EDU 614 Sullivan Blog

  This is a link to my growth plan. I hope to continue to add to this plan as a grow as an educator and continue to discover resources that will help both me and my students in the classroom.  https://docs.google.com/document/d/11aGbd-ZiZvWuAgMBOtlPBEpd8SHCcj9RYu2E_FnIODY/edit?usp=sharing

 Classroom management is an incredibly important concept for teachers to master in order to ensure that students remain focused, engaged, and learning in the classroom. Students need to develop routines in the classroom in order to establish a normal classroom environment with norms that are adhered to on a daily basis. One app that I have looked into a lot and really like is called "Stick Pick". Stick Pick is a great way to help teachers with class participation and ensuring that every student is heard from during a lesson. Teachers simply program the names of the students of their classes into the app and it will randomly pick a student's name to be called on. This is like an electronic version of the days when teachers would use popsicle sticks in the classroom in order to call on students. Another interesting feature of the app is the ability to pre-input questions for a certain lessons and topics. This will also pose a question to the student whose name appears to be...

 It can be very challenging for teachers to ensure that their lessons and teaching is reaching every student in their classroom. Each student learns best in different ways, and for this reason not every lesson may reach all students in the classroom. It is essential for teachers to take the chance to get to know their students, both before the school year and at the beginning of the year, in order to determine the resources and techniques necessary for each individual student to succeed. This is where assistive technology comes in. Assistive technology is a great tool for all students but especially for students with learning disabilities. Assistive technology aids students in being successful learners in the classroom by providing them with additional tools to learn. For example, students with autism may struggle with taking notes in class. These students may not fully be able to quickly determine important information covered and write these into their notes.  One piece of a...

 It is so important for teachers to incorporate a variety of assessment types and techniques into their classroom. Assessment is important in the classroom so that teachers can check students progress and understanding and examine whether students are able to meet the lesson's learning objectives. Using various means of formative assessment is important in the classroom so that teachers can re-teach students concepts and areas that they are struggling with or having difficulty fully comprehending. Fortunately, there are different ways that technology can help with this! One technological app that is great for formative assessment throughout the lesson is Kahoot. Kahoot is a phenomenal app that combines quiz questions on a lesson while allowing students have have fun by making the quizzes more in the format of a game. One concept about Kahoot that I particularly like is that I am able to create my own quizzes based on my own lessons. This allows me to tailor my questions for my stud...

 In today's society, our world is incredibly interconnected with small Asian villages being able to connect to large European cities and American schools. With the internet, it is possible to communicate with anyone, anywhere, anytime and it is important that this becomes integrated into my history classroom as well. November write about "letting go" in the classroom and the importance of teachers being okay with letting the students learn from each other (p.68). Especially in a history classroom, it is important to allow students to make connections with other cultures and regions in order to increase perspectives on the historical events and times being learned.  One app that can be used to facilitate this in the classroom is Zoom. Using Zoom students in one class can interact and communicate with students in a different part of the country, continent, or the world. Even with the free version of Zoom that does not require a subscription, users receive the ability to hav...

Involving students as researchers inside the classroom is essential today in the 21st Century where there are so many different resources and different ways for students to be researchers. November (p.51) writes that "one of the most astonishing gaps in many students' educations is their inability to validate information on the internet." I agree with November and think that as a history teacher, it is essential that I am showing my students how to validate information and determine the validity of different sources. It is also essential for students to recognize the appropriateness of different sources for different research. For example, Wikipedia may be appropriate for a pop-culture search but would not be complete for the impact of slavery on the Constitutional Convention.  A program that I would integrate into a history lesson for students would be the Digital Public Library of America. This website has access to countless primary source documents, where students can...

 Using students as a class scribe is an interesting way of involving them more in the note-taking part of class and giving more importance to the notes that they take in class. November (p.40) writes about using students as a "class scribe" with a different student responsible for uploading the notes online for the class to view and use after each class. While this only utilizing one student per day, students become more passionate about taking notes because the other students in class are depending on them to post quality notes to use. November (p.40) also writes that "students who struggle to take notes get better by studying and using the high-quality work of other students." Using students as scribes can be mutually beneficial for students in the classroom and is something that I would like to try implementing into my future classroom. One of the simplest and most straight-forward ways for students to scribe and have notes available for the class to view is by u...

 I wanted to look at different ways to engage students with each other throughout the lesson. The idea of "students teaching students" really struck me because students can learn so much from each other in the classroom. Students benefit from teaching each other in multiple ways. Students not only benefit from learning from their peers, but they also benefit from being able to teach their peers about a certain concept or skill. In order to promote collaborative learning in my classroom, I explored Jamboard in order to have students work on assignments collaboratively. Jamboard is a very useful tool available through Google that allows for the teacher to have an online live whiteboard for the students to actively participate and work on assignments, projects, and tutorials. Students can model different activities or concepts for each other through Jamboard to be seen by their peers. I think that in a high school history classroom, this would have multiple different uses. Novee...

 For this assignment, I chose to integrate Google Calendars into my life. I have a difficult time of creating a central collection of all of the different things on my schedule. I also have the problem of sharing my schedule with others that may need to know when I am available or when I have other commitments. I know many others who have used Google Calendars and who have found it to be helpful in their lives to stay organized, so I decided to make create a Google Calendar for my life.  I found Google Calendars to be incredibly easy to use. While I had never used it before, I even found that it already had some of my future plans added into it as suggestions which made setting it up a little easier. I really appreciated how I was able to color-code different plans and events in my calendar in order to differentiate between different events on the same day. I was also able to add my girlfriend into my calendar, which was very helpful in order for use to share information with ...

While I am not currently teaching,  am going to use my current town of Wakefield, MA as my location for my model classroom. Wakefield is a mid-size town of about 25,000 residents with largely middle class residents. Wakefield High School is a high school of approximately 1,000 students. The school also participates in the METCO program, which incorporates some students from the Boston area into the school system. My goal is to teach high school history, so that is going to be my focal point for my model classroom. Approximately 30% of students in Wakefield receive a free or reduced lunch. Wakefield features a number of resources for its students including a full guidance department of five guidance counselors, school adjustment counselors, school resource officers, and school psychologists.  My model classroom will take place in a 10th grade United States History classroom at Wakefield Memorial High School in Wakefield, MA. These students will be largely middle-class students ...