Showing posts with label accounting. Show all posts
Showing posts with label accounting. Show all posts

Monday, December 5, 2011

Accounting II Independent Study

I know I can say I am a teacher because of my high school accounting teacher Mrs. Nancy Nelson.  I had never been in a class where what ever was explained I "just got it".  When I went to college it took me a long time to decide upon a major.  Accounting or be a teacher (my mom was elementary ed).  Half way through my sophomore year it hit me, I SHOULD TEACH ACCOUNTING!  What a ride it has been.

I tell me classes every year that I am a teacher because of accounting.  But I also remember my senior year of high school I could not take accounting II because it was only offered the same hour as band.  How could I choose between the two.  I had been in Band since 5th grade but I LOVED accounting.  Mrs. Nelson talked to me and said I could take it independent study.  Work on my own reading the book and complete the assignments.  She gave me a general calendar (but I went ahead a little) and I took tests when I got to them.  I was in such appreciation of Mrs. Nelson making this accommodation for me that I do the same thing for my accounting II students. But now I offer accounting II as an independent study during the hour that I am teaching Accounting I.  I know they have a lot more questions than I did and that  is OK.  As a teacher I go through and record every section of the book for students to watch to learn how to complete the assignments.
I know not all students watch it, but I make it there available for them.  I do the same thing in Accounting I, when I teach a section I record it and publish it to the web for students to watch when they are absent or to review prior to the test.

This does take me time, but I hope it is empowering students to take command of their learning and use the tools available to them.

Thank You Mrs. Nelson for inspiring me to be the person that I am today!  Your confidence in me has taken me many places !

Here is one of my videos for Accounting II;

Friday, September 23, 2011

Grad School Class -Active Learning Strategies

As many teacher do I signed up for a grad school class for this fall.  This one credit class is being offered right in my district so I will not have to travel and some of my colleagues took it last year and raved on how they were able to use it right away in their classroom.  With that type of reviews how could I not sign up for it.  I did have to let the instructor know right away that the second night of class I would miss because I have a meeting for our Transcripted credit class at FVTC (then I also found out it was my son's open house, plus I was also scheduled to work a sporting event).  Talk about being overbooked.  I did find someone to take my sporting event duty {THANK YOU}  and I should finish my meeting in time to attend the open house.

I had the first meeting September 22 and it made my head spin.  good information but I had a hard time coming up with how to make it work for my classroom.  I asked questions and I got some assistance and advice on how to work it in a high school setting.

I was in class for 3 hours and then I promptly went to my room to try to incorporate some of those ideas into my classroom for the next day.  It took me from 8 to 11 p.m. but I pulled together two activities to use the next morning.  Now the activities were not that elaborate that it took me three hours, but I was also able to accomplish some other upcoming responsibilities.  I will save that for another post.

the two activities I did were numbered list.  I have the students the 7 steps to recording an accounting transaction.  These steps were cut into slips and as a group of 4 students had to put them in order and tell my why they choose that order.  I will admit that what I thought was the "right" order was disputed by the students thought process.  I agreed that what they had could be correct because they defended their thought process.  I liked seeing the students work in groups and it appears they enjoyed doing some moving and collaborating in a non-evaluated sense.

The second activity I did was a think pair share.  Two students worked on classifying a TAccount and then shared their Taccount with another pair of students and the groups had to agree or disagree with each other.  I did not have as much buy in from this activity but it was good to get them thinking out loud so I could hear what they know from accounting.