Gamification in the Classroom

Gamification is a great idea, in my opinion, because it engages learners. After that reason, I do not think another is necessary. My goal as a teacher is to educate students. If students are not engaged in the lesson, they will not learn-plain and simple. Being as I only recently graduated from highschool, I am well aware of the climate of today's classrooms. I was in them less than a year ago. I know what is currently working and not working with twenty-first century learners because I am one. We are competitive, easily distracted and we all know how to use a computer or tablet (at least the basics). Games are the perfect way to get a student interested in learning. Right now, kids are learning information so that they can pass a test and forget it the next day. That is NOT how I want my classroom to go. By incorporating games, students are learning to win. They are learning for fun because games, well, they are fun. If your classroom is not fun, students won't want to be there. They will find every excuse to leave the classroom and will probably pay more attention to their phone than your lecture. It is the job of the teacher to engage students and in my opinion, be fun. Gamification is a great-new age way to get that job done.

You can read this blog here.

Headings, Subheadings and Pictures

Today I read another post from "Learning from my Mistakes, an English Teacher's Blog," and though it was short and not necessarily descriptive, I got alot from it. In my technology class, we have been learning about visual learners and how-in this day and age-it is imperitive to incorporate visual learning in the classroom. The blog post I read describes how articles (probably on the internet or in a newspaper/tabloid) hook you in immediately. They use a picture. This, in my opinion, is the most important part. When someone shares something on facebook, you see a title, a subtitle and a picture. Chances are, the picture is what caught your attention. The heading gives you a short, hooking, bit of information and the subheader describes the content matter more thoroughly. As a good writing activity in my class, I believe I will do one of two things, either show students a picture, title and subtitle and have them write what they think is going to be described in the article or have students include a picture with research papers. An image would be a great way to get other students interested in reading their peer's work and it would teach the students good marketing techniques.

You can read this blog here.

Kahoot

Recently in class we have been working with google forms. I enjoy the easiness and helpfullness I think these forms will bring into the classroom. Quizzing students online is a fast way to see whether or not they actually understood the lesson. When reading another blog, I stumbled upon an alternative to google forms-a much more fun alternative. Kahoot is a website that lets you put up quizzes-like google forms-but they are collaborative and competitive. Kids love competition. They will be eager to make sure they write down and remember important details if they know it will help them win a game afterwards. All of the students can log into the quiz at once and battle eachother to get the most questions right, the fastest. It makes the mundane quiz much more interesting. Students are sure to be laughing and enjoying the experience and I am sure to know whether or not they got the information they needed from the lesson.

Click here to read the blog post.

"Literature and Society: Creating Thinkers."

The blog post I read today points out some positive solutions for the problems facing literature in the classroom today. The nerdy teacher talks about The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn and ways to incorporate such a story into modern life. Being as this book was set over a hundred years ago, it might be considered hard to relate to. This, however, is not the case. I recently read this book in my American Literature II class and the class easily found ways to connect it to recent events in our country. The nerdy teacher writes that his highschool class also had no problem linking their lives to it. By asking students to compare things happening around them to things happening in a book, a teacher is setting them up to be more attached and interested in the book. Students always ask "how am I going to use this in real life?" I asked it in highschool. That is why it is important to make sure you connect EVERYTHING you teach in your classroom to something going on in todays society. That will ensure lengthly class discussions and student participation. This rule of thumb can apply to every subject area, not just English/Literature.

You can read this article here.

"Fruity Poetry"

In Dr. Dawnie's post "leave your bananas at home," he discusses poetry. I think this is an important point to make considering the title may be misleading if you have not read the post. Anyway, he describes an activity that he has been using for a while that requires the students to bring in a fruit (although he does not allow bananas, they make him shiver.) During this activity, the students are asked to use all of their senses to examine the fruit. They can eat it, smell it, ect. Then they are required to write a poem based on their findings. I think this is probably effective for many reasons, the most important being: KIDS LOVE FOOD. That will never change. If you make eating some type of food part of an activity in class, the kids are going to love it. It also makes them think abstractly about a very ordinary item. It is a good way to get them thinking outside of the box. I think any type of food would work for this activity. Of course, you would want to encourage kids to eat healthy but a few skittles never hurt anyone.


You can read this article here.

Planning an Ideal Week

When we think of planning, any teacher tends to jump straight to Lesson Plans. However, planning other parts of our lives might be just as important. Cool Cat Teacher says that if we plan the things we need to get done, we are more likely to actually do them. Recently, I have been keeping a calander like the one described in her blog. I have found that it actually does help me keep up with the things I need to do. It is harder to brush something off when you get notifications on your phone yelling at you to do it. As a student, I find that I am much more likely to study, do an assignment or write a paper early if I have it written down or have a notification on my phone reminding me. Without this method, I used to forget about assingments until either the morning of or the night before. As a teacher, I think this method would help me make sure I get done  my lesson plans, grading and other tasks not necessarily related to school early as well. I highly suggest keeping some sort of record of what needs to be done to all people, regardless of occupation or age. It really helps us unorganized people stay on top of things.


You can read this article here.

Portland Maine Problem Solvers

Today I watched a video about a new way to approach education and teaching. In Portland Maine, kids were given problems to solve in the world and each subject area revolved around that problem. At first I did not believe this project would effect me, an aspiring English teacher, because most of the problems required scientific study and technology. However, the method quickly proved me wrong. The students were asked to write persuasive essays-something every student every where does-but their essays were geared towards the problems they were solving in science. They were to come up with an invention to solve the issues at hand and then use their essays to show people how it would be effective and why it will work. Being as in highschool I wrote about fifteen papers pretending to persuade school officials against school uniforms, I think this out-of-the-box idea is a great way to get students interested in what they're writing about. I would definitely be interested in trying to connect with other departments and work together to make lesson plans match up. This helps students realize why they're learning what they're learning. I think this method might stop kids from asking "when am I ever going to use this in real life?"

"My New 1:1 Class.. Sort of."

I recently followed a blog titled "Crazy Teaching" because I'll probably be a "crazy" teacher. The first post that jumped out to me was the "1:1 class.. sort of" mostly because I end a lot of sentences with "sort of." The author writes that she used to teach a strictly 1:1, technology based classroom but recently she has gone back to the traditional class. Being as she is tech-savvy, she was interested in finding ways to use technology in her classroom everyday. The first activity she points out is blogging, like in this class. In highschool, most of my English classes required me to write (in a notebook) a "blog" or a journal post at the beginning of class everyday to get my ready for the lesson. I really liked that. It was an easy grade and it gave me a chance to write about how I feel about a certain topic. In my technology class, the teacher required us to do the same thing, but online on a blog. That is what this teacher's blog proposes. I do like that idea. I might actually use that in my classroom if computers are readily available. The only problem is I won't be teaching in a computer lab so it will depend on the availability. Otherwise, I will just have them write on paper. But hey, using the computer would save paper (which is never a bad thing.)