what young people need in their lives rather than try to bring national test scores back to where they were.

References:

http://www.edutopia.org/blog/cross-curricular-teaching-deeper-learning-ben-johnson

http://edtechreview.in/trends-insights/trends/1981-edtech-meets-phenomenon-based-learning

The new so called generation...

 

The new generation that has grown within this technological revolution is lonely, with lack of empathy... but behind the hedonistic, consumerist, amoral, irresponsible image this new generation reflects, there is a very strong silence. 

Through the most exciting stage of life, the young ones are facing adaptation, acceptance, adventures and misadventures, joys and sorrows, hopes and concerns.

The new generation owns the technological revolution, and faces a very broad universe of distraction. They are more likely to travel and interact with others... to learn more and develop their own conclusions of life, and even though they have access to this amazing world of opportunities and information, they feel lonely, insecure, and incomplete. It’s becoming an era of consumerism, with no sense of duty and sacrifice.

They need affection sustained in time, someone who actually listen to them, accept them and understand their uniqueness.

Now days, these young adolescents are being diagnosed with anxiety, stress and depression, insecurity, attention disorders, low self-esteem, and so on. 

Families today overprotect their children, and teens react by trying to prove they are older adopting risky behaviors such as drinking alcohol, taking drugs or having sex at earlier ages, just to reaffirm their maturity.

The generation that is currently taking place has a high level of knowledge and thousands of opportunities to become productive, but still there is a need of sharing, friendship, trust, empathy, love. 

You're free to speak.

        Educate, shape, mold productive entities for an eminent and effective future. All these concepts can't be linked to the development of individual personalities. Every child is different, learns differently and enjoy things in different ways.

        For children to learn, they need to internalize and capture the information so that they can adapt it to their reality. As a teacher, we use to present a small structure and we try to stick the child to a paradigm without having the opportunity to get his or her own reasoning.

         We're all adapted to a sad and boring standard of living. A way of life that makes you vulnerable to depression and  makes your life a nonsense waist of time. You find yourself at a comfort zone where you prefer to stay for "security"... thinking you're doing something good for you, working as hard as you can... WELL... think again! You are only completing a schedule and following a regulation based on the immediate benefits of authorities. You're not standing up for yourself declaring why you don't agree with your boss, or why you're mad at your partner who's always right even when he or she is wrong. Well, we can blame this on education. The lack of "think by yourself"... giving students the answers to questions not allowing them to develop or get to the answers by thinking. ACTUALLY USING THEIR BRAIN.

        An unfair world where children are educated as robots without freedom to think , criticize , analyze and especially apply concepts to their daily situations, problems, or realia. What if we stop this established methodology? Every child, as an special and unique entity, can develop an overwhelming intelligence and a desire to express thoughts, feelings, believes, disagreements, and so on. We all have the right to say how we feel and what we believe... We learn and grow from those mistakes we face. 

Each child should be treated as a special and individual entity. Now days, teachers spend most of the time yelling at students and not wanting them to move from their chairs. As a teacher we can't force them to be seated , but if we get them interested in the class we're teaching, that is a satisfying victory. A subtle and effective way to get their attention is to apply it to their daily basis and what they see every day. Present what we teach with an everyday situation and children will feel comfortable because they know what they're talking about, they will compare and contrast, they will see familiar terms,  they will internalize meanings, and the best reaction you will get, is their confidence to give an opinion and speak their mind.

A permanent goal, a teaching philosophy, a way of living...

Teaching is what I wanted since I was a kid, and to be able to help children learn is my primary philosophy. As an educator, I really like to let students be themselves. I think that everyone has the opportunity to success in his or her own way.  I believe that each person is unique and should always have the opportunity to be heard. Their opinions, ideas, complain, suggestions, critics have to be taken into consideration. Each student deserves the chance to develop their personality in a comfortable environment with values and, of course, I always try to show good leadership for my student. I try to create a comfortable learning environment based on respect instead of fear. For me, students are my main priority and I know that they are all different. I like to encourage them to explore opportunities and use the environment also.

In my classroom, I apply creativity, stressing the importance of education and, at the same time, letting the student have the freedom to think and discover knowledge. Encourage the student to value effort and the determination to succeed.

Growing professionally is one of my eternal goals. We never stop learning. I am always open to new ideas and suggestions and I want to be involved in more educational activities: study, research, and expand my knowledge to be a better teacher. I have to be well prepared for every lesson I teach, with a good planning of time and materials that will ensure that the lesson will be successfully learned.

I believe that in the end students will have self-confidence, and good interpersonal skills to survive in this world.

Inspire with the environment!

Ohhhhhhh classroom decorations, a pain for some teachers, a therapy for others... a MUST for me! Students spend most of their time in a classroom... teachers can influence in students desire to learn by making decisions about the classroom layout. A classroom can say a lot to students and parents about us as teachers. We can let students know what we expect from them, let them know how exciting learning can be, and get them inspired on great things! That special place where students learn, that’s my classroom... And I think it’s very important to put an effort into preparing it because at the end it will always be worth it.

Desk organization also influences in students motivation and speaks about your teaching style. For example, depending on the grade level, if you organize desks by two they will know they’ll work in pairs, as a team with others, or if they will work by themselves. The traditional organization of rows of individual desks is boring, they get really excited when they get to the classroom and chairs are already fixed in a different way as it was before. Of course it all depends on the class you’ll be teaching and what works they will be doing during that day.

So this is what I’m doing this school year, and my students are very happy!

I’ve been planning in decorating my class with Dr. Seuss theme for a long time... I finally did it! Here are some pictures of my classroom.

A walk through students with learning disabilities head...

There are several indicators of disabilities presented in early childhood. Starting with coordination problems, unaware of physical surroundings, difficulty in learning new skills, or memorizing class, remembering things that happened, confusing basic words, lack of concentration, troubles with phonetics, reading errors such as inversions, transpositions, substitutions and letter reversals, problem solving simple math problems, impulsive behavior, and so on.

Disabilities are qualified in different types:

Dyslexia: The student has difficulty learning to read.

Dysgraphia: Is a deficiency in the ability to write primarily in terms of handwriting, but also in terms of coherence.

Dyscalcula: Students have problems reasoning and solving math problems.

These disabilities affect students learning skills directly, through study skills, reading and writing skills, oral and social skills, and math skills. They are unable to finish assignments on time, and they have frequently grammatical errors. They might have impulsive behavior and disoriented in time. Teachers need to be patient. There is also ADHD (Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder), which is the behavioral condition also associated with learning disabilities because kids with this condition present difficulties concentrating enough to learn and study. They are easily distracted and have problems focusing. They are very active and can’t control their impulses.

Lets put our selves in this student shoe. First of all they know that they are different than the others and they cannot control their situation. “Learning disabilities are problems that affect the brain’s ability to receive, process, analyze, or store information” according to The Nemours Foundation. These problems don’t let students with these disabilities learn at the same rhythm as a regular student. These students get frustrated because friends are playing while they have to read over and over again being unsuccessful in learning, understanding, or memorizing what they are reading. They think is unfair, and they get appointments with the psychologist, teachers, and parents, not understanding why they can’t be like the others. Once they know that they have a problem they will probably feel worried, and they are going to ask themselves if they are going to be that way forever, and if they will always be unsuccessful in life.

Now days, there are a LOT of students affected by many kinds of learning disabilities, some of the students have more than one kind. Researchers have some theories, but we’re not exactly sure of what causes it. The theories they developed are basically three: Genetic influences (it runs in the family), brain development (brain development before and after birth, with low birth weight problems, lack of oxygen, head injuries and so on), and environmental impacts (environmental toxins, poor nutrition).

Guess what? Learning disability can be controlled! 

Once we diagnostic a student with these kind of problems, we implement strategies and they get some medicine treatment to help them cope with the disability. While going through the process, students are going to restore their self-esteem and confidence.

Lets give it a try! 

Put yourself in those children shoes!

Classroom decoration!

Hello again!
Starting the new school year with a lot of enthusiasm and looking forward to take the students in a very special journey they will never forget. As I have been saying through the other posts, everything starts with classroom decoration! And as I promised, here are some pictures of different ideas from the very talented teachers that work with me at school.
Lets start with the bee classroom!

The second classroom has monkeys!

Monsters all around... I really like this one!

Ocean decoration!

And more!