C4T Summary #4

The teacher's blog I was assigned to comment on for C4Ts this month was Mr. Bryan Jackson's Adventures in a Gifted Classroom. Here is a piece from his "About me" which describes him some:

"I am a suburbanite teacher working at my old high school, exploring gifted and techno-learning with younger, smarter versions of my youthful self."

Here is his first post I commented on:

As TALONS facilitators, Ms. Mulder and I try not to make teacher-centered lectures and lessons too often the focus of our daily use of class time, preferring instead to use our common time and space for shared communication and collaborative problem solving based around many aspects of the class’ current learning. Especially in the spring semester, we often provide brief mini-lectures on topics or concepts for the day (or week), and then allow the class ample periods of “Focus Time” to be used for work and study of ongoing projects or problems.

There is a variety of different “focus” activities in the video above (Math, Socials, Adventure Trip planning, Leadership projects, etc) that attest to a diverse and productive use of class time the TALONS strive to produce on a daily basis.

Cross posted on the class blog, Defying Normality.

Here is my response to his post:

Mr. Jackson,

My name is Tiffany Fey and I am an EDM 310 student in Dr. Strange's class at the University of South Alabama, ,majoring in Elementary/ Special Education . One of my assignments is to comment on two of your blog posts, write a summary of them and my comments, and then post the summary to my blog later in the month. This blog post shared a great idea that am going to uphold in my future classrooms: Group work. I believe that allowing students to work together in a classroom really helps them build character and teaches them social skills that they will need as adults. Many teachers that I know hesitate to let their students work in groups in the classroom because they get too loud or they are afraid they will just play instead of work, but a teacher needs to have faith in their students, because students will often live up to their teacher's expectations. Teachers must give their students a chance to work in groups at least sometimes because students need interaction with each other during the learning process. Many times students learn better from each other than they do just listening to the teacher talk. Thank you for sharing this post Mr. Jackson, the video was very cute! If you would like to see my summary of your blog posts and my comments, later this month you can go to My Blog.

Thank you!

Tiffany Fey

Here is his second post I commented on:

Captured by Jenna

“Do you believe in something beautiful? Then get up and be it.”
Ted Leo

Kelly is on to something in the second draft of her This I Believe essay:

A character, even if it is based off of oneself, is not real. His or her experiences don’t have to follow the way of the rules of the world. The character is given a blank page every five hundred or so words, a new chance to create his or herself, a new chance at being somebody, a new chance at redemption, a new chance at life. So embrace your inner character. After all, everyday is a new page that we should not be afraid to write.

And here is my comment:

 Hello again Mr. Jackson,

This is Tiffany Fey with my second comment for Dr. Strange's EDM 310 comment for teachers assignment. As I said before in my previous comment, I am a Junior at the University of South Alabama majoring in Elementary/ Special Education.

I enjoyed reading this blog post because the words Kelly wrote really spoke to me. I am a writer myself and I feel the same way about characters in stories. I think writing gives you a chance to let your thoughts form a visible image of your mind and whats going on in it. We all have such unique and different thoughts in our heads and I believe that everyone should be given a chance to let people actually see these thoughts.

Thank you for sharing this blog post, it is really inspiring to see students write in such a great way like Kelly. If you would like to see my summary of your blog posts and the comments I made on them, you can click Here to view my blog. Again thank you for sharing!

Sincerely,

Tiffany Fey