Blog Post #13

Brian Crosby: Back to the Future

I found this video of Brian Crosby to be very inspirational. I was in tears by the end of the video. Mr. Crosby is a fourth grade teacher at Agnes Risley Elementary School. He teaches in a school with numerous low income students. He gave the students a questionare at the beginning of the year. He asked simple questions such as: What city do you live in?, What is your phone number?, What country do you live in?, etc. The majority of the students couldn't answer these simple questions. I was shocked that they couldn't answer these questions. Mr. Crosby is an awesome teacher. He wanted to find a way to connect these kids to the world around them and I'm pretty sure he did.

Mr. Crosby made sure all of these kids were involved. He made the classroom exciting, creative and fun with hands on projects and technology. I loved the balloon release and it created so many activities for these fourth graders. I had to keep tell myself, these are fourth graders collaborating, being creative, and most of all learning. They were able to communicate with kids around the world not read about it in a text book. I think what Mr. Crosby is doing is awesome and  I hope I can model my teaching after him.

At the end of the video, there was a student who was not able to attend class because she had leukemia.  He decided to include her in the class through skype. It was so heart touching to watch her attend class with students her age. This is teaching...in my eyes.

Paul Andersen: Blended Learning Cycle

Paul Andersen is a high school AP Biology teacher in Bozeman, MT. He teaches using what he calls the blended learning cycle which is classroom, online, and mobile. He uses the five "E's" to engage students to explore, to explain, to expand, and finally to evaluate. He has six parts to his learning cycle. He describes them with the acronym quivers. The acronym goes like this: QUestion, Investigate, Video, Elaboration, Review, and Summary quiz. I think he has some good ideas to get students motivated to learn. He uses the review time to individually speak to each student for one on one time. I think that is a great idea. Some day, I would like to try this. Mr. Anderson is always looking for new ideas to help students gain knowledge. It is a process that will never end, we must always be searching to help kids be engaged.