Research to Practice

Hi Teachers!

As this research to practice project is coming to an end, I have been looking back at my series of posts. I have definitely learned about technology the most. I have never written a blog before, and quite honestly, don’t really see myself writing another one. Even though I do not intend to write another blog, this assignment and blog definitely helped me with my reflection abilities. I have not been one to reflect in the past. I usually tend to just let things go and not bring them back up again. Throughout this process I found it a lot easier to sit down and reflect on what had happened that week and what can I change to make the next week a better one. I found posing a question tended to get easier throughout this process. For example, in my first post, my question posed was, “What are the most effective methods for teaching one-to-one correspondence?”, and by the end my questions was, “Should we be teaching all of our young students sign language to better communicate?”. As these blog posts went on, I began putting more thought into what question I was going to be asking.

If I were to do this research to practice project again, I would definitely set aside more time to work on the blog posts. I went into this blog thinking it would not be that hard to just write a little blurb and be done with it for the week. I was wrong, and would have benefited from setting aside more structured time to actually think of what I wanted to get across with my words instead of just sitting down once and writing out the post for the week. I also would probably try another media. I enjoy watching different YouTuber’s vlogs in my free time, so maybe I would find filming a vlog more intriguing to myself than writing blog posts.

When thinking about my future teaching practices, I am looking into having my students create a blog to help them learn about reflection. Depending on what age I am teaching in my future, I could have my students use a blog as an outlet for their feelings, and a way for me to be assessing how their writing is progressing throughout the year. As for myself, I definitely will be taking away reflection and bringing that into my practice, but in the media of a journal that I would write in about how my curriculum is panning out.

My advice for the next class would be to try out the different medias given to us before deciding on one. I quickly chose to write a blog because I do not like hearing the sound of my voice when it is recorded. Since I was uncomfortable, I stayed within my comfort zone, which ended up not helping me at all. Trying new things is the only way to learn, and maybe if I would have tried a new media, I would have found a new passion I did not know was there.

Hi Teachers!

This week in field, we had a new student. This student was nonverbal, making it hard to communicate with him. We started teaching him some sign language and he took a liking to it very quickly. This had me thinking. Should we be teaching all of our young students sign language to better communicate?

I found an article titled, “Is Teaching Sign Language in Early Childhood Classrooms Feasible for Busy Teachers and Beneficial for Children?”, to explore more on this topic. This article mentions how young children’s hands are ready for communication before their mouths are able to communicate. Research also shows that learning a second language actually helps strengthen the first language. It may seem scary to think of adding sign language into your curriculum, seeing as it must take a lot of extra work. This article references teachers who took the challenge of adding sign language and absolutely lovely the outcome. They found it easy to incorporate teaching signs during different activities based on what was going on. For example, teaching the signs for “mother” and “father” when reading a book, or actions words such as “sit” or “come” when engaging in gross motor play. Sign language could also be used in the classroom has a behavior tool. If a child is acting out, the teacher can sign to the student instead of having to raise their voice, disrupting the class.

I have seen sign language in the classroom twice now, both very beneficial uses. During placement, when teaching the student who is non-verbal signs, other students started picking up on what the signs meant and would use them to go and try to communicate with the new student. I also see sign language in the classroom at the daycare center I am employed with. In our preschool they go through the signs for all of the letters when they are reviewing the alphabet during circle time each day. This is exposing the students to a new language and giving them insight to how other people may have to communicate with others.

I intend to use sign language in my future classroom and encourage you all to think about implementing it in your classroom as well. Until next time, bye teachers!

This past week, my class created groups to go and co-teach at a 2nd grade science fair. I collaborated with Mirandon Blynn and Maddie Gable, and we have some findings to share with you all.

Being in an open space can be very distracting for anyone, especially for young students. We noticed that after a few rounds of rotating around the science fair, the students were starting to lose focus on what was going on at the stations. Halfway through the stations, the other science fair took a brain break and had a dance party in the gym. It was amazing to see focused the students were coming back to the tables after they were given the brain break. After observing this, our question was, how often should we be using brain breaks in the classroom?

We found an article, written by Brad Johnson, titled “Right the Wrongs of Sedentary Education”. This article gives tips on how to transform your classroom from a lecture heavy class, into one with breaks throughout. Every hour students should be given a 5-10 minute break to get up and move, for example do a GoNoodle. Another strategy is to have an exercise mat or corner set up in your room. This way if a student gets restless, they go to the exercise space and do a few exercises for a couple minutes and then get back to work refocused. It is also helpful to involve movement during your lesson. For example, our group incorporated getting up and dancing around a circle in the middle of our lesson. This gives the students a mini break and involving movement in the lesson will make the information stick out in their brains more. Lastly, the article suggests playing music during transitions to let them get up and dance around to blow off energy. This was also used at the science fair, and it seemed to really help the students let go of some energy that was building up from sitting at each station.

We found these movement strategies very helpful and would like to share them with parents, caregivers, and fellow teachers. In order to do this, we are making a section of our parent newsletter dedicated to the importance of movement and breaks so parents can incorporate them into their lives at home when they see their children having a little extra energy. We are also sending out a memo through email to fellow teachers with our research on movement to inform them of these techniques.

Talk to you next time readers!

Hi fellow teachers,

I have been noticing two particular students in my field placement seem to be short tempered. These two students, let’s call them Joe and Matt, frequently have to be moved to the “calm down” corner to recollect themselves. I am only observing for a few hours once a week and these students are brought over to the “calm down” corner multiple times, I can only imagine how many times a week they need to be brought out of instruction to get their anger under control. These observations made me think, what can we do as teachers to lower the amount of anger outbursts students are having?

My two students Joe and Matt both seem to lash out when they are told “no” or do not get their way. It is important teachers know how to approach a child who is showing signs of anger, to make sure the student knows the teacher is there to help and not punish. An article called Do it Right: Appropriate Ways for Teachers to Treat and React to Aggressive Children by Ebtesam Q. Rababah follows a study done exploring different types of anger, their causes, and the ways teachers react to anger. There are two types of anger displayed, physical and emotional. This study found that, in preschoolers, boys are more likely to show physical anger, while girls are more likely to show emotional anger. This made sense to me since Joe and Matt tend to show their anger by hitting, kicking, shoving, and yelling.

The study showed some interesting findings. First, different factors shape aggressions. These factors could include, mimicking tv shows or violent video games, peer or family conflict, maltreatment, or hard punishment from authority figures in the child’s life. The next finding stated teachers should use sanctions rather than punishment. This means, as a teacher, you should have the student actively take responsibility for what they did instead of punishing the bad behavior. Lastly, aggressive students need social learning. Social learning is modeling correct behavior, using children’s literature and songs, using drawing as a teaching technique, role-playing, and teaching children with respect. This type of learning allows students to see the appropriate way to deal with certain situations.

After reviewing this article, I decided to reach out to my co-ops and find out more information about Joe and Matt. Both children came from a two-parent home, and both had older siblings who played video games. Joe and Matt could be trying to act like the characters in their siblings’ games. the social learning strategies would be beneficial to these students to show them the correct way of behaving instead of behaving like the violent video game characters. I think it is important that all of the adults in a child’s life are modeling the correct behavior, and I will be sending out a flyer to the parents of the students with warning signs of anger their children may be expressing, and they different social learning methods they could put in place at home to help their children.

Until next time teachers!

Hi readers!

Do you worry that your child or student is not grasping the concept of one-to-one correspondence when counting? I recently observed a child who could count off numbers very easily, but when it came time to counting blocks in front of her, she counted all the way up to 12 when there were 4 blocks actually there. This had me thinking, what are the most effective methods for teaching one-to-one correspondence? Kids love to learn all the number songs that focus on counting, but we need to make sure they actually comprehend the value of the numbers they are counting. I found an article written by Maria Alkhede and Camilla Bjorklund very insightful for new teaching strategies. According to this article, there are five aspects to be highlighted when working with counting. These include, the occurrences of numbers and counting in children’s activities, the purpose for using counting and numbers, children identifying numbers and numerals, the differences in children’s knowledge and skills, and learning the meaning of numbers. I really  liked two strategies from this article. First, make sure your student or child is always lining up the objects in a straight line instead of trying to count the objects in a cluster. This makes it easier for the child to see the objects in a row to go down one by one and count. Next, try labeling the objects with numbers on them. This way, since the children know the order of the numbers, they can put the objects in order of their numbers and then try and count how many there are in front of them. Maria Alkhede and Camilla Bjorklund also mention to incorporate learning into the counting to make the lesson more memorable. Instead of having your child or student randomly count blocks, try having them count something that relates to your lesson. For example, it is dinosaur week at my school. When doing centers, I had my students count out numbered dinosaurs after going over the different colors and names of the dinosaurs. Having the numbers on the dinosaurs definitely helped, but majority of the students ended up moving to the ones without numbers on them by the end of the week. I hope everyone finds these counting strategies helpful!

Bye readers!