Week 3

In regards to my learning this week, I understand factual, procedural, cognitive, and metacognitive instruction. This was helped greatly by doing our activity of having to correctly place statements on the right instruction. When we reviewed over our answers, asking questions helped greatly in my understanding. Factual is the knowledge of content, procedural is doing something with the content, cognitive is understanding the why behind the content, and metacognitive is being able to create a personal opinion based on the content. I did struggle to grasp this concept at first when my peers seemed to understand it. I knew asking the amount of questions I did was extensive, but I asked anyways because no question is a bad question, especially when you genuinely don't understand. I had the most satisfaction when I started noticing phenomena around me. Mostly when I am outside it's to get to another place, not to observe what is around us. It's refreshing to realize the content we are learning and going to teach is present in our lives. Next week I would like to keep a careful watch over my ecocolumn and try to keep my insects, fish, and plants alive. This will be a big accomplishment because I have never attempted this. 
This week while creating our ecocolumns I drove to the river, brought a cup to dig and catch (unsuccessfully) fish with, and even brought a towel for anyone who needed to dry off from the water. Next week when my team starts our science fair project I will make sure to have my materials ready and pull my weight for whatever is needed of me. I have been researching fourth grade science standards to understand what is expected of them, then I have asked a teacher how they view these standards that will help me build a learning target. Currently, weather is an active topic so I have been studying this hurricane and wind movements. During this time, hurricane Irma is making its' way along the east coast, coming right in our direction of Charlotte, where my twin sister lives. Not only am I noticing the drastic changes in our day-to-day weather from being cold and raining to no clouds in the sky the next, I am also observing the fear that is striking fear in everyone around me. In accordance to NCTCS, it is important to discuss different points of view, as long as it is appropriate to talk about. Teachers shouldn't only talk about another culture when they have a student from that culture, but talk of other cultures so they already have knowledge of where the student may have come from. 

My first tweet concerns the relevancy of content. We may want to teach them of what we learned in school, or keep the same content that was used years before. If the content we teach is not relevant nor a requirement by the state, we shouldn't spend our time on it.
My second tweet is something that really hit home for me this week. Failure in itself is already hard for a student to accept. If a student feels as if their worth is tied into their test taking skills by our attitude towards them, then we need to reevaluate ourselves and  what our unintentionally bad actions can do.
The third tweet I chose for this week is a skill that is needed for teaching, and that is patience. It can get frustrating when a student does not work fast or does not understand even with help, but it is better for them to do it themselves. When they do their work themselves they must think about it instead of getting an answer without understanding why it is the answer.