Personal Learning Reflection

Learning about UDL guidelines and applying them to the Weather Report lesson I created was very beneficial for me in learning about effective teaching strategies. These guidelines really opened my eyes to how technology can be such a huge asset in a lower elementary classroom. In a lower elementary classroom you have such a variety of reading levels, so the simple tool of text to speech is very valuable. I really liked the website Vozme, and I also loved the feature included in powerpoint to add a sound recording. This is such a great tool to use and takes a frustration out of learning for some students. Another thing I learned about effective teaching strategies was the importance of reaching the TPACK “sweet spot” by blending knowledge of technology, pedagogy, and content when creating a lesson. After evaluating the TPACK webquest it was interesting that a lesson may be strong in content, but very weak in other areas, such as technology. The strongest lessons were those that addressed and blended all three areas.

Finding effective ways to integrate technology in a lower elementary classroom has been one of my main goals. After learning to create a StAIR, and creating my own StAIR for learning coin values, I have found that this is a very valuable tool for a lower elementary class. A StAIR is a great way to create a teacher guided activity and incorporate tutorials, online activities, or videos, while still allowing students to work independently. This is definitely something I will use in my classroom.

A new goal I have for myself is to be conscience of the UDL guidelines, as well as TPACK, as I create lessons. Making a few changes to a lesson to incorporate more UDL and blending the content, pedagogy, and technology will make my lesson plans much stronger.

Online Teaching Experience

In a lower elementary classroom an online experience that would work well with students is a webquest. Webquests can be used to teach any content area, and can also be used to teach cross curricular. The focus could be on science or social studies, but also ask students to incorporate some reading and writing tasks. When using a webquest students are able to see a task defined for them, the teacher can even model an example of the task, and then students have interactive practice through games, or use other internet resources, where they apply what they have learned.

One technology that might be harder to use with lower elementary students is interactive discussions with experts. I believe this would be a challenge due to the lack of an actual person coming to the classroom and the short attention span of lower elementary students. Another online experience that might be challenging is an online project. I feel it would be very overwhelming for students to learn how to organize all the information to create an online project.