Final Week of EDU 776

 Final Week Blog

Image Source: Republic Quote

I truly cannot believe that I am almost finished with this class and that we are three months into the year! It is so crazy how fast time goes by! I have had a great time completing the assignments and becoming a part of the blog world. I even thought to myself I want to start a blog talking about everything that happens daily in my classroom. I know that there would be a ton of teachers who could relate to my stories and who would probably like to add their experiences. For now, I am going to start doing some research on teacher blog pages. I have already found a great one. This blog site titled WAGOLL Teaching has so many different teaching advice from student engagement and learning activities to use in the classroom. Without taking this class, I would have never found an interest in exploring blogs. I am very grateful for this new interest. 

Tools that I have learned from this class: 

My views about technology have not changed that much from the beginning of the year. I still love to use it with my students and in my own personal time. One thing that has changed is the applications that I use. From this class, I learned so many tools that I can use in my classroom from technology tools to engagement. My favorite week was when we were asked to explore different active learning activities. My class and I have already done the Beach Ball Bingo to better their reading comprehension and we completed a Gallery Walk looking at different animals and their traits. These were not necessarily an online activity, but I gained knowledge on active learning and why it is important. I keep going back to the assignment tracker page just to see what my peers researched and how they used/would use the active learning activities in the classroom. I am really excited to keep trying new things and researching new engaging lessons. 

Another tool that I have found useful is analyzing data regarding primary classes and how this helps me as an educator. I have done lots of research on primary grades and how to work with students who are extremely behind. While I was researching, I found out that 1 in 5 students could have dyslexia. This was astonishing to me because of the success that I have had in teaching my first graders how to read, I now can research new ways to work with my students who struggle knowing that they might be the one who is struggling to view the letters correctly. From this, I found different accessibility tools for my students that they could use. I recently made sure that all my students knew how to use the Speak To Text on their tablets, that way they can use the search engine without having to be able to spell it. My students tend to get so frustrated with being on their tablets and not knowing how to get to a certain website. The accessibilities that researched about made it stress free for my kiddos. As a young teacher, I already had good idea of all the resources technology has for teachers, however, this class just opened my eyes to how much more there is in the digital world. I am someone who would say they are pretty techy, now I will not say that as I have learned so much just from this six-week course. 

GIF Source: Art Pictures

The first week of this class we were asked to pick a GIF of how we feel about the upcoming weeks of being in EDU 776. This is the GIF that I posted. The funny thing is during that time I did not know how to upload a GIF, so it plays, and now I do. There is so much blogger has to offer it is amazing. I still feel this way about this course because of everything that I have learned. From creating my own blogs, to viewing my classmates, I gained information that will help me become a better teacher with using technology. If I taught older grades, I think I would use blogs as a way to complete assignments, that is how much I have enjoyed writing them. The exploring for me will continue as I end this course. I want to say thank you to everyone who has engaged with my blogs, and who have changed the way I view internet usage in my classroom and personal life. This has been one of the best experiences I have had while taking a college course. 

Signing out for now, but I will continue to view and write blogs 💗

                                                                            Citations:

                        Learning Ally. (2024, June 21). Dyslexia Awareness Strategies from Learning Ally.  

Speak to Text-Bing. (n.d.). Bing.            

 WAGOLL Teaching blog. (n.d.). WAGOLL Teaching.