Winter Blog.... 2/22

I have been able to see several different styles of how teachers teach vocab. In my dyad experience (3^rd grade) the teacher had posters all over the room. It would have the word and the definition written next to it. To help support their learning she had a half sheet of the most common words and the proper spelling. To help assist in their learning, in the morning when they came in the students would have to look up two words, write the definition (this always ended up being the first one), page number, the words that were on the top of both pages, and 2 synonyms. This was a good way to get the students exposed to how use a dictionary, also what we can learn from a dictionary. Looking back I am not sure that it really made that much of an impact on the students. I noticed that many of them did it as fast as they could or just took the first definition they found. This means they did not see words could have more than one meaning, or really look at what it said.

            In my main placement (kindergarten) the teacher likes to take a different approach. While we have not used the dictionary (nor do I think we will use it), we still teach new words to the students. When teaching the students a new word we tell them the kid friendly version, but also the “big college” word. They really seem to like that we do this; it makes them feel important and cool that they are leaning the words that I am learning in college. One thing my teacher has learned from working in kindergarten for so long is that when you put the words with movement and actions, the students have a better success rate for remembering the words. We have a word wall for the sight words, and have posters with words and definitions that we bring out when we want to remember what the definitions are. 

Winter Blog.....2/15

I got to teach today!

9:00-9:40

            We started the day off with normal calendar routine. After reading our routine we read a few poems. Then we moved to sight words. After saying, spellings, saying I had each student spell one word without seeing the word. We also did some zoo phonics.

Reading workshop

           

            We continued with our center work. I worked with both Pink, and Purple groups. In Pink group: we read “The Chocolate Cake,” during the book I would pause and have them summarize (or retell) what was going on. I told them for the next time, I want them to focus on reading with expression. I noticed that they were not reading the ?,!. So we re-reviewed what those symbols meant.

In Purple group: we read the book “Blizzards,” and worked on retelling what we had read. Then they picked out new books.

Writing workshop

            We reviewed how to write a letter and the different components of a letter. Then the students went back to their desks and wrote their own letter.

Math workshop

            We did student page 131. We worked on if two numbers are equal or not. Then representing numbers with circles and then finding our five groups and circling them.

End of the day

            Someone pulled the ear off one of the stuffed bunnies. So tomorrow NO ONE CAN play with the stuffed animals, I did talk to them about how that is not how we play with others toys, and you would not like it if I am into your house and broke one of your stuffed animals.

Other than that they did really well today!!

It was a really great experience to see what it would like to be a sub/ teacher. I had to plan my day when I got to school. During our specialist I sat down and wrote what I had to do, and then how much time I was going to spend on each subject. It really helped that I put the exact times of when and what we were going to do. I am really looking forward to when I can get to full time teach!!!

Winter Blog.... 2/8

At the beginning of the year, we started off by telling your students how we read books. As the where in kindergarten we look at the pictures and try and read the words we know. My CT started off by having the students “reading” for about five minutes. Now that we are about half way through the year, they are reading for about 20-30 minutes. Routman talked about how you have to build up to reading for a long time. Which is very true in kindergarten, they start off with very small reading workshops then build up to longer times. As they learn how to read, you can give them more time to explore books. I know that my CT had a bin for where she put books that she has read out loud to the class. Then when it is reading work shop the kids always “fight” over those books, and then may “read” (most of the time they have memorized the book) the book.

Another point that Routman brought up was Independent reading. Based on how Routman described Independent reading this is what my CT does during her reading workshop. On Mondays she has the students come over in their level groups pick new books, (the books are separated by level) so she had them pick from the boxes that will “just right” books for each group. While each group is picking out their books, the other students are independent reading. Before the independent reading time she will give the students reading goals. Right now the students are working on Character, setting, problem, solution. At the end my CT will ask a few students to share what their books were about. If the students are not picking out books, she will work with the different groups. 

Winter Blog.... 2/1

This past week in my placement was a super busy. There was no school Monday, then Thursday was observation, and Friday was a Seahawks day.

From the classes that we have had before in the program showed me how much work goes into lesson planning. So it gave me a good idea about how long it would take me to write out one for my first observation. I did an observation in math, a lesson on classifying. Over all it went really well, it was at the end of a three day lesson. The students had been introduced to the topic, then spent two days working with different objects and how we could sort them. Then on the last day they had to take their shapes and sort them into different groups.

During the lesson I used many talk moves that we have learned with Allison. Even though my teacher does not use these all the time. The students did a really good job about working with me. It was a really great way for me to see if the students had understood the lesson or not. I put them into different groups. The higher level groups had to sort them into 8 groups, middle had 4 groups, and lower students had two groups.

The great part was the kids really worked well together and really helped each other. They were able to bounce ideas off each other, and learn from one another. It was also great when the low students wanted a challenge and wanted to sort the shapes into four groups (when they only had to do two).