Podcast EP#2

This episode of Teachers Teaching Teachers discusses the importance of arts integration and technology integration in the classroom. Arts integration helps engage students and encourages teamwork, while technology integration requires students to work respectfully and responsibly online. Guidelines for using technology safely are discussed, including the importance of not sharing personal information and handling hate comments appropriately. The episode also references standards from the Kennedy Center and the North Carolina government documents to support the discussion on arts and technology integration. The next episode will provide information on applying the discussed concepts. Hello everyone. This week we'll be diving a little deeper into why to create arts integration lessons and what it is, as well as the standards for arts integration for first grade reading and first grade dance. As well as using technology safely and effectively in the classroom. My name is Katie Dixon and I'm also here with Chloe Stewart and this is Teachers Teaching Teachers. Last time we went over what arts integration was, what you have to look forward to, the challenges that come with it, as well as what is technology integration, how can you integrate technology in the classroom, and what challenges you may face. Today we're going to be going into a little bit of a deeper dive. Starting off with arts integration helps engage the students with an active mindset on curriculum. It also encourages students to work as a team. Also, another idea I learned from the Kennedy Center is that normal instruction does not always entail meaningful conversations. But the material or learning content, the art integration assignments, encourage more meaningful conversations. This is what I read from the Kennedy Arts Center. Dance, music, theater, and media arts are collaborative art forms. The visual literacy arts have aspects of collaboration too. When arts integration is the approach of the teaching in the classroom, purposeful conversation, not silence, is the norm. We can use many art forms to help guide arts integration. For example, visual arts integration for first grade would be using RL.1.2, which is retelling stories, including key details, and demonstrating understanding the essential measures of a lesson. And the dance standard would be DACR 1.1.1a, exploring movement inspired by a variety of stimuli and identity source. This way, using these two standards, they are combined to give us a complete arts integrated lesson where students can understand and create using both standards of the curriculum. Here, we're using both of these standards to create meaningful conversations and provide more engagement. Okay, now when talking about technology, it can be tricky when learning how to integrate it properly and successfully in a classroom. However, it is important that at a first grade level, students can work with others online as stated in the North Carolina Standards K2-1C-03, which states work respectfully and responsibly with others online. One way you can make sure your students successfully meet these standards is by having a poster display in your classroom of your guidelines, which if you watched episode one, I talked a little bit about this, and so I'll get into it furthermore. And as a class, you can go through technology safety dos and don'ts when interacting with others online. For example, a do could be to always be respectful and you could specify it as such by using manners such as please and thank you, as well as staying on task. When talking about some don'ts, one thing could be to never share personal information online to keep yourself safe. When talking about personal information, I mean we're talking about name, address, email, nothing, none of the sorts. You all just want to keep it personal and make sure you don't put that out into the website or the public. This is solely just to ensure your students' safety and to keep you guys safe. Now, when talking about to work respectfully with others online, this means to respect your time as well as theirs. So if it takes them longer than it may take you, being willing to be patient as well as using your technology responsibly and following guidelines is key. One challenge to this standard could be the student getting a hate comment or someone else saying something rude or some sort of interaction that makes the student want to respond with something in return. However, I know this may be tempting and it is natural instinct to want to reply back when someone says something mean. It is so important that if anyone says anything rude, to contact your educator first and make them known as if you were to encounter any sort of cyberbullying at all, they immediately need to come to you first. Today in this episode, we use the Kennedy Center again and some of the standards from the North Carolina government documents. And we use these to help back up our discussion on how to integrate the arts as well as referring back to our standards to keep in check with technology integration and what to expect as a future educator standards wise when talking about technology in the first grade classroom. Thank you for listening and in the next episode, we will teach how to apply the information learned and some questions you may have. Thank you guys for listening and hope to see you in episode three of Teachers Teach Teachers.