Paige+Montgomery

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 * Hello! I'm Paige Montgomery, I recently graduated from UVM in the Elementary Education program. I'm am currently working towards my Masters degree in the Reading and Language Art's program. I am from a small town in the Northeast Kingdom of Vermont, called Sutton. I am the oldest sibling in my family, I have a younger brother and sister. I have grown up in Vermont, and love the outdoors! I love to ski, run, hike, and swim, I also love to cook and spend time with my family. I was a student teacher at the Orchard School in South Burlington, in a 3rd grade classroom, this was a great experience for me. I really enjoyed my mentor teacher and my classroom was a great group of kids. I work at the Scuffer Steak and Ale on Church st, I am a hostess there, I also babysit once a week. During my solo teaching weeks at school, I was able to complete a Complex Instruction. This was a rotation of activities centered around a main idea or concept. Students are assigned roles and having specific tasks they need to complete. My activities were focused around "The Human Body," student completed hands on tasks that engaged their bodies. A helpful website was []. On this website there are activities based on the five senses are are interesting and fun for kids.**======

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 * Paige, please comment on our amazing Voicethread! http://voicethread.com/share/559079/ Reading Response: Our brain contains many different regions, each one having a specific role, these regions work together helping us to build on prior knowledge and form new thoughts, ideas and opinions. One of the most important areas of our brain is the Frontal Cortex, as stated in Zull, "One of the main functions of the front integrative cortex has been labeled working memory." Our working memory creates new information for us, it also stores a small amount of information where we are able to access and use it. In response to the article by Evans and Schamberg, I agree with Julie in that this reading was very hard to comprehend. I understand the main focus, which is the impact of children living in poverty and how this directly impacts thier working memory and how this intereferes with student's proformance and achievement at school. One thing that I questioned was the "allostatic load," which is described as the wear and tear on the body. This idea was never explained in much detail and I wonder what is meant by "wear and tear," I feel this can be related to the lifesytle of children in poverty. Generally there are other problems occuring at home that are assciocated with living in poverty. After reading this article, I wondered what we can do in order to prevent students working memory from being affected by poverty rates in thier homes. I feel that by developing a relationship and community within the classroom can potentially elimate some of the "wear and tear," that students are experiencing within thier homes. Counseling is also an option, allowing students to connect and communicate, expressing thier feelings is a great way to decrease stress. My next suggestion is to continually use the working memory in the classroom. In doing this students would be creating, solving, making decisions, creating langauge,manipulating symbols, organizing and calculating. This are all important aspects that can be integrated in to every classroom and cirriculum. **======