Blog Journal 3

As I want to teach elementary level students I researched the ELA standards for grades 2-4. Looking through the standards they all seemed relatively simple to me. The standards were things like "use abstract nouns" or "capitalize appropriate words in titles". All of the standards are skills I use on a daily basis to do homework or communicate with others. I feel as though I would be very comfortable teaching the standards to students. There are a few standards that I understand but am not sure how I would go about exactly explaining or teaching them. An example of this would be "Choose words and phrases for effect". I understand what it means to do this in writing but I am not sure how to help young students acquire this standard.


The CPALMS Educator Toolkit has a wide variety of lesson plans and resources to help teachers in every grade level. I think this toolkit would be especially helpful to teachers in their first few years of teaching that might need help with lesson plans. The tool I would probably utilize the most in my classroom is the instructional resources. It has many fun lesson plans to help students learn while staying engaged. It also includes virtual manipulatives to be used in lessons. I think the virtual manipulatives can be used to help add technology to my lesson and keep the students more engaged in what they are learning. 

The Newsletter Design assignment was something that helped me use Word in a more creative way than I am used to. I also made me think about design and how others would view the layout and colors. I learned things like borders and columns that I knew very little about. I think I could have improved on the overall layout of my articles within the newsletter because I don't think they look very uniform. I also think I could have improved on using different colors throughout because I mostly stuck to one or two. Overall I am happy with how my newsletter came out and hope I get to use Word in a similar way soon. 

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