Purpose of my Blueprint
A plan for technology is important in my future classroom because technology is here to stay. It's not going anywhere and it is becoming more advanced each day. It is my job as a teacher to be able to prepare my students to be able to use this new technology in a useful and effective way in their day to day lives. I am hoping to teach in a 2nd grade classroom but I would be willing to teach up to 4th graders. I could be able to perhaps introduce them to new forms of technology and ignite that spark in them to explore the world of technology in a safe, responsible way.
Teaching Philosophy
My teaching philosophy is something that I have been racking my brain trying to figure out. There are many values, beliefs and ideas that I want to bring into my teaching practices. I believe that a classroom should be a place where children feel safe. Safe enough to be willing to learn and safe enough to be willing to take risks. I also believe that my students are brilliant, funny and creative. I want to learn from them as much as I can. I want to engage my students everyday so that they want to come to school everyday and come with excitement. I believe technology in all its forms are very valuable tools and should be used to the best of their ability on a daily basis.
Typical Day in Second Grade
Here is a quick schedule of a day in second grade (ideally):
The children come in and have Morning Meeting. This is a chance for them to say hello to one another, find out what is happening that day, do a fun activity to get their brains ready for learning and have a chance to share little stories or ask questions about the schedule.
After morning meeting are centers. Centers are a chance for the children to get small group instruction. I would be teaching reading as my center and there would be three other independent centers for the children to be doing. One center will involve the use of the classroom computers. There is a classroom set of laptops for each child to use. I would have an ongoing project for them to be working on in one of the various computer programs such as Hyperstudio. The other centers will be phonics, spelling, math or an art project. These centers will differ from day to day with the only constants being the reading group and the on going computer project.
After centers it is snack/recess. Then it is Math. I will have a interactive PowerPoint presentation ready to go for each lesson. The children will be able to follow along on their laptops and be able to input the correct answers from their laptops, after raising a quiet hand of course.
Lunch/recess follows math. After lunch they will have about 30 mins of silent reading to calm them down after eating and running around for 30 mins. This is where my instruction will vary from day to day. Some afternoons are filled with specialists, other afternoons they are in the classroom with me. On the days they are with me we will study Social Studies and Science. In 2nd grade Social Studies the children are learning about maps and geography. I will use Google Earth and Google Maps to teach them about neighborhoods, cities, states and countries. Science will involve more hands on experiments and I will not be using technology so much during those lessons.
Specific Activities
There are a lot of different activities I will implement into my everyday classroom. I plan on having a Center dedicated to work on the computer. This will help them with their typing skills as well as navigating different computer programs as this will be an independent center.
Ideally my school will have a class set of laptops for the students to use. For my math lessons, after I have introduced a new concept, the students will grab their laptops and start working on their Reader Rabbit Math work. This software is installed on each of their laptops and it consists of different games for them to play. They are continuously building a ship in the program so they will be able to save their place and pick up where they left off. This software has games that several of the topics we cover in second grade and I am able to set it to each student's individual level so this is another way I can differentiate the lessons. One bad thing about this software is that it is a drill and practice software and I cannot use it to introduce new concepts. I will have a PowerPoint presentation ready to introduce the new concepts before we work on Reader Rabbit Math. Once they have finished their work on this program, they can go to www.softschools.com/mathgames. I will have this bookmarked on their browsers so it is easy for them to find it each time. On this website I want them to work on the minute-math section. It is very important in second grade for the students to attain automaticity in their math facts 1-20 and this drill and practice website can help them do just this.
In Social Studies they will be able to use Google Maps to locate their own house and look at the surrounding neighborhood. We will also bring it out to the city, state and country and study those as well.
Benefits
The second graders in my classroom will be better prepared for the older grades and a little bit more prepared for the real world after being in my class. I plan on using some sort of technology each day, a few times a day. From their independent, ongoing computer work each morning during centers to the interactive math lesson they are going to know how to navigate a computer as well as many of the programs on it. They are also going to have a better grasp of typing on a keyboard, which is something I did not pick up until high school!
