Creativity and Innovation

This week learning to be more creative and innovative was a fun process for me. Generating new ideas for projects and other classes is important. I liked that this week’s assignments helped me learn more for this class and a few others that I taking.  I love looking at websites to create my own ideas and develop my own plans for assignments.

For assignments I am currently working on I have used the following cities:Human Body Printables, Lessons, & References (K-12) - TeacherVision.com and Teaching Body Parts Through Play - Head, Shoulders, Knees and Toes... - Toddlers Articles - Toddlers Today. These are just two examples that have helped me create my own plans for future assignments. I also love all the ideas that can used in the classroom for students.

Learning to be more creative is fun and great for any teacher. Learning to apply old information to new information and relate certain things to new things.  (Does that make sense to you?) LOL It’s like you can learn to find information about anything you want to teach and change it to fit into your classroom.

I believe learning to be creative and innovative can help teacher create lessons that their students are actually interested in and that they can learn well from. It helps you as the teacher to stay current with trends that are popular at the time.  

Delicious

I enjoyed learning how to use Delicious! I was very thankful that it wasn't too hard to learn how to use, although I'm sure there is more about this site that I will need to learn. I like having a place to save all my resources so that I could come back and find them easily when I needed them.

I kind of think this place is just using the Favorites link though, besides that you can find popular bookmarks and share your with others.

It could be a good website for group projects so that you and your group members can share certain websites with each others. It’s helpful for students that don't live close to each other so you can still stay on board and know what’s going on with your project.

For the most part Delicious is a good website that can be helpful to more than just students. And I like the name Lol.

Teaching Your Toddler Body Parts Through Play

Website Evaluation Checklist

Student Name: Erica Morton              Date of Evaluation: 2/11/2011

Name of the Website:  iParenting

URL of the Website: http://www.toddlerstoday.com/articles/toddlers/teaching-body-parts-through-play-1978/

Accuracy of the Web Page	Yes	No	Notes
1.  Can you find the author of the page? Hint:  Scroll to the bottom of the page.  It may be an institution.	X		Author Name: Carma Haley Shoemaker
2.  Can the author be contacted: Hint:  Look for an “About Us” or “Contact Link”		X	Author email:
3.  Do you think this person or institution is qualified to publish this webpage?	X		Why or why not? iParenting is a legit website that contains information to help parents answers all kinds of different questions.
Authority of the Web Page
1.  Check the domain of the URL, particularly the extension.       Is this a commercial site?   The URL can give clues to the authority.	X		What does the extension tell you? The extension tells you about the information contained in the website. It’s an article about teaching toddlers about body parts through play.
2.       Are there credentials listed for the author(s)? If not, try Googling the name of the author or the institution.		X	What did you find? I found another website about Ms. Shoemaker. It states her current and past careers, her education, her experience, recommendations, and other websites you can find her on. There is also a short summary about her
Purpose of the Web Page
1.  Read over the information on this website carefully.  Can you determine the purpose of this web page?	X		Why is this web page on-line?  Think critically about possible opinions or bias? This webpage was created to answers many different questions for parents. There’s pregnancy information, learning or teaching your children different things, health & nutrition information
Currency of the Web Page
1.  Can you find a publishing date?		X	When was it published?
2.  Can you find the date it was last updated?		X	When was it updated?
3.  Are the links working and current? Click on some of the links to check.	X		What do you think about the links? There are many different links and they all work. There are links to: different articles, Q&A information, recipes, links to Disney, and much more.
Looking at your answers, do you think this website would be a reliable, credible source of information?	X		Why or Why not?  This website contains great information for my topic that is reliable and I can easily add a resource for it.

Identifying Lesson Topics

When choosing lesson topics for your instructions makes sure you consider the intended learning outcomes. Lessons should contain information that is related to the standards or benchmarks of the school. The teacher and students outcomes should be clearly defined. Always provide a focus to the lesson. There should be a clear style for teaching, learning, and the assessment. Have a way to show what the students will learn and what they have learned at the end of every lesson.

Meeting the Needs of All Students

With thinking of what needs your students have you should think about your planning process. Are you planning the right amount of activities for the amount of time you have in class? Does your planning involve to much information or work for the time you have? Can your students stayed focused or will they become bored or confused with the assignments you have given them?

Each question needs to be carefully considered and the right actions need to be taken. When planning for your students make sure that you do not give them to much or to little work, both can be harmful to the students learning. Make sure the information is useful and relevant to the current class assignments.

Instructional Cycle

The three stages of the instructional cycle:

Stage 1: Intended Instructional Outcomes

You start off by identifying the content standards and benchmarks that every lesson will address. Then each standard is translated into measures learning outcomes. You should have a clear idea of what each student needs to know, understand, and be able to do to meet the standards based curriculum.

Stage 2: Planning

Second you should plan effective teaching strategies and instructional activities. Planning should include both standardized tests and teacher-made test. To carry out the planned instructions you must plan for the learning outcomes, instructions, and assessments.

Stage 3: Assessment

Finally you will implement your planned assessments to show if students have met the intended learning outcomes. Assessments should be planned when thinking of the intended outcomes, and not just created at the end of you unit.

Components of Good Assessment

Any good assessment should:

1.      Provide relevant evidence

2.      Measure the skills, knowledge, or abilities the teacher holds important

3.      Match purpose with the skills assessed

All of these help you in your goals and the outcome you want for yourself and your students. They will help you measure the success of each assessment.