February 14th Post

When reading the chapter one of Tompkins I liked the way she described classroom communities. She says that there are ten specific characteristics to a classroom community: responsibility, opportunities, engagement, demonstration, risk taking, instructing, response, choice, time, and assessment. I think that these ten things really give a nice wide variety of the dimensions that an effective classroom community should have. She then also gives a teacher's role of each of these and also a student's role. I would really like to implement these into my classroom some day and the table that she gives on page 23 is an easy way for me to do create my classroom community that will benefit me and my students.

I liked the technology day that we had on the February 14th. Even though she went a little fast in explaining some of the procedures for doing the technology, I gained a lot from this experience. The scrapbooking on the computer was fun and working with and editing the different clips from online videos. I was amazed by some of the technology that she presented to us. For example, the table that you could manipulate with your hands, and the paint brush was really cool.