Standard5

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** Standard 5 ** ** Teachers know how to manage a classroom. **  The teacher uses an understanding of individual and group motivation and behavior to create a learning environment that encourages positive social interaction, active engagement in learning, and self-motivation. Evidence 1: Mrs. Huston’s Class Blog [] Rationale 1: One of the first things we learned about in this program was blogging. I honestly had not heard of it before and thought that it could have some great uses in education. I developed the blog for my sixth grade class as a tool to share information with students and parents and as a place to list great websites that would enhance student learning. The first time I showed the students the blog, they were immediately excited, and students could not wait to have their turns to post our daily happenings. One of the rules of the blog, whether students are creating a new post or commenting, is that the writing has to be correct. Sentences must be complete with proper punctuation and capitalization. We discussed that this is a blog for formal language. Because students want to see their posts online, they are motivated to edit their work more carefully than they are when I am the only audience. I don’t “teach” the blog, but I do teach from the blog. I use elements from it to enhance and motivate students. I show them where to find the tools that they can use to further their studies. Sometimes we do use some of the links on the blog in class for assignments. Sometimes I pose questions on the blog for the students to answer. Our online literature book is linked to the blog and is where students go to connect to it during reading class. Often when students finish their work, they are instructed to explore the links on the blog. During my Latin America unit, students started each hour on the geography game linked to the blog and spent five minutes quizzing themselves on the countries of South America. I believe the blog absolutely encourages positive social interaction through the comments, active engagement in learning, and self-motivation. KSD 5.K.4 The teacher understands the principles of effective classroom management and can use a range of strategies to promote routines and positive relationships, cooperation, and purposeful learning in the classroom. When students are engaged in learning, classroom management is easy. I think that classroom management, in general, is one of my strengths. I learned early on that students are most productive when they have meaningful tasks to accomplish and when expectations are clear. When students are in the computer lab, they often surf places that they are not supposed to be. By having the blog established as an anchor site when we enter the computer lab, they are never far from meaningful choices when their first tasks are completed.  5.S.3 The teacher organizes, allocates, and manages the resources of time, space, activities, and attention to provide active and equitable engagement of students in productive tasks.  Because of the many different options linked to the class blog, students are able to find many different productive tasks to engage them when we are in a computer lab. Typically, my plans on a computer lab day include plenty of work for students without them having to seek more things to do, but there are students who work at a faster pace. I am confident when they finish their work that they will find something interesting and meaningful using the blog choices.   5.D.4 The teacher recognizes the value of intrinsic motivation to students’ life-long growth and learning.  I think that the class blog is valuable in many ways, but one way is that it shows students different tools to be successful in different subject areas. Students can have access to those tools from school or home. Often the links I have added have been due to student suggestions. Students are excited when their ideas are added to the blog. The blog is also fun, and let’s face it, people of all ages are motivated by things that are fun. Using student ideas and allowing them to have fun as they learn leads to intrinsic motivation. People who are intrinsically motivated to learn do better in school. As a teacher, I have found that the blog and its links are very helpful. 