Ms. Speichinger's Blog

      I'm moving from a scripted math curriculum (which is all I know..they implemented it in my first year of teaching, and I used it for 3 years) to Theatre Arts, which I'm not even sure has a textbook to even loosely follow along with during the year. I will literally just have my TEKS and whatever resources I can scrounge from other teachers in nearby districts. Luckily collaboration is amazing, but I will be going from having lesson plans created for me (which I just need to adjust a bit) to having no lesson plans at all. I'm wildly excited about the freedom, this is why I left math, but it is also a really overwhelming task. This weeks tech tool feels like it will literally save my life (and I once again feel like I am so behind in what I should know as a teacher because of these scripted curriculums, but that is another blog post for another day).     I thought about using math standards for this assignment, I am so much more familiar with them and I feel...

 Intro intro.. This week's focus was learning about *how* students learn, and how we can use technology to overcome intrinsic and external barriers that our students have that may hinder the learning process. The chapter I focused on was about student's motivation, which was interesting to me as I struggled significantly with motivation from my students as a math teacher. I learned about factors that weren't necessarily in my control, as well as some factors that I could influence in my classroom.  As an educator, some of the ISTE Educator Standards that were hit for me this week were 2.1.c Keep Current on Research, as the chapter I analyzed had research about how to foster motivation through rewards, and how student's association with socioeconomic and racial/cultural/gender groups affected motivation on different types of assignments. I also always had 2.3.a Create Positive experiences in my mind as I was considering how to apply this knowledge to my classroom, as in ...

This week’s blog post covers an immense amount of information and feels like a 6–8-page paper condensed into 700 words, but I will do my best!   Part 1: This week’s readings started out with the concept of authentic intellectual work and how to use it in instruction. Authentic intellectual work refers to the work that students are doing in class that goes beyond mastering conventional academic skills and encourages creative and individual application of knowledge as opposed to regurgitation. It has two distinct characteristics, construction of knowledge and disciplined inquiry (Newmann et al., 2007). Applying these characteristics in education requires creative thinking from teachers, and it almost feels like a complete shift in education from 1st grade up. Newman et al. recognize that in life, we need to apply basic knowledge to unique situations. This involves organizing, interpreting, evaluating, or synthesizing prior knowledge to solve new problems (Newman, et al., 2007, p. 4)....

Hello! My name is Anna Speichinger, and I am a current middle school math teacher, just outside of Austin, TX. I have been teaching math for 3 years, but have just been hired to teach theatre arts at a new middle school. I am wildly excited! I’m very happy just teaching, I do not have goals to move into administration, curriculum design, or instructional support at the moment (but who knows what the future will bring!). I’d like to learn how to engage my students with the technology that they are used to while still teaching them how to appreciate activities that are not tech-based. While reviewing the Texas TEKS for middle school and cross-referencing them with ISTE standards, I was thinking about how much fun it would be for the students to be able to research historical characters and present factual information about when and where they existed as a product of current-day social media. The educational standards I chose are as follows ( Texas Education Agency, 2023) : Texas TEKS §11...