Moving Mountains in Ms. Morrison's Class

During my time in the Literacy Block in JSU's early childhood and elementary education program, I was required to take a course on assessment. While in this course I became familiar with the process of using portfolios for formative and summative assessment. I initially began to favor portfolio assessment because it offered a very authentic view of my students' growth over time. I have points in my educational journey that I am not particularly proud of ... like the time I had to call my dad and explain why I made a 56% on my first college math test... or the time in high school physics when my Suspension bridge {attempt} in high school physics file folder suspension bridge broke because I didn't read the directions precisely... and then there was one time in middle school when I was the leader for a group book talk and I led the talk about the wrong book for three days... but I would never put those instances in a professional portfolio for a job interview! Those mome...

  "Changing Education from the Inside Out" - CORE I am so incredibly excited to be registered for CORE Academy 2016!! I cannot wait to collaborate with so many educators from so many different areas and backgrounds; the experience will be invaluable.  This is CORE's vision and mission statement which can also be found on their website (see link below):  Vision To transform K-12 and higher education so students are increasingly engaged, instructors are increasingly innovative, and educational institutions are increasingly supportive of system-wide change and community-wide partnership building. Mission To fuel transformation in K-12 and higher education classrooms through professional development, project-/challenge-based learning, technology, classroom support, change management and partnership building, evaluation and research, dual enrollment, and innovative teacher preparation. I think this experience will be such a blessing in my educational journey and a wonderful fo...

I finally created my Twitter account! I cannot wait to further connect to the online educational world through this outlet! Follow me at:  https://twitter.com/moving_mounts

This last week I was one of about thirty JSU students who were lucky enough to get to Skype with author Dave Burgess. Dave Burgess has done what we all secretly (or not so secretly) want to accomplish: to have our philosophy and methods of teaching known and respected nation wide. He has done this through his book Teach Like a Pirate .       Pirates are daring and adventurous. They sail into uncharted territories with no guarantee of success. They reject the status quo and refuse to conform to any society that stifles creativity and independence. They are entrepreneurs who take risks and are willing to travel to the ends of the earth for that which they value. Pirates don't much care about public perception; they proudly fly their flags in defiance. Karen Nelson welcoming us into her classroom. Ms. Nelson set up the Skype session with Burgess through her classroom Twitter account.  Dave Burgess beginning our Skype session with a description of the creativ...

The ECE block at JSU spent our class time in ECE 309 playing with a handful of new apps for digital stoytelling. While this may sound like a waste of valuable class time to some, this is one of the best ways to learn about technology. A room full of future educators learning and sharing ideas for different ways to use these apps in our practicum classrooms and our future classrooms, what could be better? “Learn to write by doing it. Read widely and wisely. Increase your word power. Find your own individual voice though practicing constantly. Go through the world with your eyes and ears open and learn to express that experience in words.”  ―  P.D. James ,  Advice to Writers: A Compendium of Quotes, Anecdotes, and Writerly Wisdom from a Dazzling Array of Literary Lights We have transcribed this quote from P.D. James into the technology filled, twenty first century classroom. 

When I was little, my mom and I would read at least one book every night. As I got older, the books turned into chapter books and those chapter books turned into trilogies, chronicles, and entire series. I have very found memories of sitting in my mother's room before bed reading The Chronicles of Narnia and how excited we would both get (because she loved reading the books just as much as I did) when Mary Pope Osborn would come out with a new Magic Tree House book. All of those books were good, old fashioned paper and ink and I still have them, although now they're packed away in boxes for my kids in the future. That form of storytelling is out-dated for this new generation. While students today still like the tradition of reading stories, they want more pizzazz. They want characters that move. They want to narrate the story themselves, hit a button, and replay it to their peers. Like everything else in their age, they want it DIGITAL. Digital storytelling is the relativel...

Last week I was able to create my first interactive bulletin board (it's an exciting milestone for an early childhood education major) with my fellow teacher candidate, Alana Needham. We used the following kindergarten standards to create "WiseKids' Pizzeria":  2.) Count forward beginning from a given number within the known sequence (instead of having to begin at 1). [K-CC2] 8.) Represent addition and subtraction with objects, fingers, mental images, drawings, sounds (e.g., claps), acting out situations, verbal explanations, expressions, or equations. (Drawings need not show details, but should show the mathematics in the problem. This applies wherever drawings are mentioned in the Standards.) [K-OA1] 22.) Compose simple shapes to form larger shapes. [K-G6] * Standards taken from the alex.state.al.us website *   On the board, students have the opportunity to configure a pizza by matching the numbers on the pan to the number of pepperonis on a slice of pizza (standard...

Wow, oh wow, to be a student in Ms. Toliver's classroom...  Just watching this video made me want to go back to a middle school classroom. Ms. Toliver was able to create the perfect atmosphere for learning: creative, positive, and ever-evolving. Kay Toliver taught for over thirty years in East Harlem, New York and during that time created a program called "The Math Trail" in which students plot a course through their community and develop several math problems based on real life situations. This kind of out-of-the-box curriculum is exactly the material that will turn today's young students into critical thinkers and innovators who are ready for tomorrow's workforce. I encourage anyone and everyone to watch this video; it will give you a new yearning for learning.  http://youtu.be/J0Hgh7qvSIk   

Hello!        My name is Taylor Morrison and I have just begun a new chapter in my ever-evolving education as a Teacher Candidate at Jacksonville State University. I cannot begin to explain how excited I am to start my new journey and meet all the new children I will be able to work with. As a Sunday school teacher, preschool teacher, camp counselor, babysitter, aunt, and mom I am always looking for new, creative things to do with my kiddos. However, just because things are "cute" does not mean that they are appropriate for the classroom or worth the effort (because let's face it, some of those Pinterest crafts are hard to make as adults, much less as kids). I believe that children need content and creativity to thrive in their various learning environments. I have had so many wonderful teachers in my life that have taught me how much fun learning can be, I could not imagine spending my life doing anything else but learning and teaching others to love it as wel...