Canva is an online design and publishing tool with templates that make it easy to create presentations, posters, documents, and other visual content. In addition, Canva for Education provides upgraded access to images, tools as well as some automated student groupings to make using this design suite even more intuitive. Canva for Education is 100% free for K-12 (primary and secondary) teachers and their students, powering creation and collaboration in every classroom. Creativity, critical thinking, design, and visual communication are central to preparing our students for the world outside of school. Canva fosters these skills by making it easy to produce and complete group projects, videos, posters and more. And as a teacher, you can also deliver impactful feedback to reach and motivate students all in one place. Share, review, and give feedback on student work in real-time. I’ve been using the newsletter template for several weeks with my cooperative teacher. I’ve enjoyed browsing the many designs! I’m looking forward to working with Canva in my future classroom.
I’ve enjoyed working with Kindergarten students weekly with Ortin Gillingham curriculum on letter and dictation writing. It’s fascinating to see students who struggle with fine motor skills struggling with tummy time writing due to over use of their elbows. My Cooperative Teacher and I are adding tummy time with dictation writing weekly to our lesson plans.
Why it’s helpful:
Increases postural core strength (neck, back, and abdominal muscles).
Increases shoulder and arm strength, which is important for fine motor skills (eating with utensils, writing, drawing, cutting) and gross motor skills (throwing, crawling, climbing).
Helps the two sides of the body learn to coordinate as the child learns to lift one arm at a time and reach in different directions, including across their body, for objects.
Increases stability of the neck muscles, which helps support the functional use of vision in other positions.
Helps ALL of us counteract the negative effects of looking down at technological devices
Improves flexibility in the hips, which helps with running, jumping, and climbing and can relieve a tight low back.
The top 5 educators that I have the most respect/admiration for in education are:
Maria Montessori
Maria Montessori was an Italian physician, educator, and innovator, known for her educational method that builds on the way children learn. Using scientific observation and experience gained from her earlier work with young children, Maria designed learning materials and a classroom environment that allowed the children’s natural desire to learn and provided freedom for them to choose their own materials. Maria dedicated herself to advancing the child-centered approach to education.
2. John Dewey
John Dewey (1859—1952) was a psychologist, philosopher, and educator who made contributions to numerous topics in philosophy and psychology. His work continues to inform modern philosophy and educational practice today. Dewey’s influential education is marked by the belief that people learn and grow as a result of their experiences and interactions with the world. He helped to shape educational environments so that they would promote active inquiry but did not do away with traditional instruction altogether.
3. Anne Sullivan
When Anne Sullivan was about five years old, she contracted trachoma, an eye disease caused by bacteria. Trachoma usually begins in childhood and causes repeated, painful infections, making the eyes red and swollen. Over time the recurring irritation and scarring of the cornea causes severe vision loss. Sullivan dealt with the effects of trachoma throughout her life. Anne Sullivan and her younger brother Jimmie were sent to live in the “poor house” in Tewksbury. At 14, after pleading with a visiting state official, she was allowed to leave the confines of the state institution and enter the Perkins School for the Blind, in Boston, where she eagerly learned to read, write and use the manual alphabet. After a few more eye operations, Sullivan’s eyesight improved, and she graduated from Perkins as class valedictorian in 1886. Shortly after graduation, 20-year-old Anne Sullivan accepted an offer from the Keller family of Tuscumbia, Alabama to tutor their daughter. The girl was 6 years old, blind, deaf, and mute. Her name was Helen Keller. Prior to Anne Sullivan, no one had been able to successfully teach a blind, deaf and mute child. It was perhaps Sullivan’s own difficult childhood that provided the patience for the trial and error necessary. Sullivan’ determination perhaps sets the standard for teachers. Even with Keller’s disabilities, Sullivan refused to give up, and set high goals. She was not only a pioneer in teaching the deaf and blind, but to this day is an example for all teachers trying to reach difficult and challenging students.
4. Booker T. Washington
Booker Taliaferro Washington ( 1856 – 1915) was an African-American educator, author, orator, and advisor to presidents of the United States. Between 1890 and 1915, Washington was the dominant leader in the African-American community. Washington was from the last generation of black American leaders born into slavery and became the leading voice of the former slaves and their descendants. Washington took the first opportunity to attend a formal school, Hampton Institute, which led to professorship and the founding of one of the most prestigious African American educational institutions of the nineteenth century, Tuskegee Institute in Alabama. Washington was seen as accommodating the status quo of African American subordination because his writings and speeches advocated that success for blacks would be achieved through the economic stability of education (mainly, vocational training); he did not protest, did not challenge the political system and did not speak about the lack of social equality like his critics, Frederick Douglass and W.E.B. DuBois.
5. Frederick Froebel
Friedrich Froebel ( 1782-1852) was a German educator who invented kindergarten. He believed that “play is the highest expression of human development in childhood for it alone is the free expression of what is in the child’s soul.” According to Froebel, in play children construct their understanding of the world through direct experience with it. His ideas about learning through nature and the importance of play have spread throughout the world. Froebel considered the whole child’s, health, physical development, the environment, emotional well-being, mental ability, social relationships and spiritual aspects of development as important. Froebel believed that playing with blocks gives fundamental expression to a child’s soul and to the unity of life. Blocks represent the actual building blocks of the universe. The symmetry of the soul is symbolized as a child constructs with blocks, bringing them together to form a whole.
