Sunday, November 16, 2008

HOT OFF THE PRESS, READ ALL ABOUT IT...


Communication between parents and teachers is essential for student success. When I become an educator I hope to establish partnerships with parents to allow the door for communication to ALWAYS be open. Parents need to know and feel that teachers are approachable. Often it is difficult for parents to frequent parent teacher conferences, open house, board meetings, and activities or programs taking place within their child's school. Parent's busy schedules often don't allow flexibility to accommodate such activities. Luckily parents and teachers can communicate in a variety of ways. In my opinion one of the very best ways to effectively communicate is via email. It is a fast and efficient way to ask questions, get answers, share information, and maintain a relationship/partnership. I know that I will use email as the main form of communication with parents. I believe podcast would be fun to use to share information with parents. I could create one podcast for ALL parents. For this weeks assignment we created a newsletter. I think it would be interesting to turn it into a podcast. For the newsletter I used Microsoft Publisher. I had difficulty choosing which template to use for the layout. I also had to figure out how to make the print/text larger without changing the font.. So, now I know how to use the zoom option. Two years ago I took a course at the Mount, Nature of Schools. I had to write a letter to parents explaining how I was going to incorporate multicultural influence into the curriculum. I used the letter for this assignment. I wish I had know about Microsoft publisher then. I'm not sure that I would do anything differently if I were to compose another newsletter.
Click here to view newsletter.

Monday, November 10, 2008

I really enjoyed this weeks assignments. I found them to be relatively easy and time efficient. As we learned through the readings and resources external rewards, such as grades, can provide a strong incentive for students to perform work and can affect student learning. For the assessment and evaluation process I choose engrade to create my grade book. An attractive feature of online grade books is that they can't get lost or stolen. You can save on CD or flash drive, email grades to other educators on your team, guidance counselors, administration, and provide students and parents with information more quickly, and readily and aid in organization. This program was real easy to use and gave clear step-by-step instructions with a great demo video. Once I do become an educator I hope the district I am employed by uses such programs as engrade.

Here is the link to my grade book
http://www.engrade.com/teacher-gradebook.php?c=1

Here is the link to HA6CaQ
http://www.proprofs.com/quiz-school/story.php?title=ela-greek-mythology-quiz