Day 30: Lady Liberty

November 5, 2015

I taught my third lesson in my American Symbols lesson today. It was by far my favorite one yet! The students were so engaged throughout and everything flowed smoothly. As my motivational device I had one of my students come to the back of the room out of site of the other sites and put my Statue of Liberty crown on him. I told the students that Mike* and I went on a trip to borrow this crown for our lesson today. I prompted the class about who we borrowed the crown from in order for them to say "the Statue of Liberty". This really got all of the students focused on the task at hand. I made Statue of Liberty "puzzles". The pieces had a true or false facts next to a section of the statue. The students had to put the pieces in order. The false facts would not fit into the puzzle so that helped students determine what was true and what wasn't. I paired students up to help each other with reading the pieces. I had strong readers with weak readers and this seemed to really help. After each student had their puzzles completed I brought them over to the SmartBoard rug. Each student got an iPad and I used the website Kahoot! to check the students puzzles in quiz form. I discovered this website recently and I was so excited to try it in an actual classroom. You can make quizzes, discussions or surveys. You can also choose from quizzes that other users have made and allowed for public access. The quiz questions were up on the SmartBoard and the students answered on the iPads after entering the quiz using a game pin.

My co-op gave me great feedback and she asked for a copy of the activity to save for future use. We also discussed other ways we could use Kahoot! in the classroom. We had slight technology issues but for the most part it all went smoothly.

Day 29: Substitute Teacher

November 3, 2015

Today my co-op was only at school for half the day. She left at 11 and I was going to be teaching the remainder of the day. I knew about this a few days in advance and I was excited the whole time leading up to it. So far I've just been doing Math Warm-Up daily and Social Studies. Today I got to teach Handwriting, Science, Math and do a read aloud for the class. I was surprised at how not nervous I was. I felt extremely confident going into the remainder of the day. Today was my 29th day in the classroom so I had 28 days of observing and helping out with the other subjects to know what I had to do.

The Handwriting and Math lessons were straight from their textbooks/teacher edition books. I created the Science lesson. My co-op received information a few weeks ago on a energy conservation poster contest. She asked me to get them started on this. I did a brief overview of what it means to save energy using a website a found that gave you a virtual tour of saving energy throughout your house. The class then went back to their desks to begin working on a rough draft of their posters which needed to display a way they can help save energy. This concept proved to be a little challenging for them. They were able to verbally talk about what they would do but they struggled when it came to representing that concept in picture form.

There was a substitute in the room with me the whole time I was there. She taught religion at the end of the day. It was interesting to see the class taught from a different person. Although the lesson was out of their books she put her own twist on it. The students were very engaged and did exceptionally well when answering review questions. The substitute asked them if they had any questions about what they learned about and a lot of the students had higher order thinking questions to ask. This really impressed me.

I really enjoyed getting to teach for half of the day today. It made me even more excited for student teaching to begin when I will be adding more and more subjects to my work load. Today was a great day!

Day 28: Schedules

November 2, 2015

I cannot believe it is already November!! I decided I wanted to focus today's post on the "scheduling" aspect in a 1st grade classroom. This was always something I wondered about coming into the room. I was curious if certain subjects were always at the same time, if some subjects were taught everyday or just some, if there was allotted time on the schedule for each subject, etc. What I have learned after being in the classroom for over 10 weeks now is that how you schedule your elementary classroom is up to you and each teacher has their own method. I like the schedule my co-op has. She has times for each subject, as I will show below. However, I have more importantly learned in my 10 weeks that this schedule is 100% flexible. I don't think there has been a single day where we begin each subject at the start time on the schedule. AND THAT IS OKAY!! The time frames give a rough estimate of when you should wrap one thing up to prepare for the next. Other teachers in the school don't even use times on their schedule, they just list the subjects in order that they will be completed. For some people they don't want to have the feeling of being done with something too early or running over time with one activity. Everyone has their own preference. Personally, I like the idea of having times. It allows me to gauge if we are on track to complete everything for the day or if we will have some catching up to do. Here is what a Monday looks like in first grade...

7:40- Unpack

8:00- Morning Meeting

8:15- Whole Group (Phonics, Spelling, English)

8:45- Technology

9:35- Snack

9:45- Reading Centers

10:10- Music

11:00- Reading Centers

11:30- Recess/Lunch

12:15- Drink/Bathroom

12:20- Read Aloud

12:45- Math (and Math Warm-up)

1:20- Kid-Writing 

2:00- Religion

2:35- Pack Up

Each day's schedule is a little different. There is always Morning Meeting, Whole Group, Reading Centers, Math and Religion. There is at least one special each day (some days there are two). The three days without a second special the class does Handwriting. Kid- Writing is done Monday, Wednesday and Friday. Science is done on Tuesday and Social Studies is done on Thursdays. This gives the students and teacher a little change each day and it also allows for a variety of subjects to be covered. 

Day 27: Happy Halloween!!

October 30, 2015

Today was the Halloween celebration at school! The students arrived and were ready to celebrate all day long. The teachers got to wear their costumes all day (myself and two other teachers were the witches from the movie Hocus Pocus). The students brought their costumes to school and changed after lunch. The whole class was not in the mood to focus and my co-op adjusted for that. First thing in the morning the class went to their Library special and when they got bock we had a morning meeting and did the weekly spelling test. After that the Halloween celebrating began. We went over to the 2nd grade classroom and did a Frankenstein craft. When that was done we moved down to 4th grade. Myself and the other intern planned an integrated lesson. Each 1st grader was paired with a 4th grader. The older students helped the younger students make a hand print painting of a witch or vampire (student's choice). When the painting was done the students worked together to collaborate on a story about their witch or vampire. The 4th grade students did the writing. When they were done the pair went to the front of the room to share their painting and their writing (pictures to come). This activity went really well. One thing that I really wanted my first graders to gain from this was practicing their descriptive story telling. A lot of their writing is very basic and lacks detail. The 4th grade students did a great job at prompting them with questions to make them think of materiel to add.

The students skipped recess and went to lunch early. After lunch was over parents began arriving to join in the Halloween fun, volunteer to run activities and to help students change into their costumes. After everyone was dressed we did a two-block parade around town as an entire school. We then made our way outside for carnival games where students won candy and treats. The day concluded with a Halloween snack in the cafeteria paired with a presentation from a theater group Popcorn Hat Players. Students had the opportunity to participate on stage and interact with the lady narrating. Overall, it was a great day and it was obvious how much fun the students had. Next week though its back to a full week of "classes".

Happy Halloween!!

Day 26: Running Records

October 29,2015

Today while the class was doing their reading centers I pulled two students out (one at a time) to do running records. The classroom teacher was trying to decide on whether or not it was time to move those 2 students up a level in reading. She uses Reading A-Z. I've done running records with this program before so I was already familiar with how it worked. As much as I'd like to think running records provide a concrete answer on what level the student's reading is, after today my opinion has really changed.

Mike's* Running Record
95 word book
16 errors
4 self corrections

Accuracy- 83%....this would put him in the "Frustrational" category.
If a teacher saw this raw information she would move Mike* down a level and re-do a running record.

Insight: 8 of the 16 errors were exactly the same. Mike said "fast" instead of "faster" on every page in the book. If you only count this as 1 error and not 8, changes Mike's* Accuracy to a 91%. This would put this level text into an instructional level.

The book was about different animals. 2 of the animals used were not on a 1st grade reading level (in my and my co-op's opinion); tortoise and antelope. These also added on 4 more errors (both animal names were used twice).

My co-op decided that we would retest early next week on the same level just with another book. She had very similar views on the possible skewed results. I do find running records very helpful and for the most part fairly accurate; however, I do believe that you have to analyze the errors and recalculate based on that evaluation.

We also finally had our final production of the This is a Moose play that the class has been working on. They all did great!! We had a few parents that came and the 2nd, 3rd and 4th grade classes. Hopefully by next week it will be up online for all to see.

Day 25: Pumpkin Day!

October 27, 2015

Today was Pumpkin Day in first grade!! The whole afternoon was filled with pumpkin stations. The students began by "picking" their own pumpkin (off of the carpet not from a patch). The class was then broke up into 3 groups. We made sure to mix up the groups up from their everyday reading groups. This gave the students the ability to work with a different set of peers. There were 3 stations the students rotated between. They were all math and science related.

At the first station there was a pumpkin cut open. Each student made a prediction of how many seeds were going to be inside. They as a class then counted all of the seeds. Each student counted seeds into groups of ten and put each group into a plastic cup. After all three groups went through we counted the cups by tens to get the total number.

At the second station students began by predicting if their pumpkin would sink or float. I thought that everyone would predict their pumpkin would sink, however there was a good mixture of answers. We had a container of water on the table and each student took a turn placing their pumpkin in. A lot of them were surprised when their "heavy" pumpkin floated on the top. The second portion of this station was weighing their pumpkin. Each kid weighed them self on the scale, then weighed them self again while holding their pumpkin. Using subtraction they found the weight of their pumpkins.

The final station was all about measurement. Students measured the height of their pumpkin using cubes, and measured the circumference using yarn and a yard stick. They then went into the hall and made a prediction about their pumpkin rolling in a straight line or not. Everyone then got the opportunity to roll their pumpkin and mark how far it went with masking tape. They were all very engaged in this and enjoyed the "competition" aspect of who's pumpkin rolled the furthest.

After all the stations were complete everyone got to paint their pumpkin. This was a great conclusion to Pumpkin Day and it was fun to see how each student's pumpkin was decorated differently.

Day 24: Extended Excused Absences

October 26, 2015

Today was the first time in over 2 weeks that we had a full class of students. There have been kids out sick and 3 students had extended excused absences in the past month. One student spent a week in Disney, another spent a week in Boston and another spent 2 weeks in Hawaii. Students get absences of this length approved ahead of time. This allows them to also get their work in advance. This is nice because they don't get as far behind. However, it is challenging from the teacher's point of view to prepare work for a single student two weeks in advance. Two students returned from trips today and I spent the beginning of the day correcting their many packets of work. Each of them had an error here and there but there were no major issues with specific topics. This indicated to us that they are able to take the tests they missed while they were gone. Since there are multiple we will spread them out through the week so they are not overwhelmed with so many in one day.

It is definitely difficult when students miss school, for both the student and the teacher. You have to add in to your daily plans upon their return on how to get them back on track. Students also get out of their usual school routine.

We have an exciting week ahead of us. It may be challenging to keep the class' attention throughout some of the days because they have a lot to look forward to.

Tomorrow is Pumpkin Day.
Thursday is the This is a Moose Play
Friday is the Halloween Parade and Carnival

I'm excited for this week, I can't imagine how the students are feeling!