This week we had the pleasure of welcoming Joanna Lake into our classroom! This presentation was so inspirational, resourceful, and productive! Right away I loved Joanna’s energy and her youthful personality. I really enjoyed how she dug deep into everyday classroom activities that are so important. I thought it was so fun that she included memes into her morning message everyday to make it fun and relatable for her students. This is also a great way to start the day on a fun note, and to have students be excited and engaged. I think this is a really great, and fresh way to mix up a students day. I think a lot of students struggle to make connections with some of their older teachers because they aren’t putting in that extra effort to make school more fun and relatable to their students. Kids love fresh and active ways to learn that differs from standard lecturing and worksheets.

I also really enjoyed looking through the various resources Joanna linked to her slides, some of these will be extremely helpful for my practicum and I am so grateful that she shared these with our program 🙂

Joanna also emphasized the importance of making connections with all of your students, and recognizing that each of your students have different strengths. This is so important to remember, especially when you are the new teacher in the classroom. I will definitely be spending my first two weeks making that extra effort to learn all my students names, learning about them and what they like, and also engaging in play and activities with them. This is soooo important, and I can’t wait to use Joanna’s advice and dig right in!

“On a Scale of dog, how do you feel today friends?”

I also really enjoyed discussing the Fresh Grade App and the Science Journal. Both of these apps could be very beneficial as a future teacher, and I think the students and parents would also say the same.

Here is a great blog post that goes into further detail about all the benefits the app has to offer!

http://www.edtechroundup.org/reviews/freshgrade-enabling-teachers-engaging-parents-empowering-students

“This free app for students, teachers, and parents that is designed to give teachers and parents a continuous look at student work and progress through their digital portfolio and grade book.  It’s an excellent classroom resource that offers an enormous amount of flexibility in terms of assignments and assessments, so let’s take a look at the app!”


“In general, FreshGrade has focused their app on four primary areas:”

  • Student empowerment & voice
  • Parent engagement & communication
  • Enabling 21st century learning practices
  • Innovative assessment

This blog post states that “In short, FreshGrade offers all the benefits of a well-designed learning management system with the added bonus of a robust digital portfolio that gives teachers flexible assessment possibilities and parents a chance to see what their kids are up to.” (Ed Tech Round Up, 2016).

I downloaded the Arduino Science Journal app and can’t wait to play around more with it in the coming weeks. I am going to be teaching some science units in my practicum, and would love to suggest to my mentor teacher ways to incorporate the app.

I love the variety of experiments for both teachers and students, and how it gives so much agency for students to explore what they feel most interested in! This is a great tool to have students become engaged, and to have them hands on learning. I am excited to try the app out for myself!