Blog Journal 3

   Based on the ELA standards for technology in a seventh grade class, I feel most comfortable with teaching my students how to use an online dictionary or thesaurus for their writing. I use this already and so passing on some tips and tricks would be easy to do and I have a lot of confidence in using these tools. However, I do not feel comfortable with the standard to create online posters or graphics. I have never needed to create a poster or photo online, and I would not even know where to begin. But this is something I want to learn so I can teach my students to be better than I am at it. Especially in our day and age where everything is now digital or done on a computer, it is an extremely important skill to have, it also minimizes the amount of work needed to create a nice looking poster. I am sure there are many programs and systems that can be used to make these graphics or posters.

   The CPALMS website is an amazing tool that has endless resources and tools to aid a teacher in the classroom. I would like to be either a science or math teacher for seventh graders and looking through this website I was able to see somethings that I may use in my future career. I love the many tools they have for math because I feel like math is the one subject in school that no one loves and it is always students worst class or subject. No one comes into a math class excited to do math problems besides the teacher.
   CPALMS offers a great tool called 7th grade Math Element Cards, where they have it listed out on how an instructor can support students as they are teaching a lesson and even after when they are practicing. The Math Element Cards also offer some practice or activities for the students and walks the teacher through it to scaffold the students. This source can be beneficial for me because there are some concepts in math that I understand very well but cannot put it into words for others to understand. I think these element cards account for the teacher and allows them to teach the students in a way that is more effective than just practice problems.

   Unfortunately, I did not enjoy the newsletter assignment at all. It was very broad and there were too many ways to go about it, which I guess is good, but for me felt a little upsetting because I spent more time trying to figure out what I wanted the topic to be than actually putting it together. I did however enjoy using some of the skills learned in class about word, I've never worked on a project like so before and it was interesting that, although it was not the best newsletter, I think it came out pretty good for a beginner. Next time, I would like to use a template just to give me more of a guided thought process in deciding what to do.
   I did not see myself using this in my future career as a teacher, but I can see now that a nice fun newsletter for the parents would be nice. It can be helpful to keep the parents in the know and to have them be active participants in their child's education. Newsletters are also a great way to get your point across in an appealing and short way. Often times long paragraphs will turn the readers away and they will not want to read whatever it is you want them to read.
Here is my newsletter :)