Twitter Chat Reflection: #1stchat

            On Sunday I participated in my first twitter chat ever. I can definitely say it was a great experience and I look forward to participating in more.

The chat I took part in was #1stchat which is primarily 1^st grade teachers discussing different topics.  We first discussed curriculum that teachers were currently doing, then the chat evolved to discuss that teachers do for fun in the last couple of weeks of school. Although we jumped from topic to topic, I took away a lot of important information.

One of the teachers mentioned she has a 26 day countdown for the last days of school. For each day, the teacher focuses on a letter of the alphabet beginning with ‘A’ and has a theme each day. I thought this was brilliant! From my clinical experience I have learned that elementary students really enjoy themes in their learning, so having a theme for each day would be fun for the students. I also took away another idea. A lot of us mentioned that our schools engage in field day at the end of the school year, including myself. One of the teachers mentioned that they do a Dr. Seuss themed field day. I thought this was also very brilliant! Since my cooperating teacher and I will be doing a lot of the planning, I will make sure to bring this idea up.

Some of the teachers also mentioned different things that struck my mind. Since I am only teaching PE, we do a lot of psychomotor activities. We do not have the students engage in reading or writing since we only see them once per week for 30 minutes. From engaging in the chat, teachers mentioned that they had their students read different stories and reflect. I thought that 1st graders might be too young to do this, but from what teachers were posting it seems that it is a concept that they do a lot. So it was good to know that I can have the option of having students reflect on their actions in PE.

Another teacher mentioned that she was going to use ipads to have her students create picture books. I also thought that using technology such as ipads and give them the freedom to create something for 1^st graders was a little too advanced but again I was glad to know that they are very capable to engage in such activities.

Participating in the chat was very eye opening in that one can learn so much from others just by communicating. I was amazed that I was chatting with people from all over the US. I got so many ideas in one hour, I couldn’t believe it. Now some of the people I chatted with are following me on twitter and I am following them. I think I am getting a better understating of the power of developing my PLN.