Alicia McEwen's Chapter 11 Reflection

Chapter 11 reinforced the idea that effective teaching in today's world includes instructional methods that entail a variety of teaching methods, tools, and activities. Finding this balance will allow students to be active learners who feel excited, motivated, and challenged in their classrooms.

When it comes to integrating technology into lessons it's important to also maintain a balance of instructional methods. As a first grade teacher, I have found that my kids love to explore when they are on computers. It's amazing for me to see how quickly my young students can figure out how to navigate new programs and become effective users in such a short amount of time. It's obvious that they were born into an advanced technological time. I have found that with some of the programs I am currently using, my students work well with indirect instruction. After introducing certain concepts I have them explore them by manipulating and practicing them. The Harcourt Math program has some games that work well for indirect instruction on math concepts. As the students play the math games they are asked to solve problems by interactively manipulating amounts of objects and numbers. I see them feeling challenged and excited to figure out what needs to be done to solve the problems.

As chapter 11 suggests, allowing students to learn with direct and indirect instruction provides an effective balance. I have found that although my first graders can pick things up fairly quickly in terms of manuevering technology, there are many appropriate times when direct instruction provides effective lessons when integrating technology. For example, when I teach my kids to practice their spelling words on the computer, I initially teach them how to capitalize, space, and edit their mistakes. My goals for my students at this point are for them to learn basic functions of the keyboard while spelling their spelling words correctly.

One of my goals this year is to try using a Jeopordy interactive game we have at our school. The teachers that have used it seem to love it! Basically the teacher creates questions based on content that has been taught. The students are split up into teams and the game follows similar to how it would on the real Jeopordy game. I've heard it can be a little time consuming getting use to putting the questions in, but once you've done it, it gets easier. I am excited and feeling motivated to give it a try.

The other idea I have for implementing technology into my content is having my students practice typing the different types of sentences. In first grade the kids learn to identify and write telling, exclamation, and question sentences. Having them write one of each would be a good reinforcement of the skill and would help build their keyboarding skills.

My concern is not knowing what technological tools or programs and how much exposure I should be implementing into my first grade curriculum.