Chapter Four Response:
This chapter can prove to be very helpful for elementary school teachers. Organization is one of the most important keys within the classroom. Not only does the classroom need to be organized, student’s thoughts must also be organized. This chapter introduces concept maps to the reader. There are several websites and software that caters to the needs of students through the use of concept maps. These concept maps link related ideas with pictures, text, and educational websites that students can study to help them understand a concept within any subject. Next, chapter four discusses presentation writing. PowerPoint presentations are the first thing this part of the chapter addresses. It talks about how PowerPoint Presentations have been basically overused. The chapter lists five major advantages to using PowerPoint Presentations. However, the chapter then goes on to list four disadvantages of using them. These important points should be recognized by all instructors and students who will use these presentations. Technology also provides websites that can help students write creatively. Online websites offer workshops to help students expand their thoughts, especially with poetry. This chapter provides numerous websites for students to explore that will help stimulate their brains to write creatively. Using online resources, the chapter mentions that it is easy to write collaboratively. The author talks about the different ways students can work together to write: brainstorming ideas, structuring the flow of their writing, generating text to be used in their written product, editing text, and negotiating the meaning of those tasks. This can be used with or without technology in the elementary classroom. This is a great opportunity for group work and class discussions. This book mention several ways that adults write collaboratively that could ask is used in the grade school environment. SWoRD is also a neat program to use that can help students receive feedback on writing.
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You are absolutely right for mentioning the point that organization is the key to running an effective classroom. Without proper classroom management skills and a plan on how to go about the facilitation of learning, the classroom environment would be a chaotic mess. I also thought the section on the software and websites that offer tools for creating concept maps was interesting. I was unaware of all the resources available for making them until this semester when we used the in science class. These tools can also help the classroom run in a more effective manner as students can use them to work in groups on concept maps. Nice blog!
ReplyDeleteI also wanted to comment about organization - it makes such a difference! I agree that this chapter had many helpful websites and tips on how they can be used in an elementary classroom.
ReplyDeleteThe chapter definitely did have some great suggestions for organization, whether it was talking about concept maps, powerpoints, or whatever. I agree, though. If the classroom is not organized, it just makes it much more difficult for the teacher.
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