Surpising Findings

The biggest surprise that I have found over this quarter has been how much I love teaching and working with kindergartners. I always knew that loved playing with kids that age but I had no idea what it would be like to teach them. I didn't even know the kinds of things that kindergartners did. What has surprised me so much is how much I love teaching the 5 & 6 year olds in my class. It's amazing to see how much the students can learn and absorb; it really is like seeing a sponge soaking up water. They come into the classroom with a huge smile on their face and just want to tell you a story. They listen when you talk to them and they get excited when you get excited. Finally, the things that I have come to take for granted, such as being able to sound out a work, are amazing discoveries to these students. The wonder on their face inspires me even more to think creatively to teach lessons that will continue to amaze and engage the kindergartners in my class.

Blog Post #3- teaching and reteaching

(1) Learning target: list the short term learning target/objective of the lesson, along with a short description of the learning experiences section of your lesson plan.

The short term learning target of the lesson that I taught was that the kindergartners would be able to create three letter words with the vowel 'a' in the middle of the word.

For this lesson, I chose four students to preteach this lesson to. These were the students whose status I hope to improve. The students were given 'word lines' which shows them which direction to place the letters (left to right). Also, the students were given cards with different letters on them, most of the letters being those that we have learned so far this year. The consonants are green and the vowel is purple (although the kids don't yet know vowels and consonants) and their jobs it to create a words with 2 consonants and 1 vowel (green, purple, green pattern). Once the students have created their words they will record them onto a piece of paper. Then, when I teach this lesson to the whole group, these four students will be my 'teacher helpers' and the 'experts' of this lesson. They will help me teach the process of creating and recording words and they will also help their classmates if they are having a hard time.

(2) Evidence: describe what students did or said to let you know whether you were successful in meeting this goal (what evidence led you to this conclusion?)

I created some of my own words and asked the students to give me a thumbs up if I had actually created a word (consonant, vowel, consonant) and a thumbs down if I had not. Then I asked students why they thought I had or hadn't created a word and this showed me that the students did understand the learning goal for the lesson. Also, after looking at the student's recording sheets I can see that they were all successful.

(3) Reteach: describe how you could/will reteach the lesson for students who may need extra support beyond what you offered in the lesson, and

I will be reteaching this lesson to these four students before I teach it to the whole class. I will give the students a reminder of the task objectives and ask them comprehension questions about the requirements of a word. Also, I will repeat the questioning process where I create correct and incorrect words and ask them if the word is right or not. Also, I will want to reteach what being my teacher's helper means and what appropriate help looks like.

(4) Extend: describe how you could/will extend the lesson for students who successfully met your expectations (i.e., how will you help students build on what they've already mastered?).

For those students who pick up on this very fast and do not have trouble understanding this concept, I will ask them to try and sound out the words they created. The students have learned the sounds of almost all of the letters we will be working with and I will have those quick students try and piece together the sounds to read the words. Then if students master this I will ask them to circle all of the real words that they created using the letter cards.

Work in progress

This past week I have started trying to focus a little more on my 'Documenting Student Learning' table that I created to help me keep track of the things that I notice about each student. I have found myself having somewhat of a difficult time with this. It seems as though when I am observing and trying to make really thoughtful notes about the students, I am less engaged with them. So, then of course once I notice this I try and correct it as soon as possible. The problem is though that once I am completely engaged in the students, I forget to write things down. I am still of course making observations all of the time, I just assume that I will remember the observations later, which of course I do not. Then I feel like I have to make a choice between writing down my observations and being 100% with my students.....and of course the latter always wins out, which is why I still don't have many observations about the students. I think what makes writing down my observations difficult for me is that I am always doing something with the students. Usually I am working with a small group on an activity that requires a lot of attention. I have to continually explain their task, motivate them to continue, remind them of behavior expectations, expand their thinking with questions prompts, and the list goes on and on. As I head into the next week, I am going to try and come up with a better way to do the observations while still being completely engaged with the students.
Any suggestions? Have you had this problem? What do you do to get your observations down on paper?

Signs of Personal Growth

One conviction that I came into the classroom having was the notion that everything must be stated explicitly regarding rules and expectations. The whole school rule at LU is that "No one has the right to interfere with the learning, safety, or well-being of others." Although this rule does not state explicitly all of the rules of the school (what exactly might interfere with someone's learning?), the students understand that their actions do affect others and that they cannot negatively affect the environment of the other individuals of the school. What I have learned from LU and its main overarching rule is that it may not be exactly what the rules are or how explicit each of the rules and expectations are stated, but how you deal with broken rules or strict rule followers. Lately, I have found myself looking around the class and being amazed at how well-behaved these kindergartners are, many of whom never stepped inside a school until one month ago. I think that as long as the students understand that their teacher truly cares about them and wants what is best for them, then you will be on the right track when it comes to classroom management. Clearly the students in my kindergarten class understand that their teacher cares for them, and through some trial and error and testing the limits, the students are turning into pretty well-behaved five and six year olds.

Welcome

Welcome to my Internship Blog. I'm not sure what will come of this but I hope that you enjoy whatever I end up posting on here.

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