Engaging Learners in Today’s Classrooms

I was able to see the use of technology. Students would trace their name over and over to get into the rhythm and precision they would need to make a legible name that they would need to use in their futures. Sometimes the students would get bored over the repeated and dull tasks so the teacher would then place the students on iPads and there was a game/app that students would practice tracing letters and words to help them in their writing abilities.

Another use of engaged learning was another activity with the use of names. Instead of tracing the letters in the name the teacher had them afterwards as a reward dump dozens of tiles with letters on them and the students would search through the mess and find the letters in their names. This would help them become familiar with what letters are in their name and what letters they need to anticipate in the creation of it.

The last activity I found interesting was one where the teacher was trying to get this special needs student to write a short story. The student was very intimidated and could not formulate their story like most people normally do on paper with pencil. So the teacher gave the student paper and pencil and they would draw out a story similar to a comic book or picture book and then use that as an outline in the creation of their short story.

One activity that I found was engaged in learning, but I didn't think it engaged the learning part, just the engaged part. The teacher every week would try to teach the students new letters of the alphabet, They would play this game with the students where they would scatter the letter they were focusing on with other cards that had symbols such as % $ & # signs and students would need to hop of the letters that they were mastering. So the first week they needed to hop on the letter M across the carpet. Then the next week the teacher could have them hop on both or one letter being M and P this week. I feel like the activity did not stretch the learning and that it was just a game that required remembering patterns as the students would jump to different letters and miss every now and then. Plus I thought it was not good to have other symbols when they should be using all letters to develop the ability to differentiate between letters.