reflection 3

I really enjoyed today's peer learning format with my table. This was a welcomed approach for me as I look forward to collaborating with my colleagues.  Although I find most all professional development beneficial I have always found that I have learned the most valuable techniques and information from the colleagues I work with everyday. I found today to be no exception.  It was contenting to listen and share with my table's knowledge and experience.  We face the same challenges and share the same passion to learn with kids. The peer learning approach has great value and I thought about some ways to use this in my second grade classroom.  Math problem solving would be a great place to begin.  Providing small groups of students with a math problem and giving them a time limit to come up with possible outcomes.  I like the idea of the timer.  I use three sand timers in my classroom a 3, 5, and 10 minutes and find them to work best with primary age children because of the visual.  Fortunately haven't found that the pressure of time stresses my students as Hillary spoke of today. I have found it to provide them with a clear guideline and to keep their focus on the task.

When exploring through the various sites I found that diigo was easy to install and no doubt a tool I've needed for a long time.  I am always hunting for a website while my students wait.  I often find things at home in the evening on my computer that I want to share with my students. This program's ability to follow you would allow me to access and share it easily.  The google drive was very cool.  I probably need to spend some serious amount of time to figure it out but I could use many aspects of this without any doubt.  I want to construct a survey with this program to use for writing narratives with my students and a survey for math problem solving.  I am interested in using twitter to search out a person to skype with my students.  The mystery skype program showed some feedback from teachers who had done skyping with two paleontologists and I will be teaching a dinosaur unit this spring.  What a great way to bring an expert into your classroom!  I also checked out the top 50 elementary school teacher blogs and this had some useful discussions, lessons, and printables that could be accessed.  I plan on looking over kahnacademy before bedtime.  I have many above grade level students to challange and this might be a resource for them.

All in all great day!  Lots of information!  I need the rest of the summer to try this stuff out!