Your 2nd Grade Teacher's Thoughts

  A strength of mine that I have recognized from this week’s readings is that I am always willing to embrace change when it comes to incorporating technology into the classroom. Due to the nature of technology, it is always changing, evolving, and sometimes can be unpredictable. However, I see the academic value it can have if incorporated correctly. According to Saumell in Principles for Meaningful Technology Integration, “Meaningful technology integration focuses on the learning task and not the technology.” (pg 2) To me this means that as an educator we need to come up with the tasks first and then find technology that makes that learning possible. Finding different technology tools or websites is something I enjoy doing. Teaching my students how to use those tools to enrich their learning experiences I also love doing. Some technology tools I’ve used with my students this last year are Wevideo, Math Learning Center Apps, Book Composer, SeeSaw and NearPod.  The challenge that I face

  One of the overarching ideas from this week’s readings that I think I am already doing as an educator is formatively assess student learning in a lot of different ways. While I feel like sometimes, my school might over-assess student learning I do think as a teacher I do collect a lot of meaningful data on my students. Some of the ways I currently formative assess student learning are through student interviews, student conferences, observation notes, and student portfolios. One of the big ideas from Wiggins & McTighe’s readings this week explained how “Effective teacher-assessors gather lots of evidence along the way, using a variety of methods and formats.” (2005, pg 152) Generally, within a unit, I already build several forms of formative assessment and take observation notes on all my students daily. While these formative assessments are not perfect, I feel like most of the data we collect (that isn’t state or district required) is “descriptive and narrative not just scored a