Gabriels Post 4.26.11

I think DJ teach did a great job exploring the readings and materials taught in class and incorporating them into our blogs. It is clear through the posts that we all took what we read and connected it to our classrooms. We have learned in this class that it is so important for students to feel connected to what they are learning and make the content mean something outside of school. We are clearly showing this in our blog, and prove that students must connect topics to their personal life. I think we all agreed on a lot of issues in this class and our blogs seemed to go together. The only time I read that Lauren disagreed with me was in our math blog. Even though it wasn’t part of this blog, I think its important to note that even though Lauren disagreed with me, she did so in a very respectable manner and explained why she disagreed with me. Both Lauren and Gabe pushed my thinking while I read their note blogs, there were times when they brought up points that I didn’t think about. They were also lucky enough to see evidence of the readings in their classroom, while I didn’t always see things that we talked about in my classroom. When this did occur, I did try to connect it back to when I was in elementary school, that way I was at least making some connection to my personal life. One thing that surprised me about the blog was that we actually took the conversations from the blog and brought it to class. We had discussed topics from the blog while we were all out to lunch one day. I think this really shows that we are taking what we are learning and incorporating it into our daily lives, which is what I think this class is all about. I think the only way our group may have been able improved our professional learning would be to expand more on the quotes we used in our note blogs. Even though I think we all did a good job in pulling quotes out and relating it back to our classroom experience, perhaps we could have gone more in depth about the quote its self. Overall, I think we all did an excellent job with our blogs, and I give myself 10 out of 10. I really feel that I got a lot out of the readings and did my best to connect what I was learning to my life, and the classroom I am currently in.