My teacher for these past few weeks has been Greta Sandler. Greta teaches English as a second language at an elementary school. She grew up in Argentina speaking Spanish and feel in love with the English language at an early age. The first post I read was telling her followers that she would be presenting an award for Blended Instruction with Blogs and Wikis for Young Learners at the CO11 Free Online Conference. She believes blogs and wikis are amazing tools that can help to engage students in learning. She also believes that they are powerful tools to help get parents more involved in their child's learning. I couldn't agree more. I think things like blogs and wikis can really interest parent and they have the ability to check in on their child's education anytime they desire. I really don't think parents, for the most part, aren't interested in their child's education I just think they are busy.
Creating Safe Learning Environments
For this post Greta shared a slideshow featured in a presentation she did for the New Teachers Reform Symposium. This presentation was on creating safe learning environments for students. In the presentation she describes a safe learning environment to be a place where students feel comfortable enough to participate, are motivated to learn, and feel confident enough to give their best. This is the kind of atmosphere every classroom should have. Why they don't I'm not quite sure, but it is definitely something every teacher should strive to create. If a child has a safe learning environment it opens the door to a new level of learning.
Greta gives a list of things teachers can do to create this type of environment in their classroom. Here is the list:
- Make Connections
- Clear Rules and Expectations
- Build Trusting Relationships
- Our Class, Not A Class
- It's OK to Make Mistakes
- It's OK to Have Fun
- Working Together With Parents
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