Big Idea:  Children are sent to school to receive an education.  Parents are excited for their kids to go so that they will begin to learn many important skills and knowledge that will help them get through life.  They view the school as the agent for success for their children, and expect it to follow through on the promise of a good education.  The school has many different ways that is can help children learn.

Activity:  Class can offer many different types of things.  Three ways that teachers can help students learn in school are: 1) Using the school setting to teach basic social skills and character traits.  Teachers have a big responsibility to hammer things like responsibility, integrity, and manners into kids because if not they will most likely be underdeveloped in this area if allowed to run free at school.  2) Teachers can use different types of tools to teach the students.  These tools can be various systems of counting, mnemonic techniques, algebraic symbol systems, works of art, writing, schemes, diagrams, maps, all sorts of conventional signs and so on.  These tools will expand students minds and increase their learning capacity.  3) Teachers can let students work together.  This helps create social skills with peers which is a valuable asset.  It also lets students realize that they can accomplish even more in life when working together, and it improves the over all development.

Reflection:  These activities of learning are based off of Vygotsky's sociocultural theory.  I personally really do agree with these ways of learning for students.  It seems like it covers a wide variety of learners with the different tools and it also helps expand students range of learning by allowing them to share ideas and collaborate in groups.  Lastly, it stresses the importance school has on basic social skills of students.  This is something that is extremely important and is often over looked when teachers are becoming teachings.  These are things taught in schools, which means right now we as future teachers should be practicing these good behavioral models as well.

Week 3 - Redesign

Big Idea:  Students are bombarded with many different stimuli every second of every day.  Especially as young kids, they are open to learn anything.  In my last model I talked about how students can be excited to learn anything as long as it is relevant to them.  I stand by this.  But through my readings I am expanding this even further.  Kids can get excited about anything and almost every moment is a teachable moment.  It is our job as teachers to take the questions and excitement that kids have and direct it toward a few specific topics.  This will promote the most growth.  Students need to be taught what to learn not just how to learn in general.  Specific directions and guidance is so important.

Activity:  Every teacher can spend a whole class period lecturing and putting notes on the screen to copy down.  That is the easy way.  But because there is just an endless array of new things to be learned, teachers need to be specific.  This can happen by following up with every kids individually or in small groups and asking questions.  This will help gauge what the students are learning.  In class activities are the best way to do this.  As the students work the teacher can wander around and monitor progress.  This is also the best time to answer questions when learning is put into practical use.

Reflection:  In my past experiences, it is really easy to get washed up in a lot of very broad homework assignments and readings.  This can be very overwhelming.  Specifying lessons and activities in class will help students learn more and it will have better practical application.  The material should be able to be seen in every day life and not seem just like pointless knowledge.  Busy work is not the best solution.  The more practical and specific the activities are the more passionate students will be about learning.  Their questions will turn into more questions, but these questions will be the mark of progress and desire to learn more not just mere confusion.

Introduction Post

About Me

My name is Nolan Duffey.  I grew up in Zionsville, Indiana, which is about 15 minutes northwest of Indianapolis.  Some of my favorite things to do are camping/hiking/anything outdoors, playing sports, reading, going to amusement parks, and playing guitar.  I also love my summer job of being a camp counselor.  The past two summers I have been a counselor at a camp in northern Wisconsin called Fort Wilderness.  It has been such a great experience and has taught me so many things about working with kids.  It was working at camp that caused me to change my major from Business to Teaching all Learners.  So far, I have really loved my classes and being able to learn new and exciting things.  I am also really looking forward to field experience this semester.  It will be such a great time for learning.  That is a little about me and what I like to do.

REFLECTION
Big Idea:  People are eager to learn and expand their knowledge.

As teachers we should be excited about teaching and present the topics in a way that is relevant to the students so they will be excited as well.