Review Game Host

Contestant Number One, Come on Down!

In our cancer unit we worked on being “Scientist Researchers,” by researching different treatments. It went pretty well other than minor hiccups such as me giving groups the wrong research materials. We got it all knocked out today, and I like that because that’s pretty much all the time I can use for it, but I wasn’t able to allow them the freedom to present their findings in the way they want.  Last time I had them in research groups for social studies, they got to present their own way, and they did a wonderful job of it while having fun. This time, I pretty much made a template for them to fill out as they went along. It went over pretty smoothly, but was not quite as exciting. I really wish I had more time for researching treatments because there are so many, and quite frankly, I just think that some of them are really cool, and I believe they would have the same opinion if we had time to delve into the subject.

Social studies was a riot today.  Without any warning, I sprung a review game on them. The civil war unit is taking a ridiculous amount of time to cover because we probably only average about three days a week for social studies, so I figured it was time for a little review. There were a few kinks in the logistics of the game that I had to work out along the way, but other than that, it was a super success. The kids loved playing, got a good refresher, and I had a great time being the host. I snuck out during the transition from science to social studies and changed into a sweet outfit, then had my teacher play music from “The Dating Game,” to cue me to come in after he split the class into two teams. The best part was the shock on their face as I ran in high-fiving them because they had no clue what was happening. Once I announced that I was the host of the “Civil War Review Show,” they all began to cheer, and the game was on! It had a perfect balance of individual opportunity as well as group scoring opportunity, with a little strategy mixed in. In the end, it was a great change of pace, and a great learning environment in which to be.

Hard Lesson to Learn

Well, today was a hard lesson learned. We began our cancer unit today, and I found out that one student has a grandmother who has cancer that is about to take her life. There wasn’t a big scene or anything. She began to cry and when we noticed, my mentor teacher walked her out and talked to her. After he explained her situation to me, I felt absolutely horrible. I had talked to the class and given them a pretest about our unit weeks before, but she didn’t bring it up to me. It may not have even been a big issue a few weeks ago, but now that her grandmother is reaching the final stages, it’s just too much for her to deal with having a whole period devoted to talking about something that is causing her this pain. I figured out a couple of assignments for her to complete on genetics today and tomorrow. I’m now working on a project for her, but I still feel bad that things have happened this way. I feel bad for her situation at home, and now it’s just magnified, but I also feel bad for the timing. I feel like this would be a great unit for her to be a part of, but she’s just not ready for it at this point. We are going to end the unit with a cancer awareness project, and I hate that she will miss that because I think it will be something that she will be a strong advocate for at some point in time. most of all, I just hope that everything works out as well as possible in her situation.

Marathon

Whew, second day of conferences complete. It’s been so wonderful to meet student’s parents. I’ve met most of them now after a day of conferences from 1:00-7:30 without any breaks. I’ve been able to see the different levels of involvement parents have, how serious they are about their child’s performance, and how agreeable they are with what’s going on in class and the work students do at home.  It has been a pleasant learning experience, but after being at school for over twelve hours today, I see why some teachers dread it. It’s long, repetitive, and a bit draining. However, it is quite necessary to have this nearly mandated parent-teacher interaction.

Genetics is continuing to prove challenging to teach and learn. We’ve taken quizzes and the results have not been too high. I will say that each child improved greatly comparing pre and post vocabulary quizzes; probably by an average of 25%.  However, my goal is 100% passing, and we haven’t reached that yet.  Also, we took a quiz, measuring their ability to differentiate mitosis and meiosis today, and the results told me that we need at least one more day of work on those two topics. I’m trying to hit every possible approach I can to reach all students, and it’s getting to be pretty challenging for my creativity to come up with re-teaching methods, but I know it’s a necessary lesson for me to learn. 

First Day of Conferences

Our first day of parent-teacher conferences were today. It’s a very new thing for me so I am learning a lot. As far as the conference structure goes, it’s pretty much as I imagined it. We review their report card and talk about how the student is doing in each area (mostly math and reading), talk about behavior, and then hand out any information about the future while fielding any questions the parents have. We only had three conferences today, but I was able to learn about those parents and how they are supporting their child. The three that visited today all seemed to be involved in motivating their child if nothing else. They all had questions of what area the child needed improvement most, and they all already had an understanding of where their child stands before meeting with us. The really neat thing was that the three students whose parents visited today are on three different academic levels. So, it was nice to see firsthand that these parents are involved whether their child is “high” or “low.”

We scored a win for science this week! Instead of doing math for ELT this week, we will be doing science during the early release days since science is usually in the afternoon. This way, we will not fall further behind schedule in science than we already are. On an even better note, it looks like I will actually be able to begin the second part of my unit this week. However, I may take a day or two to re-teach and/or elaborate on genetics and cell division a little more. It’s really tough material, and I think I planned too short of a time to cover it. Even getting a surface understanding of this material as they are required would have been similar to my first week of genetics and cell division in tenth grade biology. I really just feel it’s necessary to go back, review some things, and tie it all together.

The Teacher is Back

Things were finally restored to a bit of normalcy today. However, the time is drawing near to where they will become off kilter once again. Parent conferences start on Wednesday. And, now that I think of it, we didn’t actually have a normal day today either. During ELT, we went to the computer lab to do “Success Maker” testing. I’m not really sure what the purpose of it is. Perhaps there is a computer program that they will take part in based off of their scores. Things are always so hectic that I don’t ever think to ask my mentor teacher questions in the midst of things. The inconsistencies do bother me. We got to do reading three days last week, and we will only get it two days this week. It’s actually going to take about 3 weeks to do my two week unit, and the only social studies I will get to teach all year will be the Civil War.  The worst thing is that I can see how the lack of consistency is hurting the kids from building strong foundations before going deeper into any topic in any subject.

I got a bit of a lesson today in the value of a well executed delivery. But, of course, the lessons I learn come from failures. I had planned out everything for us to talk about when discussing the Battle of Appomattox Court House pretty specifically.  However, I’m not quite a Civil War expert so I needed to have some notes with me. Well, right away, in my activation, I divulged some important information that I had meant to have the kids discus in groups and try to figure out the importance of it themselves.  Because I did that, the lesson took a turn in a different direction, and I was having a bit of a tough time trying to reign it all in and tie it together in a way that makes sense. Let’s just say that I found myself repeating a lot of things. I guess it was at least the most vital piece of information they kept hearing so maybe they will remember, but it certainly wasn’t a very fun period for anyone…

10-14-2011

     My mentor teacher was back for the morning today. I noticed that the morning seemed to take much longer when the responsibilities are shared. Overall, the past few days have been a great experience. I’ve received a few encouraging complements from and really got to interact with the other teachers and staff. They’ve done an amazing job all year of making me feel like an equal, but I was able to get a true sense of it when they would ask for my advice or opinion and my teacher wasn’t there for me to turn around and get confirmation.

     We did a science activity today that involved Play-Doh. It was quite the event. The kids really enjoyed it and showed a shallow understanding of the process of mitosis, but I believe I will need to do some follow-up instruction because the focus on the art seemed to override some of their focus on the science. It’s just really hard to find the balance of how much straightforward instruction they need with active, independent explorations.

Here I Go Again on My Own

For the past two days, my mentor teacher has not been at school. So, it’s been completely up to me to make sure things are running smoothly and productively. The day flies by so much quicker when you are completely in charge of everything. I used to just kind of sit back or interact with students when we were transitioning in the morning, and people are leaving the room and people from other classes are coming in to our room. However, I’ve found that when in charge of everything going on, there are a thousand things running through your mind, and those transitions feel like you only have five seconds to have everyone where they need to be, and everything set up for the next lesson. Luckily, the students in my class are responding well to me being THE one in charge on these days. I feel like we have established a pretty good mutual respect for each that makes this possible. Really the only snag we hit was during ELT on Wednesday when students from the other home room were mixed in with us. They had a little bit of the “sub mentality.” However, I believe we got things smoothed out because ELT ran smoothly today and was quite productive.

Speaking of ELT, it has been a wonderful learning experience over these past two days. This week is the first time meeting with this specific group since we do flexible groups based on pre and post tests. So, I did not know a lot about these kids, other than the fact that they scored in the range that placed them in our ELT class. Well, come to find out on Wednesday, half of them did not know how to find the GCF of two numbers, and many of those didn’t know what a GCF is. So, after noting who all needed remediation/re-teaching, I allowed the other half of the class to move along with the activity while I gave a mini-lesson on GCF.  I then made modifications last night to today’s lesson and worked out a way to get the class on the same page by the end of the lesson.  I gave another quick mini-lesson on GCF as an activation, and then allowed the kids who did not need remediation to explore some tougher scenarios and word problems with finding the GCF, while I got the others started on finding GCF by themselves, and showed them alternative methods to finding the GCF.  Eventually, I allowed the kids not needing remediation to begin working on what was originally planned for today by themselves to see if they could figure out the connection between finding the GCF and putting fractions in their simplest form, while I reviewed the problems the others were practicing with them. By the end of the lesson, I was able to give them a lead into tomorrow’s lesson that everyone could now begin to understand.

GAPS Review

     At our school, we practiced for the GAPS review today. During our planning period, we met with administration, got checklists, and then split into teams to go and evaluate the third grade teachers.  The main focus of the GAPS review seems to be to check and see if the classroom and lessons are standards based.  Pretty much every question was asking if a standard is used in a certain way, if a standards based work is posted, if the child can give you an answer that sounds like the standard when you ask him what they are doing during their lesson, or simply if the standard is posted.  There wasn’t really any rating of delivery or appropriateness of activities; pretty much just checking for a standards centered environment.  After doing the walkthroughs, which took about fifteen minutes, we met back in the conference room and discussed what we saw, and how we scored our rubrics.  The rating options were: apparent, not obvious, or not available. Most of the ratings were either “apparent” or “not available.”  Later on, we were on the other end of the process. Two administrators came into our room during our reading period, which is one of my subjects.  We had entered into the “student work period,” so there wasn’t really any teaching to score, but I had prepared my students during the activation/mini-lesson as usual by cueing them with the standard and essential question. I also had the standard and essential question posted, and when we gave students individual work, we made sure to refer back to the standard that is being addressed. It was pretty normal, everyday stuff for us so I believe everything went well.

    We entered into a pretty deep discussion in social studies today. I posed an activation question (which ended up encompassing the student work period and summary) of whether or not there are certain things that shouldn’t be done during a war. The student’s opinions and discussion funneled almost perfectly into the issue that I wanted to raise of which wins when in war, “good strategy vs. good morals.”  The kids were having a great debate, and were giving plenty of supporting reasons for their arguments. I believe when we get into more details about the Atlanta Campaign and Sherman’s March to the Sea tomorrow, they will be ready to evaluate the strategic vs. moral decision that was made by General Sherman at that point in the war.

Assessments

The students began bench-mark testing for the first quarter today. I feel bad for them. I knew there was a lot of pressure for the CRCT, but I didn’t know they were having to take these high pressure standardized tests at the end of every quarter.  It’s not like its set up to be a low pressure situation.  The kids know they have to constantly take these tests, and they realize the implications that come with it. In my elementary school experience, all I knew was that we had to take the ITBS at the end of the year, and had no clue about what the significance of it was.  So, in my day, I simply looked forward to standardized testing days because they only lasted for a few days at the end of the year and we got snacks and extended recess. Now, the kids are having to miss three mornings of instruction three to four times a year on top of all of the mandated pre and post unit tests that are they typical pen and paper multiple choice, fill in the blank type assessment (un-fun).

     I did what I feel was a pretty useful and fun assessment with my kids today. They were to create their own animal, and then they had to classify it. I gave them the frame for how it should be classified, and they had to use their knowledge of classification in order to complete the task. By the end of the class period, I was able to get an idea of who has the concept and who doesn’t, as well as what areas will need to be taught again. The kids have no clue that they are being assessed, and I am finding out who needs attention in what area. They were having fun doing it, and I was having more fun evaluating them as they worked than grading papers. The best part is, they are still learning while they are performing. If it’s something they did not understand before the task, they can actually continue to learn while creating their animal.

Bird Banquett

When doing my reading mini-lessons, I’ve began to notice that creating my own stories can be such a useful thing to do. I hate trying to sift through and find short stories for mini-lessons so I just decided I would start writing my own. I feel like it’s such a useful tool. I can tailor the story to the element we are covering, as well as tailor it to my class. So far, they have enjoyed and gotten a lot out of the three stories I’ve read so far. The first two were really entertaining, and the one I just wrote about a new student for “theme” was very meaningful, and I believe most of them got the message.

I also did a pretty involved activity in science today. It definitely went the way you would expect a very active activity to go the first time. The kids were excited and jittery, and I have not had the experience with it to be able to prevent some problems from happening. I was catching onto things as the period went on that I could fix for next time, and ways that I could instruct better. Luckily, my supervisor was there to reinforce things that could be improved on and point out other things, otherwise, they could have slipped my mind or gone unnoticed. I’m really glad I did that activity, which I will now refer to as experiment, while she was there because, even though it’s a risky thing to do while a supervisor is there (if you worry about that), I believe it’s a great experiment and I wanted feedback so that I could continue it in the future and make it even more powerful. 

10-4-2011

     I’ve completely taken over writing now, and have started to take over math. I’m not able to completely take over math right now because we are kind of in data grouping limbo until next week because we are doing benchmark testing this week. So, yesterday, I was just able to run a center rotation for math. I believe it is the subject I am most afraid of teaching. I pretty much have zero experience teaching any math above third grade. And most of the math I have taught in the first place has been in kindergarten.

     Taking over writing has been fun. I’m finding that I really enjoy writing and teaching writing myself. I’ve been collaborating with the two writing coaches as they plan and using those plans for the most part, but the delivery is all me. So, when it comes to writing time, I get to take those plans and make them mine, and I get to discuss what my class needs at the time.

     We learned about invertebrates in science today. We began by watching a video that was going to take about ten minutes. Well, we ended up watching videos for about 25-30 minutes. The kids were so enthralled with what they were seeing; all these cool insects, aquatic creatures, animals that look like plants, giant squids, jelly-fish…they were hooked. So, after the activation, we found some more video for them to watch and I just made a small assignment out of it. They had to list three things they learned, as well as three more things they learned that they thought was really cool. I condensed the remainder of the lesson, and we got through it, but I just couldn’t go to something else when they were so excited about seeing the new things we were learning about in the video. 

PLC Day 2

      No kids today.  Today was another Professional Learning day that consisted of only teachers, meetings, and planning. It was pretty nice to have a little extra designated time for planning. I was able to tie up a lot of loose ends today.  It also gave me a great opportunity to talk to my mentor teacher about my upcoming two week unit. I wanted to plan it further ahead of time, but one thing I have been learning is that you have to play it by ear a lot as far as time frame goes. So, with inconsistent opportunities to meet for particular subjects, and finding time to meet and discuss it with my mentor, it’s been hard to get ahead on it. Luckily, I was able to speak with him today with the extra time we had, and I was able to confirm that I will be able to start it on time since we should have science (the main time I will be doing my unit) consistently this week.

      Another great aspect of today’s Professional Learning was learning about, and planning for, student data notebooks. These will be notebooks with goal sheets, checklists, rubrics, and reflection sections for the students to keep up with. So, it will largely be their responsibility to plan and track their own progress. With these student notebooks, we will be instituting student lead parent conferences. Basically, the students will use their notebooks to review with their parents where they are and where they want to be in their progress. The teacher will be there to facilitate as multiple meetings are happening at once. I think it is a great idea because what some students lack is a sense of responsibility and self-efficacy, and I think this will be a way to motivate them in both areas. By being a part of planning for their learning progress, I think the kids will value themselves more, and in turn, take more initiative in doing what they should be doing in class and at home in order to make the progress they want.

Voice is Gone

Ahh, today was such a struggle anytime I had to address the class. If I needed to raise my voice loud enough to be heard by everyone, I just ended up sounding like a 13 year old going through puberty. I shall certainly be resting my voice this weekend. The biggest struggle was science because there was some factual/definition type things that we needed to review, and there isn’t much time to do it in an activity format, so I was having to lead a large group discussion, and just posing the questions was a struggle for my voice. I had to constantly move to different parts of the room and repeat things. Alas, I made it though.

I’m glad that I will technically have five weeks remaining to cover my two week unit because it’s such a struggle to get every subject in every day with all the extra events going on. If my Civil War unit had gone by the time frame that was planned, it would have ended this week. Instead, we won’t even get to start talking about reconstruction until the week after next. It is a bit of an extreme case with social studies being at the end of the day, though.

What brings the subject up though, is that we will be doing benchmark testing all week next week, and that will interrupt class at various times of the day. It will be interesting to see how things play out, especially since Monday is a professional learning day with teachers only.

One thing that I have seen that was pretty cool for the past two Fridays is vocabulary skits. The kids really enjoy doing them, and we get to see what they really think of the meanings of the words they try to portray. They come up with interesting scenarios and portray them in such funny ways that it makes me appreciate the level of creativity they have when they chose to let it show.

No Mentor Day

I had the class all to myself today.  My mentor teacher had to stay out with his sick child so I was in charge of the whole day. I think when it came down to it, the only things that really worried me were the non-teaching issues. I had to make out a checklist of all the other little things to do like attendance, lunch count, Thursday folders, knowing where the Epi-pen is, and getting the kids from place to place on time. Those were the things in the back of my mind causing me to be slightly worrisome throughout the day. Oh, not to mention getting everyone on the right bus when there were bus number changes.

But as I said, the non-teaching things were what gave me the most stress. As far as teaching goes, things went pretty well. It was actually the first time I have led taught fifth grade math, and it was interesting doing it with plans that I had never seen before. I know I probably didn’t do a great job because I couldn’t think of enough critical thinking and follow questions on the spot, but for the circumstances, I think I did fairly well. Also, a teacher who usually pulls kids out for ELT just pushed in and gave me some assistance for that period, which was nice. The kicker though, was that she has been pushing in to lead writing instruction, but she informed me that she had an IEP meeting to go to, and I would be doing her writing lesson, which I got to look at during the transition from ELT to writing.

Another interesting part of the day was that my voice has been growing more and more hoarse over the past few days. So, it was a little tough doing all the lead teaching for most of the day. On top of that, we had an assembly at the end of the day in which the teachers, myself included, performed a play about the character work of the month. My character was “The Proclaimer,” and if the name is as leading as it sounds, I was indeed making proclamations; very loud proclamations. My voice is now shot. It was all great fun and worth it though. The play was hilarious and portrayed the message of “acceptance” very well.

September 28

In an unexpected turn of events, the smartboard was actually up and running today. The projector bulb was replaced in record time! I had already written a slightly revised plan and torn out tons of pictures of mammals and birds from magazines under the assumption that we would be doing non-smartboard learning today. Fortunately, we had the board, but it was comforting knowing that I could make quick revisions and be ready to teach without technology. I pretty much ended up just blending the two lessons together, giving them smartboard videos describing the characteristics of each group of vertebrates we learned about today, and gave them the magazine pictures to pass around. 

The smartboard really came in handy in social studies. My mentor and I were able to have a discussion with the students to set up a video of the Battle of Gettysburg. The video is a perfect set up for a reenactment that we will perform outside on Friday, hopefully.  The video discusses the major objectives of both armies, and the major obstacles that prevented the Confederacy from winning. It just so happens that the terrain behind the school is perfect for discussing important skirmishes within the battle, and being able to reenact those parts of the battle to see what their importance is and how and why things played out the way they did.

One thing that I am really beginning to enjoy is becoming a part of the school community. It’s gotten to the point where all of the administrators, the media specialist, the fifth grade support staff, custodians, cafeteria workers, specials teachers, and teachers from other grades all know me. There are many relationships being formed, and it makes me feel much more comfortable about the setting I am in. The best thing is that everyone is willing to help or has a nice thing to say about someone else. Those things, combined with the support many people provide, all combine to make great community at this school. 

And Boom Goes the Projector Bulb

     Today had some interesting twists and turns. To start with, the kids were a bit wired today. At the end of the day, the behavior pocket chart looked like a legitimate rainbow. Most of the problem was transitions and talking at inappropriate times. It was a total group effort. It wasn’t just a concentrated area, or a few lone talkers. With that being said, it was a pretty valuable thing when we did our science lesson today. We made spines out of pipe cleaners, white Life Saver mints, and gummy Life Savers. We first created a spine without intervertebral disks, and made observations with a partner of how it feels, moves, sounds, etc. We then made a spine with intervertebral disks, and once again made observations. After we made a class observation chart, we compared our spines to the model with intervertebral disks. We got up and moved around plenty of times to test if the observations students made held true. Going back to the topic of the students being chatty, it was a good thing because everyone was talking to their partners about observations and wanting to share their observations with the whole class when that came.

      Overall, I think the lesson went well and students made the connection between the model and the function of an actual spine. However, the lesson didn’t happen without any glitches. About half way through the lesson, the bulb in the smartboard projector blew. For one, it’s not an easy distraction to avoid because it’s a bit loud. I will give the students credit for moving on from it pretty quickly, however. The main problem lay within my mind. It happened during the student work period, and I knew I had about a minute long video that shows how a human spine works, and we weren’t going to be able to use that to stimulate our summary discussion. Luckily, I was able to transfer into an alternative summary where I highlighted the main functions of the spine, and how our models are relative examples. I also remembered some information that I would have totally left out had we been able to watch the video.

     The greatest worry I had about the smartboard blowing was for social studies. We are going to spend a few days on Gettysburg, and today I was going to show about a twenty minute intro video…yeah, that wasn’t happening. Luckily, I have brought in a text set, and I have a book that is especially about Gettysburg that I had ready to read. However, even more luckily, my mentor teacher’s first degree is in history, and he was able to give a great introductory lecture to lead us into Gettysburg. Even though he didn’t mean to, where he left off today will be a great lead into our outdoor reenactment that will take place tomorrow.

Monday, Monday

     Another Monday come and gone. Each day really seems to go by more quickly as I pick up more subjects. About the only thing slowing the day down is the scratchy throat I have, and the water bottle I did not have today. Having to stop for a bit to close my mouth and let the dryness subside can really throw me of kilter when I’m in front of the class trying to make a point. While on the topic of being in front of the class, I’ve been finding out I’m not very comfortable when writing on the board, especially the smartboard. I really can’t stand the feeling of having my back turned to the class because I feel like it takes the class and my self out of any flow we might be in. Also, I have terrible handwriting, especially on the smartboard. And when it comes to board writing, writing on the smartboard is a whole other level of uncomfortable because it is really low, and I am really tall. Also, you have to figure out how to write without blocking the kids from seeing and having your shadow cover up where you are writing. Luckily, I try to keep the situations that require me having to write out information to a minimum.

     It’s still hard trying to get the timing right in social studies. I had every intention of getting finished a couple minutes early today so that we would be able to have a ticket-out-the-door. I ended up taking it right to the bell again. I hate that I haven’t been leaving time for summary/closure. I’ve found that they are able to recall the more important points or the overall importance of a topic if we are able to have a good closure session.

     One thing that has been quite bothersome that was really prevalent today is the lack of effort from the new student who arrived about a month ago. He has the typical “too cool for school” attitude, but for the past few days, it’s like he’s been trying to intentionally throw it in everyone’s face. He maybe completes one assignment per day if you combine the little bit he willingly participates in from each subject. I try to focus a lot of attention on him in all types of group or individual settings, but as soon as whomever is working with him walks away, he quits. He’s perfectly capable of handling the work and he doesn’t have a short attention span. It seems to be more or less a refusal. Hopefully we can get to the bottom of what makes him tick and not tick.

Test Day

     I’ve been teaching the American Civil War for about 2-3 weeks now. I am learning a lot about little time there is for social studies. We’re only about two lessons in on the second third of what’s supposed to be a 3 week unit. It’s going to take at least three weeks of lessons to teach the material, especially if we want to do active things and projects instead of me just being a presenter, but it’s looking like it could take about 5 weeks to have enough opportunities to get in all the information.  The reason is that, whenever there is some kind of extra activity, such as DARE or 4-H, going on, it takes place in the afternoon. Well, science has recently been entered into AYP consideration, and science becomes the main subject of the afternoon if one or the other time slots are going to be filled. The point I’m making is that there is little time for social studies, and it’s making it a little tough on me to get to do as many lessons as possible that they are going to be highly interested in regardless of whether or not they are initially interested in the topic. For example, I had to completely nix a picture walk that I had planned out for them, but it got cut because we had a morning field trip that ran into the afternoon, leaving us time for science only.

     About this day in particular, I felt bad for some of the kids. They had three tests today, one of which I am accountable for because it was science. Some don’t mind taking tests, but I know it’s miserable for others.        So, to have three in one day can definitely be disheartening.

     For the science test, I used a test that the other fifth grade teacher generated. I don’t believe I will ever do this again. I’m not saying she wrote a bad test. That’s not what I’m saying at all. I can just see clearly now, that if a test is going to be written for your kids, you should definitely be the one to do it. And now that I look back on it, the thing I regret the most is that this test could have been a great opportunity to do a different type of formal assessment than just pencil and paper. I really wish I had brought in some plants, had the children classify them one on one with me, and made sure to figure out some way to assess all of the vocabulary within that. I think it would have been very possible, and probably been a more true assessment.

The Wheels on the Bus Go Round and Round

     Yes indeed, today was field trip day. Aside from the usual loudness on the bus, the trip was a fun time for all. More importantly, it was quite educational. We went to the Sandy Creek Nature Center to build on our past unit of micro-organisms and our current unit of macro-organisms. Our class began the day inside where we got to have a short lecture about micro-organisms, and then break into groups and do centers. I was quite happy with how we impressed the person leading the lecture with our ability to accurately answer her questions that she had not given us the answers to. The students did an exceptional job with the centers as well. There were five centers: Dissecting microscopes, cause and effect sort, two different microscope stations where they viewed micro-organisms (they got to make their own wet mount slides at one), and one more station that I did not get to see. I was in charge of the dissecting microscope station, and I noticed that all the kids were really enjoying it, and they were doing a great job of exploring the specimens they were given. By the way, don’t look at your fingernails under a microscope…you won’t like what you see.

     The second part of the trip was a hike. We have been learning about classifying plants for the past few days, so this was a perfect time for the kids to practice classifying and for me to do some informal probing. All of the kids in my group were able to find non-vascular plants, vascular seed bearing, and vascular non-seed bearing plants that have spores instead. One student even identified some mushrooms as fungi so we talked a little bit about fungi and why these mushrooms were on the dead logs (because they are decomposers). What really impressed me was some of their abilities to classify some plants. I showed them a few different plants during the hike, and they were able to classify them. For example, I held up a small branch that had pine needles on it, and one of the students classified it perfectly: vascular, seed-bearing, gymnosperm. After he classified, another student even pointed out that that kind of plant is called a conifer.

     Overall, the field trip was a good reinforcement and chance to see things in the real world for the kids. It was also a great chance for me to get to see how their learning is progressing without having to do a usual classroom activity.

Long, but Good Day

The length of this day includes extracurricular activities as well. I was only at the elementary school til 5.

     I had a lot of fun and learned a lot of things during my lead teaching periods today. To start, I made my own story to present during the mini-lesson for reading today. The kids loved the story and were able to identify the character’s conflict and resolution, as well as motives, with great accuracy. I think if you have the creativity to make a story that reflects a literary component you are teaching, and you can make the story interesting, it is a great mini-lesson tool. However, I will always want to keep authentic texts involved.

Now, on to science. Science was my favorite part of the day. I learned that deviation from the plans can be such a wonderful thing when appropriate. This past Saturday, I went to the botanical gardens and found a plant I had never seen before. So, the teacher in me said, steal this one and that one over there so you can show it to your students since we are learning about classifying plants. So, I brought in the two examples, and we did some inquiry thinking for our activation. Well, the activation turned into a 30 minute work period where they made their own inferences on paper, and we discussed them as a class, supporting and refuting with evidence. This was the first time this year that the kids have gotten to do any real inquiry based exploration in science, and I am really happy that I got to make it happen because the kids had fun and learned a lot about what it means to really consider something. They did a great job, and some of them had fantastic, accurate inferences with support.

     Social studies today was a lesson in time and clear directions. The two being related in this instance. The students were supposed to rewrite the Missouri Compromise of the Compromise of 1850 in their own words, as if they were part of congress in that time. Apparently my directions were not very clear, and looking back, I can see that. My mentor said that he understood what I was asking of them, but it probably needed to be explained in a little more detail for them. I will say that the unclear directions led to us getting one-on-one time with just about every student, thus getting a good opportunity to check for their understanding of the content, and help them understand anything they did not about the compromises. I’m quite the glass half full type person though. Needless to say, the social studies lesson ended unfinished today, but tomorrow is a new day!

(A) Good Friday

     Today was a fantastic Friday. There was no strife among the kids, and all of their energy was pretty focused. Everyone seemed to have a little extra pep today, but we all didn’t let it get out of hand. I suppose it had something to do with it being Friday and not 100 degrees outside. All of the kids were pretty attentive during math and ELT, excited and inquisitive when working on their narratives in writing, worked hard on their center work during reading, and were on the ball and engaged in science and social studies. I was really impressed with what all this class can accomplish in a day.

     During our science lesson, it was a constant exchange between the students and me. We first made a chart of how to classify plants, and they did a really good job of working out how that’s done after watching the video yesterday. We then moved onto viewing different plants, classifying them, and supporting how we classified the plants. We had 18 pictures of plants and got about 16 different willing volunteers to classify a plant each time. It was exciting having everyone involved, and more importantly, wanting to be involved. After some practice classifying, we moved onto seeing some examples of angiosperms (naked seed bearing plants) and gymnosperms (enclosed seed bearing plants). Each student got a pine cone and an apple and got to make their own inquiries into which was which, and why they are the way they are. They really enjoyed this and got a good understanding of the difference. Just in case they have trouble remembering, they can refer back to their mnemonic: You shower naked after working out at the gym (gymnosperm). But, unfortunately, Angie doesn’t have hot water at her house so she showers in clothes (enclosed angiosperm).

     Three of the five groups got to present their abolitionist or abolitionist event today in social studies. They had complete freedom of choice of how to present, and so far, everyone has chosen to do a skit. Hey, it’s what they love to do. Their skits were creative. It was hard to get the message by watching some of the skits, but the kids did a great job of briefly explaining the real event after the skit so everyone could understand.

Thursday, September 15, 2011

     We had a School Improvement Leadership Team (SILT) today. I really got to see a good picture of what’s going on behind the scenes in school. I got to find out where a lot of the decisions about programs used, assessment tools, formation of school improvement teams, and community coordination are made. Representatives from each grade and/or subject shared what’s going on in each area and what’s coming up. I got to see what happens when there is a clear split on a decision. There was an issue of whether or not to have a mandatory vocabulary probe, and obviously some wanted it and some did not. So, seeing an apparent difference in opinions, the Principal called for a hands raised vote, and the matter was settled.

     We watched a National Geographic video to activate our plant classification unit. I had the kids keep a chart with sections for Plants, characteristics, and how they are classified. Most of them enjoyed the video, but man was it stressful for some of them. I didn’t even say anything about taking up their chart, and some of them were completely worried about missing something. I guess it’s good that they want to get the information, but I figured the video would be something fun and different instead of a burden.

     My reading group met today and everyone had completed their job for the first time in a couple of days so we got to have really good sharing time before we went into reading and discussing the ensuing pages. These kids make great inferences and have wonderful interpretations, and man, oh, man, can they come up with some exciting (to say the least) predictions. Their imaginations sure can run nice and wild when making predictions. It’s fun stuff!

The Day That the Lights Went out in Georgia

I got my first experience transitioning from three subjects in a row today. I went from my reading group, straight to science, and then to social studies. We made the transitions fairly smoothly. My goal is to keep them under two minutes and with minimal talking and moving around because as soon as one person starts talking or moves to another table, it catches like wildfire. We’ve been doing well on the time, but the noise can tend to start up sometimes. They received an x in their transition box for one transition, and that got their cooperation for the remaining transition times.

The most exciting, as in interesting, thing that happened today was that I had to readjust the science lesson immediately as science was about to begin. I came in from the hallway with my reading group as it was time to go into science, and my mentor teacher informed me that the bulb in the projector had blown. We are learning about plants and I had found an interactive sight where you can label the parts of a plant, and it tells you what those parts do once you have labeled them. I also had pictures of vascular and non-vascular plants to sort. Well, that wasn’t going to happen. Fortunately, I had brought in some leaf samples to look at in addition to the plans. Also, the other fifth grade teacher had brought in some moss. So, I retrieved some microscopes and set up a mini lab session instead. We looked at the non-vascular moss first, read a page from our book and created Venn Diagrams for non-vascular and vascular plants, then observed the vascular leaves so that we could see which had veins (xylem and phloem) running through it.

We’ve began a new piece in writing, and I have high hopes for this piece. We have finally covered all of the 6+1 traits of writing, and thoroughly gone over organization and ideas. The students were given the option to use a prompt or make their story completely from scratch. Some children showed me what they have so far in order to get my opinion on how their pieces have started and I believe there are going to be some great pieces. I am also going to write a story, organizing my ideas by time, in a way that will hopefully show the kids how you can use typical organization, but still be original with it. I want to do this because I have learned that students writings can have creative, original ideas (sometimes not), but be displayed in a very bland manner.  (My story will be about my Monday, but my Monday begins on a Friday.

Here's the picture used for the optional prompt:

Science Pick-Up

     I picked up science to go along with social studies and reading, starting today. It was a pretty interesting situation because I am using the other fifth grade teacher’s plans for this week. The way it is set up here is that my teacher plans for social studies, and the other teacher plans for science, and then each teacher makes any needed differentiation based on their own student’s needs. I thought about going ahead and making my own plans, but I thought it would be a interesting experience to see how that system works. So, I suggested that we do the normal system for a week of this unit, and I would take over planning for the second week so I get planning practice as well. It was certainly quite a different experience. The plans and the activities are good, but I sometimes found myself at a loss for words for just a couple seconds every-now-and-then. When reviewing the plans, I would think, Okay, this is the point that she is meaning to get across, but a couple times during the lesson, it would occur to me that something else may have been intended as I see things playing out. It’s good practice for adjusting on the fly.

     We started our activity for learning about the abolitionist cause of the Civil War today. I have separated the class into five groups. Each group will learn about their topic (John Brown, Nat Turner, Uncle Tom’s Cabin, Abraham Lincoln’s election, and The Dred Scott case) from resources I have found for them, and they will present what they have learned to the class, essentially becoming the teachers, in any way they choose. They are going to have a couple of days to research and prepare presentations on their own, involving the teacher and me only when they feel necessary. I was a little wary of this activity since they have been showing their immature sides for the past couple of weeks, but I must say, they really stepped up and became diligent researchers during their work period today. They were going to town with their highlighters (a little too heavily in some cases, of course) and telling their group members about important things they were discovering. I was impressed with their level of maturity and the interest many of them were taking in their topics. I’ll be honest, I knew this would be a pretty tough task to make the connections by themselves when I planned this, but they are showing very positive signs of being able to put it all together on their own. Tomorrow is always another day, though. I’ll just keep the faith anyway.

Friday 9-9-11

     Usually, a support teacher comes into our classroom and lead teaches the writing lessons. She was out of town today so my mentor teacher and I took over writing. I felt like it was a really good experience in co-teaching. We have been doing a form of co-teaching all year so far, but usually one of us (whoever planned the lesson) still stands out as a lead teacher. Because we were working off of someone else’s plan that was not there, we were both able to carry a fairly equal amount of weight in instruction. We were teaching a lesson in editing, specifically the job of the “Grammar Guard,” who looks for grammar mistakes during editing. We were able to go along with the plan prepared for us, and because we were working well together, being able to feed off and build off of one another, we were able to stray away from the lesson with success whenever necessary. Frankly, it was fun being able to share the responsibility. I can see how it could be a miserable experience if two instructors do not complement one another and have two totally different views about a particular topic or how that topic should be addressed. However, my experience was not that. We bounced ideas off of each other, we didn’t interrupt, and we were even able to pull off some impromptu roll plays when performing grammar guard duties.

     While I’m on the subject of teamwork, I think this is a good time to talk about the overall fifth grade team at my school. I feel, and have even heard them state during meetings, that the fifth grade team works really well together. During data team meetings, as well as other team meetings, it’s been brought up that the fifth grade meetings run more smoothly than other grade levels, specifically because fifth grade home room teachers, support staff, and special education teachers work so well together. Having a collaborative can certainly make the overall process more effective, but when the collaborative works together well, it can be a powerful thing. I really enjoy the fact that, for the first two thirds of the day, there is more than one teacher (not including me) in the classroom or pulling out. Actually, during reading, there are three teachers every day, myself not included.

Day Two of Social Studies

     Yesterday, the social studies lesson went great for the full time. The kids were engaged, excited and were absorbing the material. Today, they were only into it for about half the lesson. The activation went really well and carried over into the work period. But the excitement and engagement did not last for everyone. There were still plenty of kids engaged in discussion, but my goal is 100% engaged and %100 excited about what’s going on. I believe when that’s happening, the child is going to have the greatest opportunity to learn.

      The main focus today was the Missouri Compromise and the Compromise of 1850.  I used an activation strategy of making a personal connection by giving them a scenario. The school has acquired a new gym and the fifth grade gets to decide what to do with it, but only if both classes agree. My class came up with fun uses, and then I informed them that the other class wants to use it for more ELT. That led into our discussion of the compromises and slavery, and how that could have aided in spurring the American Civil War. It is all new information for them, and the concept of connecting these compromises and the dissolving of them can have been a cause for the war is a tough concept to see. So, I found myself doing a lot of talking, which is not what I was wanting. In that is where I believe I lost a few kids. I believe it does require a little extra direct instruction from the teacher when trying to explain or inform about completely new content or concepts, but I know I talked too much this time. I believe next time I have a similar lesson; I will have to have another activity somewhere in the middle to break things up if it is a subject that requires a little background information from the instructor.

    On a positive note, I have started something that I believe will be a good thing. We will do ticket-out-the door from time to time. I am going to have them continue their TOD on the same piece(s) of paper, and respond to each one. This way, I will have a running conversation with each child as we explore different ideas together. I’m hoping this will be as powerful as I envision it can be.

First Day of SS

     Since we had the extra long weekend, I kept feeling like today was Monday. So, it will be interesting to see what it feels like when Friday rolls around.

     I started my Civil War unit in social studies today. I believe I got them stimulated. I wanted to have something that they can relate to while going over the causes of the civil war so before we got into discussion (little did they know, they were discussing the issue already) I told half the class that they would be doing the homework of the other half all during the civil war unit. It got pretty heated, but under control. Once they all expressed how they felt about it, I was able to connect to the issue of slavery and economics. They were able to see what the appeal was to the slave states and the moral issue that the abolitionists were fighting for. I gave them another example of a student running a pizza shop and all the costs that go into it, and how the owner could make so much more money if she didn’t have to pay for labor. Now, the real beauty of this discussion was that I didn’t have to do much talking. Most of my talking came from restating ideas and asking why. The kids were making the connections themselves. At the end of the lesson, when we summarized, I asked “Was slavery and economics related? Explain.” I asked three different children, and received 3 unique, but equally correct responses. The gist of the three answers was that plantation owners wanted to have slaves because they knew they could make more money that way. I was thoroughly impressed with their discussion capabilities and critical thinking skills.

     We filled out behavior evaluations today. It was a basic 1-5 rating for different areas, and you total the numbers you circled at the end. It was very revealing to actually sit down and think about the behavior of each child. I think it was an even more powerful experience having someone to consider and discuss how to score the kids. I feel these kinds of things are really good to have multiple perspectives for. Even if each evaluator agrees for the most part, it’s still good to have that support and confirmation before scoring a child.

Professional Learning Day

     We had our first Personal Learning Communities (PLC) day today. I apparently had no idea what it would be like. I suspected a couple of meetings, but I have learned that it can mean a whole day of meetings. With the exception of a lunch break, we constantly had meetings from 8:00-2:00, and one more from 2:30-3:00. I had plans of completing two weeks of science planning today. I wanted to do this with the other fifth grade teacher since it is her subject to plan for, and I would like experience with collaborative planning. However, we didn’t even have a chance to get together until 3:00, but she is coming down with a cold and has prior engagements. So, I’ve learned not to plan on “planning days” to be actual planning days. I was able to stay late and plan my next reading group, finish week two of my upcoming American Civil War unit, and knock out this journal entry. And, I am currently eyeballing two stacks of homework, wondering if I should comment on those now or in the morning. I think I will do them in the morning so I will have something to do while waiting on students to arrive.

     Though today was not what I expected, I still learned a lot of new things. There were professional matters such as, goal setting and getting a retirement fund started, but those were not the things I enjoyed most. What I enjoyed most were two demonstrations given by two different teachers. The first was a writing workshop; this workshop was in the mode of learning different activities to use in our writing classes, not an actual writing workshop writing time. Although, we did participate in some of the activities we learned about. The other demonstration was on a strategy I had never heard of, “Touch Math.” It seems to be a great way of representation, and then transferring from representation to abstract if you are familiar with the C-R-A method of math. If not, it’s the method of giving students experiences with concrete objects, and then transitioning to representation methods (pencil and paper), and eventually to abstract thinking where students can analyze more complex forms of problems, sometimes involving mental math. Here is a link to a page for "Touch Math":

http://www.touchmath.com/index.cfm?fuseaction=freestuff.welcome

     Oh, I also was not informed that we didn’t have to be at school until 7:45…I arrived at 7:05.

Friday, Fun...scratch that...Interestingday

     I believe this is the first time I am writing about a Friday. Man, is Friday its own day. All the kids are a little excited for it to be Friday, but it’s also the last day of the week, and everyone is a little tired. So, from what I can tell, emotions run high. Fortunately, this class is a pretty friendly class in general so there were no student-student conflicts (I will come back to that though).

This first statement will be short because I will not disclose any personal information about the situation. What I will say is, parents, know that your kids know what’s going on in your lives so try and be extra considerate of them.

     The next story is certainly one of those “elementary school stories”. One of my students managed to tie her jacket around her waist and a pole at recess. Now, if you know anything about knots, you know that when stress is put on many knots, they get tighter and tighter. This was one of those knots. So, as everyone is lining up to go inside, I see one remaining…tied to a pole by her jacket. It was quite the site. She managed to wiggle out of it, but the jacket remained around the pose, tied in a knot. I eventually had to be the one to untie it.

     Now, back to the student-student conflict topic…there have been no direct conflicts, accept for one solid kick to the shin, this year. However, someone showed my mentor teacher a name tag that had some pretty mean things written about another student. I’m not going to go into many details in this situation as well. However, I will say that it looks like a “frame job,” and I feel bad for the two students being framed because, even if they didn’t really like someone, they are considerate enough, when on their own, to not hurt someone’s feelings in such a way. I think someone showed the kid today, thus leading to more emotions on a Friday.

     I’ll now speak of myself because, after all, teachers (ST in my case) have feelings too. In accordance with paragraph two, there was definitely a lump in my throat at one point today. On a more cheerful circumstance, another teacher was considerate enough to put in a good reference for me with the Assistant Principal. It made me feel very good about myself, as well as, very grateful to be in the situation I am in, working with the wonderful people in this situation.

Pre-Test and an Outlier

     I learned today that students really need a good understanding of the purpose of a pre-test. I gave them a “show what you know,” as I called it, for morning work today and they didn’t quite seem to get the point. I handed the paper to each one as they came in, and told them, since they have certain duties to take care of when they first get there, “once you get settled in, answer what you can and write any questions about the topic (The American Civil War) you would like to find out about. This is just a little ‘show what you know’ pre-test to help me plan for the Civil War unit.” Some of them went straight into a panic and some of them wouldn’t have even touched it if the teacher and I had not kept reminding them of it. I was hoping it would be something casual enough for them to not worry, and they would be responsible enough to take care of it. I was wrong. Everyone got it done, but it was like pulling teeth for half the class that was either worried too much, or didn’t care enough. I really think this is due to the possibility that nobody has ever really explained to them the real purpose of a pre-test. It also wasn’t multiple choice like the scantron pre-tests they have been taking for the past two weeks. It could also be that a pre-test is not good morning work. I’ll have to explain things to them when a good opportunity arises, and everyone is in the room, and then see how the next pretest goes.

     Our advanced math class took a quiz over the rules of division for 2, 3, 5, 9, and 10. Nobody in the class scored what they could have potentially scored. We explained to them today that the quiz grade was not going to be recorded, and then we showed them their quizzes. Nobody was happy. We explained how they are all smart, but sometimes quick and easy is chosen over thorough. They were allowed to use the rules they had written down for those five numbers, but I do not believe anyone actually used them. Many of them also rushed to “sure” answers without checking for other possibilities. After explaining these things to them, we gave them the same quiz, but with different numbers to test the divisibility rules of the above five numbers, and the class grades increased by an average of 20-30 percent. Unfortunately, there is one student who did not improve any. If someone is talking to him about a procedure, rule, or algorithm, he completely understands and can explain it back to that person. However, when it comes time to do actual pencil to paper work, it’s almost like he is subconsciously, or consciously, refusing to do what he knows how to do, and take the easiest (which ends up being incorrect) rout. My mentor teacher and I have been discussing possible ways of improving this situation.

Surprise!

     My mentor teacher was a part of an unofficial, observation, of which he was not informed. It was neat to see, but I found myself getting just as nervous as when I am being observed. It only lasted about twenty minutes because it was an informal observation. It was the principal and vice principal observing, and they each had Ipads to record information on or use as a check list. They observed my mentor while he was addressing the whole group. When it was time for a student work period, they began to ask students questions. I heard them ask what the children were learning about, what standard was being covered, or even questions about the specific problems on which they were working. There was no interaction with the teacher, only students. It was quite funny to see the student look up at the standard then back to the AP and recite it to her word for word. How else would we know the student is learning, right?

     I believe we will get to start working on our second piece of writing tomorrow. We did an organization activity today, working with organizing your ideas by content. The lead teacher read When I was Young in the Mountains, and then we made idea webs about a specific topic, or content, about ourselves. I didn’t get to talk to the writing coach afterwards, but I am predicting we will be using our idea webs to develop personal narratives.

     We finally finished Scantron testing, a norm reference test, today. What I’ve learned from this is that apparently you have to take away the kids learning time in order to see what they should be learning. We’ve missed three days of science and social studies because of this test, and the kicker is, half the kids don’t want to be taking the test and know it doesn’t count towards their grade so they just blow through it, doing poorly, and you don’t get a true reading. There will be little correlation between the test scores and what a lot of these children actually know or can do.

     One thing that I am taking home from lit centers today is that a vocal, creative group is certainly a great thing, but I’m going to have to figure out some way to make sure the imaginations are focused and we can chase a few less rabbits. It’s a golden problem as I like to say.

One Can Make a Difference

     We received a twenty third student today. The student is not new to our school, but this is the first time he has been there this year. The most important lesson I learned today is that one can make a difference. Nothing bad happened today, but it’s easy to see the wheels turning for some drama. The kid has done nothing wrong and seems like a pretty nice guy. Where the potential problem lies is the influence he has. He seems to be pretty popular with the rest of the class. So, it didn’t take long to see some of the girls become a little flirty and some of the other guys trying to act too cool for school to impress him.  I believe we will be working hard to engage our new student because, if he does have some pull with some of the others, we can hopefully turn this into a positive instead of a negative. I really hope to have him in my reading group because we have all been really open about our ideas and have enjoyed it. I think if he can take an active role in my reading group, it could translate into the classroom where everyone can be influenced.

      On another note, we did an activity in writing that I really enjoyed. The focus was “organizing your ideas.” The lead teacher gave an overview of four common ways writers order their writing: time, space, perspective, and content. After doing think-pair-share to discuss what each was in their own words, the children wrote on a post-it which way they like or think they are best. We all then posted our note on the board in the particular category, and told the class why we chose that category. This gave the kids an opportunity to thing about which organizational approach may be best for them, and we all got a better understanding of what each approach means when we explain why we chose a certain strategy.

Eventful Day

            I am currently at the SLC (MLC) so that I can have internet to post. I have not had internet at home for the past two days. No good…

Second day of Lit Circle and it went pretty great. We didn’t get to finish reading the chapter we are on because the kids kept making so many great connections, predictions, and inferences. I had sticky notes in my book to remind me to bring up certain topics or make certain worldly connections, but I didn’t even get to use half of them…because they were bringing up these topics and issues themselves!

Example one:  I had written a note to myself to bring up the issue of population control in China as it relates to the novel we are reading. Two pages before I was going to do that, we inferred there must be some kind of rule that parents can only have a certain amount of kids. At that moment, one of the students said something along the lines of, “Isn’t it like in China where parents can only have a certain amount of kids and they have to pay for or get rid of any other kids they have?” To say the least, I was pretty darn excited to hear that student bring it up instead of me.

          Example two:  A wonderful text-to-world, and possibly text-to-self, connection. He brought up the topic of government assistance, but in other words.  He was thinking that maybe, in the book, the government was limiting the number of children per family because the government didn’t want to have to give families extra money because they had a lot of kids. Another student then asked if that was like “when parents get money back from the government a couple of weeks after new year (assistance and/or tax returns). It’s amazing to see what knowledge of such mature matters these kids have that I certainly did not have a clue about when I was that age.

          I could go on about lit circle, but I won’t. Another great part of our day was when the DARE officer came. I could tell the kids really look up to him, and I believe he has the kind of personality and position in the community to have a very positive effect on them.

         The day ended with a professional learning staff meeting on “cultural awareness.” I have had lots of lessons on cultural awareness at UGA and learned so many things. I was a little weary at first because I thought I would be hearing the same things one more time. However, the discussion leader brought up a couple of perspectives and issues that I had never heard of or thought about. We got to discuss things in small groups so it was nice to get to somewhat participate in the meeting.

Wednesdays are now officially “Data Team” days. We meet in the morning during planning and in the afternoon after school. We have pretty much been discussing tracking of student progress and trying to figure out a model for ELT. The purpose of data team, from what I can gather, is to track the student’s progress in math and see what kind of accommodations they need to receive during ELT. I don’t know if ELT was originally set up this way, but it is basically an extra math period at my school. Even though Reading, and starting this year, science, are a part of the CRCT, math seems to be the main focus at this school, and I am assuming this county.

On a less “red tapeish” note, the students put on skits that they have been preparing to portray amendments 2-6 of the Bill of Rights. They were of course goofy and couldn’t keep from laughing most of the time (I almost couldn’t contain myself at times also), the groups presenting seemed to hit the nail on the head. The group presenting the right to a fair and speedy trial did really well once they got done laughing through the awkwardness of being in front of everyone. Their trail was very speedy, and it ended with the judge asking if the verdict seems fair. If only we got the same treatment for speeding tickets…

We had science centers today to explore microorganisms. Each group seemed to enjoy the station they were at. There were a few technology stations and physical “creating of a cell station” the kids seemed to really enjoy. I think many of them still have trouble associating computers with learning because whenever the kids are using them, they just want to know how they can win…even when there’s no competition. That could be what they are use to at home.

A couple kids who are in my reading group asked if they could read ahead since they finished chapter one and their job last night. I kind of wanted to say no so everyone could stay on the same pace, but in the end I decided it would be worse to stifle their excitement for reading. So, I told them they could read the next two chapters that we would be reading in our next meeting, and they had to bring questions along with them for us to discuss after reading as a group.

Gots me a readin group!

Today, we started reading groups. I’ve been very excited about this because, even though it’s a small group, I get to lead teach them, and I really enjoy literature.

Now that we have had our first day, I am even more excited! The groups have been made according to ability, but not strictly determined by or limited to that. I have a group of four mid-range ability students. However, I can already sense great things coming from these guys. These four guys always have an opinion or inference about something so I know our discussions will be great, and probably more challenging for me to accommodate them then for them to contribute. I really believe we will all push each other.

Since this was our first day, I allowed them to come up with some rules and guidelines specifically for OUR reading group. Not just, “Mr. Cooper’s Group.” A couple of great ideas they came up with were to have sticky notes present for observations during reading group, and establish an order at the beginning of each meeting so everyone gets a chance to read, and they will know when they read. After those great ideas and more, I knew I probably wouldn’t need to worry about my ideas, but I gave them a few guidelines that I believe should always be explicitly stated in this kind of intimate setting where we can feel vulnerable reading aloud and sharing ideas and inferences: Respect for the reader/speaker. Respect for others ideas, although it is okay to politely disagree. Complete our lit circle jobs for the week (literary luminary, connector, summarizer, vocab enricher, and illustrator). And finally, but very important, keep an open mind about what we are reading.

Next, we dove right into the middle of the story. Nope, that’s not a typo. The first two pages we read were 66 pages into the book. One of our current main focuses in reading is “conflict/resolution.” This excerpt had a great short example of that to get them ready to identify the main conflict once we began reading from the beginning. I also selected this excerpt because it was a pretty intense moment in the novel and I knew it would grab their attention, and hopefully get them excited about the book. The guys quickly identified the conflict and how it was resolved, and we are now off to the races with chapter 1!

This novel will also be a great connection for the Bill of Rights unit we are on in SS right now. I can't wait till one of them makes that text-to-world connection! 

Here is a link to our novel Among the Hidden, by Margaret Haddix:

http://www.haddixbooks.com/books/hidden.html

What does it make when we assume?

MONDAY:

I had a pretty valuable lesson reinforced today. Never assume what the students know and do not know.

During ELT we did a couple of place value activities, and I figured this would just be review for everyone and we would be able to move onto the next number sense topic. I have the feeling my mentor teacher and the support team teacher who was in the room at that time had the same feeling as well. Turns out I was wrong. We played a game with two teams, 10 on each team. Each student had a large number, any digit 0-9. When the teacher called out a number, 342,891 for example, the teams had to order themselves to make that number. In short, mistakes were made by the children when lining up. Even the ones who seem to have a pretty good grasp on everything dealing with place value didn’t seem confident enough to help their team correct mistakes in their order. The biggest problem seemed to be putting a 0 where it shouldn’t be or leaving one out to fill an empty place value.

After the game was over, we went over a couple of examples similar to the ones they were having trouble with in the game. After an explanation, it seemed to either click with, or come back to, some of the students. Still, after doing a group activity today there were a few students getting a little mixed up when including, or not including, a zero.

Listless Student List

Now that I have been in my class for five total days, I feel I know all the students so I will try this suggested reflective practice from the syllabus:  From memory, try to list the name of every student in your classroom.  Who do you name first?  Who is forgotten?  What might this tell you about your interactions about certain students?

Because I am posting on the internet, I won’t list all the student’s names, but I was successful in listing all 22 with pen and paper.

The first student that came to mind was “Brad.” Brad sits in front of my desk, is the largest kid in the class, and has one of the largest personalities. I have had time to get to know him because he is near to me and can be a little mischievous, but still has a great personality. He is bright and fairly charismatic at times. He is often singing quietly, or loudly at times, likes to joke, and horse around in line, or whenever he has something up his sleeve. When it comes to academics, when Brad is on, he is on. He is actually the one who came up with the interpretation about the picture from my 8/15/11 post. He is in the advanced math class, enjoys when we read aloud, and can comprehend very well. These qualities, however, only prevail when he is “on,” as a said earlier. Sometimes, Brad can “space out” pretty intensely. Every now and then, I can look at him and tell he has slipped of f to somewhere else in his mind. When that happens, he doesn’t even hear what’s going on. I feel like he may be a child who, even if his grades aren’t great in class, he is bright enough to test well.  He is also a very likeable child that really knows how to use his personality.

I did not leave anyone out, but the last child I listed was Tamia. Tamia is actually a very good student and has a likeable personality. However, she doesn’t have many questions and never looks to be distressed. She is certainly one student I should spend more time with to get to know her. I know she enjoys dancing from what I’ve seen at recess, and she aspires to be 4-H president. That’s all I can really say about her. This tells me I am not spending enough time with her outside, or inside, of class. I have only seen a couple samples of her work because she never raises her hand for help, so I should be checking in more on her and a couple others similar to her.

Speaking of 4-H, elections are coming up soon. Children began to write their speeches for whatever offices they are running for. Most are excited, but pretty laid back about it, but there are a few who are completely stressed about the election. One child was getting very upset while trying to write her speech today when she realized some people were finishing and she only had a couple lines so far. I let her know she shouldn’t worry because the more thought she put into it, the better it would probably be, and she could probably even get her parents to help her point out her good qualities.

Well, today was a pretty hectic day in some areas, but it was also a pretty productive day in other areas.

I’ll begin with the former. One child had a really tough day due to one instance that he could not put behind him. Here’s the scenario: It’s ELT time, around 10:00, my mentor teacher is speaking with another student, I am on the other side of the room helping another student, and then I hear something along the lines of, “John Doe, go pull your red strip,” the child then raises voice to teacher in a fairly disrespectful manner. I then also hear, “and pull a green strip for being disrespectful.” I have never seen a fifth grader shut down or cry so much. I can’t say it was because the teacher was too stern or unfair at all, but perhaps the child is use to getting his way or is worried about punishment at home. A little later that day during the science lesson, the child tried to plead his case to the teacher, and the teacher told him that it wasn’t a good time and he should come talk at a more appropriate time when a lesson is not in progress. The child shut down and began to cry again. When it was time to pack up and get ready to leave, I was in charge of signing agendas, where the color of the strips children had to pull is indicated. Unfortunately, this sent him into his final spiral. After I signed his agenda, he began to plead his case to me. I tried to sympathize with him, and then tell him to, if there’s a next time he has to pull a strip, accept it for the time being and wait for a good time to discuss the situation with the teacher.  This was not what he wanted to hear so the crying continued all the way to the bus. It ended up being about a 5 minute walk for him and me to walk about ninety yards down the hall…

On a positive note, again dealing with classroom and hallway management, the class made some positive strides today.  For one, transitions were addressed again today. After a noisy first transition, the teacher set up a system on the board (pretty much a 3 strikes deal), where if the kids couldn’t transition quietly and quickly, they would spend recess time practicing. While my mentor teacher was addressing transitions, he went ahead and addressed hallway behavior, setting up the same system. I don’t really care for recess time being taken away, but it seems to be the most popular leverage for many teachers. However, I will say the transitions and hallway behavior for the rest of the day were the best so far. Let’s hope the system and behaviors can remain consistent.

Another positive for today was reading and writing time. During reading, the children were learning the job of “vocabulary enricher” for when we begin reading groups. The teacher read a chapter from, The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe, to the class and they were to list unfamiliar words and the page numbers they were on. After reading, children shared their words with the class, and we all went back to the page and used context clues to figure out their meanings. This was a positive experience because the children were all pretty excited to find out what their words meant, and asked if they could do that for extra reading homework tonight (along with a request for a bonus, but hey, it’s a step forward).

In writing, the children were given time to work on a “Challenge Piece,” where they were given three images the day before, and they are challenged to create an imaginative narrative connecting ideas inspired from the three pictures. The children, my mentor, and I, were so into the writing, all you could hear were sniffs, coughs, and pencil on paper. This is not an extended piece, but just an exercise for practicing generating ideas, but I am excited to see what they have come up with when they publish by Friday!

ST

Today, the second day, I was able to begin to start getting a sense of certain small things. For example, I was able to get a sense of how some students will truly act. One girl who is very pleasant, will always act very pleasant, including the times when she is lying to you about something. Another girl is very bright and can become bored before moving on to the next section or example, and miss small things.

I have also been able to catch on to some things that pertain to teaching and classroom management. Transitions are hard. Period. During the afternoon, we have three subjects in a row. It’s probably pretty tough to have all materials prepared for the next subject so there will be some down time while things are being prepared. Even when the kids are given a task during that time, they still get fidgety and chatty, making it hard to get the next lesson started once everything is prepared. This is one thing that I am apprehensive about when looking forward to my full time teaching.

Thus far, my class seems to get along pretty well with each other. This works out nicely because there aren’t constant arguments disrupting class. However, when everyone gets along they like to chat and joke too much, and going back to the transitions, that can sometimes be a problem. I don’t say this to be misleading, because my mentor and I love to joke around and have fun with the kids. The kids just haven’t figured out the appropriate time for certain things. That’s the only reason I bring that up. Also, another golden problem is that many of the students love to read, but they can distract themselves with it during inappropriate times.

To end this post, I will tell about a fun activity we did today. It was titled, “Willy Wonka Needs Your Help!” My mentor teacher was able to integrate Math and Literature into this activity, which made it all the more fun. He read a passage from Charlie and the Chocolate Factory, where Willy Wonka was sending out boxes of chocolate bars. The children then had to arrange tiles in as many ways possible to make an array for a certain multiple, thus finding all the factors of that multiple. They then cut out grid paper with the dimensions of their arrays and glued it to construction paper to be hung on the walls as references.

The First Day and the Official First Day

I attended the first day of school this past Monday. It was pretty hectic. I think what I took most from the experience is that teachers probably need more than one week of pre-planning if you wish to be close to fully prepared on the first day. I believe this is largely due to new mandates of required curriculum that everyone is expected to keep pace with. So, it becomes a team effort since you have to stay together as teachers and assistants. If it were just one person planning for one class, you could do that on your own throughout the summer, but with so much collaboration needed, it’s hard to get it all done in one week.

Today was my first official day. I tried to spend time getting to know different students whenever opportunities presented themselves. Media center time was great for this because many of them needed help searching for a book on the new search engine, “Destiny Quest,” which is a great way for children to research books and locate them in the library.  When they were having trouble deciding, a natural question that helps me get to know some of them was, “What are you interested in or like to do?”

I got my first great surprise when a kid, who is usually a goofball and not very serious, gave a wonderful interpretation of a photograph during writing today. Here’s the image:

The student said, and I’m paraphrasing, “It looks dark behind him, where he is coming from, like he might have had a bad life there. In front of him, it looks like there is light, like it might be brighter and a better place for him to go and have a good life.”  I could not help but be impressed and wonder if they had previously studied “light and dark” themes/representations, or possibly from what experiences this student could have been drawing.

Something else that I have quickly noticed, as far as teacher duties goes, is that there lots of meetings involved in such a collaborative effort. Just today we had a morning planning meeting with all fifth grade teachers, interventionists, and special ed. teachers. During planning, there was a data team meeting with the Principal and Asst. Principal.  Also, to end the day, another data team meeting that did not include the Principal or Asst. Principal.

one liner

“The only way they get experience with all parts of the writing journey…is to use that process over and over to do important work for them.”

tagxedo thing

http://www.tagxedo.com/artful/6d3c24d33b74492e

Laminack Article (sort of)

I agree with a lot that Laminack says about spelling.  As I learned in my American lit class, it’s really all a matter of perspective; perspective of the writer and what the audience (the teacher in most cases) sees as important.  Is it in the idea or the presentation of that idea from which the value is derived?  In my opinion, the genius certainly lies within the idea when writing.  Now, there are many presentations of the writings that can further and better express the author’s idea, but it is the superficial things such as spelling and comma splices that we should judge a writer on.  Yes, there would be certain need for intervention if a third grade writer is still writing in a way that is indistinguishable.  But we cannot lose focus of what the overall focus of what that intervention should be for.  Should it be for the aesthetic reasons so that everything is proper, or is it for the goal of giving a mind one other way to display its insights and ideas?  However, it is hard to not worry about how children present their writing because we know all too well that in the real world there is value and judgment placed on how proper our writing is.  I myself had to trash a very sincere thank you letter just the other day because I realized after writing it that I had misspelled two words.  I feel the second card I wrote contained less meaning because I was not thinking about the great thing that person had done for me while I was writing it.  Instead I was focused on spelling, punctuation, and yes, handwriting.  I think that is why I never write second drafts of poems.  The first draft is where the meaning is.  When you start editing the second draft is when you begin to try and make your thoughts, feelings, and emotions suitable to be seen and they are no longer in their raw state. Well, I think I had better sign off now before this stream of consciousness writing leads me to talk about what I will be having for dinner tonight.  But that last sentence does lead me to one last thought.  I don’t know how to spell consciousness so thank goodness for the word autocorrect so that I do not have to worry about spelling while I am typing.  Although, I did just spell it correctly the second time.  Maybe the first time was a typing error.  The sentence that begins with “Although” is a sentence fragment.

comments4kids links

http://kidblog.org/MsNaugles5thPeriodMath/madisonu/probability-is-awesome/#comment-773

http://kidblog.org/period23/evelync/bugs-yuck/#comment-648

http://kidblog.org/Grade4A/malaikacheyne/why-saturn-has-its-rings/#comment-721

Things are pretty easy going at the moment.  Just a few things due each week, many of which I have already taken care of.  I just ended that sentence with a preposition, but I never really understood why you cannot do that.  I think everyone will get the point of that sentence even though it ends with a preposition. Anyway, things are pretty laid back right now, but I have a feeling that things will be different starting next week.  That time of year is coming up when everything will be due at the same time, and there are some things that are just impossible to get a head start on for one reason or another.  Oh well, I always push through.  It's really no big deal.  Ten's of million's of Chinese people have to carry all of their belongings with them to wait, for weeks at a time sometimes, for the chance to catch a train to travel multiple days with hardly any room to breath so they can see their family for the one and only time of the year for a couple days during the New Year.  Yeah, I think we'll all push through.  Hopefully with a little less complaining this time...