The one thing that makes me excited about learning is when I learn something and I can relate it to the real world and situations in my life. I find it hard to understand things that do not pertain to something I may eventually experience. One of the hardest ways for me to learn is by just reading long, boring, informational text. I find it a lot easier if after I read a text, I am shown by visuals or a hands on activity what I have just read about.

I find it to be very exciting to also see this in my students. This happened to me this year in my classroom during the first semester. My first graders had been learning about absorbency and how certain materials absorb things while others don’t. The students could repeat the definition of absorb, but I didn’t feel that they truly understood the meaning of the word. At the end of the unit, the students were given numerous different materials and were told to build a house for “the three little pigs”. This house had to withstand a windstorm as well as a rain storm (caused by a person blowing air and a watering can). After working for about a half hour on their houses, my CT walked around and tested them. It was amazing to see the student’s reactions to the tests. They finally had figured out what it meant to absorb something. I thought this was an awesome hands on activity that the students can look back on when asked about absorbency in the future.

I hope that during my internship year and in years after that I will be able to have classroom materials that I can use to do as many hands on activities as possible. It is very important for students to do more than sit in their chairs when learning things. I think it is vital for students to be able to move around and figure out how everything they are learning will relate to their future lives.

I am using this blog entry to talk about the testing that has been going on in my classroom recently. The students have been working hard and preparing for these state tests that they have had to take the week before spring break and finish up this week. They have been going over the important lessons they have learned throughout their first grade year, and I have been very proud of them.

I really thought it was a good idea for my CT to give them practice tests. She made up a four page math test for the students to take. A great idea she had, that I will probably incorporate into my classroom was to tape two manila folders together to make a sort of barrier for the students. On the back of this barrier she wrote “Shhh, I’m working!” The students loved these little cubby areas that they were introduced to. They felt as though they each had their own little space to work. This special space helped my CT teach the students how important it is to be honest when taking a test as important as this one and how it is wrong to cheat off of others or allow others to cheat off of you.

The biggest concern I have with this test is that the directions say that the teacher is only allowed to say the directions one time. An important thing I learned this year was to repeat myself so that all students have time to comprehend what is being asked of them. After the first day, my CT explained to me her frustration with students asking her what they were supposed to do numerous times, and she wasn’t allowed to answer them. I also feel that giving this test the week it was given is a terrible idea. Students are thinking about their spring break plans and sometimes families chose to leave for spring break early. For these students this was not available because of the tests they were obligated to take. Overall, I wish that the tests were given in a different time with availability to bend the rules a little bit. I know this would not be fair or appropriate, but these first graders had an extremely hard time with it.  

After learning about the Basal reading programs, I find that it would be something very difficult to use in a classroom. Before being in the classroom this year, I probably would have thought of it to be a great idea and something that I could use easily and effectively. Now, after being in a classroom for about 5 hours a week, I believe that it would be nearly impossible to use the Basal reading programs.

            Basal reading programs do not allow students of different levels to be in one classroom together. If they are in a classroom together some students will be completely lost while other students will probably become extremely bored. I find it very hard to believe that a teacher will ever encounter an entire classroom where the children are all at the same level of reading. As we have learned about in class this semester differentiation is a very important thing to incorporate into your classroom. It is important to accommodate your lesson plans and the available reading for all students in the classroom.

            If I had to use this program I would definitely talk to teachers of other grade levels and see if we could figure out a system where we could share material so that all of the students in my classroom are able to work with material they are comfortable with. I know that I would be very frustrated if this were not possible and I would try my hardest to help my students understand the reading!

Mike!
I really like your idea to use a wiki to explain emotional literacy. I guess I have never really thought about getting a wiki account or even adding my input on pages when I know there is information I would like to add. Things that I find on Wikipedia always seem more like bland facts to me. I loved your idea under “My Learnings” about adding stories you and your friends make. It is kind of like a blog, but a blog that is not so private. I guess you could say it’s like Youtube for written pieces of work. I have been really getting into writing poetry, and wiki just might be the place to talk about different kinds of poetry and write down my feelings about it. I believe that wiki might have been one of the best ways to talk about emotional literacy. I loved how you gave definitions and described things, but also gave specific examples and links to other pages. Examples are definitely important when trying to teach about certain literacies. The list of feeling words that you included is awesome! When looking at your project I sat down with my roommates and tried to think of sentences to use the words we hadn’t heard before in. It was very entertaining! Overall, I really enjoyed your new literacies project, and I can’t wait to try it out!!
-Cassie   

Above is my response to Mike about his wiki project; which I thoroughly enjoyed! I also really enjoyed being able to make my won literacies project. I thought that I knew everything about power point, but when I looked at the websites, I realized that most of the time I just throw a power point together without using transitions, other websites, etc. I usually just use different definitions or examples of work and add pictures. I am very excited to continue to use the wiki our class has made and use different ideas from everyone in my TE class in my classroom internship next year!

I believe that fluency and vocabulary are very important when looking at language arts instruction. Fluency is something that you don’t really find as much in the lower elementary classes. Some of the students in my classroom are able to read the books set in front of them with ease; pronouncing the words correctly and reading smoothly. Others have a difficult time reading the books at the level they are supposed to be at. This is why these students work with my CT separately at some points during the week, while others work with a specific reading teacher at the school.

A main point that my CT uses to encourage students to learn how to spell words is by allowing them to spell everything phonetically. She then asks the students to read what they have written to her, and she makes some corrections if the words are really butchered, otherwise she leaves the words written the way they are. Some of the students constantly ask for help with spelling words, and when they ask if they have spelled a word right, she tells them if you think it looks right then leave it, or it looks pretty good to me!

I think it is also important for children to learn as much vocabulary as possible. I believe that it is important to not only have spelling words for the students every week, but vocabulary words and a word board to keep your students learning the definition of words as well as how and when to use them. This is something that I have not seen much in the field, but I hope to incorporate into my classroom when I start teaching.

In my classroom, I do not see a lot of writing practice or instruction. A lot of what I see is working on worksheets and learning the different sounds of certain letter combinations. Right now, my students are trying to learn how to spell words rather than write complete paragraphs. The only time I really see them writing complete paragraphs is when they are writing in their journals. I decided to ask my CT this week if I could look at a couple of the journals to see how far the kids have come since the beginning of the year. I found that a lot of the students who I thought were working hard and progressing really were, and it showed in their work. At the beginning of the year, a lot of the students could barely write one sentence when asked to write about a certain topic. Now, these students are writing at least five sentences and using details as well as illustrations to show what they are talking about.

Some of the journals I looked at really disappointed me, because I have seen some of the students write extraordinary pieces of work, but they do not try as hard as they can when asked to write in their journals. I feel like these students are not really motivated when doing their work and sit at their desks doing absolutely nothing instead of actually writing. I wish these students had more motivation and for lack of a better word, were not as lazy as they are. If anyone has any advice on how to keep young children interested in writing, please let me know! All they are worried about is spelling words right, so they tend to not use words they don’t know how to spell.

My lesson plan for literacy went pretty well. I know the directions said that we were supposed to choose a story to read and have a discussion, but as I looked at the details for this lesson, I realized that the students in my classroom were not going to be very good at actually having a discussion that involved talking with each other and feeding off each other’s thoughts. I talked to my CT about this and we decided that it might be easier to read a poem to the classroom and have the children talk about the poem, the themes and patterns of the poem as well as rhyming. A lot of the discussion with my first grade class was about what a rhyme is and how the students knew what rhymes were. They also used their prior knowledge to talk about other places that they saw words that rhyme and tried to list different groups of words that rhyme; even if they were made up words.

I enjoyed this because I really wanted the students to understand the concept of rhyming and how the ends of words sound alike. If I could do my lesson over, I would have planned more time. I felt a little bit pressured for time half way into my lesson. After I had finished I realized that it took over an hour and a half, which my CT and I had not planned on. Although my classroom is not very discussion based, they did a pretty good job talking about their experiences with rhyming and patterns.

Overall, I thought I did pretty well with this lesson. Compared to my TE401 lessons on social studies and science topics, I was a lot more confident and was able to worry about what the students were actually learning rather than what I was saying and if I was sounding professional. I am very excited to use all that I have learned next year to build units in my internship! J

I am not too sure what to write in this blog. Whenever we have assigned topics, I tend to vear away from them, but now that we are able to write about whatever we would like, my mind draws a blank. I would just like to thank anyone who reads this for all of their suggestions and support during round table this week. It’s a topic that no one really wants to talk about, because no one wants to consider it actually happening. I think that everyone had really thoughtful and helpful ideas – it was greatly appreciated!! On a different note, I have been a lot more happy this semester with how my field placement is going. I have been able to actually have a lot more interaction with the students and teach small lessons. I have been able to sit down and talk one on one with my CT not only about issues in the classroom, but about issues the children I babysit have gone through. She has been able to refer me to or let me borrow plenty of resource books to help with any problems I encounter. Overall, this semester in the field has been a lot more beneficial to me than last semester.

This week I have chosen to write about something that has really bothered me in my CT’s classroom. It really has nothing to do with the teaching aspect, but more importantly has to do with becoming attached to the students. There is a child in my class whom we have recently found out was sexual molested by a family member. All we know was that it was not an immediate family member, and this child’s immediate family is absolutely in shock about the situation. The student’s older brother is in third grade and comes into the classroom at least two times a day to make sure his sibling is doing alright. I know this child needs the right kind of love and care at a time like this but how do we do this as teachers without singling the student out even more. I am sure this student already feels violated and ‘different’ from their fellow classmates, and I am not sure how to act or what to do. They are constantly hungry lately. My CT says that this is a way of comfort. (comfort food) It absolutely amazes me that a six year old is in need of comfort food. I thought only girls did this when they were breaking up with a boyfriend!! The entire situation makes me sick to my stomach. I go home at night and cannot stop thinking about the police interviews and rape kit tests this child had to undergo and how violated they feel. I find myself starring at this student while my CT is teaching. I know this is wrong, but I really cannot help it! If anyone has any advice on how to act as to not make a scene it would be much appreciated. I am so irate that this would happen to one of my students and I don’t know if I am handling the situations correctly.

I was really excited to do this lesson plan because I am a Language Arts major. Once I talked to my CT I realized that literacy is such a large subject in the first grade classroom; there are hundreds of things to choose from. We sat down together and decided that I would have fun teaching the students about rhyming words. A couple of months ago, I had gone to my CT about a young boy I baby-sit. He is in first grade and when his mom got his report card, it said that he was having trouble with rhyme. My CT gave me books, worksheets, and games to play with him and now he loves rhyming every word he says. Because I have some experience trying to teach students this age about rhyme, I thought it would be fun. I have not decided what poem I am going to use to start my lesson about rhyming, but it will probably be a poem by Shel Silverstein. I always enjoyed reading his poems as a child, and I am sure my class will enjoy them too. I am going to read the poem to the class, and then I haven’t figured out exactly what I am going to do to teach the students about rhyme. I have figured out that after my lesson, the students are each going to get a sheet of paper of which they are going to fold in half. With this paper, the students are going to write a word on each side of the fold that rhyme with each other. They will then make an illustration of the two words. I will take these pieces of art home with me and bring them back the next day bound together in a book so the class has a book of rhymes that they made all by themselves. I am very excited to do my lesson! I know I still have a lot to work on, but I am discussing it with my CT next week!