To worksheet or not to worksheet?

Should kindergarteners be using worksheets to learn math and science skills? How much are children learning about money by color circles with $.1? I think they learn a whole lot more about money by counting real money than they do by color circles with numbers.

Children should be learning about how plants grow, how to count money, math concepts (i.e. adding and subtracting), and other life skills by doing the skills with their hands rather than coloring worksheets or timed math tests.

Being Fair to all Students with Disablities

Students with disabilities are becoming more and more a part of regular classrooms, even Kindergarten. But how are teachers of regular classrooms suppose to adapt their lesson to fit both regular and disabled students?

More and more assistive technology tools are being created to help teachers work with disabled students. These tools range from toys to computer programs. Companies like Assistive Technologies (http://www.assistivetechnologies.com/) are available to provide help in finding the right assistive technologies for people with disabilities and those that work with them and software that can be used in the classroom or at home.

It is important to properly train those teachers who work with disabled students on assistive technology programs and provide the best materials to help disabled students learn along with their peers (disabled and not disabled). Teachers must also make sure that putting disabled students in regular classrooms is the right environment for the disabled students.

Implementing Technology in the Classroom

Our world is becoming more and more technologically based, causing teachers to become more knowledgeable about programs available for their classroom. I feel that there is too much technology is being put into the classroom in the first place, thus children are losing out on precious one on one teacher-student time.

Another major issue that has been created in classrooms today is several computer programs our being put in the classrooms for children to use but teachers are not being properly trained on how to use the programs. If teachers cannot teach the students how to use the programs correctly, the students just feel that they are playing games, thus the students are losing out on valuable lessons.

If technology is going to be any part of the classroom, teachers need to have the proper training to teach the children how to use the programs. We (teachers) must be careful not to let computer programs take over our one on one teaching with the students.

Some ways that we can make sure technology works to the best advantage for both teachers and students are: 1) provide professional development for teachers on how to use the programs that are in their classroom
2) Monitor the time that students spend on the computer.