First Grade Teacher - Reading Recovery Teacher

by Rita Wenrich
(Alamogordo, New Mexico, USA)

Having received my Master's Degree in Curriculum and Instruction/Technology in Education, I find it beneficial to my students' learning to use technology throughout my classroom curriculum.

With the aid of an interactive whiteboard, my students become engaged as active learners. I am able to post daily math activities on my classroom website ( http://myteacherpages.com/webpages/RWenrich)allowing my students to review the lessons with their parents and to assist students who were absent.

I am able to introduce new content that the students will be working with during the daily computer lab.

Funding is tight and we live in a small city seventy miles away from the nearest city, therefore I create virtual field trips of my personal travels as well as online virtual field trips for my students.

I have one student textbook for science so my document camera and LCD projector is extremely helpful. Weekly I create a classroom newsletter and then post it to my website. I keep my camera handy so I can document my students' year in first grade.

At the end of the school year we invite parents to join us in celebrating the ending of first grade with a slide show presentation generated from the photos I have captured throughout the school year.

Each family is given a copy of the slide show. This becomes their child's virtual scrapbook from their year in the first grade. When I attend workshops I take photos of the various displays/ideas to share with my fellow teachers.