C4T Summary

Connect Educators
This week I comment on a blog post by Kevin Bennett, Connect Educators: Putting Aside Politics for Practice. His post was about the negative feedback teachers can get from the press, or from outside people in general. He states that it is important to stay focused on our job at hand because we shape children's lives, and it is the only K-12 experience that they will ever get. He says that there are three ways for teachers to get connected and feel empowered. These three things are to join a professional learning community, go beyond your profession, and keep moving forward. These three things will help you to get new ideas from other people in the teaching profession, nourish your soul and help you make a commitment with yourself, and help you find ways to step out and push forward.


In my response I told him who I was and that I was an education student at South Alabama. I thanked him for his insightful post. I think it is a great thing for future teachers to read, as well as present teachers, because it gives you a good outlook on our profession. I do think it is important to stay focused on the children because like he said it is their only chance!

Science Notebooks
The other teacher blog I commented on was by Jane Fung. This blog was about way to make the kids "think like scientists". Ms. Fung uses notebooks with her children keep up with their information and become more complex thinkers. She uses hers for science. She gave us tips on four different ways to use these science notebooks. The first was to get students to use them as reference sheets. This just means getting students to copy down a definition or a diagram or pictures to use for later reference. The next way is for recording discoveries. This means that the students will write down there own understanding of different concepts. The third way is to capture evidence of learning or understanding. This means the teacher checks the students notebooks to see if they are understanding. The last way to use these notebooks is to watch the students progress over the year. This just means that at the end of the year, you can go back to the beginning and see how much the child grew with their entries throughout the year. Ms. Hung thinks that this science notebooks are very powerful resources in the classroom. Read her blog on the Teacher Channel, Ms. Jane Fung.

In my response,  I told her that I was majoring in education. I also told her that I thought this was a wonderful idea. I think it is a great idea for science, and I think that it could be incorporated into other subjects also! I told her that I hoped to use this idea in my classroom when I have one because I thought it would be very helpful to the children.