Week 4 Post

I really enjoyed how Tomkins refered to effective spelling practices in the classroom. She mentions that some teachers find spelling tests effective, while others feel they should be learned through reading and writing. In the third grade classroom I work in, my students do not have spelling tests. My CT is not big on testing children’s knowledge, he is even against times table test too. He would rather have his students demonstrate their knowledge through math games and math work than a test, and he feels the same way about spelling. My CT has his students working towards their spelling in much of their language arts work daily. The students have reading time where they read out loud to the class, are being read to, or are reading silently. Also, he has students writing their own books and sharing them to the class. The other day in class my CT had the students use their thesaurus’ when he eliminated certain words to be used in their writing. He told the students they couldn’t use words like “said, little, big, etc” because he wanted more descriptive words like “declared, shouted, enormous, miniscule, etc. I really enjoy his method of teaching and so do the students of his classroom. Although, I find spelling tests helpful and encouraging to some students, I think there should be more ways to encourage a child to learn besides the competitive nature of tests.

After taking the Digital Native quiz, I felt less confident about my digital skills. I would say, overall, I am digitally native rather than a digital immigrant, but I still am not aware of all the digital possibilities out there. For example, before this class I had never really blogged before. I knew of friends’ blogs that I would read and check up on, but I never had one of my own. The more I read on the site about how our generation is always multi-tasking I knew I was digitally native because I am always multi-tasking. As of right now, I am typing while listening to music with a friend talking to me. I am always doing multiple things at once and I find it impossible not to at my current point in life. I am always so busy, it seems pointless not to multi-task. I found the site interesting how it said that certain people do not find disabilities like ADHD legit, because with the current generation it may not be that a child needs medications, but simply more of a challenge. For example, I can compare two classes where I cannot focus in one, but am fully alert in the other. I think a lot of it has to do with how effectively a class utilizes its time and class to yield participation and attention.