C4T #2

C4T #2, Comment 1

For my second C4T assignment, I was assigned to Lana Gerin. Mrs. Gerin is a fifth grade teacher here in the United States, and her blog "4 the Love of Teaching" can be found here. For the first week, I left a comment on her post titled "International Dot Day." When I looked over her blog and saw this post, I thought, "What in the world is International Dot Day?" After reading Mrs. Gerin's post, I learned that International Dot Day is inspired by Peter Reynold's book The Dot. It is a day to celebrate creativity and courage. Mrs. Gerin's class was asked to do a craft project in honor of this day. Mrs. Gerin did not have the book, so she showed her class this video from YouTube. The story is about a girl named Vaski who is inspired by her art teacher to "make her mark and see where it takes her." Mrs. Gerin discussed how she was pleasantly surprised that her class picked up on the theme of the story. She talked with her class about encouragement, having courage, and making "marks" in the world. After the class discussion, each student made his/her craft project to go along with the story. The students drew their dots on coffee filters, sprayed the coffee filters with water, and let them dry. Then, they displayed their projects in the cafeteria. The picture below is the finished product.

In my comment, I simply introduced myself and EDM310. I left her the links to my blog and our class blog. I talked about how I had never heard of International Dot Day before, and I also commented on how cute the crafts turned out.

C4T #2, Comment 2

For my second comment, I went back to an older post titled "Student Showcase Night." This night is similar to an open house, but the parents are able to see what their children have been doing in class. Mrs. Gerin set up stations in her classroom, and the students were able to take their parents through the different stations. Her first station was a simple game that each family could play. She had a jar filled with candy, and whoever guessed the right amount in the jar took home the candy. At her second station, she had a Smartboard review game for the novel of the week. The students were able to show their parents the game, and the parents were able to see if their child needed to spend more time studying. I thought this station was really great, so I told Mrs. Gerin that I would love to do this in my future classroom. Other stations included computer related topics, letters of encouragement for upcoming tests, and "Helping Hands." In my comment, I thanked her for sharing all of her great ideas.

Source for all photos: Lana Gerin