Teaching Philosophy
My lessons cover a variety of pedagogical strategies – audio, visual and kinesthetic. Research shows that students can listen for a maximum of twenty minutes before they begin to lose interest in the material, so keeping this in mind, my lessons incorporate technology such as power-points or Prezis, Storify, and other modalities, and they last, at most, one half hour. Then, there is a hands on activity for at least another half hour before we have a class discussion ont hat particular lesson topic.
Sometimes I will bring in a guest speaker in order to stimulate discussion and introduce another point of view. Many of my writing assignments include writing articles for FSW Newsletter (an online newspaper I have sponsored, edited, and designed), Prezi presentations, Storify presentations, newspaper articles through Zoomvillage.com, web pages, and blogs. My most compelling successes in the last five years are:
1. Students completing a blog for their narrative writing assignment through Blogger.com.
2. Students designing a web page through Weebly.com
3. Students creating a Prezi presentation for their Definition essay assignment.
4. Students creating a Power Point for their research paper presentation.
5. Students writing editorials for our FSW Newsletter online.