For my second C4T I was assigned to Mrs. Elvira Deyamport's blog "Language Journeys." Mrs. Deyamport is a Gifted Education teacher in grades 2-6. She also has a specialist degree in Reading Instruction, a masters in Gifted Education, and a dual bachelor's in Elementary Education and Spanish. Prior to Gifted Education, she taught second grade and elementary Spanish.
#1
The first post I read and commented on of hers was "Research Meets Podcasts." Mrs. Deyamport had to teach for her district's enrichment program. She said "I love teaching this program because it gives me a time to test out some methods and projects that I normally don't get to try during the school year or like in this case, haven't tried in a while." She sounds like a wonderful teacher, one that will try anything for her students. She said "I admit, I am a little weary of throwing tools at my students without trying them out myself, but this summer has taught me to do the opposite." She continued saying, "This time around I took a leap with my basic skills and knowledge and jumped right in." She wasn't at all disappointed in her decision to do so as well. I told Mrs. Deyamport in my comment that I wanted to be the same kind of teacher as her. I don't want to let my fear of not knowing how things work to keep me from trying new things with my future students. She encouraged me to want to jump right into things that could have a very positive outcome in students lives. Technology shouldn't be something we fret about. I need to start looking at technology in a different way.
Mrs. Deyamport was assigned as the "Activity Teacher" for their program and she decided to focus on exploring one tool and creating a product with that tool. I think that was a very wise decision. She "choose podcasts and narrowed their final product to a talk show where they would interview other scientists." The students had fun with their podcasts and she said "another reason why I love this tool- it captured my students' personalities best." I loved watching/listening to some of her students podcast videos. They were very creative!
#2
The second post I read and commented on of Mrs. Deyamport's was "Real Life Math and Other Enrichment Activities." Mrs. Deyamport started this post by saying she had been struggling with ways to make Math more engaging and relevant for her gifted learners. She said, "The drill and skill approach is not sufficient and worksheets are not going to cut it either." I told her in the comment that I left, that I totally agreed. She continued by saying "That's when I came to the conclusion that they needed to explore concepts and apply what they have learned to real life settings." With the help of her PLN, she was able to come across several resources to help her transition to projects and better manage them in her class. By doing this she said that "Now instead of feeding information to my students, they are solving problems through trial and error, communicating with each other on the best strategies to reach a conclusion or solution, and most importantly, making sense of and even justifying what they are learning."
She included some of the projects her students have done. The projects that she included in this post were "Decimal Designs," "Math Movies" which demonstrated their understanding of place value, and thanks to their school's PTA they were able to have a "Math Party" to apply estimation and computation skills. The students planned a themed party with a budget of $100. In the comment I left Mrs. Deyamport, I told her that I loved how she gave her students the opportunity to learn with hands on projects. The projects looked fun but also engaging at the same time. I concluded my comment by thanking her for sharing these great ideas.
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