This week's reading explored how students' prior knowledge affects their learning and ability to understand and retain new information. The authors suggest prior to lessons, making an assessment of which skills the students possess using techniques such as pre-assessments, talking to colleagues who taught the students the previous year, brainstorming with the students, observing patterns of error, etc. These are good suggestions, probably something that most experienced teachers are aware of but may not always put into practice.
As an instrumental music instructor, I can say we have the opportunity to review prior knowledge and skills every day during warmups and skill review. Most directors will incorporate rhythms, scales, or tone production exercises within the warmup. The students are reviewing basics on a daily basis which is not always possible in an academic classroom. In addition, instrumental music students usually have the same team of directors for a number of years, so they know what prior knowledge the students have been taught.
In setting up my Weebly website shell for this class, I found it to be extremely easy. I first used Weebly in another class and I have found it to be one of the easiest website platforms I have used. There are also great tutorials if you need help, and the topics of each are nice, short, and easy to understand. There is even a live chat/tutorial option.
Weebly's web design tools are, indeed, easy enough for young students to use in a class. I think it could be a very engaging way for them to create a web-based portfolio for their work while learning technology skills that will be valuable to them later.
The only negative I found with Weebly is that there doesn't seem to be an easy option for changing the font color in the templates. This would be a nice feature for teachers with visually impaired students. I plan to experiment with the HTML coding to make minor adjustments to both the text color and the standard templates.
As an instrumental music instructor, I can say we have the opportunity to review prior knowledge and skills every day during warmups and skill review. Most directors will incorporate rhythms, scales, or tone production exercises within the warmup. The students are reviewing basics on a daily basis which is not always possible in an academic classroom. In addition, instrumental music students usually have the same team of directors for a number of years, so they know what prior knowledge the students have been taught.
In setting up my Weebly website shell for this class, I found it to be extremely easy. I first used Weebly in another class and I have found it to be one of the easiest website platforms I have used. There are also great tutorials if you need help, and the topics of each are nice, short, and easy to understand. There is even a live chat/tutorial option.
Weebly's web design tools are, indeed, easy enough for young students to use in a class. I think it could be a very engaging way for them to create a web-based portfolio for their work while learning technology skills that will be valuable to them later.
The only negative I found with Weebly is that there doesn't seem to be an easy option for changing the font color in the templates. This would be a nice feature for teachers with visually impaired students. I plan to experiment with the HTML coding to make minor adjustments to both the text color and the standard templates.
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