Thoughts from 7/23

Tonight's class served as a way to get caught up with discussing our readings, review various types of instructional strategies and delve more deeply into our use of Inspiration. In Lindquist, we reviewed Chapter 2 and explored Tarry's ideas for creating a positive classroom. Starting off the year with a classroom set of goals created by the class is a way of teaching students the importance of rules and respect for others, but it also carries over a critical civics lesson. Tarry has many ideas for promoting peace in the classroom.

Moving on to the course readings we covered instructional strategies for Differentiated Instruction and Cooperative Learning. There are so many ways to get students involved in group work and to help them gain the skills necessary for working with their peers. Social Studies provides many opportunities for collaboration, problem solving and critical thinking as a group. Differentiated Instruction requires the teacher to have a thorough understanding of the students in class and ways of learning that are most effective for them. This website provided a clearinghouse of DI resources. We also reviewed Maslow's Hierarchy of Needs, which can be found here.

Lastly, we delved back into the world of graphic organizers in Inspiration for work on the unit lesson integrating the software. As I went around the room I saw a wide variety of usages for the program. Some are creating models for their students to create in a classroom. Others are using the program to create a graphic organizer to use in conjunction with a projector for whole class instruction. As the units are completed for the end of class I will be posting completed units on my website so that those resources are available to all.