My reflections on ED-554

     This has been a hectic semester for me. Besides course ED-554, I have two more courses, and one of which is definitely not a walk in the park. Although I have invested a considerable amount of time and energy doing assignments for this class, this has been by far the most entertaining, fun, and enriching experience I have ever had since I started my graduate program. I realize now that doing something you love and enjoy is the key to success, and that is how I feel about technology and this course in particular. The integration of technology in the classroom is a MUST nowadays and not a choice, and it would be highly embarrassing for any teacher to be ignorant in this regard. Sadly, I have been fairly ignorant until I took this rich and powerful class with dr. Langran and learned all those diverse and fun tools to make lesson instruction in the classroom accessible, meaningful, and enjoyable for each and every student.
       Nevertheless, the journey in this course hasn't been all lilies and daisies, for there were times I have experienced feelings of frustration and helplessness, and that was the time we had to tackle the copy write issue. Never mind how long it takes you as a teacher to create ideas for your lessons, search for resources, arrange your thoughts and plans, you will always be hand-tied when it comes to using the web treasures. Fortunately, I won't be facing the same difficulty back home simply because copy write in my country is not that big of a deal as it is here in the States, at least it wasn't around the time I left the country three years ago.
   More creative and fun tools for lesson creation and delivery could be added to the content of this course to make it more comprehensive and inclusive of all possible resources in technology and media world. Another suggestion is to assign more classes as online sessions considering the fact that most of our work is done at home and not in the classroom.
   Thank you ED-554 and Dr. Langran for creating a fairly beginner technology expert out of me and helping me brag about my new talent in front of my two teenage technology-addict kids. 

update on my favorite blog "Fun to Teach ESL"

      Every Tuesday, Lori the author of the This blog shares two of her favorite structured language practice activities with the readers. This past Tuesday Oct. 22 her  first activity was the "Talking Chips", which encourages ESL learners to speak and participate with the whole class. The idea here is to pass out the same number of chips to every student, present a topic for discussion along with sentence frames, vocabulary, and prompts, and ask whoever wishes to speak to give back a chip until all students have used all their chips. This way all students participate in the discussion without having some speak more than the others.
The second tip for this week is doing the same activity using numbers in a hat. Students are divided into two groups, the teacher or the students themselves suggest a fun topic to discuss, each students is assigned a number, and every time that number is drawn that student used the prompts from the teacher to contribute to the discussion.
Even though some of these tips are familiar to me, I find it important to keep reminding myself to use them with my students in the classroom. By creating a list of teaching tips like these, teachers will end up having a good source of ideas and activities to use with their ESL learners, a thing that would make their instruction diverse, up to date, and engaging to the different students.
Comment already posted on the blog.
http://esleld.blogspot.com/2013/10/favorite-structured-language-practice_22.html?showComment=1382994519204#c6645719987688068954

ED 554 digital story Mona Alammar

This 3 mins and 47 seconds clip represents some of the factors about animals, and answers some of the requirements of my chosen SOL. The whole ideas is about six different animal species representing my six animal groups gathering in a baby shower. Going through the process of preparing for the baby shower I tried to point out certain factors related to those animals' physical characteristics, habitat, and reproduction. As for the inquiry part, students can go from here to investigate more attributes and characteristics of these animals and add more names to the different six groups. This clip is a teaching aid that answers the different learning styles, in which visual learners look at the pictures of the different animals, those who are auditory listen to me describing those animals in an indirect way, those with logical or mathematical learning style can draw conclusions and inferences about the animals throughout the whole story, and those who are kinesthetic can touch and explore models of those animals shown in the pictures. 

Director, Author and photographer: Mona Alammar

Music retrieved from: http://freeplaymusic.com/search.aspx?q=happy

Music piece: "Serenade me" by composer Dan Pasternak

Inquiry-based Learning

      Throughout all my school years I have never been given the chance to think for my self, come up with a solution for a problem, or question my textbooks. The classrooms back home have always been teacher centered where there is always the textbook, the teacher who feeds the students the content of that textbook, and the students who have to memorize the information if they wish to pass the tests. Therefore, and because I have had no knowledge or experience whatsoever with inquiry-based learning as a student, I have never used it with my students simply because I have never heard of it during my teaching career.
     Learning about this teaching strategy through this course made me think how great it would have been applying it in my classroom. As an English teacher, I doubt if I could have used it in earlier grades, simply because students at this level didn't have enough language to help them. Nevertheless, it could have been applicable in higher grades where topics like pollution, obesity, fashion and shopping, and famous literature pieces could have been tailored for the purpose of research and discovery.
     Introducing this strategy to the classrooms back home would be a considerable positive change in the school system and how classes are being run. Teachers' role will be the facilitators channelling students into the desired directions instead of being overwhelmingly responsible for delivering the content throughout every class period. Students, on the other hand, will get the chance to think for themselves, enhance their critical thinking and problem-solving skills, be responsible for their own learning instead of relying solely on the teacher to feed them the knowledge. If this dream comes true, both teachers and students will have their negative attitudes towards school and the teaching and learning processes changed into something positive and productive for both parties.
  

Webquest

1-  http://questgarden.com/24/31/2/060502113437/ 
Animal Classification and Animal Habitat by Marcia Kish, Wilson Hill
In this webQuest students are expected to search for and compare different animal groups, their classifications, and habitats. They will then reflect on the most or least enjoyable part of their search, the things they have learned in this experience, and what they have contributed to the group work. 

2-http://questgarden.com/133/76/1/111021173227                                                                                 All About My Animals by Lani Iemma, Chamberlain
In this webQuest students are expected to work in pairs, choose one animal each, exchange information with partner, and finally, write a page for a class book about their findings.

URL address for my three day old baby website.
https://sites.google.com/a/marymount.edu/mona-s-ed-554-site/podcast

Map of UDL

Standard of Learning

For my standard of learning, I chose standard 1.5 / Science / 1st Grade / Strand: Life Processes

Standard 1.5

The student will investigate and understand that animals, including humans, have basic needs and certain distinguishing characteristics. Key concepts include:

a) basic needs include adequate air, food, water, shelter, and space (habitat);

b) animals, including humans, have many physical characteristics; and

c) animals can be classified according to a variety of characteristics.

Overview

     This standard focuses on the idea that animals move, need food, breathe, and reproduce. 
Animals have a variety of ways in which they accomplish these activities. Each type of animal has features that allow it to function in unique and specific ways to obtain food, reproduce, and survive in a particular place. This standard builds upon the Life Processes strand (K.6 and K.7), in which students are introduced to the concept of living and nonliving, and investigate and understand basic needs and life processes of plants and animals. It is intended that students will actively develop scientific investigation, reasoning, and logic skills (1.1) in the context of the key concepts presented in this standard.

Linking activities to different learning styles:

      This topic lends itself to different activities that are bound to meet students' different learning styles ranging from using photos of animals for visual learners to investigate the physical characteristics, using miniature plastic figures of animals or stuffed toys for kinesthetic learners, learning songs and dances about animals' habitats, their physical appearances, and food preferences, using the internet to learn more about animals, taking field trips to a zoo to examine the different animal types there, bringing a pet to the classroom and watching it for an extended period of time to write something about what habits and characteristics it has, creating different corners in the classroom to represent the different animals and their habitat, the reenactment of a story about animals, and much more. 

Teddy Bears Project

      Even though the idea of having students practice writing to a real or imaginary friend in the same school or overseas has been around for decades now, implementing it using technology makes it more appealing, effective, convenient, and a strong representative of what we have so far learned in class 554  about integrating technology in teaching to meet all learning styles.
     I remember that more than twenty years ago my classmates and I were engaged in a similar project, in which the teacher had assigned each student a pen-pal in another country ( I have realized long time ago that those were imaginary friends), asked us to write letters on weekly basis exchanging information about our country, culture, school, and events. The teacher would then revise the letters, bring them back to us to write the final draft, then send them to wherever those imaginary friends lived. Once each got a response letter, the next assignment was to revise it, point out structural, grammatical, and spelling mistakes, and share the content information with the rest of the class. I have enjoyed this project to a great extent, for it helped me to indirectly improve my knowledge in geography, practice writing, and refine my spelling and grammar skills.
     Implementing a modern version of this project makes it up to date in engaging the new generation to use the computer instead of a pen and a paper, and a great opportunity for collaboration, taking responsibilities,  and learning about different cultures. I also liked the proactive measures the teacher took in monitoring the students' work, and censoring and revising all that has been published.  Integrating different elements pertaining to geography, history, technology, and Language Arts in this project makes it nothing but a successful, enjoyable, and beneficial learning experience.
    As a teacher, I have always been a proponent for technology and its use in the classroom, but I was not fortunate enough to work in a district where the use of technology was appreciated or facilitated. I have spent a good part of my teaching income paying for all my teaching materials, and would have done the same to provide the privilege of technology for my students if it weren't for my classrooms being technology unfriendly, and poorly designed to accommodate any piece of technology devices. As
a future administrative, I will do my best to give each and every student the right to be exposed to technology, and practice learning using technology, because, whether we like it or not, our dear old pens and copy books have been almost completely replaced by keypads and printing paper. 

"Fun to Teach ESL" blog http://esleld.blogspot.com/

      Fun to teach ESL-Teaching English as a Second Language blog is a useful tool for any ESL teacher. The creator of this blog Lorie Wolfe, who is an ESL and math teacher, is doing a remarkable job of enriching this blog with the latest information and ideas pertaining to teaching English as a second language. There is always a list of up to date best teaching blogs for readers to discover, differentiated freebies to print out and use in class, fun language activities to use with students, and web links that have materials beneficial for ESL teachers.
     I visit this blog on regular basis to update myself with the latest news for ESL teachers, such as ideas for differentiating teaching styles, accommodating the students' different learning styles, and using fun activities and techniques in delivering the lessons. I always find something fun and interesting in this blog about teaching English, among which, worksheets that help ESL students differentiate between similar words such as their/there/they're, it's/its, affect/effect, etc.. This blog helps me generate ideas, strategies, worksheets, lesson plans, and activities to use with my ESL adult students in the Arlington County REEP program. Some of those ideas make use of technology in the classroom to create a fun, diverse, and creative environment for the learning process, which is what ED-554 is about.
     Among the posts I have read and enjoyed, the one about teaching ESL students the academic language, in which the writer listed, by means of a clear and precise graphic organizer, all the language different elements teachers should cover in teaching the language. Another post I liked was the article that listed different suggestions and ideas to accommodate new ESL students, help them understand the different rules and regulations, get used to the new settings, and develop a sense of belonging to the new environment.
    All in all, This blog is a treasure box full of useful, fun, and different ideas and materials for teaching English for ESL students.