Pre-Student Teaching (EDUC 362: Teaching Experience I) serves as the initial field experience for prospective student teachers and is completed the semester prior to student teaching.
I was in the classroom today from 8:30 to 11:30 again. This time seems to be the best time for me to be in the classroom, the students are fresh and ready to learn. Today I was put in charge of the centers while Mrs. Schritter conducted reading groups. Today she also had an extra reading group. One of the other 1st grade teacher had her work with her low readers who need a little extra help. It was refreshing to see all members of the 1st grade pod utilizing one another strengths to benefit their students.
I have had both my lesson plans approved and I will be implementing my Language Arts lesson on Friday. I am looking forward to it. It will be an assessment on their site words. I have 150 of them on magnets and they will be using them to create sentences. I will be able to assess if they can say the word correctly and also use it in a sentence. I had a great day and really enjoyed being in charge of centers!
I have begun teaching my two week lesson, which turns out my be extended a little. My cooperating teach has asked me to complete a unit on US history from the civil war to WWII. We decided having the students do a chatauqua presentation would be a great repensentation of their knowledge. Other teachers within Mosaic will also be teaching other concepts from the civil war to WWII. Each teacher will hit on a different part, for example Mrs. Mitler will be presenting the historical facts and Mrs. Pierce is still working on what she will bring into the history piece. My first day was a presntation of Harriet Tubman by Mrs. Francis Vitali. The kids learned w hat a chatauqua is, and a lot of information on the civil war. I even had one student ask is that really Harriet Tubman. Thank you Francis. Today I broke the students into groups of four and one group of five into five different time periods. I had each person look up a person they think their group should do their chatauqua on and tomorrow they will present that information to thier group. By the end of the day tomorrow each group will pick one person from their time era to do their chatauqua. The students seem to really enjoy the unit this far. I also love sseeing them learn and enjoying it. I will post again later on in the week to tell you how everything is going.
Hello everyone, I went to my classroom on Halloween and of course the room was full of excitement. We started out the day by settling down first, then the teacher read out the agenda. She knew the excitement level may be difficult to work so her lesson plan involved working with the Fall season activities. We worked with crossword puzzles, word search puzzles and she read from their classroom chapter book, "Witches", by Ronald Dahl. I enjoy hearing her read the book, her voices are fun and keep the students in tune, it's great! After we finished reading from the book, we worked with science, the students predicted on what would happen to a candle when placed inside of the pumpkin with the cut out top placed back on top. Some of the students were stumped for awhile so the teacher had to model out on one of the pumpkins and that's when the students caught on. It was a messy project of course but boy the students loved it. What kept the student in tune was the fact that the teacher was not going to put the candle in the pumpkin until they worked on their prediction worksheets-great teaching strategy! All in all, it was a fun learning day for everyone including myself.
Emily, I also like that the teachers in the 1st Grade Pod work together to help all the students. That should happen in all grades at all schools, but we all know that isn't always the case. It's good to know that some teachers take advantage of each other's different strengths to better serve the students.
Phyllis, It sounds like you had a really fun day with the kids for Halloween. I was a little bummed that my students weren't more excited about Halloween, but we did some research as a group on the history of the holiday and where it came from. I think they learned quite a bit from it.
Heather, I have to admit that I don't know what a chatauqua is either. I would love to find out more though. I bet your students' presentations will be great, I personally love history lessons from that time period and I always enjoyed learning about historical figures such as Harriet Tubman.
This week in my class we have been working on writing letters for Operation Christmas Child. Wednesday we watched videos about a few children who have received OCC boxes in the past. The students then did a writing prompt trying to imagine what it would be like to live in a third world country and to receive a shoe box full of awesome stuff. Next, we discussed the parts of a letter as a class and that there can be several types of letters. They made the connection that a letter I write to my best friend would be very different from a letter I would write to a college or job. As their assignment at home today they are typing up their letters and taking pictures of themselves, pets, family, etc. to send in their shoebox with their letter. Tomorrow we are going to put our shoeboxes together. I'm really excited to see what the students choose to put in the boxes. I went to the dollar store and got pencils, paper, puzzles, playdough, coloring books, colors, toy cars, sports toys, soap, toothbrushes, etc. My church donated several items such as socks, toys, toothpaste, etc. Once the boxes are packed I will take them to an OCC drop off point and we will then track each box as it travels across the world so we can see what countries they end up in. We are also going to include a self addressed envelope in each box in hopes that we will get a letter back from the child who receives our box.
If anyone wants to take part in OCC the link to the website is http://www.samaritanspurse.org/index.php/OCC/ From here you can print labels for boxes, watch videos, etc. I can be a drop off point if there isn't one located close to you guys in Farmington for whoever wants to participate. The church where I work is a drop off point in Durango, so I am there regularly.
That's all for now, hope everyone is having a great week!
I presented my first of many lesson plans Tuesday (11/1). In actuality, this lesson plan was written to encompass the week. I do the reading class for 4th graders, and of those, I have 8 ELL students that I am to focus on when we break away into group discussions. Today we read Gleam and Glow by Eve Bunting… a story of survival for a family and their adopted goldfish. It is also one of hope centered around the Bosnian Civil War. I began with a review of a portable word wall and how we would construct them. The students would interact with the text using identification strategies, as well as, personal connection strategies. This was just Day 1. Day 2 would be the completion of their word wall with both a definition and a visual representation (ELL focus). Offering predictions and opinions led us to a mini-lesson defining pessimist and optimist… which I chose to do with visuals (glasses of water) and math terms (+, -) and teach all key terms in Spanish. Day 3 the students shared their word walls and this led to a discussion of Idioms over the definition of “jabbered” – “to bend someone’s ear”. Watching a couple of ELL’s pulling on their ears told me we needed to stop here and do a mini-lesson on pragmatics. Remarkable discourse led by my proficient bi-lingual students. Tomorrow (Friday) is the extension unit which will incorporate multiple reference material and multi-media sources to identify the region, the culture, and the demographics. Me thinks I have been given a wonderful opportunity to change my corner of the world. Reach 2 Teach…
Wow.....what a day in my classroom. I got to teach my lesson on ecosystems and it went very well!! I made a glogster and the students loved it. I also found a song for ecosystems and it was a hit!! I found some good game websites and videos to show them. (with a little help from an amazing computer tech!!! She knows who she is!! Love this girl!! Thanks for all of your help!!) Ok back to my lesson we played the games in two teams and they loved it. ms. Acosta asked me to keep going with this unit. So I am very excited about that. She did tell me thought that with each lesson I need to write the objective on the board and also incorporate some kind of writing. She told the students to write down three things they learned and their favorite part of the lesson. This was great way to get feedback and to asses what they learned!! I think I am going to have them create their own Biom's in groups so If anyone has any kind of recycled stuff they would like to donate me to help the kids create please let me know!! Gene, I love you optimist/pessimist examples. You are really connecting with your students and I think that is great!! What a great influence you are to them. They are lucky to have you!!!!
Hello Everyone, This week has been a rollercoaster of emotions. I start every class by reading a picture book from one of the time periods. I have read "Henry's Freedom Box," from the civil war, "One's Boy's War," from WWI and am presently reading "A Place Where Sunflowers Grow," from WWII. Wednesday was a very challenging day for me in terms of classroom management. I began with my hook of reading, then moved to doing a whole class bio poem on Harriet Tubman, the chatauqua character Francis presnted to us on Monday. Intsead of having students cooperate on the whole class assignment they were working ahead on their bio poem of their chatauqua character. Then two minutes later they were coming up to me asking me what the instructions were. I also went over group assignments and once again they did not listen and were asking me again what I had said. It was a struggle, and eventually I found myself raising my voice and telling them they needed to listen. The teacher congratulated me on being so abrupt, but I left wondering what I could do differently. The next day I began again with reading a picture book. Before they could start talking I told them we would not be having a day like the day before and that it was unacceptable. I staed all pencils were to be down while working on the whole class "Five W's organizer" on Harriet Tubman, and that all groups were to participate.Then I staed that if I saw pencls in hands that the students with pencils in their hands would not be able to write for the rest of the time I was there for the day and any work written would have to be rewritten by that student for homework. I only had two students use their pencils and I announced thei names when I saw the pencils in their hands. They promptly placed their pencils on their desks and did not touch them for the rest of the class period. They did take home their classwork and make a copy for themselves as homework. Today, I had nobody use their pencils when they were not suppossed to or start work early. When I began with a read aloud I only read half the picture book due to the time constraints and had students begging me to read more. Then I wrote the objectives for the day on the board and due dates for assignments and the date of the chatauqua presentation. Together we worked on a whole class rubric as well as went over the rubric classmates will be grading each group on. Bio poems were due at the end of the class period today and I had two groupd state they were not finished. When I stated they had three days and that it was unacceptable, by the time it was their turn to read or tell the class they were not finished both groups miraculously had thier bio poems finished and they were spectacular. At the end of the day today I had a student come up to me and ask me if she could interview for a presentation she has to do by the end of the year on her future profession. She stated she admired me, my love of my students, and how I work. This was a great moment for me, especially since this is one of the girld I had punished the day before for using her pencil when she was not supposed to. This has been a great week and I cannot wait to see the final product.
Heather: Perhaps remember to write instructions step by step on the board or a poster. And remember to chunk instructions. This can help less than focused students. It helps me... Sounds like you are getting a lot done. Keep up the good work. I haven't had any "discipline issues" yet. But stick with the meaning business ala Fred Jones :)
Emily: I love your magnet idea. How did your lesson go?
Phyllis: I love that your teacher used the pumkins to demonstrate the need for Oxygen for a fire to burn using the pumpkins. I bet the kids were intrigued.
Alyce: What a great service learning project for your students! They will learn so much more than academics! (although your activities for that are good as well)
Gene: What a great challenge you have. I don't have any ELLs in my class. You have a great opportunity to apply everything we are learning. You are so dynamic!
Jena: Glad your lesson is going well. What kinds of things (donated items) are you looking for? What was the song? That sounds interesting!
I had another great week! Unfortuneately I had to cut my visit short, finishing up right after teaching my lesson because my son came down with influenza and my husband had to go to work. But we had a very busy 1 1/2 hours. My lesson this week was a social studies lesson on citizenship. This is a pretty difficult concept for second grade. I chose to focus most of the lesson on what makes a good citizen. They really "got" this part of the lesson. I think the other parts were more difficult, but they understood the basics- like rights, laws, and consequences. Again I began the lesson with a read loud on the rug. I am a huge fan of incorporating literature anywhere I can. I read Good Citizen Sarah. This book really was at a level that the students could understand and identify with since the main character was their age. We talked about what made Sarah a good citizen. We then returned to the desks and did a KWL chart on citizenship. We did a text walk through their social studies book and then read in pairs (strong reader with struggling reader)We then met again to finish the KWL. The activity for the lesson was traced hand on red, white, and blue paper: each hand labeled home, community, or school. The students had to write what they could do to be a good citizen in each environment. I am making their hands into a giant american flag for their class. The students were very engaged, although I was because this activity was individual, I was able to see some of the students that struggle more easily and I realized that additional time was needed by some. The lesson was about 30 min longer than I intended, but I guess that is part of the learning process- pacing. I am looking forward to my 10 day unit. I posted the citizenship lesson on my portfolio. The Good citizen Sarah book is available at the library.
Wow. What a week! Gina sent me an email that really scared me! She said she is a little bit uncomfortable letting someone take over a whole subject in her class when I have not been there very much. She is used to the Ft. Lewis program and they don’t do a pre-teach for 10 days, so I talked with Frances, and then reassured Gina that I have some experience (as a Para for 16 years!) and have been substituting, etc. I told her that I understand her frustration and hesitation, and that I will do whatever I can to make this easier. So I will be spending more time in her class this next week, getting to know her and the students better (by the end of this week, I had more than 16 hours logged already). I really like Gina and her class and am hoping this all works out! When I observed this week, I helped her as much as I could, grading papers, making copies, etc. and she really seems to appreciate that, although she said it is really important for me to spend time with the students and encouraged me to “get in there” with them to help as they need it too. She went over my first Math lesson plan and actually liked my idea of using cookie tins (I will bring) to teach about the terms used for circles: center, diameter, and circumference. She is so SMOOTH with her class! Her pace and transition times seem perfect to me. One of her great ideas for helping students is to say, “Henry, you need to refocus,” and the student automatically gets up to get a “Refocus Slip” that says: 1) I am here because I made the choice to… 2) I am going to change my behavior by… 3) Next time I am in the same situation I will… There are several lines for students to write their responses. I like this because students have to take responsibility for their behavior, and yet this does not interrupt class or make them feel embarrassed or humiliated. I’ve only seen her do this a few times, as the students are really good for her. She always follows up with each student later too. I will definitely use this idea!
Emily: You seem to have found a good fit. I love the idea of using magnets and having them use the words in sentences.
Heather: What a compliment! It's great that this teacher respects you so much and wants you to teach more. An idea to help you get the students to refocus: Tell them you will be counting down to 0 and you expect the noise level to go down as well and then start counting down from 5-4-3... I have used this a lot when I worked in classrooms before and it's also great for subbing. Start your next class with them by saying something like, "Things got too noisy last time and I know you can do better today." ALSO: so neat that this student wants to interview you!
Phyllis: So cool that your teacher uses the holiday and season to help students learn. You are having too much fun!
Alyse: OCC is a great program! I love the way you are helping your students learn from this.
Junior: Love the way you always spin your lessons on the positive! Students must love you. Way to keep your glass half FULL!
Jena: My teacher also wants me to focus on the objective at the very beginning. I think it does really help students to focus, especially if you can review it at the end with them to see if they really "got" it! Let me know if you still need recyclables - I'm in!
Jen: What a great way to present good citizenship - love the hand idea. Pacing is really tricky - I was right on yesterday, and then today went over. Just have to be prepared either way I guess. Good to see you and the kiddos last night. Miss ya.
Hi everybody! I have to first of all apologize for not posting in a timely manner!!! I got so caught up in observing, planning & bonding with my students that I didn't get on here to blog!! VERY sorry to all of you!!! All of you though to have gotten off to a great and maybe sometimes frustrating start! I am sure all of you will do awesome & I will be getting on all of the dates & catching up on your posts! BUT, here is a good luck!!! VERY late!!! I spent this week in Mrs. Rahm's 2nd grade class several different times & worked with her to create a Math lesson plan for my 2nd one to post on our portfolios. My 10-day Unit will be an Author Study on Laura Numeroff, author of the "If You Give" series. Sooo excited!!!
I was in the classroom today from 8:30 to 11:30 again. This time seems to be the best time for me to be in the classroom, the students are fresh and ready to learn. Today I was put in charge of the centers while Mrs. Schritter conducted reading groups. Today she also had an extra reading group. One of the other 1st grade teacher had her work with her low readers who need a little extra help. It was refreshing to see all members of the 1st grade pod utilizing one another strengths to benefit their students.
ReplyDeleteI have had both my lesson plans approved and I will be implementing my Language Arts lesson on Friday. I am looking forward to it. It will be an assessment on their site words. I have 150 of them on magnets and they will be using them to create sentences. I will be able to assess if they can say the word correctly and also use it in a sentence. I had a great day and really enjoyed being in charge of centers!
Emily
I have begun teaching my two week lesson, which turns out my be extended a little. My cooperating teach has asked me to complete a unit on US history from the civil war to WWII. We decided having the students do a chatauqua presentation would be a great repensentation of their knowledge. Other teachers within Mosaic will also be teaching other concepts from the civil war to WWII. Each teacher will hit on a different part, for example Mrs. Mitler will be presenting the historical facts and Mrs. Pierce is still working on what she will bring into the history piece. My first day was a presntation of Harriet Tubman by Mrs. Francis Vitali. The kids learned w hat a chatauqua is, and a lot of information on the civil war. I even had one student ask is that really Harriet Tubman. Thank you Francis. Today I broke the students into groups of four and one group of five into five different time periods. I had each person look up a person they think their group should do their chatauqua on and tomorrow they will present that information to thier group. By the end of the day tomorrow each group will pick one person from their time era to do their chatauqua. The students seem to really enjoy the unit this far. I also love sseeing them learn and enjoying it. I will post again later on in the week to tell you how everything is going.
ReplyDeleteHello everyone, I went to my classroom on Halloween and of course the room was full of excitement. We started out the day by settling down first, then the teacher read out the agenda. She knew the excitement level may be difficult to work so her lesson plan involved working with the Fall season activities. We worked with crossword puzzles, word search puzzles and she read from their classroom chapter book, "Witches", by Ronald Dahl. I enjoy hearing her read the book, her voices are fun and keep the students in tune, it's great! After we finished reading from the book, we worked with science, the students predicted on what would happen to a candle when placed inside of the pumpkin with the cut out top placed back on top. Some of the students were stumped for awhile so the teacher had to model out on one of the pumpkins and that's when the students caught on. It was a messy project of course but boy the students loved it. What kept the student in tune was the fact that the teacher was not going to put the candle in the pumpkin until they worked on their prediction worksheets-great teaching strategy! All in all, it was a fun learning day for everyone including myself.
ReplyDeleteEmily, I also like that the teachers in the 1st Grade Pod work together to help all the students. That should happen in all grades at all schools, but we all know that isn't always the case. It's good to know that some teachers take advantage of each other's different strengths to better serve the students.
ReplyDeletePhyllis, It sounds like you had a really fun day with the kids for Halloween. I was a little bummed that my students weren't more excited about Halloween, but we did some research as a group on the history of the holiday and where it came from. I think they learned quite a bit from it.
Heather, I have to admit that I don't know what a chatauqua is either. I would love to find out more though. I bet your students' presentations will be great, I personally love history lessons from that time period and I always enjoyed learning about historical figures such as Harriet Tubman.
This week in my class we have been working on writing letters for Operation Christmas Child. Wednesday we watched videos about a few children who have received OCC boxes in the past. The students then did a writing prompt trying to imagine what it would be like to live in a third world country and to receive a shoe box full of awesome stuff. Next, we discussed the parts of a letter as a class and that there can be several types of letters. They made the connection that a letter I write to my best friend would be very different from a letter I would write to a college or job. As their assignment at home today they are typing up their letters and taking pictures of themselves, pets, family, etc. to send in their shoebox with their letter. Tomorrow we are going to put our shoeboxes together. I'm really excited to see what the students choose to put in the boxes. I went to the dollar store and got pencils, paper, puzzles, playdough, coloring books, colors, toy cars, sports toys, soap, toothbrushes, etc. My church donated several items such as socks, toys, toothpaste, etc. Once the boxes are packed I will take them to an OCC drop off point and we will then track each box as it travels across the world so we can see what countries they end up in. We are also going to include a self addressed envelope in each box in hopes that we will get a letter back from the child who receives our box.
If anyone wants to take part in OCC the link to the website is http://www.samaritanspurse.org/index.php/OCC/
From here you can print labels for boxes, watch videos, etc. I can be a drop off point if there isn't one located close to you guys in Farmington for whoever wants to participate. The church where I work is a drop off point in Durango, so I am there regularly.
That's all for now, hope everyone is having a great week!
I presented my first of many lesson plans Tuesday (11/1). In actuality, this lesson plan was written to encompass the week. I do the reading class for 4th graders, and of those, I have 8 ELL students that I am to focus on when we break away into group discussions.
ReplyDeleteToday we read Gleam and Glow by Eve Bunting… a story of survival for a family and their adopted goldfish. It is also one of hope centered around the Bosnian Civil War. I began with a review of a portable word wall and how we would construct them. The students would interact with the text using identification strategies, as well as, personal connection strategies. This was just Day 1. Day 2 would be the completion of their word wall with both a definition and a visual representation (ELL focus). Offering predictions and opinions led us to a mini-lesson defining pessimist and optimist… which I chose to do with visuals (glasses of water) and math terms (+, -) and teach all key terms in Spanish. Day 3 the students shared their word walls and this led to a discussion of Idioms over the definition of “jabbered” – “to bend someone’s ear”. Watching a couple of ELL’s pulling on their ears told me we needed to stop here and do a mini-lesson on pragmatics. Remarkable discourse led by my proficient bi-lingual students. Tomorrow (Friday) is the extension unit which will incorporate multiple reference material and multi-media sources to identify the region, the culture, and the demographics. Me thinks I have been given a wonderful opportunity to change my corner of the world. Reach 2 Teach…
Wow.....what a day in my classroom. I got to teach my lesson on ecosystems and it went very well!! I made a glogster and the students loved it. I also found a song for ecosystems and it was a hit!! I found some good game websites and videos to show them. (with a little help from an amazing computer tech!!! She knows who she is!! Love this girl!! Thanks for all of your help!!) Ok back to my lesson we played the games in two teams and they loved it. ms. Acosta asked me to keep going with this unit. So I am very excited about that. She did tell me thought that with each lesson I need to write the objective on the board and also incorporate some kind of writing. She told the students to write down three things they learned and their favorite part of the lesson. This was great way to get feedback and to asses what they learned!! I think I am going to have them create their own Biom's in groups so If anyone has any kind of recycled stuff they would like to donate me to help the kids create please let me know!!
ReplyDeleteGene, I love you optimist/pessimist examples. You are really connecting with your students and I think that is great!! What a great influence you are to them. They are lucky to have you!!!!
Hello Everyone,
ReplyDeleteThis week has been a rollercoaster of emotions. I start every class by reading a picture book from one of the time periods. I have read "Henry's Freedom Box," from the civil war, "One's Boy's War," from WWI and am presently reading "A Place Where Sunflowers Grow," from WWII. Wednesday was a very challenging day for me in terms of classroom management. I began with my hook of reading, then moved to doing a whole class bio poem on Harriet Tubman, the chatauqua character Francis presnted to us on Monday. Intsead of having students cooperate on the whole class assignment they were working ahead on their bio poem of their chatauqua character. Then two minutes later they were coming up to me asking me what the instructions were. I also went over group assignments and once again they did not listen and were asking me again what I had said. It was a struggle, and eventually I found myself raising my voice and telling them they needed to listen. The teacher congratulated me on being so abrupt, but I left wondering what I could do differently. The next day I began again with reading a picture book. Before they could start talking I told them we would not be having a day like the day before and that it was unacceptable. I staed all pencils were to be down while working on the whole class "Five W's organizer" on Harriet Tubman, and that all groups were to participate.Then I staed that if I saw pencls in hands that the students with pencils in their hands would not be able to write for the rest of the time I was there for the day and any work written would have to be rewritten by that student for homework. I only had two students use their pencils and I announced thei names when I saw the pencils in their hands. They promptly placed their pencils on their desks and did not touch them for the rest of the class period. They did take home their classwork and make a copy for themselves as homework. Today, I had nobody use their pencils when they were not suppossed to or start work early. When I began with a read aloud I only read half the picture book due to the time constraints and had students begging me to read more. Then I wrote the objectives for the day on the board and due dates for assignments and the date of the chatauqua presentation. Together we worked on a whole class rubric as well as went over the rubric classmates will be grading each group on. Bio poems were due at the end of the class period today and I had two groupd state they were not finished. When I stated they had three days and that it was unacceptable, by the time it was their turn to read or tell the class they were not finished both groups miraculously had thier bio poems finished and they were spectacular. At the end of the day today I had a student come up to me and ask me if she could interview for a presentation she has to do by the end of the year on her future profession. She stated she admired me, my love of my students, and how I work. This was a great moment for me, especially since this is one of the girld I had punished the day before for using her pencil when she was not supposed to. This has been a great week and I cannot wait to see the final product.
Heather: Perhaps remember to write instructions step by step on the board or a poster. And remember to chunk instructions. This can help less than focused students. It helps me... Sounds like you are getting a lot done. Keep up the good work. I haven't had any "discipline issues" yet. But stick with the meaning business ala Fred Jones :)
ReplyDeleteEmily: I love your magnet idea. How did your lesson go?
Phyllis: I love that your teacher used the pumkins to demonstrate the need for Oxygen for a fire to burn using the pumpkins. I bet the kids were intrigued.
Alyce: What a great service learning project for your students! They will learn so much more than academics! (although your activities for that are good as well)
Gene: What a great challenge you have. I don't have any ELLs in my class. You have a great opportunity to apply everything we are learning. You are so dynamic!
Jena: Glad your lesson is going well. What kinds of things (donated items) are you looking for? What was the song? That sounds interesting!
I had another great week! Unfortuneately I had to cut my visit short, finishing up right after teaching my lesson because my son came down with influenza and my husband had to go to work. But we had a very busy 1 1/2 hours. My lesson this week was a social studies lesson on citizenship. This is a pretty difficult concept for second grade. I chose to focus most of the lesson on what makes a good citizen. They really "got" this part of the lesson. I think the other parts were more difficult, but they understood the basics- like rights, laws, and consequences. Again I began the lesson with a read loud on the rug. I am a huge fan of incorporating literature anywhere I can. I read Good Citizen Sarah. This book really was at a level that the students could understand and identify with since the main character was their age. We talked about what made Sarah a good citizen. We then returned to the desks and did a KWL chart on citizenship. We did a text walk through their social studies book and then read in pairs (strong reader with struggling reader)We then met again to finish the KWL. The activity for the lesson was traced hand on red, white, and blue paper: each hand labeled home, community, or school. The students had to write what they could do to be a good citizen in each environment. I am making their hands into a giant american flag for their class. The students were very engaged, although I was because this activity was individual, I was able to see some of the students that struggle more easily and I realized that additional time was needed by some. The lesson was about 30 min longer than I intended, but I guess that is part of the learning process- pacing. I am looking forward to my 10 day unit. I posted the citizenship lesson on my portfolio. The Good citizen Sarah book is available at the library.
ReplyDeleteFYI- I also posted my PDP on my portfolio.
ReplyDeleteWow. What a week! Gina sent me an email that really scared me! She said she is a little bit uncomfortable letting someone take over a whole subject in her class when I have not been there very much. She is used to the Ft. Lewis program and they don’t do a pre-teach for 10 days, so I talked with Frances, and then reassured Gina that I have some experience (as a Para for 16 years!) and have been substituting, etc. I told her that I understand her frustration and hesitation, and that I will do whatever I can to make this easier. So I will be spending more time in her class this next week, getting to know her and the students better (by the end of this week, I had more than 16 hours logged already). I really like Gina and her class and am hoping this all works out! When I observed this week, I helped her as much as I could, grading papers, making copies, etc. and she really seems to appreciate that, although she said it is really important for me to spend time with the students and encouraged me to “get in there” with them to help as they need it too. She went over my first Math lesson plan and actually liked my idea of using cookie tins (I will bring) to teach about the terms used for circles: center, diameter, and circumference. She is so SMOOTH with her class! Her pace and transition times seem perfect to me. One of her great ideas for helping students is to say, “Henry, you need to refocus,” and the student automatically gets up to get a “Refocus Slip” that says: 1) I am here because I made the choice to… 2) I am going to change my behavior by… 3) Next time I am in the same situation I will… There are several lines for students to write their responses. I like this because students have to take responsibility for their behavior, and yet this does not interrupt class or make them feel embarrassed or humiliated. I’ve only seen her do this a few times, as the students are really good for her. She always follows up with each student later too. I will definitely use this idea!
ReplyDeleteEmily: You seem to have found a good fit. I love the idea of using magnets and having them use the words in sentences.
ReplyDeleteHeather: What a compliment! It's great that this teacher respects you so much and wants you to teach more. An idea to help you get the students to refocus: Tell them you will be counting down to 0 and you expect the noise level to go down as well and then start counting down from 5-4-3... I have used this a lot when I worked in classrooms before and it's also great for subbing. Start your next class with them by saying something like, "Things got too noisy last time and I know you can do better today." ALSO: so neat that this student wants to interview you!
Phyllis: So cool that your teacher uses the holiday and season to help students learn. You are having too much fun!
Alyse: OCC is a great program! I love the way you are helping your students learn from this.
Junior: Love the way you always spin your lessons on the positive! Students must love you. Way to keep your glass half FULL!
Jena: My teacher also wants me to focus on the objective at the very beginning. I think it does really help students to focus, especially if you can review it at the end with them to see if they really "got" it! Let me know if you still need recyclables - I'm in!
Jen: What a great way to present good citizenship - love the hand idea. Pacing is really tricky - I was right on yesterday, and then today went over. Just have to be prepared either way I guess. Good to see you and the kiddos last night. Miss ya.
Hi everybody! I have to first of all apologize for not posting in a timely manner!!! I got so caught up in observing, planning & bonding with my students that I didn't get on here to blog!! VERY sorry to all of you!!!
ReplyDeleteAll of you though to have gotten off to a great and maybe sometimes frustrating start! I am sure all of you will do awesome & I will be getting on all of the dates & catching up on your posts! BUT, here is a good luck!!! VERY late!!!
I spent this week in Mrs. Rahm's 2nd grade class several different times & worked with her to create a Math lesson plan for my 2nd one to post on our portfolios. My 10-day Unit will be an Author Study on Laura Numeroff, author of the "If You Give" series. Sooo excited!!!