Month: October 2020

Categories
Uncategorized

Virtual Field Trip

Going on the website my Professor gave us was very informative and gave me many ideas of places I would want to take my students, whether it is an actual field trip or a virtual one. On this website, there are places to take your students right in our backyard and places across the world. The field trip I decided to pick was the 9/11 Tribute Museum.

I decided to pick the 9/11 Tribute Museum because I believe it is not talked enough about in school, and we really do not look at it and see all the lost lives. 9/11 is not even in the history books yet; when I was in high school, 9/11 was not in the books, and we did not even talk about it. This is such an important part of our history; it shows how we, as a nation, came together to help people. My parents know exactly where they were when 9/11 happened. Our students won’t know that, and that is why I think they need to go to the Tribute to learn what happened, how many lives were lost, and how we came together as a nation to help each other. Especially because we live in New Jersey, some people could see the towers falling from their backyards. My father is a police officer for New Jersey Transit, and he had to rush my mom home from work so she could watch me and him go to the train station to get people off the trains coming from New York. I want my student to learn about how many lives were affected.

Going on the website and seeing all of the information about the 9/11 Tribute Museum, it was fascinating to see what was donated and reading people’s stories. It also shows the aftermath of that day and what New York looked like. The museum is also a non-profit. It was built in 2006 to share family experiences, survivor stories, and people who lived in Manhattan. I would love to take my students here and have them learn about 9/11 and how it affected everyone and changed people’s lives. That 9/11 is the reason for all of the security measures when getting onto an airplane, that if we see a bag by itself, we report it.

Please let me know if you will take your class to this 9/11 Tribute Museum and what you think will add to your classroom and help your students learn about 9/11. After looking at the website, I would also want to know what other places you would like to take your students on a virtual field trip!

Categories
Uncategorized

Subtitles

This week I am watching a show called Aprende a Vivir. Check it out if you would like to watch it! I have watched so far the first two episodes, and I have to say it is excellent. It is school appropriate, but I would not play it for my elementary school kids. I would play it in a 6th-grade Spanish class or a health class. It is only 3 episodes and easy to watch in school. It is a show that teaches about diabetes and how to manage this disease. Even though this is a different language, you can learn a lot about diabetes, a different family, and culture. Also, while watching this show, you see a love story as well. This reminds me of the Spanish soap operas I used to watch with my Abuela.

While watching this show, you can see many Spanish cultures and how they are as a family. They only speak Spanish in the house and say a couple of words in English. You can also tell this is a rigorous family, where the oldest daughter who is in a serious relationship and is going to get married, still lives at home with her parents. It is very family-oriented and sticks to gender roles. The oldest daughter will be a nurse and marries a doctor; the mother stays home, cooks, and takes care of their children while the father works. There is nothing wrong with these gender roles. It plays out as being your typical family we see on Tv. The young boy is very athletic, and his sister goes to all his games and watches them play. You can also tell that the mother is running the household and takes care of everyone. Especially her husband, she will be going to his doctor’s appointments with him to tell the doctors everything they need to know. You can tell this is a typical Spanish family; it looks a lot like how the family is and how I grew up just without everyone speaking Spanish. Only my father and grandparents spoke Spanish.

While watching the episodes, you only saw the family in their kitchen, but it was a typical kitchen that you see in everyone. The mother was home, cooking, and waiting for her family to come home and eat. This is what it is like in my family; my mom will cook, and we will all gather in the kitchen when we get home, and it is time to eat. We know from watching the episodes that the family loves soccer and plays it for fun and watches the games on Tv and when their son plays it. With families in the United States on our, Tv is mostly football and basketball are the sports we watch. I noticed that there staple food they would have and even eat as snacks were rice white or yellow with beans or without, and I liked seeing that because it is a staple food in my house, we always have rice. I thought it was the normal food to have with every meal, but when I started going to friends’ houses for dinner, I realized they did not have it with every meal; they mostly had pasta or potatoes with their dinners. I always thought it was weird until I realized people could be thinking the same thing about my having rice for every meal. Our cultures are different, and what we eat is different, and it does not make sure weird. In this show, you saw that these family’s values were health and their family members’ safety. They put family above everything else. It is nice and refreshing to see in a Tv series because it most Tv shows, we do not see that. The one thing that I thought was very different is the same. His oldest daughter got engaged in front of the whole family and not just them together. I thought it was sweet that the only family got to be involved. We do not see that in our culture anymore, especially the man asking the father permission for his daughter’s hand; I loved watching that part. It means that this young man has respect for his new family.

I highly recommend that everyone check this quick series on youtube, and I have provided the link as well. I believe it is a great mini-series to show in our classroom to learn about health, Spanish, and cultures.

Please let me know what you thought in the comments!

Categories
Uncategorized

Communicating With The World

There are roughly 6,500 spoken languages in the world today; we do not have the time or the resources to learn all these languages, and if you do, I admire you! Just imagine all the different languages spoken in your town or state; it’s hard to learn them. Since it is hard to learn them, it is hard to communicate with people who do not speak the same language, but this does not mean that you can not speak with them. There are tons of new technologies out there to communicate with people who speak a different language. We will be talking about one that I believe will help us communicate with the people in our community and the people in our global classroom. I know I talk about Microsoft a lot, but I love it; my best teaching tool; is my best friend. Now that I can use it to communicate with everyone just makes me so happy.

Microsft has plenty of information on its website about the translator app; check out the website to learn even more. Microsoft translator is used to bridge the gap between students and teachers, and even when students communicate with each other. I will be using this in my classroom all of the time. Not only with my students but also with their parents to ensure I have good communication with them. I want my classroom to be very community-based, and using this tool will make sure that everyone is connected and there is no language gap. I can even use this to teach languages and bring it in with social studies lessons. I am coming up with so many ideas to use this app in my classroom.

Besides just being able to use it in my classroom, my students and I can use it when communicating with other students and teachers worldwide. We can take global education to the next level with this tool. Instead of having my students only speak English to the other students worldwide, they can use Microsoft translator and talk to people in their native language. This will help my students learn even more than speaking English to the students in our global classroom. This can also help me become a better teacher and learn from other teachers worldwide about what they do in their classroom.

I am so excited to use Microsoft translator in my classroom and make connections with students and teachers all over the world. I will definitely come with even more ideas around Microsoft translator; stay on the lookout for that. Please let me know if you will use Microsoft translator in your classroom and how you will use it.

Categories
Uncategorized

Sustainable Development Goals: Environmental Protection.

This week I took a course in Microsoft called Teaching Sustainable Developmental Goals. Going through his course, I learned a lot about the United Nations and the goals they want the world to reach by 2030. While reading the different sections they had, I thought that these are all fantastic topics to teach our students about; for the grade level I want interested in, some Goals might be too intense for younger students. The one that I thought would be super important to teach young children is Environmental Protection. When I was reading about it, plenty of future lesson plans came to my mind. After reading about it on Microsoft, I wanted to do a little more research before teaching my students. I came across this website that has so much information on how to protect the environment. After finding this website and learning more about environment protection, I have been come up with an idea on how to teach SDGs in my classroom, that I want to share with other teachers.

When I got onto the website I went to the section that talked about Clean, Healthier Environment and I was thinking how can I do this in my classroom, how can my class be part of creating this healthy environment. What I want to do in my classroom is create a virtual book, each student will have there own page or pages in the book, and talk about what it means to have a Clean and Healthy Environment. We will use the website I found to find information and do our research and then we will create a book coming from the child’s perspective about the environment and how to make it clean and healthy. I will also inform my students since the book is virtual it saves the planet because we are not using paper and that we can send it to everyone in the school and to our friends all over the world.

I thought this lesson is a great way to teach about SDGs and use global education all in one. I am very excited to see how this will work out in my classroom. Please let me know if you have tried this!