I recently read a post on the blog: Top Teaching. The post was called 3 classroom management tips that changed my life. The post talked about different ways to prevent uncontrolled chaos in the classroom. It listed out things like; numbing the students, have a classroom set of rules, and music time. I feel like these three tips would be extremely useful in a younger classroom setting, which is what they are geared towards. But for those of us that are in a secondary setting with older kids, it would be nice to have resources such as these available for us to look over.

What I really enjoy about this particular blog was that there were ten different teachers that contributed to this blog and all gave their own opinions and advice. They all posted their own blog in the classroom management portion. As I went through and skimmed these blogs I realized that only one of these blogs specifically wrote that these rules could applied through grade 12. Which against makes me stress the need that secondary teachers should have a voice too. They (we) should share our insight and tell people our experiences in the classroom.

Besides this blog on having enough secondary advice, I would say it is extremely organized, and I do like the fact that we hear many voices and many backgrounds through this site. It is actually part of the scholastic site, which has even more resources for people to check out.

Bevin K. Reinen’s blog has many interesting feature that are worth exploring, but the part of her blog that captivated my interest to begin with was her section on brain breaks.In her video, Mrs. Reinen talks about her three rules she uses during her brain breaks; assinging a dancing bubbles, DJ for the day, and take a break. These rules are to help kids on safe fun during these breaks and to easily get the students back on track after the break is finished. The dancing bubble rule is there to make sure students have their own space. The DJ for the day gets to pick the video or song they will be listening to during the break. And, when a child can not behave appropriately during a brain break, he or she may need to sit out while the rest of the students continue with their break.

As I have stated many, many times, I plan on teaching secondary education as a social studies teacher. As while it may be difficult to implement some of these breaks to older kids, I do believe that they need breaks just as much as the younger ones. However, I would like to be able to redesign some of these ideas to make them work in a high school setting. Even if I am not a school that does block settings, and only have an hour long class, my students will still get board within that hour. Somehow I have to keep their interests peaked while teaching. To do this I will have to come up with some way of getting them up and moving. I did not like sitting in a desk all day through out school, and I shouldn’t expect my students to either. What better why to get them moving than music?!

Not everyone will like Sid the Sloth or Ice Age for that matter, but as a mother myself, I find that going with what I already know is a good place to start when coming up with new and even better ideas!

Sam Gliksman has a website called: iPads In Education, on this website he write blogs about his incites into the modern day classrooms. In some ways our classrooms now a days can hinder the way our students learn.

Gliksman hints on some of the ways the students are hindered in their learning; being forced to sit facing the front, being forced to do exactly as they’re told, being forced to work alone and not allowed to collaborate in groups. However, he also says in his blog: Everything I Need To Know About Education… I Learned in Kindergarten. This blogs lists eight important ‘pillars’ of education that should be included into all grades levels, according to Gliksman.

1. Play
2. Create
3. Socailize
4. Discover
5. Experience
6. Express
7. Move
8. Relate

I have to say that I agree with Gliksman. Even as an aspiring secondary teacher, I do not get to see many of these qualities in the high school or even middle school grades. I want to change this. I want my students to collaborate and facilitate in groups. I want my students to express themselves and be allowed to do assignment creatively. I want my students to his discover new ways to accomplish task. And most importantly I want to teach my students how to think divergently. Even though this is not listened on there, it has been found that kindergartners are more likely to have divergent thinking than 15 year olds.

To go along with this blog, I thought this video might be an eye opener. If nothing else it’s food for thought.

There were very few ways that we used technology in the classroom when I was in high school. Sure, we used emails, Microsoft programs. and maybe once in a while watched a movie. And of course calculators, for us none mathematical types. But that was the extent to technology through out most of school year. My senior year of high school they started to implement the use of technology more. (Some teachers used technologies potential more than others)

Looking over Matt Miller’s blog Ditch That Textbook, I discovered refreshing ways to use technology in the classroom. Most of his techniques were ones that I had not thought of. From videos, to auidoBoom, google docs, to review games. All ways in which we no longer have to just teach from the textbook.

8 ways technology is revolutionizing education (with examples) is a blog where he does just that. Matt Miller list ways that he incorporates technology in the classroom, with examples of how to do so. (As the title implies) He links all of his examples to different site for easy accessibility. I checked out a few of his examples, such as; The Answer Pad, audioBoom, and ClassTools. I think I would like to find a ways to incorporate audioBoom for classroom projects. However, all of his examples could be easily integrated into most classroom settings.

Matt Miller does not just reference technology. Another blog of Miller’s that I really enjoyed was: Using Weekend Language to Engage Students. One of his examples was to use story telling. This really hit home to me because I can recall my favorite American Government class always telling stories to get his point across. By using story-telling as a teaching technique, we as teachers can relate to more students, and hopefully have less dropping eyes in our classrooms.

I think if we can appropriately incorporate technology in the classroom then we will be better able to engage our students. Technology gives us more resources for constructing learning opportunities, group/individual projects, test reviews, and as well as many others.

I just discovered The History Blog and this blog has some extremely interesting, not to mention detailed information about the latest findings in history. They cover a wide range of topic and have everything categorized into organized files making every subject easily accessible.

Artifacts from the Scythian gold vessel

This blog created by Livius, was started in 2006 and has been continuously updated. Their latest blog was today, 5/28/2015. This blogged covered Scythian gold vessels containing opium and cannabis residue. While 2,400 year old gold artifacts, there is definitely something for ever history enthusiast on this site.

Livius enhanced their blogs with graphic images and videos to really bring history life. Which I personally enjoy because I can put an image with what I am reading.

The blog Le Brun’s Jabach Family restored and on display, was fascinating to learn about how they were able to restore and bring back to live this family in Le Brun’s painting.  Livius also included a video of the paintings unraveling, with descriptions of how the process was handle. To read more about this blog: http://www.thehistoryblog.com/archives/36671

I sincerly encourage all history lovers to check out this site, they have something to adhere to all interest. It will be well worth your time to explore The History Blog.