During my professional experience I have observed the spelling groups conducted in the year 2 classroom. At the start of the week the students watch a C2C video which introduces the spelling words to the students, gives the students a context for the words and describes what they are eg. superlative. After observing this I thought this was a good way to integrate ICT in the classroom as for the students who don’t learn by writing their spelling words they might learn more through listening to the words and watching them on the screen of the video. This ICT integration caters for diverse learners in the classroom a which aligns with Gardener’s Multiple Intelligence Theory which I value as an important aspect of teaching young children.
Third Week: professional experience
The third week of professional experience has commenced and I am now marking and taking on all of the teaching responsibilities. Unlike Jess, as she mentioned on her blog, I have not found it easy to integrate ICT in this classroom. Integrating ICT have been difficult in this classroom, so I have been thinking of ways in which I could be using ICT’s in the classroom which will benefit the students. While I have been teaching this group they have been completing a monitoring task in which they needed to complete a for and against table about two similar texts on a specific character. They then completed 5 sentences using sentence starts such as I prefer, I think and In my opinion. When modelling each step of the task I wrote on the blackboard, however, to integrate ICT’s I could have used an interactive whiteboard if that had of been an available resource to encourage students to interact and to collaboratively model the task before the students independently complete the task.
ICT integration on Professional experience.
In the year two classroom I am teaching in for professional experience there is a projector and a screen therefore, to integrate ICT into the learning experiences i have been using this equipment to read books to the students and for the computer to read to the students. This has been an easier way of integrating ICT compared to allowing the students themselves to interact with them as the students in this class are behaviourally challenging. Next week I plan to integrate more ICT’s and adjust their interaction with ICT’s to see if they are mature enough to follow tasks set for them without playing and not following instructions which has been a challenging aspect of my professional experience so far.
Week 2 – professional experience
After nearly two weeks on professional experience I have been able to successfully complete two lessons integrating ICT. My first was more of a unit which was achieved over four lessons. The aim was for the students to create a growing or repeating pattern to create a piece of wrapping paper using the paint program. This displayed students with understanding of patterns in an engaging way whilst integrating ICT. This also aligns with the ICT general capability creating with ICT as students are using ICT to create a visual representation of their understanding of patterns. This worked well, however, there were a few students who did not understand and got distracted by the tools on the program.
Professional Experience
While on professional experience as described by Jess on her blog it is my aim to integrate as much ICT’s as possible. My context is a prep-year 2 class and I work mostly with the year two students. I have found it difficult to integrate ICT’s for a number of reasons. The first reason is the lack of resources . The school has a computer room with 25 computers, however, they don’t always work. The classroom for the year two students has three computers, however one is currently not working and the children are always complaining they freeze. The second issue is the behaviour of the students in the class. They do not focus on tasks and see the computers as something they play with in free play time between learning experiences. The third issue is their lack of knowledge about how to use ICT’s to begin with.
Assignment three
For assignment three , there are three aspects that we need to consider. Preparation and planning, the lesson plans and Refection, each need to reflect the theory and literature which underpins the concepts discussed and the ICT’s used in the lesson plans. When researching my topic of interest I came across this blog, Mobspawner and the post titled Differences between game based learning and educational games. This blog is an example where an ICT resource, used in the classroom is discussed in relation to the theoretical principles that underpin it. For the first and last part of the assignment it is necessary to discuss similar connections in order to meet the requirements of the assignment.
Topic of Interest one
As mentioned by Nick in his blog, in this weeks learning path and tutorial we were asked to research and expand out knowledge in relation to using ICT on professional experience.
I came across Turtle Diary, a website comprising of many educational games for prep to year two in Maths, English, science and the arts. These games can be used at school or for further assistance at home. The games introduce and build concepts and skills from all learning areas in a fun, engaging and non threatening way. The educational games also cater for English as a Second language learners and is accessed by many countries around the world.
This website is American designed therefore, some of the spelling does not align with English Standards which could confuse students who are learning how to read and spell.
As Nick mentioned on his blog at the end of the tutorial we brainstormed where we can look for ICT resources to use while on professional experience. When we are on professional experience it will be our role to develop and choose what ICT resources will be used in our lesson plans. To help this process, as a class we stock piled a list of different areas learnt throughout the semester and found on the learning path that could assist us. We categorised our brainstorming into four categories.
Process Models: TPACK, Backward design
Frameworks: Blooms Taxonomy, Australian Curriculum
Literature: journal articles, Herrington’s paper
Theories: Tool belt theory, constructivism
Assignment three preperation
After submitting assignment two, in class this week we moved onto assignment three. Assignment three focuses on module three of the learning path. Assignment three is based on what is learnt and the ICT integrated lesson plans developed while on professional experience. There is three sections of assignment three, preparation, lesson plans and reflection. Section one preparation can be started before professional experience. The five lesson plans need to be implemented on professional experience but do not have to be written by you, they may be the C2C or lessons already planned by the teacher. The reflection needs to address what worked well in the lessons and what could be planned better for the future.
Authentic Activities
Herington and Kervin’s paper suggests that authentic learning environments should be designed focusing on nine key areas. The area authentic activities describes the need for learning experiences and activities in the classroom to reflect the students real world and reflect real life experiences. An example of this which was used to development my unit plan in assignment two is to use ICT as a tool to create a toy or game based on how technology has impacted toys and games. This tool could be paint or a gaming program. This is an authentic activity for students in the early childhood setting as toys and games are something they are interested in and interact with when they are not at school.
EDC3100 ICT Blog 