finding your niche

There has been alot of strategies and manipulatives that we have covered in class---soooo many to choose from.  The top four that have been drilled into our heads are as follows:

1                                                                      opportunities to communicate and collaborate

                                                                                                                   concrete to abstract

3                                                     age appropriate activities

4                                                                                                  experiencial and beneficial

I  If I remember to use these strategies in my classroom it will be extremely beneficial not only to me, but to my students because making the curriculum personal and promoting active learning will make them want to learn and experience education the way it should be experienced.  When you are experiencing a classroom it can be a good experience or a bad one---if it turns negative it can change a child's outlook on school and even life to be one that is unhappy, struggling, and unwilling to learn.   If I choose to teach with activities that involve groups, sometimes the members don't want to participate because they don't like the spotlight on them:

Nikkita in the spotlight!

But, if the spotlight activity is just an assessment of learning and repeating the information that they already know (which sometimes helps the student to relax because they aren't nervous about saying a wrong answer).

I also really like the idea of using manipulatives with pairs or in smaller groups because it makes the activity and the learning more personal than it can be sometimes within the entire classroom.  This activity:

What Suits You!

   allows the students not only to practice mental math( using the top cards together to achieve the number of the card located on the bottom) but also to keep their mathematic and social skills developing.  When we participated in this activity it forced me to think, but it also didn't stress me out because my partner was having some of the same struggles as I was, and if they weren't struggling then we discovered we could work together to solve the problem and achieve our same goal.

     I think it is SO cool how each classroom has different students and everytime it will be an adventure as to how that set of students work together.  The strategies that may work for one group of students may not work with another group---it is a constant reminder that every child is different and that a teacher must always be on their toes and strive to reach each and every one of those separate needs.  

                                                     Every student is DIFFERENT!!!!!!!! :)