Attending Webinar

The webinar which I attended is titled ''Apps Every Teacher Needs Now!'' by Shannon Holden. This webinar highlights the most effective applications that each teacher needs to be updated with in order to ensure having valuable and effective learning.
The first application is titled ''Kahoot'' in which interesting activities or games can be shared in a challenging and exciting way.
''Quizlet Live'' is the second application in which quick individual or group assessment can be done. such application helps the teacher to form an idea about students' work throughout with less effort.
Moreover, the other applications such as Flipgrid, Waklet and the other forms are also free and very helpful. These applications are effective when knowing when to use each and under which type of assessment. As mentioned in this webinar, there are specific forms that can be used with formative assessment while others can be used with summative one. For instance, the Waklet application is like a digital portfolio which provides students with feedback on their works throughout the year. This is a summative assessment. While Kahoot application, for example, is a formative one.
To sum up, this webinar highlights the importance of integrating such professional applications into the teaching process to engage students more and work effectively.
I really enjoyed attending it and learning more about this topic for two reasons. The first one is that it enriched my mind with valuable ideas related to the assessment field and the second one is that this webinar is strongly related to the course Educ560 and it even  includes some applications we have learned in it.

Kinds of Memories

Being a successful teacher makes you work on improving many aspects and pushes you to exert more effort to make learning last as longer as possible in students' mind. One main part that falls here is knowing about students' memories and relating that to their age. For instance, knowing that my KG students can't be attentive for a long period of time, I divide the lesson into chunks to help them better understand and retrieve the information easier. Moreover, with older learners, it's very helpful to teach them the strategies that would aid them in learning the new knowledge and remembering it easily. One effective strategy could be acronyms which leads to more enduring learning. To sum up, making teaching successful requires making learning successful as well through planning how to teach and how to help students retain what they have learnt forever. 

Cooperative Learning

Cooperative learning is one major component of  effective learning. I have heard a lot about this approach and learnt about the importance of knowing how to apply it in our classes. However, it is not easy at all to teach KG students how to work cooperatively. That's why I'm working on having the students form an idea about how to work with each other through applying simple group work or pair activities. this will teach students the importance of putting their hands together to finish their work successfully. I hope to reach with them to the stage where they can learn a complete lesson through cooperative learning approach. Reaching this level for now with young learners makes me feel delighted and hopeful because this is one basic element of cooperative learning and which is building the trust and love among learners. With more advanced levels, I used cooperative learning successfully keeping in mind that cooperative learning is group work but not all group work is cooperative learning. In other words, it's essential to know how to apply this approach and to make sure all of its essential elements and present in order to reach the desired successful results.

My School's Project

In my school, we yearly work on a project to help our students overcome one of the challenges which they face. This year we chose a very important topic ''Ethics and Morals''. And as we know that morals is a huge topic and has many branches like ( respect, love, participation, justice, cleanliness, honesty.... ).
We started to work on each value separately by doing a lot of activities and events that enhance the value in the mind and the actions of the child. For example, on World Peace Day we celebrated by doing activities that enhance the value of love and participation among students. Also, we make a big tree on the wall of the school and name it ''Tree of Morals'', it is filled of leaves and every child who is distinguished by moral value through his actions and behaviors, his name or photo will be put on a leaf of this tree. In addition to many awareness sessions for students about personal hygiene and taking care of the surrounding environment. The school's project from the beginning showed positive results through the behaviors of students, and the work on this project continues to promote good moral values in their minds and hearts.

Teacher's Consecutive Evaluation

As for today, I had three educational experts attending my session and evaluating my teaching process. Actually, I was really worried when I knew that I'll be evaluated and by three individuals because it's not easy to have more than one person observing each single act that you do and criticizing it. However, the feedback which they gave me after their observation was really motivating and beneficial. Their way was very kind and effective because they told me that the main purpose behind this evaluation is my own development which will be positively reflected on my students' achievement in return. They also mentioned my positive aspects of teaching at first which encouraged me and made me share more ideas with them. As for the negatives, though they weren't many but they really showed me that there are some points which I have to work on to improve my work. As a result, teachers shouldn't worry so much for being evaluated because no matter how annoying it is, it will lead for their own development and sustainable success.

The Importance of Sharing

It's very important to share the beautiful values that exist in each religion because diversity is very important to our culture. Islam and Christianity have similarities in many values such as charity, justice, helping the poor, and love others. A lot of schools have students from different religions and they share morals and values.
Last week Christian visitors came to our school and they met some Islamic students and asked them about Islam and the Islamic morals that they follow in their daily and academic life. The students talked about the most important values that they play a key role in education such as respect, love and cooperation. Our visitors agreed with them on these morals that found in Christianity too and they stressed the importance of being one hand to reach our goals. when they share moral values, our students figured out the similarities and they were open to new values.

Motivation of KG Students

Motivation is a key  element in education because it pushes children to work hard and be more productive. Every teacher must know how to motivate her students and implant in them the love of learning. Once this step is achieved successfully, nothing would stop students from learning more and more. What I mainly work on with my KG students is motivating them intrinsically with some extrinsic pushes because when they have the passion of learning they'll be pushed to learn without caring to get any rewards for that. Their only reward will be success. I have a student who was obliged to come to school with zero motivation. I tried to motivate him extrinsically through giving him a sticker for any simple positive action that he does. This worked well with him but for a short period of time. That's why I thought of how I have to keep him working always without feeling demotivated and here comes  the importance of intrinsically motivating students through believing in their abilities and giving them high expectations.