October 6, 2015
In all of my education classes we seem to talk about ways to give our students experiences beyond the classroom on a budget. Two common topics are walking field trips and virtual field trips. Today first grade got to take a "field trip" to tour the church. The church is approximately an entire 25 steps from the school and we were back into the classroom within 30 minutes. We walked over to the church and met the priest there. He gave the class an excellent tour of all the different areas of the church. For a good majority of our time there he brought the class up on the altar and allowed them to touch some different items and get a closer look. I was surprised how engaged all of the students were. In their religion lesson the day prior we looked at things that are found in all Catholic churches. This gave the students some certain things to look for.
3 weeks ago the students began doing timed math facts. Twice a week they are given a paper that has 36 addition problems. The students are timed for 2 minutes to see how many they can get done. After each set I go through and date their papers and write their score down. It then goes in a folder that keeps all of their completed timed papers. Today I decided to create a log to track their scores. I created a word document and printed one off for each student. This was a much easier way to visualize the students progress and see whether or not they are improving or going backwards. There were only 2 students that seemed to make some progress each time. The other students have "roller coaster scores". By this I mean one timing they're high, the next they're lower and then they may go back up. The goal is to begin to see an improvement from the 1st set in the week to the 2nd set in the same week. Once students complete the entire paper in 2 minutes or less, 3 times in a row, we will decrease the time they have to complete the problems.
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