Meet the Standards

Week of 3/4/10:
This week we discussed standards for social studies and learned about other subject areas through jog saw learning. This group presentation was a bit smoother than the first couple. Everyone put a good effort in, and we were definitely more prepared. My favorite subject area is English – so I was very happy to be assigned to the ELA group!
I love that part of the foreword to the National ELA Standards states that room is left for “the innovation and creativity essential to teaching and learning.” My most memorable projects/assignments from my grade school days are the creative ones in the ELA area. I thought my fifth grade teacher Mrs. Rosenberger was innovative because she had us design our book report as a sandwich. We had bread for the cover and back, lettuce for the introduction and conclusion, and meat as our descriptive paragraphs. Now, after exploring the current ELA standards and learning about the technology out there for children today – I see there is a whole other side to making lessons creative and innovative. When researching some ways to meet standards in the classroom, I came across a website that provides suggestions for lessons incorporating technology. I tried incorporating a link to the particular lesson I had in mind, but of course the site is down as I’m writing. The main site is, Digital Wish. There are hundreds of lessons for every subject – pretty awesome! The people at Digital Wish provide technology to classrooms in need. People can go there to donate money, equipment, or to request help in getting those products for their classroom. I would love to have children in my future classroom to partake in a group project where they reenact key parts of a novel that we’ve read in class, or. They could record with a webcam or Flip, and then arrange their mini movies on Prezi. Several standards would be incorporated and they students would have something truly unique to share with their classmates and family.
The one thing that I found most interesting after learning about all of the standards, is how much they are incorporate technology. In the little fieldwork I’ve done in my time at MSMC, I can’t say I’ve seen any new technology used at all. Last semester I did ask the teacher I was observing about the computers in her classroom, and she simply told me that they were there for the children to play games and look up vocabulary words if someone else had the dictionary! I wonder how many teachers out there are letting what great tools they have go to waste?