Summary Post C4T #4

I followed Matthew Needleman's blog titled "Creating Lifelong Learners." I really enjoyed this blog and all of the information that Mr. Needleman was able to share with me. Through this blog Mr. Needleman offers elementary teachers practical and useful tips. I read two of his posts, the first "3 ways to Download Movies from YouTube." This post gave three tips for downloading videos from YouTube to use in your classroom. He informed me of two ways the first being Zamzar.com. He suggested to use this one for only downloading a few movies and then he suggested to use browser plug-ins such as Download Helper for Firefox or Download Youtube for Safari. He says that these are best when you are trying to download a lot of movies. I have not needed to download very many movies from YouTube but I was glad to know of these tools for when I may need to.
The second post that I read of Mr. Needleman's was "Six Ways Teachers Can Improve Education This Year." I really enjoyed reading this post because it had some great tips on it that you may not always think about doing. His first tip was to greet your students at the door each morning. I think that this is a must for any teacher and if you are a teacher and do not do this you should be ashamed of yourself. In my opinion, this is something that starts anyone's day off in the right direction. His second tip was to eat in the faculty lounge. This to me was something that I would have never thought about but once he made his point about why it made perfect sense. Mr. Needleman says that if you don't eat with your faculty it is hard to be a "family" and that all teachers in a school are a "family" and this brings them closer together. His third tip was to teach authentic writing. His fourth tip was to teach art as a discipline. I fully agree with this idea as well. It is not enough to teach art only one day a week. Art allows students to be themselves and use their imagination and their creativity and this leads to higher level thinking and learning. It is crazy to me that so many schools do not allow any time for this now. It is a must in schools and should be used DAILY! His fifth tip was to incorporate multimedia into every lesson. This, too, is a must. We, as teachers, can only reach so many students by just lecturing but when we offer the information in multiple ways we are able to reach more of our students. His final tip was to teach test prep 2 minutes every day. This idea is one that I had not thought about but is a great one. We expect our students to do well on standardized tests but don't really ever prepare them to take them. Mr. Needleman says that we should teach them how to take these type tests.
I think that all teachers should read this post because it is very informative and useful. I will try to incorporate all of these ideas into my classroom when I am teaching and think that all teachers should do so as well!