Week 3: Storytelling in the Classroom

Reading the article about storytelling amazed me learning how storytelling is such a powerful tool to understand an idea, as well as to get a message across. Storytelling literally activates our brain and we can effectively retain what we learn. It was interesting to self-reflect and realize I do in fact think of everything as a narrative. I think, “Hmm, what should I cook today?... maybe I should cook this or what if I buy something instead”, I create a little story in my head! Knowing about how story-telling helps the retention of information I started thinking of ways I can incorporate that in lessons. I quickly thought of math. Now I know math is not everyone’s cup of tea, especially when it comes to lengthy word problems. English language learners struggle so much in this area for the obvious reasons. They look at long word problems and think “Oh no, this is too hard!”. But what if I students actually pictured themselves in the story and changed a couple details to make it more relatable? Maybe putting themselves in the story can help them relate thus creating some type of connection and understanding the main concept. For example, percentages. I finally understood the crucial use of percentages when it came to shopping, sales, and coupons. If students can’t seem to understand percentages maybe creating a relatable story about going shopping for a new game or phone and getting a discount can trigger meaning behind calculating percentages. Same thing with fractions. If we create a story about pizza and how we can slice it into different amounts creating portions or fractions can maybe facilitate understanding them. Storytelling in the classroom can open up so many ways to help explain different concepts. Not only for math, but for other subjects too!

Week 2: What are Children Really Up to when Browsing the Internet?

Reading the articles opened my eyes to the raw statistics of online safety. What really caught me off guard was the article about the children internet usage study! A study of kids in grades 4-8 was conducted to understand their internet usage behavior and how far they sometimes go in engaging in inappropriate or dangerous behavior online. We all know by now the Fortnite craze. Well in this article it stated that 40 percent of these students connected or chatted with a stranger. Mind you this article was published in the year 2016…imagine what percent that might be now?! With Fortnite, kids can talk and play with people from any part of the world! How do I know this? My son plays this game too. And you bet I spoke to him about safety and the importance of never giving out information to strangers but even doing so, we still have to keep an eye out on who they are playing with. Some other alarming statistics were that 53 percent of students revealed their phone number to a complete stranger, 21 percent spoke by phone to a stranger, 30 percent texted a stranger from their phone, and 11 percent met a stranger in their own home, the strangers home, a park, mall or restaurant. That is pretty scary. Educators can only do so much for our student’s online safety. The survey stated that 87 percent of students were taught to use the internet safely! So that just shows us that teachers need support from home to ensure student safety. There are apps out available to block certain websites and see what websites kids are browsing through. Parents have to keep track of everything their child does online so the child thinks twice before engaging in inappropriate online behavior. After reading this article it made me remember to always be on the look-out for what my child is doing online!