Week 4 - literacy things

This week was another crazy one. The whole school had practice for their music program which took about an hour in the morning. My class had a substitute for the first 1/3 of the day followed by the assembly where my CT came in halfway through. Then the students went to lunch. After lunch, the principle called all first graders into one room to give the teachers a 20 minute plan period. Overall the only learning part of the day was about two hours at the end where they did literacy and math. In literacy I was able to see the student learn how to compare and contrast two stories that they have been reading for at least a month. They use these two stories for most of their literacy lessons and have become very familiar with them. The teacher used a ven diagram for this activity. I was amazed at some of the ideas that the students came up with. They covered characters, setting, theme and outcome in their answers. The teacher wrote all of their answers in the ven diagram on the easel. I know that this lesson was incomplete although I am not sure what they will do with it in the next few days.
My CT asked me if I’d like to do a read aloud with the students next week and come up with a beginning, middle and end activity for them, since this is another literacy skill they are working on. So, next week I will be doing a read aloud of “If you Bring a Mouse to School” followed by a sequence activity. I’m looking forward to seeing how the students respond to me as their teacher.

Day 4: Text Features

Rachel Sebastian

Thursday, February 20,2020

Today was my first day being able to observe my CT for the whole day. Last week my CT asked if I wanted to teach a lesson on text features, and I was excited to get the opportunity to teach a lesson before my actual lesson. I came up with a game for the students called “Roll a Text Feature.” When I was teaching the lesson, I gathered the students on the carpet and explained the game and demonstrated how they were going to play. I split the class up into groups and I handed out their game boards, scholastic magazines, and dice. They students would take turns rolling the dice and whatever number they landed on they would look at their game board and see what text feature they needed to find in the magazine. One of the most challenging aspects of this was a lot of the students were still unfamiliar with text features because the topic was still new. Now I know when I am in my own classroom or for next time, I will show examples of the text features before the students play the game. This way they can refresh their memory and have a review before jumping right into the lesson. I think this will still be difficult for me because I am just getting in the swing of things of what the students are learning and where they are at in a lot of their topics. But, I received great feedback from my CT and I was able to reflect on myself after I taught the lesson. This will help me become a better teacher and learn from my mistakes. 

Day 4: The Boy Who Harnessed the Wind

• By: Nadine Hamideh
• Thursday February 20, 2020

Today was a very fun day for the students as there was an assembly. The students started the day by completing their morning work and then waited until they were called down to the assembly. My CT then told me that I can read them all a book, so I read them the book called "The boy who harnessed the wind" and they all loved it. All the students participated and were engaged, I asked many thought provoking questions and they all gave great responses. My CT told me that this would be great practice for when it comes to actually performing my whole group lessons. She informed me that its key to ask questions throughout a read- aloud to get students thinking and engaged, so she really liked how I was able to incorporate many questions on the spot. After the book was finished, many of the students began telling me that they are so happy that the crops got water, and that the main character was so brave, as well as their favorite parts throughout the story. It was a great read and the students loved it. After that it was time for the assembly, and students were very excited for that, after the assembly finish the students came back to the classroom and began working on their writing journals. My CT also explained to me a great learning strategy that she likes to incorporate within her class, being Think-Pair-Share and while they were writing out their writing journals, she had students think about what they want to write and write about it individually and then had them pair up and share their writing journal entry with a buddy. I thought this was a great strategy and I will surely incorporate it in some of my future lessons. The students went to lunch and when they got back they practiced number bonds and addition equations. My CT then put me with another small group and had me go over the math equations with the students. It all was just a great experience and can not wait to see what comes next!

More Responsibility

Throughout my day today, I was given more responsibility, because my CT was absent.  While I really enjoy learning from my CT, today I had the opportunity to understand what exactly my role, expectations, and responsibilities as a classroom teacher will be like, in the future.  I was able to facilitate whole-group plans, that were left by the sub, as well as lead transitional portions of the day and ensure that they were successful.  Throughout the day, I learned that students tended to have better listening ears when they knew exactly what was expected of them.  I also realized that they had better behavior when they were engaged in their learning experiences.  I feel like being direct with your instruction, clear with your learning objectives, and planning for instruction that includes student involvement are all important concepts to incorporate in one's teaching.  I'm glad I was able to practice these concepts this week.

Day 4: Donut Shop Challenge-Open For Business!

by: Amnah Hzaiyen
Thursday, February 20, 2020

Today, the students were working on a group literacy project challenge where they had different worksheets to complete with their groups related to literacy skills they are working on. The groups received prizes for first, second, and third place. All but about two of the students were engaged and excited to work on this assignment and worked pretty well in groups. My CT added doughnut decorations all around the classroom and brought in doughnut shop hats for the students to wear to get into character. It was a super cute and fun idea, and I will definitely love to do something like this for my own classroom one day! With this challenge, it made me realize the importance in creating team-building activities for the students to engage in. Of course, being young children, they came across issues that they felt needed to be handled by the teachers. My CT and I would step in only to guide them to realize they must work together and solve these issues together as a team to figure out how to solve the correct answers or any disagreements they had. Studies show the importance of creating team-building activities in the classroom, and the benefits it can carry along in the students' lives even after school, such as in the work place some day.

Week Ending 2/14

This week I went two days for my field experience. The first day was honestly rough. I taught a small group math lesson with the lowest students in the class.

It was super difficult to keep the students on task because they wanted to sit with their friends and draw all over the whiteboards that they were using to do their problems on. Honestly, I wish it had gone better, but my CT said that it wasn't uncommon to have this issue with that group of students. It collectively took us an hour and a half to get through about nine problems. I didn't even finish my problems with my group because I spent most of my time attempting to keep them on task. And while some of these students are really low, some of the others in the group have at least the foundational skills required to progress with what I was teaching. The lower students didn't even have that, so it was really, really frustrating. I had to be patient with them, and I found that difficult because in my head I was thinking 'how hard is it to get through nine simply two-digit addition and subtraction problems? It shouldn't be that hard'. But it really was. I need to figure out some other strategies for teaching math, which is something I'm sorely lacking, I think.

The second day, the students did a lot of their routine testing. The first did their math tests, which I graded. It was honestly a great experience to grade some of their stuff because it showed me the skills that each student was lacking. Some students wouldn't show their work despite getting the correct answer, which is a skill they really need to have down pat for high school. They also did a spelling test. Mind you, these students are in the second grade. Their spelling was honestly atrocious. For compound words that they had worked on all week, some of these students are performing at a kindergarten level. A lot of these students are not strong readers, so I'm not surprised that they are struggling with spelling.

My goal for the week was to practice positive relationships with the students. I definitely want to get more in line with telling the students the positives of what they're doing rather than the negative because a lot of the time, they are doing things right. Usually, however, people like to focus on the negative. I want to definitely start giving that positive feedback and that positive reinforcement for the students to keep them engaged and on task.

Music Program

On Thursday, students were preparing for their music program that is designed as a celebration for Black History month. Students spent most of their half-day, in the gym, being taught by the music teacher.  Through observing these music practices, I began to wonder what the best teaching method would be for that amount of elementary students.  In order to address behavior, the music teacher wrote down names of those behaving.  She stated that she would bring treats for those that were on her list.  While many students listened, because they wanted her treat, others decided they would act out, because they felt as if they never stood a chance to her list, in the first place.  This made me start to wonder, would there be a more efficient way to address behavior in a large group setting such as this?  In addition, I found that more students would participate if they saw the adults in the room partaking in the motions as well as singing the songs.  I feel like students feed off of your energy, so it is important to participate and make their learning experiences enjoyable.