Standard+6

Home Page - Standard I - Standard II - Standard III - Standard IV - Standard V - Standard VI - Standard VII - Standard VIII - Standard IX - Standard X **__Standard 6 __** **Teachers communicate well. ** //The teacher uses effective verbal and nonverbal communication techniques as well as instructional media and technology to foster active inquiry, collaboration, and supportive interaction in the classroom. //

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<span style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS',sans-serif; font-size: 10pt; text-align: justify;">Communication is a key part of this career. A teacher has to not only communicate with their own students, but also their co-workers, their students’ parents, and various members of the community. In order to communicate with my class, besides the verbal and non-verbal communication in the classroom, we have a class website for discussions and a class blog to keep parents in the loop about what is happening in our school. <span style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS',sans-serif; font-size: 10pt;">The class website is used for uploading important documents for parents, posting daily homework, having discussions that parents and the community can see (Edmodo is used for more private, real-time conversations, including homework help), and linking important websites in one location. The students are adept at navigating through this website, replying to posts, and doing research before they answer discussion questions. They are able to work together by commenting on one another’s posts, ask questions to one another, and even give out virtual compliments for insightful and inspiring comments. <span style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS',sans-serif; font-size: 10pt;">Our class blog is designed to keep the parents in the loop on some of the larger happenings going on in the classroom. Stories are posted about previous and upcoming events, popular books are listed, contact information and schedule information is there for a quick check, and a link to our class wiki is included for a whole set of resources to help out. Staying in contact with parents, and keeping parents generally informed, through these websites has proven critical in keeping parent questions to a minimum and allowing me to spend more time on my students. <span style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS',sans-serif; font-size: 10pt;">Our blog has been operational for about 3 years now, though it has gone through some major upgrades in the past couple years. It started off as a simple blog with just stories and now has all of the previously mentioned resources attached to it. Our school website is brand new this year, our district just switched over, but the impact on our teaching, students, and curriculum has been noticeable. We have incorporated the discussions into lessons and its feature to have us ‘approve’ the post before it is seen by others allows us to send it back to the user if it needs some more work. Our students are using it nightly to double check they have all of their homework accounted for and we are weaving it into our curriculum as we see fit. We expect it to become more integrated as we go 1:1 next year.
 * <span style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS',sans-serif; font-size: 10pt;">KSD **

**<span style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS',sans-serif; font-size: 10pt;">6.K.4: The teacher recognizes the importance of nonverbal, verbal and media communication techniques. **

<span style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS',sans-serif; font-size: 10pt; text-align: justify;">While some students are outgoing in the classroom and participate in every discussion, others are more reserved and don’t participate. Sometimes this is out of shyness, sometimes this is out of needing more time to process the information, and sometimes this is because the student doesn’t understand the content. Having an online discussion gives these students the medium in which they can feel comfortable talking (because they’re not going to be cutting anyone off) and the time to process their thoughts before communicating them. They are also able to ask a question privately to their teacher without their classmates knowing, clearing up any confusion before they offer their viewpoint.

**<span style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS',sans-serif; font-size: 10pt;">6.S.3: The teacher knows how to ask questions and stimulate discussion for particular purposes (e.g. probing for learning understanding, helping students articulate their ideas and thinking processes, promoting risk-taking and problem-solving, facilitating factual recall, encouraging convergent and divergent thinking, stimulating curiosity, helping students to question). **

<span style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS',sans-serif; font-size: 10pt; text-align: justify;">Online discussions have to be based on open-ended questions. If you ask a question online that is a yes or no type question, the responses will be the same and all very, very short. Asking open ended questions gets the students to think more critically about what they are learning and allows them to dig deeper into the subject matter.
 * <span style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS',sans-serif; font-size: 10pt;">6.D.2: The teacher values many ways in which people seek to communicate and encourages many modes of communication in the classroom. **

<span style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS',sans-serif; font-size: 10pt; text-align: justify;">We have class discussions and online discussions to give all students the opportunity to participate and have their voice heard. Some students prefer to be in front of the class giving a presentation, others prefer to dwell on their thoughts for a while and then communicate them. Each method works in my classroom.