Week 12 PLE

At Rocky Mountain Elementary the teacher uses a fair amount of technology, but I think more could be used. She used the Elmo for a math lesson. She placed the worksheet that everybody was working on, on top of the Elmo and walked through the problems with the classroom. The students were really excited to see how it worked.

My teacher also used a microphone to have the students read the stories they had written, and when she was talking to the class. It was very helpful because even if she spoke in a whisper which drew the attention of the first graders, she was still audible because of the microphone. She didn’t only use the central sound system with the microphone, but she also used it to plug the TV and the CD player into. The students once a week would watch an episode of Reading Rainbow or Between the Lions. They could hear the TV because it was plugged in.

She used the CD player in a myriad of ways. She played music while they were working, or she played songs that matched the lyrics on a flipchart. The flip chart would focus on “ip” words or “op” words. The kids would listen to the song that stressed words ending in “ip” and a student would follow along pointing to the words on the flipchart. She had another CD player for a listening center. Every morning one group would participate in the listening center where they would read a book while listening to it on CD.

There is room to grow in the use of technology, but the teacher did a pretty good job in my opinion. I think it is hard for younger grade teachers to remember because so much focus is on books, and writing.