Welcome to Week 9

Hello Everyone, I hope you are all doing great this week. I cannot believe that we are already halfway to the end of the semester.

In beginning my blog for today, I will start with the positive. My proudest moment for this week was that my CE trusted me to take the students outside by myself. I had to watch my time very closely since we only had a few minutes before the school bell. I did what I have seen my CE do before. She uses a cell phone alarm as a warning for when she has to be somewhere. I had students line up to go back inside seven minutes before the bell rang.

My biggest struggle this week was knowing how to deal with a student being “hurt.” Students will use any excuse to go up to the office to get a pack of ice. I was concerned without how to deal with this issue as it seemed to be happening more and more frequently. On Wednesday, my CE put a stop to the nonsense. She told all the students that if they had to go to the office to get ice they will miss out on recess and specials because she was concerned about them hurting themselves. The method worked perfectly. Students who had gone to get ice that day had to sit down during recess. They told me that they were feeling so much better, but I told them that they had to sit down because I was concerned that they might get hurt again. Hopefully having to miss out recess will discourage those who are faking hurt. Of course, those who are really hurting would not care about missing out on recess.

For the work which brought me the most satisfaction this week, I taught my leaf lessons for the science methods class. I was able to integrate literacy and science by reading books about fall. The student also worked on using adjectives to describe their leaves that they had drawn. Students also used a Venn diagram to compare and contrast fall and spring. The books engaged the students because I tried to connect their background knowledge about fall and their field trip to Strawberry Hill. All the students were able to pick a pumpkin at Strawberry Hill, therefore I could connect their experience with discussing how pumpkins are harvested in the fall. I also brought in fall leaves to help engage students in the lesson on leaves.

For my action plan this week, I plan to spend time at the school on Monday, Tuesday, and Wednesday of next week. I will be doing assignments for both math and literacy classes with the small reading group I have. I will also be attending parent night on Thursday. The first-grade teachers will be showing a presentation of what is expected of first-grade students. The parents will also be looking at student artwork on the walls.

For my classmates this week, I worked to finish up our google slideshow and website for the water cycle by inserting some google forms and changing some of the criteria. Our team put the finishing touches in the rubrics and then I submitted the project last night. Next week, I will help my team to make any final adjustments needed for the science fair project.

  For outside learning connected to my classroom, my CE was telling me about a new app which the first-grade teachers will download on their ipads. This app will enable teachers to control students on ipads. She will be able to see what app students are on and if they are on the correct app for the assignment. My teacher was unsure of the actual app so I looked up some apps with this description. The name of an app which is similar or identical to the one the first-grade team will be using is called “Google Classroom.” Please check out this website. Teachers can download apps onto their students ipads, mute audio, and check students work. This app will be very useful for my CE in controlling the student iPad usage.   I also plan to use google classroom when I get my own job.Teachers utilize technology as in connection with standard four teachers facilitate learning. The classroom app is the perfect technology which can be used in the classroom to manage students learning.

Welcome to my Tweets

Above is an app called the ABCMouse. My CE's first-grade students use the app every day for morning work and in between lessons. The students keep their ipads on their desk all day long so that they may have easy access to work when there are pauses in between lessons. Students love this interactive app filled with engaging math and phonics game for children.

These are some great questions to ask during a lesson to engage students in the participation of a project. I can see the guided directions guiding some of my lesson plans. At the top, the teacher engages the students to dive into a lesson. Students begin to discuss suggestions and ideas about a question or picture.The teacher will then ask “how can we make this work.” She leads the students to the evaluation process on number seven.

 Check out this beautiful picture. Two stars crashed together in the sky. This would be a great picture to show in the classroom. Some questions the teacher could ask is for the following. Where does this take place?   What causes this to happen? Has this ever happened before?

Scientific Learning

Two stars crashed together within another galaxy for recent news. This would be a great story to discuss in the classroom for a solar system lesson perhaps in third grade. Students will be able to learn about what is beyond earth and even the solar system.  

http://nationalpost.com/news/world/scientists-witness-huge-cosmic-crash-find-origins-of-gold

Week 5 hyperdocs: I love the picture about the formative and summative assessment in your explain part. Formative assessment is when the chef tastes the soup. Summative assessment is when the guest eats the soup. Great comparison! As I was reading your definitions about formative and summative feedback, I could not help thinking of my CE’s classroom. Most of the work done in the classroom never goes in the grade book (like your movie about formative assessment said) most of the work is the teacher assessing the students by asking them questions or by giving them practice worksheets. My CE hardly ever gives grades to her students except on Fridays math and spelling test. I also like how you created a pretest and posttest for your assessment piece to see how much learners know before and after the learning segments. Assessment is so important in the classroom because the teacher can decide whether the students are learning the material she is teaching. I would use formative assessment in every lesson by asking students questions to gage if they are comprehending the material. Summative assessment would be the final test to see if they understood all of the information needed. The reason why it is important to have different classroom assessments is that every student has different learning strategies and backgrounds. Not every strategy will work with children. I think the best type of assessment strategy is asking questions. Students are usually eager to share the information they know. At least my little first graders are eager.

Week 6 hyperdocs:

In knowing the science content I need to teach the class, I must have adequate knowledge of what the grade level standards are for science. By looking at the video on slide 4 in order to have correct written objectives, as a teacher I need to put a performance activity with my objectives so that students can do some type of demonstration in showing what they have learned from the lesson. In establishing a safe environment certain guidelines must be given to students along with classroom management skills. A safety such as wearing goggles, not playing, no eating or drinking, no running, never smell chemicals directly, and always practice safe methods when handling various science equipment. I love your video in the explore section. The video is also very engaging as students act out what it means to be safe. Having students work in groups, passing out items one at a time and having an engaging lesson are three excellent ways for teachers to control class management.

Week 7 hyperdocs: I love the explore guideline for science-based in inquiry as a guideline for students. Also, the explore section in the slide 7 video describes the necessary need for using leading and probing questions to helps students understand the question in a deeper manner. Students are forced ask themselves critical thinking of the content for inquiry-based learning. Therefore, the teacher's must be able to ask the right questions to promote students high-level thinking skills as related to the lesson.

Specifically for North Carolina teaching standards this week in science instruction, standard 3 teachers know the content which they teach applies to the star picture. Teachers must be able to connect their instruction within a standard. For example, before I showed the picture of the stars crashing together in class I would find a standard related to the picture and then decide on some thought-provoking questions for students to ponder on. 

One example I would like to add from my clinical experiences this week and what I hope to use in my own classroom is the Hamburger example. Hamburger is referred when talking about the beginning, middle, and ending of a book. The beginning is the top of the bun. All of the stuff in the middle is the lettuce, tomato, pickles, onions, mustard, and ketchup. There is so much information, that goes on the inside of the hamburger. In comparison, the middle of the story is the longest part of the story. Then ending is the bottom part of the bun. My CE was using this as a comparison for the daily homework students have to complete. Most students have just been writing one sentence for beginning, middle, and ending. Since many of the students are graduating to AR books this week, they have larger books to read. The middle will have to be the largest part of their book report. The teacher uses this colorful example to help students remember how long the beginning, middle, and ending are in comparison to each other. What a great way for students to separate the idea of three different parts of the story.

I hope all of you have a restful fall break.