Teacher Cadets

Questions to ponder

Choose any question and give examples to back up your answer.

Do you consider yourself a risk taker? Would this be a good thing for a teacher?

Brainstorm some blogging activities that you believe would work in your classrooms.

What are some effective ways to build rapport with students? 

How do you feel about noise in the classroom?  How do you handle noise in the classroom? 

How do you give your students recognition? Do you think a student can have too much recognition?   

If you could create the ideal school, what would it be like?

How do you encourage students to learn?  What works for you?

Are you an objective person? Give an example.  

Are you patient?  Give an example.

What is the most important thing you need to be thinking about to be an excellent teacher?

Describe a "best practice" that you have observed in your classroom.

Now if you could ask questions of your peers, what would they be? It would be interesting to develop good questions. Isn't it amazing how much we can learn from each other?

Your experiences make for some great reading.  Keep on posting on your blogs!

First day in the lab!

Wasn't it great to be in the lab? Even though our connections were a little slow, we got to our blogs. Hooray!

The first order of the day was to take a look at the Blooming Bloggers PowerPoint presentation from last year. It was chocked full of tips for blogging and writing. I could see how impressed you were with the students' work. Yes, we can all learn from each other. I learned a great deal from that great group of fifth graders and I know I will learn a lot from all of you! I was happy to show you what this group had accomplished because as you get ready to enter the elementary classrooms you will be aware of their capabilities. They will never cease to amaze you. It's important to have high, yet realistic, expectations for children. If you have high expectations and believe in them they will work hard to meet them. Set high goals.

At the same time, you want to be a role model for them so have the same high expectations for yourself. Tavon said it well in her post today:

Reading blogs from fifth graders got me very interested in teaching. I was very interested in how they could express and even teach me a 12th. grader how to do something. Most people say that younger students have no clue and should stay in a child's place when in fact we could all learn a thing or two from them. I read Ashley's blog and she said that she thinks when writing blogs we should be more cheerful and have more humor. I agree because things can get boring when you are going on and on about something. She also said that we should be sure about what we are writing. It is important that we should be a role model and show good grammar. In our intro to teaching class every week we must to a log(an overview of what we did that week), a quote(an inspiring quote), and an article(a current event essay). By doing so it teaches us that we must stay up on what is happening in life today, how life has changed, how to inspire your students, and how to keep track of your class and their activities.

I love her ending line where she talks about inspiring your students. What a good post!

We touched on links today. We will work some more on that next week. Be sure to read your educational article and be prepared to blog about it.

Yesterday I was talking about blogging possibilities with one of my educational blogging friends and he pointed me to a great poem, Listen to the Mustn'ts,  that I want to share with you. Think about what Shel Silverstein, the author, is trying to tell us. What do you think is the meaning of the poem? We'll talk about that in class. What fun! Have you read any other poems by this author? They're great to share with students!  See you next Tuesday!

One reminder: Use spell check! Remember we want to be role models and why not have a little help that is so readily available for you!