Final Blog Assignment:

Once it was decided that the lesson plan was going to be a collaboration project, it was now time to begin to come up with ideas. During several classes, my partner and I sat down together with each of us coming up with various ideas on what we wanted to accomplish in our lesson plan. Once all of our ideas were set, we decided that each of us would complete certain parts of the lesson plan. Once all was agreed upon, we completed the lesson plan. We then planned what each of our roles would be in the classroom once the presentation date arrived.
The objective of the lesson plan was that the students would be able to recognize nursery rhyme characters from the story. The assessments of the lesson plan consisted of a ditto as well as the help from the teacher who was circulating the room during the lesson plan. We stayed as close to the script (our written lesson plan) as much as we could and I thought that we executed our lesson plan well. All in all, I feel that our lesson plan was effective. The students seemed to enjoy it and we accomplished our objective.
Upon our successful completion of the recoding of our podcast, my partner and I decided to incorporate the podcast int he planning of our lesson. we decided to gather students in a group so that they can sit quietly and listen to the podcast of our story. When the date arrived for our lesson plan presentation, we did play the podcast for the class. We decided to do this so that the students can experience a different way of listening to a story. The students were attentive and seemed to enjoy the podcast. Pod casting can be an effective tool in a classroom. By listening to a podcast, students can let their minds visualize what they think the illustrations of the story would look like while they are using their listening skills.
Overall, I thought that the lesson plans presented by the class went well. Each lesson plan was unique to the story that was picked. Each lesson plan contained some interesting ideas for presentations as well as for a system for behavioral rewards and/or punishments. Having the other students act in a certain way prepares for what may be a real life classroom situation.
I thought that some of the class had some difficulties in the handling of these behavioral situations, although at times, some of the behaviors went overboard.
Teaching is a constant learning experience. I have learned some new things and hope to continue with the learning process.

We have concluded that we plan to create one lesson plan on nursery rhymes. After planning on what our objective is, we have decided on how we wish to set up the lesson plan. Based on the various characters in the story, we plan on creating a lesson plan that we help the students identify the nursery rhyme characters. Hopefully, at the end of the elsson the students will have a better understanding of who nursery rhyme charcters are and how to identify them in other books.

Today, we will be deciding on whether or not we will be creating one or two lesson plans. Two lesson plans will mean that each of us will be teaching a separate leasson plan. One lesson plan means that we will be co-teaching. Then we will be searching on the computer for examples and other things we can use for the lesson plans.

Today, we accomplished the creating of the five effect questions about the book an posted them on the blog. Also, we accomplished the task of deciding on what lesson plans that we can create about the book. Having decided that 2 separate lesson plans can be created about the book, we then decided on which one of us would be creating what lesson plan. After the decision, we then began to search on the Internet for various ideas about the lesson plans we would be creating. The problem now will be to narrow down all the information so that we can each create a lesson plan that accomplishes what we would like to teach in the allotted time frame. There is so much information available and it will take some time to get just enough to create an effective lesson plan...

Questions

These would be the questions that I would ask the students about this book, "Once Upon a Time"....

1. Where would you have heard the title of the book, "Once Upon a Time" used before?
2. By looking at the cover, can anyone tell what the story of "The Three Little Pigs" is about?
3. Does anyone know what rhyming words are?
4. Can anyone give examples of rhyming words from the story?
5. Can anyone name any of the characters from fairy tales that are in the story?

After completing and publishing our pod cast, we are now ready to move on with the task. Today we are going to be working on the lesson plan for "Once Upon a Time". We will be focusing on getting ideas created and organized for a lesson plan that hopefully will be educational to students. We will see how it goes.....

Here is the link for our pod cast.... http://rebeccaandstacey.podOmatic.com

We have successfully published our pod cast reading of "Once Upon a Time".... We both listened to the recording and agreed that it was successful and that we should publish it. We found it a little difficult to get the right angle of the microphone, not only for the reading but also for the sound effects. After figuring out how to get the task accoplished, we finished our reading and approved the recording so that it was published.

We recorded our podcast.... it took 3 tries.... but I think that the last try was successful.... the soound effects worked, finally.....

We have planned on which pages we will each read and what sound effects will we use. We have also planned on which one of use gets the sound effects for the other's reading of the page where the sound effect occurs.

We will be podcating the story "Once Upon a Time"... Today, was the first day that I actually looked at the book. To me, the book is an easy read.... It flows because the sentences on each page are rhyming. We have decided this morning to each read a page.... We can try to use sound effects if we can find them.... Hopefully, our first attempt at the podcasting will be a success... and if not, then hopefully, it will not take many tries to accomplish the task.

Here is the link for the first attempt of a pod cast : http://rebeccaandstacey.podomatic.com/entry/2009-09-18T07_27_20-07_00

It is not that the best attempt but I am not a big fan of hearing my voice over anything.

I am sitting here trying to learn about this pod casting. It's a little frustrating... and I realize that I do not like the way my voice sounds...never did...

When I first learned of this assignment, I figured that since I have no ides what pod casting is, I would look up the definition and see if I could get any help. After reading the definition on Wikipedia, I realized that I still have no idea on what pod casting is all about. I guess that I have used a form of pod casting when I have used the application iTunes to download music and YouTube to download videos (although I'm not positive that this is pod casting). That being said, I think that I want to learn what pod casting is all about,  how one goes about using it and how one can incorporate it into the classroom. 

The advantages that I can see by using pod casting are that  a student can work on a particular assignment on his/her free time whether it be at home or at school. Another one, could be that others can see a student's work and can offer any help and/or suggestions about the topic. Some drawbacks might include the fact that not everyone may have his/her own computer limiting their options on doing the work. Another one may involve a student's understanding of an assignment. If a student is having a problem with their assignment, where can they turn for help if they are on their own time. 

Like I stated above, I'm not sure on all the aspects of pod casting but I am willing to give it a try. My hopes are that I can understand the concepts and be able to someday put this knowledge into use in a classroom situation.