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Weekly Observations
The Learning Academy:
9-3-2015
Classroom of: Mrs. Conners
The Art of Co-Teaching:
Observation:
First day jitters surged through me as I entered my first classroom as a pre-service teacher. My teacher, Mrs. Conners, greeted me with a friendly face. As I looked around the room, Mrs. Conners explained her expectations and activities she had for the day. To her, the best way to start a class is have the students dive head first into an assignment the minute they walk into their classroom. As each of her eight student entered the classroom, they had tasks they had to do before starting their assignment. While completing these tasks the teacher inquired about how the students were doing, and how their night had been. After their tasks were completed, students worked on their assignments. When students became stuck, instead of complaining or giving up they looked to help from the neighboring student. When the students were finished with the assignment, their class and the class next door combined for a lesson. My teacher, Mrs. Conners and the teacher next door, Mrs. Smith, co-taught a phonemic awareness lesson. Mrs. Smith took over the class first, addressing what she had planned for the students to do. She started with giving the class letters to give the sounds of. From there they focused on words and the letters the words were made up of. While teaching, the students followed along on whiteboards. Halfway through, Mrs. Conners took over and completed the same lesson, using different letters and words.
Reflection:
Observing this classroom brought a new perspective to teaching. Both of the classroom teachers were well involved in the lives of the students. Mrs. Conners, made her classroom an easy opportunity got the kids to learn.
9-10-2015
Classroom of: Mrs. Conners
Mistakes are Good Learning Moments:
Observation:
Mrs. Conners greeted her students with a warm smile, and questions about the students homework assignments. She assigned me to work with the students one on one to help with their Fleuncy. She was cautious about how she taugtht her lesson because she knew the kids were reading words and identifying vowels sounds. She had her other student teacher and I do a lesson, taught by her, with the kids. Taking turns we, along with the kids, wrote our the letters of the sounds that she gave us. Mrs. Conner was patient and understnading. After all these years of reading, and being able to comprehend, going baack to basic phonics was nerve racking. i made mistakes on some of the vowels. Mrs. Conners did not correct me in a condesending tone, or embarass me, she simply turned my mistake into a learning experience for the students. They had gone over the information the day before, and so, not purposely, my mistakes helped her see where her students were at. Next, she had us purposely misspell words in sentences on the board, so that she could use it another excerise with the class, and they would be able to correct the mistakes.
Reflection:
While working with Mrs. Conners, and some of her students, itwas easily to find mistakes or problems have in phonics. I thought it was both interesting and applaud worthy, that Mrs. Conners never lost her self control with the kids, and always turn a mistakes into a good learning lesson.
9-17-2015
Classroom of: Mrs. Conners
Co-Teaching on a Timer:
Observation:
This week at the Learning Academy, all pre-service teachers taught their first lesson. Each teacher has two pre-service teachers.
Today was the first lesson I am required to teach at the Learning Academy. I am assigned, with another student to the classroom of Mrs. Conners. The lesson was on CVC (closed syllables) and short vowel sounds excluding e. My partner and I had come prepared to teach the lesson, and had spent numerous hours trying to make it as educational, and fun as possible. We had many opportunities for the students to be involved both physically and orally in our lesson. When we arrived at the classroom we were suprised with a slight problem. Today our teacher was doing tutoring of other students around the school. As we had before, both third grade classes combined. We had planned our lesson for our normal eight students, but now we had seventeen. How were we going to do this? If that was not enough, we now shared the classroom with two other pre-service teachers. This was their normal classroom, so accordingly they went first. Our lessons were supposed to last approximately 25-30 minutes long. After and Orton-Gillingham or OG lesson by Mrs. Smith, the other pre-service students took their turn. Their presentation was on the short /u/ sound. Their presentation was well put together and they did an incredible job of keeping the kids involved in their lesson, both on their own boards, and orally. Their lesson though, lasted more then 30 minutes. In between the lessons we were going to have snack, and then start on our lesson. Due to the fact the other lesson ran over the time, snack time was moved back, and our lesson was cut to about 20 minutes. At this point, my partner and I were feeling anxious, we knew that we needed to do the lesson regardless of the time. We moved for reviewing the CVC words and short vowel sounds. We had many activities the kids could do for review, but unfortunately we had to skip many of them due to the time crunch. We ended our lesson with a game of hangman.
Reflection:
SO... It was a stressful day for our lesson, and if their had been more time, I think our lesson would have played out better. Also, we as pre-service teachers are still learning to be more flexible, and just go with the flow. In this case, it was our first experience, and for me a bit nerve racking. Mrs. Smith, did help us out though, she understood that we were on a time crunch, and in places that could have been explained better with time, she quickly summarized and had us move on. I do think that the students enjoyed the lesson. I also don't think they noticed to much on the time. With that being said, I think the lesson did go well. The goal for next time will just be more flexibility.
9-24-2015
Classroom of: Mrs. Conners
Flexibility at its Finest:
Observation:
Today in class, the teacher Mrs. Conners showed how flexibility is a big part of a teachers classroom. In the first 10 minutes of class, the teacher and her student smelled smoke. As per this not being an everyday encounter, the teacher Mrs. Conners, had to be flexible with her lesson plans and her students. She had to move her class into the lunchroom until other memebers of the school staff could figure out where the smell was coming from, and if it was safe. The students of the Learning Academy, quite frequently work on their handwriting skills, which is what we did for about an hour of the class time. Students learn that tracing coloring book pictures, or any pictures, gives them more of a definite grasp of straight lines, steady hands and details, this help in the same aspects of their handwriting. While the students were working on their handwriting, the oother pre-service teacher and I worked on spelling, and fluency with students one-on-one. In the lunchroom this was kind of a difficult environment to do this in. While testing the kids individually, there were 2 or three different things going on around the students making it difficult to focus on any one thing.
Reflection:
So... In a classroom, you can hope that everything goes smoothly, but that may not always be the case. Therefore, YOU MUST BE FLEXIBLE! Watching Mrs. Conners handle the situation, and the students was very interesting and insiring. She moved her plans around, and even accomodated for the space. If that isn't quality teaching, then I don't know what is.
10-1-2015
Classroom of: Mrs. Conners
Read Aloud:
Observation:
This week all pre-service teachers were required to do a read - aloud in their classrooms at the Learning Academy. For my book, I chose "If You Give a Pig a Pancake." I was nervous before the class because I have never read aloud to a class before. Sure , I have taught different lessons, on various subjects, but I've never been required to read from a book. Not only did we do the real-aloud, we were also videotaped. For me this was even more nerve-racking. Though I was nervous, I had pre-planned what i was going to do and say with the students. I am a very hand-on learner, and have learned my lessons go farther if I do a hands-on activity. In the book "If You Give a Pig a Pancake", the story does a loop. I found this to be an interesting concept, and thought it would go well with reviewing the story. So, I took sticky notes and wrote words such as; Pancake, Syrup, Home, Duck, Mailbox, Treehouse and others. Before I started my story, I handed each student a single word. As I read through the story, I asked several question to make sure the students were involved as well as listening. Some of the questions, referenced students to text references, and well as students to world references. For example, the pig got all sticky from eating the syrup and wanted to take a bath to get clean. From this, she wanted a rubber duck toy that she could play with in the tub. The duck remind her of home, therefore I asked "Is there anything that you have with you, or like to keep safe, that reminds you of home?" Also, after many more activities, the pig wanted to build herself a treehouse, which looked like a barn, so I asked "What is the significance in the design of the treehouse?" At the end, with the words I had given each student, they worked together to form thloop based on the story.
Reflection:
Even though I was nervous I thought the read aloud went really well. the students seemed to enjoy being asked questions throughout the book. They also showed alot of attention knowing the words were going to be used at the end. I think being a hands on learner helped me a lot with this read aloud. The questions were a lot of help on seeing if the students were paying attention and if they had any interest in the book.
10-8-2015
Classroom of: Mrs. Conners
Interactive Literacy Centers: Fun to Learn, Fun to Participate
Observation:
This week, our class divided into three, worked in Literacy Centers. These centers are designed to help the students work on different aspect of literacy.
Center One: Teacher Lead
Desined as flash cards to help students with sp, and floss words. This helps students understand blending of letters and double letter endings such as; -ll, -ss and -ff. The students worked together to sound out the words and come up with a decent meaning.
Center Two: Pre-service Teacher Lead
A game based around floss words, much like the game candyland but with a twist. The students get cards with some floss word endings, as well as some cards with word beginnings. They had to match the cards to move to a space on the board. For instance, She_ _ and -ll would make the word shell.
Center Three: Pre-Service Lead
Students looked through a book that used pictures to display the multiple meanings for CVC words. For example: one page had the word pin, and there were about 16 pictures. The students had to deteremine if the picture related to pin or not, and then determine the meaning in the picture. There were bobby pins, safety pins, clothes pins, and pin the tail on the donkey.
Reflection:
It was interesting to see the different ways literacy can be incorporated into different aspects to teach similar topics. The centers only lasted about 20 minutes, so the students had just enough time to focus on the centers without getting to distracted.
Read Aloud Videotape Review:
Things done well:
-- I think that the book I chose to do my read aloud, was appropriate for my third grade class. I chose the book "If You Give a Pig a Pancake." I have a class of all boys. The main character in the book is a female, i thought this would give a little bit of diversity to the classroom. The boys liked being engaged and tellling what they thought was going to happen next.
-- It was not required, but I also had an activity that went along with the book. Each student received a slip of paper with a words on it. These words followed the chronological order of the story. As the students followed along, I made sure to emphasize these key words. At the end of the story, I asked the students to work together to put the words in proper order. This kept the kids engaged not only during the story, but afterwords. This helped there knowledge of what had happened in the story and showed me what information they can recall.
Things that could have gone better:
-- During the story, we were asked to keep questions available to ask the students. It was difficult to find a good place to stop, to actually ask the questions. Also, I just kept placing the sticky notes I had used in my lap, which just created a distraction for myself and the kids, they were now focused on the sticky notes and not completely the story.
Things to change:
-- Next time I will find a better spot to keep the sticky notes when I am finished with them.
-- Next time I will also wait on handing out any words in the beginning and see if that makes any difference in the students concentratoin on the book.
Vocabulary Activity
People
Can
migrate
Symbols
of
Me
Football
and
boat
Magnetic
Activity
Board
Reviewing
Vocabulary
Words
Migrate:
Bear
What is
a
Citizen?
10-15-2015
Classroom of: Mrs. Conners
Literacy Centers: Social Studies with Vocabulary
Observation: Today was similar to last weeek, we worked in literacy centers. Last week the centers were teacher planned, this week the are pre-service teacher planned.
The activity thatI did with the students was based on a set of social studies words that our teacher previously gave us. The words I was given were, Migration, Great Migration, Citizen, Ancestor and Symbol. With the words I was given, I created a hands on activity. I created a board where all of my pieces were magnetic, so that the students would be able to place the items into the correct categories. For each word, I created a grade appopriate definition, one synonym, one antonym, one fill in the blank sentence and two correlating pictures. By doing this, the students would be able to read items that went along with their word, as well as have visuals. Examples of what the students did, are below.
Reflection:
How well did it go? The students caught on fairly quickly as to how the activity worked. The students did get carried away with their guessing at what went where but were eventually re-directed to just trying to putting the correct answers in the correct columns.
Things to improve on.. The activity was magnetic, so the students would throw the pieces at the board. It miht be beneficialy to maybe use velcroe next time instead.
Citizen of
Africa and
Cric (Made up Place)
Migrate:
Bear
10-29-2015
Classroom of: Mrs. Myers
New Classroom, New Experience
Observation: I was really nervous knowing that today I would be getting a new teacher, and a new group of students to teach. I went from the classroom of Mrs. Conners, which was 8, 3rd grade boys, to a class of 11, 6th graders. The teaching styles of the teachers were even dramatically different. Mrs. Conners is a veteran teacher who was in public school for the longest time. She is more on top of her studies with her students, and transitions right into the next topic, with little time to stop. She is less observation though, on what her students are actually doing. Mrs. Myers, is almost the opposite. She knows what here students are doing most of the time, and who is doing it, but it seems she is a little more lax, in her transitions from one subject to the next. I wouldn't say that either way the teachers teach is wrong. No two teachers will end up teaching the same.
Reflection: For me this was a chance to see how the Learning Academy works at both ends of the grade scale, from 3rd grade, to 6th grade. It was drastically different than I thought it would be. If I were to take away from the change in classrooms I would take away that knowing your students on a personal level seems to make it that much more easy to come up with differentiated assignments, but at the same time creates a harder time with classroom management.
11-5-2015
Classroom of: Mrs. Myers
What to do, what to do?
Observation:
In my class, I did not really have much to do. As a pre-service teacher, I had the opportunity to walk around and monitor the students, but that was really all that was available for me to do. The students in this class, are a little more outgoing, and personal then the class I had before. The teacher's classroom management, is very lax in the way she handles the students, they more or less run the class.
Reflection:
The experience was definitely something to learn from. There wasn't a lot to do, but as a teacher you won't always need help, so having someone monitor when needed, and help students where the teacher can't is always a good strart. I think.
11-12-2015
Classroom of: Mrs. Myers
New Classroom, First Lesson, Lesson Learned
Observation:
Today was the first time teaching a new lesson in Mrs. Myers classroom. My partner and I had prepared our comprehension lesson as we thought would be beneficial to the students. Our main focus of comprehension was sequencing and then compare and contrast. We had two stories; the first was a literary piece called The Story of Gilgamesh and the second was an informative piece called the Dawn of the Mayas. Due to the fact that at the Learning Academy, most student do not read on grade level, we thought it would be best to separate the class into low reading level and high reading level. The low reading level was given the literary piece from their textbook, and the the high readers read the informative piece. The students were to read the story and then using premade strips, put the story into chronological order. After the students attempted that we had both groups share with the other what they had gained from their story. This was quite difficult for them to do. Neither group could fully remember what they had read. We had them read their sequencing strips to help. From the group discussion they went on to compare and contrast the two stories, which again was a struggle for the students.
Reflection:
For both of us pre-service teacher this was a tough lesson to teach. Not only were we unaware of how each of the students read on a personal level, but even working together was a problem. The group is of eleven students, but working together and following directions seemed to be difficult for them. Next time, for this class the reading levels of the passages will have to be even lower, and I don't think separating the groups will help. With this group, I think a lot of teacher lead learning is the goal, as well as a lesson that is more engaging for the students.
11-19-2015
Classroom of: Mrs. Myers
Thanksgiving Themed
Observation:
Today in class, in celebration of the upcoming Thanksgiving holiday, my teacher Mrs. Myers decided to do several Thanksgiving activities. The first was a reading passage on Turkeys. The passage was informative and told all about where turkey live, and the gender specifics, as well as giving domain specific words. I read the passage to the students, and together, as a class, we answered the questions and did some matching for the story. Next the students had an activity where they were given the word Thanksgiving, and asked to cut out each letter individually, from these letters they were to see how many words they could come up with. For the kids, this helped with their ability to sound ou the letters and using their knowledge of how words for, to make new words. The kids worked together in groups to solve this. The students really enjoyed eing able to create words from thanksgiving, and i think that it gave them a little bit more confidence on their spelling and pronuciation of words.
Reflection:
Even though this day was just based around Thanksgiving activities, I saw the most learning going on. The students love being read to and I think by the passage being read to them, they were better able to comprehend what they question later were asking. Also with the word creating activity, it was great to watch them all work together to create the new words, as well as work their way sounding out the words, using their ortan-gillingham skills.
12-3-2015
Classroom of: Mrs. Myers
Reality After Break
Observation:
The students just got back from thanksgiving break, and suprisingly, they slipped right back into their routine, like nothing had changed. It was interesting to see how quickly they could do that, the teacher, I think struggled the most. They got right back into adding new words, and sounsd to their ortan- gillingham skills, and worked on new spelling words. The students worked really well together, and from pervious weeks this was a good change for them. There was not much for me to do. I mostly just was able to walk around and help the students with homework, or help when they became stuck on their writing prompts.
Reflection:
With there not being much for me to do, it wasn't really beneficial for me. I do think though, that because I was more available to the students, it was easier to make connections with them, and find out more ways to help each one individually.
12-10-2015
Classroom of: Mrs. Myers
Bittersweet
Observation:
This was my last class of the semester. Boy, could you tell. With Christmas fast approaching, the students were more wound then ever. The students ability to focus was long gone. Nevertheless, Today was my last read aloud for the class. I read "How the Grinch Stole Christmas." Now the book, is quite a bit different than the movie, but the students only wanted to make connections with the movie. Questions I recieved from the students were "Why is the Grinch green?", or "Why was Cindy-Lou Who the only nice person to the Grinch. Now I was only supposed to be testing their knowledge from the book I read, but because of these outside questions, I was able to tie both back into the story. As a class we went through the book, and spotted the differences between the movie and the book version. They could see, that in the book, Cindy -Lou was only about 2 years old, whereas in the movie, she was at least 11 or 12. By going through, and finding the difference between the book and the movie, I think that their comprehension of both developed further.
Reflection:
Due to the fact that the students were mroe familiar with the movie, this read aloud, proved to be a bit difficult for me as the teacher to navigate. When we went through as a class to find the differences though, in the story, I think that it became clear to the students that the movie made the story much more believable and added in things that the audience would better realte to. The story was relateable, but still harder for the students to understand why the Grinch hated Christmas, and what fact made him change his mind.
Video Reflection:
What went well?
Though the students were familiar with the movie of "How the Grinch Stole Christmas", they tried to relate the best they could to the book version. They were very well behaved while reading, and not to many students blurted anything out. It was a quite time for them, and they took advantage of that.
What were the students saying and doing?
Most of the students just sat and intently listened to the story. Others figeted with their shoes, and or made comments every now and then. For the most part the students were well behaved.
Based on what students said, what evidence do you have that students comprehended the book?
When asked comprehension questions from the story, they mostly tried to relate back to the movie version. One student said that they had become confused by the book, there were so many differences between the book and the movie. Once we sought the out as a class, the students became less confused.
While watching the video, was there anything that suprised you? If so, explain. What did you notice when you were delivering the read aloud?
The only thing that suprised me was really how well the students worked together when we were finding the differences between the book and the movie. They don't usually work that well together. It was a nice change. I did notice that being read aloud to, helped calm the students down a little. Before the read aloud none of the students had the ability to stay focused, but after everything seemed to flow better because they had that break.
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