My experiences:

I never thought I would have a blog. I always thought of myself as someone who was not good at this stuff. I reluctantly started into the course work, exploring many sites for different web 2.0 applications, such as video and voice recording, making videos, virtual classrooms, sharing tools, and bookmarking tools.

It didn't take long to get the hang of the different websites and become rather involved in the whole process. It was quite the education. I learned so much in so little time, I had no idea these resources where available to anyone, and best of all most of them are free!

Overall I had a great time exploring these different websites and using the different web 2.0 tools. I have learned a lot and bookmarked all the relevant pages in the process so I can easily find them again. This can certainly help any teacher, new or experienced, so much! There are great tools out there if you have the time to find them and learn to use them.

I see this as the start of my personal online learning library and resources for teaching collection. There is, no doubt, a lot more to be learned and a lot more to be added to my pages, and to my classroom as we bring the children we teach into the 21st century.

-- Mrs. Mullikin

Here are the addresses to some great blogs I have used as examples and inspiration for my own work.

These are the blogs I commented on:

http://teacharchitecture.blogspot.com/

http://mrdedios2013.blogspot.com/2012/12/simply-delicious.html#comment-form

http://davisale.blogspot.com/2013/03/long-time-reader-first-time-blogger.html#comment-form

Some Thoughts on Teaching

These might be better titled ``thoughts on learning.'' In any event, over the years I've collected a variety of quotes that I have found to be insightful about what it means to learn and teach. JHM

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We have to look for routes of power our teachers never imagined, or were encouraged to avoid.
Thomas Pynchon, Gravity's Rainbow

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1. Your study should be broad and diversified. Do not limit yourself.
2. Examine and question. Ask yourself how and why something works. Be receptive to what others ignore.
3. Be deliberate and careful in your thinking. Use your mind to discover proper understanding.
4. Clearly examine. Separate concepts distinctly, then decide upon the proper course.
5. Practice sincerely.

``The Five Virtues of T'ai Chi'' an early manuscript by an unknown master.

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It then occurred to me that this was not the first time I had been given a map which failed to show many things I could see right in front of my eyes. All through school and university I had been given maps of life and knowledge on which there was hardly a trace of many of the things that I most cared about and that seemed to me to be of the greatest possible importance to the conduct of my life. I remembered that for many years my perplexity had been complete; and no interpreter had come along to help me. It remained complete until I ceased to suspect the sanity of my perceptions and began, instead, to suspect the soundness of my maps.
E.F. Schumacher, A Guide for the Perplexed

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The master shook his head. ``I could answer your questions but I won't try because you wouldn't understand the answer. Now listen. Imagine that I am holding a pot of tea, and you are thirsty. You want me to give you tea. I can pour tea but you'll have to produce a cup. I can't pour the tea on your hands or you'll get burnt. If I pour it on the floor I shall spoil the floormats. You have to have a cup. That cup you will form in yourself by the training you will receive here.''
Janwillem Van de Wetering, The Empty Mirror

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Believe those who are seeking the truth; doubt those who find it.
Andre Gide

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This does not mean a closed mind, but actually an empty mind and a ready mind. If your mind is empty, it is always ready for anything; it is open to everything. In the beginner's mind there are many possibilities; in the expert's mind there are few.
Shunryu Suzuki-roshi, Zen Mind, Beginner's Mind

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``I cannot understand what makes them [scientists] tick. They are always wrong and they always go on.''
Hoyle, The Black Cloud

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A sage of Chelm went bathing in the lake and almost drowned. When he raised an outcry other swimmers came to his rescue. As he was helped out of the water he took a solemn oath: ``I swear never to go into the water again until I learn how to swim!''
A Treasury of Jewish Folklore

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The mind of the beginner is empty, free of the habits of the expert, ready to accept, to doubt, and open to all the possibilities... The Zen way of calligraphy is to write in the most straightforward, simple way as if you were a beginner, not trying to make something skillful or beautiful, but simply writing with full attention as if you were discovering what you were writing for the first time;
Richard Baker

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I warn you. Look at every path closely and deliberately. Try it as many times as you think necessary. Then ask yourself, and yourself alone, one question. This question is one that only a very old man asks. My benefactor told me about it once when I was young, and my blood was too vigorous for me to understand it. Now I do understand it. I will tell you what it is: Does this path have a heart?
Carlos Casteneda, The Teachings of Don Juan

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To read well, that is to read true books in a true spirit, is a noble exercise.
Henry David Thoreau, Walden

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Not many years ago I began to play the cello. Most people would say that what I am doing is ``learning to play'' the cello. But these words carry into our minds the strange idea that there exists two very different processes: 1) learning to play the cello; and 2) playing the cello. They imply that I will do the first until I have completed it, at which point I will stop the first process and begin the second; in short, that I will go on ``learning to play'' until I have ``learned to play'' and that then I will begin to play. Of course, this is nonsense. There are not two processes, but one. We learn to do something by doing it. There is no other way.

John Holt

Kindergarten

Check out my latest project!

A video:

Kindergarten

by Joe Savrock (October 2009)

Smith_Deborah.jpgUNIVERSITY PARK, Pa. – Young children are capable of working and thinking in much the same ways that scientists do, according to a study headed by a Penn State researcher.

Deborah Smith, assistant professor of science education, and two colleagues showed how teachers create opportunities for children to take up scientific discourses and practices in their classroom work. The research found that when the children acted in a community of peers, they not only attained a deep understanding of the science, but also an appreciation for how they could make scientific knowledge themselves.

Smith collaborated with Jessica Cowan ‘02 E K Ed, a kindergarten teacher at a central Pennsylvania elementary school, and Alicia Culp ‘08 E K Ed, who at the time of the study was an undergraduate intern in the Penn State teacher education program. Culp now is an elementary school teacher in Bavaria, Germany.

Smith, Cowan, and Culp describe their work in an article titled “Growing Seeds and Scientists” in the Sept. 2009 issue of Science & Children, a peer-reviewed journal for elementary teachers.

In 2007, the National Research Council invited a national committee of scientists, science educators, cognitive scientists, and teachers to investigate and summarize the research on how K–8 children learn science. Their report, Taking Science to School: Learning and Teaching Science in Grades K–8, contends that young children can engage in scientific reasoning more readily than previously thought. The report was authored by Richard A. Duschl, Heidi A. Schweingruber, and Andrew W. Shouse.  Duschl now is Waterbury Chaired Professor in Secondary Education at Penn State.

Duschl and his colleagues proposed four strands of scientific learning to be woven throughout lessons, so that students:

1.    know, use, and interpret scientific explanations of the natural world;
2.    generate and evaluate scientific evidence and explanations;
3.    understand the nature and development of scientific knowledge; and
4.    participate productively in scientific practices and discourse.

The four strands, say the authors, are of equal importance and have an interwoven relationship. By experiencing all four strands, students are more likely to grasp important ideas in science.

Smith was a teacher advisor to the national committee at the time, and later she worked with Sarah Michaels, Andrew Shouse, and Heidi Schweingruber, authors of the 2008 book Ready, Set, Science! to summarize the report for educators.

“I knew, from my own work with preschoolers, that young children were excited about, and more capable, in science than we thought,” says Smith. “I was eager to try embedding the four strands to see what might be possible with them.”

Smith, Cowan, and Culp explored the four-strands framework in Cowan’s kindergarten class. The children were studying how plants grow from seeds. They shared their predictions and ideas with their classmates, conducted investigations to test their ideas, varied growing conditions, and created a data chart and graphs to record the results.

“The classroom activities engaged the students in the ways that scientists use talk, writing, drawing, investigations, tools, representations, and explanations to make knowledge,” says Smith.

The four strands of scientific learning were included in various aspects of the class project. For example, the students learned that scientists often attend professional conferences to share ideas and findings. In their own “scientists’ conference,” the children shared their individual thoughts with their classmates to contribute to the class’s ongoing knowledge refinement—a reflection of strands three and four.

In one discussion, many children disagreed about what could be a seed and suggested that they plant all the objects they had examined to see if they would grow. To gather evidence, the students planted the small objects (e.g., seeds, shells, and small stones) in soil in plastic cups. They watered the objects to see if, and how, they would grow into plants. Over the next several weeks, the students wrote, drew, and graphed plant growth in their scientific notebooks, and  discussed their findings.

At the same time, Smith and her colleagues were making observations of a different kind—they noticed development in the children’s ability to think and talk like scientists. They heard comments such as “I have a question for Jennica” and “I think the mold grew because those seeds got more water.” The students noticed when there were anomalies in their data, proposed possible reasons, designed new investigations to test their ideas, used representations to chart the results of plant growth, and capably reflected on and explained their findings. These activities reinforced the four strands of knowledge building.

At the end of the unit, the children explained why they thought they were scientists themselves:

    Because we drew and wrote in our notebooks.
    Because we had scientists’ conferences and shared our ideas.
    Because we tested our ideas.
    Because we figured things out.
    Because we made charts and graphs.

Smith and her colleagues provide details about how teachers and children worked together to create a “community of knowledge makers,” for whom talk, writing, questions, ideas, investigations, and evidence-based explanations were central. They acknowledge that their work is only a beginning.

“We encourage other teachers and researchers to explore the four strands in other grade levels and domains of science,” says Smith. “Our work provides a good example of how teachers and researchers can work together to investigate important questions and produce needed knowledge for teaching and learning science.”

The Color Game - English Kindgarten Education

Alphabet Chant - FULL SONG - Preschool Kindergarten Video

Hi!

My name is Mrs. Mullikin and I am a first year kindergarten teacher. I work in Fort Worth Texas, and I am passionate about teaching and learning more about my profession. I will be posting on this blog about teaching, tips, comments and advice. Also I will be adding musings about kindergarten and everything that comes with that beautiful and challenging age group.

Stay posted for more.