C4Ta #4

Summary of Teacher’s Blog #1-

Angela Maiers spoke at #TEPSA15 in Austin. She shared her presentation, Mattering is the Agenda. This is about how important it is to make students feel like they matter. They should feel like they have a voice and a choice when it comes to their education.

Comment on Teacher’s Blog #1-

Hi, my name is Brittany Slay and I am a student in EDM 310 at the University of South Alabama. I loved your presentation! It was very inspiring and I had never heard of Choose2Matter before. I think that making your students feel like they matter is of utmost importance. That alone will help make them more confident in themselves and want to give everything that they do their all. Please visit my personal blog to see what I have been doing in my class, Brittany Slay.

Summary of Teacher’s Blog #2-

In this post Angela Maiers discusses her classroom mantra, “Sorry about the laughter, volume, chaos, and mess, but we’re learning here.” She says that we are teaching in an unprecedented time. Never before have we had the power to connect, share, and learn with amazing educators using social media to harness personalized professional development and growth. In this spirit of collaboration, this is where my first introduction to genius hour happened. She created this form called Genius Hour, which gives her students voice and choice. The premise of genius hour is that students create an overarching question that requires them to research and synthesize new learning from multiple sources. Here is a link to the Genius Hour form.

Comment on Teacher’s Blog #2-

I think this is such a great idea. The fact that students can have a say in their learning is crucial. I feel that they learn so much more and actually retain information when they are researching in their own way. I think the Genius Hour form is an awesome way to have the students do their research. I would love to create something like that to use in my future classroom.