Thanks for joining me!
This is my first blog, and I'm super excited to share primary teaching ideas with you! Currently, I am tacking the huge task of incorporating more online learning in my first grade classroom. Now that my first graders are one-to-one with iPads, it's time to get started! So far, I've only used the iPads for reading apps and the math games that go with our math curriculum. I've had some hesitation, as many of you may have, about students having technology problems, because I feel inept to help them when I am fairly new to this myself. I feel confident to help myself when I get stuck with technology, but with teaching first grade, I never feel like I have time to "play around" with technology before completely losing my audience!
I'm hoping to engage my students with a new science curriculum. Our new science curriculum is completely online based, and there is a student version and a teacher version. I will put students into partners to work together. After all, two minds are always greater than one! This will also help my non-English speakers. I am planning to practice with my daughter first too (who is in 3rd grade.) I want to introduce one aspect of the online science resource at a time. I'm going to create QR codes for the log-in if needed. If you haven't done this before, it is a huge time saver, especially with younger ages! After investigating one area at a time on the resource, we will share our successes and failures as a class. Hopefully we will learn do's and don'ts together! (As I quickly write all the ideas down for future reference! Ha, ha!)
I still anticipate technology mishaps and navigating through new material to be my biggest challenges. I fear we will waste more time figuring things out, and not actually learning the science content. I am wanting to use the pitfalls as a learning experience for my students to show them that- it's OK to try new things, and things don't have to go perfectly. Sometimes by doing something wrong and making mistakes, it teaches us better than everything going perfectly smooth. I'm going to enlist the help of our media specialist to help me as an extra set of hands in the room and navigate areas that she may have a little more experience in than I do.
Wish me luck! I will post again soon after getting started!!!
Children must be taught how to think, not what to think. --Margaret Mead
