Mrs. Turner Teaches

This week we talked about Marzano's 9 Instructional strategies. The one that I feel will be really useful in my lesson plans and in my classes in the future is Questions, Cues and Advance organizers. I feel that asking questions helps students identify what they already know to use and help learn new information. For example, with my current students now we use Fundations to help with language training. This has been useful in helping students with sign in work and identifying there name as well. By asking them question, or using the letter sound they are able to identify letters. It has been especially neat to see students who are low cognitively identify letter sounds with different objects in the room. I think that Marzano's strategies will be very helpful when coming up with our unit lesson plans. 

This week we talked about Thinking Maps. Thinking Maps are eight different diagram types that use common language for thinking strategies. You can read more about Thinking Maps here html Types of Thinking Maps I personally will enjoy doing lessons with Thinking Maps. I am a visual learner and I think that these will help engage students and also help work together. As an early childhood SPED teacher I plan to use Thinking Maps with pictures and simple words. Pinterest is a blessing to teachers (thank you technology!) and I've enjoyed looking at ideas for thinking Maps for preschoolers. We do a lot of references to our theme (usually a book) in our larger group, small group and snack time. At small group we've done simple sequences and I never knew that was a Thinking map until now! We've also used tree maps to distinguish our feelings or what types of apples we like or even what shoes we are wearing (Thanks to Pete the Cat!) Personally, I use Thinking Maps when I jou...

This week in class we listened about Madeline Hunter parts of a lesson plan. This is exciting for me because I already do lesson plannning and I know this will be helpful in my current classroom. Working with Early childhood SPED children you always have to be aware of pedogogical goals. I never knew there were so many parts to lesson plans! When we plan on fridays in my classroom we break it down by each kid. We have "typical" developing students but we don't talk about them we just normally focus on IEP students and how to help them get the most out of the lessons. Starting next week we begin Fundations with our classes and I know that many of the typical developing students will get a little more out of it than some of our IEP students but it will still be nice to incorporate. I feel that modeling is my favorite part of any lesson. I am a visual learner and after seeing how something is created or done I can tend to put my own twist on it as well.

Writing objectives are a way to structure instruction. They are a way for us to help students learn a new skill or information. We learned an acronym for this and it is CBAD. The C is condition, B is behavior, A is audience and D is degree. In the classroom our audience would most likely be our students. The behavior is what we want them to do. The condition is how we want them to do this and the degree is how long it will take. I feel that writing objectives are important because they help students learn and you will be able to see measurable outcome from this. An example that I will use from my house is: To help Lila learn to roll she will need to practice tummy time for twenty minutes a day. A: Lila B: Learn to roll C: Tummy time D: 20 minutes