It's a bird.. NO .. it's a plane.. No.. It's Just Mrs. MUNOZ.

As many of you may know, I am Superwoman.

OK.. I am not.  BUT.. I feel like a superwoman who has single handedly flown around the world, saved it, made a sandwich, mended some booboo's and looked fabulous while doing it.
It's a bird.. NO .. it's a plane.. No.. It's Just Mrs. MUNOZ. 

 My professor has asked me to provide a learning summary in order to evaluate myself and reflect on the class. Yet, I don't even know where to begin. How do I even begin to asses myself for this class? I feel that it has been one of the most valuable classes that I have taken. It has truly served a great purpose in my life, especially by also being my first grad class. The only way I could truly evaluate myself in this class was to separate out all of its great pieces and then re-group them into a cohesive chart. I present to you "THE LIFE CYCLE OF: EME 5050."

 At the top of the chart I added our simpler online activities. These were things I had heard of, but that only my EME5050 would push me to try. Creating a blog, starting a Twitter Feed, Diigo account and WIKI page were all items I had never done before and doing so has allowed me to see their benefits immensely.

Following that, I grouped the WAR's and Journal writing. These had to be my worst enemies throughout the class. Although I love writing, I was so scared of what others would think of my writing and that would ultimately lead me to procrastinate. The WAR's exposed me to writing about research and allowed me a glimpse into the research world of IDT. I really liked that our journal entries on the blog were something that we could take on creatively by choosing our own topics. I tried to relate something I was experiencing as a teacher to something we were learning. I feel that my students gave me more than enough examples from which to correlate the two genres.

The Activity Reflections that we completed and then evaluated ourselves on were the most helpful to me. I was fully submerged in the process of the activities. I learn best by doing, and these activity reflections helped me incorporate my learning style.

Testing had to be my least favorite of our learning objectives. I fear testing as much as a visit to the dentist. The book offered some good insight, but I enjoyed the modules of the class 100 times more than the book.  I know that traditional assessments are still a very valuable way to find out what material your students are learning, but at grad level, I just think they are redundant. The final had to be my least favorite activity, but I am grateful it was only 30 questions. Anymore.. and I would have had to hide under the bed.

Last but certainly not least was the culminating project which I feel was more than an adequate way for us to put it all together.

At the beginning of this class, I was timid in not knowing what to expect. Was the work going to be to hard? Would I succeed in grad school ? Was I up to par with the other grad students? These are all questions and worries that I faced, but after taking and completing this course I've learned that I can handle it.. I can complete my first grad course and survive the Life Cycle of EME 5050.

Wiki Page

WIKI Final Project Link

https://mrsmunozlanguagearts.wikispaces.com/Unit+Plan+Putting+it+All+Together

Please don't call me CUPCAKE.

"Mrs. Munoz, Kevin is calling me cupcake and I really don't like it."
"I will talk to him about it"
(After class is over)
"Kevin will you please see me for a second?"
"Yes Mrs. Munoz."
"Kevin, have you been calling Madison "cupcake", lately?"
"I was hungry."
"OK, well she doesn't appreciate that name, please refer to her as Madison from now on."

As I stifled the laughter that threatened to erupt from my chest, I shook my head in dismay as the little 6th grade boy rushed out of my class and headed to his next period. Later on while mentioning this anecdote to my peer teacher, she mentioned that he seems to call her lots of names, all terms of endearment that seem to make her uncomfortable. I was unaware of the "name-calling", yet in intrigued to know if this was something that I should explore deeper and go to my Dean of Conduct with. What seemingly is innocent can sometimes be bothersome to another.

You might ask how this correlates to our class, but it definitely connects to social norms in real life and the social norms in the digital world. How are we as educators supposed to know what is acceptable for out students to share online and how are supposed to filter them in appropriateness?  More importantly, how do the kids know?

Since we do not know what their parents are teaching them, I propose that all students take an online module or complete a lesson similar to the one that UCF makes its students complete when taking online classes.
I am using this idea an opportunity to create a learning objectives for the students that will help them learn what is right and what is potentially wrong in a digital social environment. Here are some of my ideas for the learning objectives for middle schoolers:

1.Cyber Bullying - What is it ? How to prevent it. What to do if you are a victim?
2. Social Media- What is it? Review of popular apps and what they are used for.
3. Online Blogging- What are posts of substance? What is response of substance?

Giving students the basic overview  on social media and how to be digitally appropriate will definitely be beneficial.

Please comment on your ideas or perhaps suggestions. This is a simple outline but I think a whole lesson could be applied and assessed. What do you think ?

Journal Entry 6- Digital Story Telling Will you Survive?

Whew.. That was awesome yet completely time consuming. I  created  the below  digital story example for my students and it honestly took me a lot more time than I thought it would. I'm glad I started it early this week and didn't wait till last minute. Here are some facts you should know about it:

I teach 6th Grade Language Arts
The students objective will be to create a Digital Story using three different lesson plans.
Lesson Plan 1: Survival Tactics
Lesson Plan 2: Elements of a Story
Lesson Plan 3: How to create a Digital Story and post it online

I took me a while to sync the video with the narrative. Please be advised, there are some errors. .

Like I mentioned, I teach 6th grade language arts at a STEM school for advanced students. While language arts may not be their forte, many of my students enjoy my class and especially the creative writing portion. This digital story provides an example for the upcoming Unit Lesson Plan. The Unit Plan will incorporate a novel study, elements of a short story and implementing media into their creative writing. I left empty slides to illustrate to the students that they must complete 10 slides, but I did not feel it necessary to potentially bore you with my short story. Please critique my example!! I welcome all advice. When you comment please address the following questions:

• What did you like about the digital story?
• Identify any problems or errors. (Politely!).
• Is this example appropriate for the grade level/subject area it is intended?

Thanks, 

Mrs. Munoz

Digital Story Example

Please use the below link in order to access the Digital Story Example.

Digital Story Example WikiPage

To Kill a Mokingbird or Mockingjay?

6th Grader: "Mrs. Munoz, is it To Kill a Mokingbird or Mockingjay?"

As the tiny inquisitive 6th grader stood before me with his giant eyes and humongous backpack,  I couldn't help but smile as he referenced to  two great pieces of literature. He was genuinely asking if the title of the famous book by Harper Lee published in 1960 was "To Kill a Mockingbird" or "To Kill a Mokingjay". The later reference of mockingjay comes from the popular series "The Hunger Games" published in his lifetime. The notion was comical to me as we were not discussing either one of the books, but I found it quirky that he took the two genres and mashed them up. It shows that he was eliciting prior knowledge of literal classics with contempary or soon to be literal classics. This then led me to think about our upcoming project of digital storytelling.

Could I use an "OLD and CLASSIC" novel and have my students find similarities to the contempary pieces that they are reading?

What better way to show that my students are understanding the elements of literature than I am teaching than to have them find two books that seemingly have no relation,  and compare them to each other?

Now how do I implement technology into this? I am not 100% sure, but I do know that I will find a creative way of doing so. Here are some of my ideas, I just need to research the best way to implement the use of technology and still have the students demonstrate  full understanding of the two novels, their characters, themes, figurative language used, and how the elements of literature give meaning to the books.

Ideas:
Character Analysis-Have the students set up a FAKEBOOK accounts for the main characters of the books. Their fakebook posts will have to illustrate that the student understood the plot of the story by describing it with the characters posts. They could have an interactive conversation between the two characters, or have the characters give each other advise. Perhaps that can give input from the antagonists of the books, and add some negative and positive feedback to illustrate the conflict.

Alternate Ending- This idea is more of a creative writing lesson, but I could have the student write an alternate ending, where two characters from two different books meet. They would have to create a fictional setting and use what they know about the characters to develop a new story.  Then they can create a digital story and present them to the class.

What do you think ? Any Suggestions ?

Digital Storytelling Example