Blog #4

 For the ELA technology standards, I selected the Kindergarten grade level since this is the grade I would like to teach in the future. The standard listed for this grade level states that the students should be able to use or be familiar with various technological tools with the help of adults with a focus on writing and collaboration. This standard ensures that kindergarten students will become familiar with digital tools early on and will begin their journey with using technology in an educational setting, while including the importance of collaboration with their peers. Based on my current skill set, I feel prepared to implement this standard because I have the skillset to use the tools listed in the standard, simply from using them in my educational past. I believe that I would definitely feel more comfortable implementing this standard in my classroom if I was able to review these tools before. 

Using the CPALMS Educator toolkit, I was able to find an entire lesson plan for a shape sorting lesson for Kindergarteners. I really liked how easy this website was to navigate and how many resources I was able to find. I chose a lesson for the Kindergarten grade level that was called, "Sorting Shapes". This lead me to a series of videos explaining the lesson, that used kid-friendly language and had characters so the students would be able to follow along and stay interested. The lesson included interactive practice slides, so if I were using this in my classroom, I would allow the students to take turns to come up to the board and place the shapes into the category they think it belongs in. I could see myself playing each of the videos in this lesson, then checking in with the students after each one. I would allow the students to ask questions and interact with the lesson as well. This seems like an amazing resource for teachers and I am excited to use this!

Internet searching is an important skill to have in everyday life, but especially as a teacher. I think it is important to be proficient in internet searching as a teacher because you will be asked questions very frequently, and it is important to stay on top of it and know how to search. I think that being a teacher allows for many different minds to collaborate in a classroom, which allows for you to always be exploring and learning new things. That being said, being able to internet search is a valuable tool for a teacher to have. Of the internet searching skills that were introduced this week, I think I will be using Google's advanced search because it allows you to exclude things that you don't want in your search or to narrow your search. I think this would save a lot of time and I was not familiar with this feature before this week.