Students Being Teachers

I was thinking about my blog Thursday and had it planned out in my head….UNTIL…I had such a great co-teaching moment Friday! Our Spanish teacher came to me earlier in the week and told me that the third grade was learning about animals in Spanish and she wanted them to “create” something on the computer. We really didn’t have time to talk about ideas but knew that it would not be a problem.


On Friday, we had both third grades at the same time. Our computer lab does not have enough computers for two classes, however, one class brought their netbooks and they sat at tables in the back of the room.

We decided that using PowerPoint would be the easiest way to create the project. The student had to find a piece of clipart of their animal, write their animal in Spanish, write three sentences about their animals in Spanish, and then they would print their project.

The amazing moment came when the students were showing each other ways to design their PowerPoint by adding a background, changing font, or playing with the picture. It was so much fun to watch the students teach each other. It truly was a moment where the students became the teachers and the teachers were the facilitators. What a wonderful lesson!

Here are some examples of their work:

An Amazing Moment

Many times during your teaching experience you have an amazing moment.  A moment that you want to share with everyone and one that you tuck away and recall when the day is not going your way.  Well, last week I had one of those moments.

I was in our Kindergarten where I have a fantastic opportunity to assist the teacher in helping her students develop their computer skills.  Our goal is that the students will be able to turn on the computer, find the correct short-cut which will lead them to a website (ex. Starfall), navigate the site, and then shut down the computer.

Two students came over to the netbook center and sat down very excited to show me how good they were with computers.  They immediately showed me how they could turn on the computer and then log on using the username and password.  Then the both asked me “what site would you like to see?”  I admit, I giggled a little, they were so proud of themselves.  I told them that I would love to see Starfall.  They both clicked on Starfall and they could not wait to tell me all about the site, I was amazed.  After they finished, I asked them if they could turn off the computers since our time was over.  Both of them immediately shut down the computer the correct way and closed them, leaving the area as neat as when they arrived.

I took a picture of each of them and we are going to make a bulletin board in their classroom.  As each student in the class accomplishes this task I will add their picture to the bulletin board.  

I cannot wait to see all of their pictures hanging on the board! 

New Year's Resolutions 2012

Now that we have officially welcomed 2012, it is time to look at my New Year’s Resolutions.

First, I plan on blogging once a week.  Since I starting blogging last year I was not consistent with it, but I will now ( I promise)!

Second, I would like to tweet more regularly.  I love reading and learning from everyone’s tweets but now I would like to contribute as well.

The third and final resolution this year is to increase my professional reading.  During this break I finally started reading Mindset: The New Psychology of Success by Carol Dweck, I look forward to sharing my thoughts on this book along with other books on my blog!

Happy New Year Everyone!