Week Nine - Round Two

So I just remembered two other great things I witnessed while being in the field all day last week.

The first was that I got to watch the children's overall attitudes change from being positive in the morning to slightly more negative in the afternoon. As I arrived at 7:10am all the children were so excited to see me, and so excited for their day to start. They were on task and trying their hardest for all assignments given to them. They were all friendly with each other and no real behavior issues happened. BUT as the day went on, the children became more and more tired and less and less able to focus on the tasks at hand. I noticed a huge change in two of the children, and by the end of the day one was refusing to do work, and the other had her thumb in the mouth and kept saying that she wanted her mom. Being in kindergarten all day is really hard for some of the children. I can remember that when I went to kindergarten it was only a half day program. It was just really interesting to see the progression throughout their day, and how much it really affects certain students, and how others are not affected at all.

The second thing that I thought was worth mentioning was that for the first time since I have been inside this semester's field classroom, I saw the children really misbehave and they got punished for it. All semester I have bragged and bragged about how well the teacher does with classroom management. The children really seem to respect her, and each other, and they have been really well behaved and seem to know exactly what is expected of them. Well this week things did not go as well as they usually do. The teacher was about to show the children a movie on the Smartboard because it was raining outside so they could not go out for recess. She instructed the children to sit where ever they wanted, on the carpet or seated at their desks. The kids got very excited, and a few of them decided that it would be okay to sit on top of the desks instead of in their chairs. Well this was NOT OKAY with the teacher! She immediately turned off the Smartboard and instructed all the students to go back to their seats and put their heads down on their tables. She told them that it was never okay to sit on top of the desks and that they knew better. She told them she was disappointed in them and their behavior. She made them sit there with their heads down and the lights off for about 10 minutes straight. And of course, with no surprise to me at all, each and every child listened to her right away and sat there without talking until she told them they could get up. I really wish I could have seen what the beginning of the year was like in this classroom. I know that this day was a bad day for my teacher and that she was not necessarily happy with how she handled the situation, but the point I am trying to make here is that even when the children misbehave, which of course all will at some point, her students really do seem to respect her and her authority. I could tell that they definitely did not like the fact that she was upset and disappointed with them. This classroom really does seem like a small community, and I know that the teachers and students both love and respect each other!

Week Nine

Last week was a fantastic week! I spent the ENTIRE day in the field! I have never seen a full day of school so I thought it would be a great experience for me to go and spend the entire day there. My cooperating teacher put me right to work as always! I put the students art work up onto the walls, and I helped some of the children finish some individual work that they had not completed earlier in the week. Some of the sheets had to do with color names, and others were math sheets. It was very interesting to see them do the math worksheet since I have not had a lot of experience seeing young children actually learn and do math yet. The teacher also changed things up a bit and did an entire math lesson later on in the day this week. The students were learning how to count the numbers 14, 15, and 16. She started the lesson by playing a quick game with the children on the Smartboard. The game was rolling a dice and the point was to see which group (her or her students) could get to twenty first. Of course she would count with the children each time a new number was rolled, so they had a lot of practice counting all the way to twenty. Then for the assessment she had the children go back to their tables (6 kids each) and do a worksheet with those numbers. Since there ended up being four of us "teachers" ( Kerri, I, the main teacher, and her assistant) we each toke on a group of children to help them work through the problems. My group was a bit rowdy and all over the place, but it was the end of the day so I didn't take it personally. I just had to work with them in groups of two and lead them step by step through the worksheet.

I really enjoyed spending the entire day there! I think I might do it again next week

Week Eight

This week nothing to exciting happened while we were in field. I was only there for the 3 hours this week and no one taught any lessons. One fun thing I got to do was help some of the children finish their "alphabet book". The book has a page for each letter, and each letter has a different craft. For example, H is for handprint, I got to paint the students hands and they got to make a handprint onto their paper. So on Thursday I got to help about 6 children finish some of the pages they had missed from when they must have been absent. As always I loved working with the children on a one-on-one basis.
Another thing I noticed this week was that one of the children, K, was absent again. She had two pages missing from her book, which means she has missed two days previously, and now she has missed yet another day. It just got me to thinking about how that might be a problem and missing school at such a young age could cause issues in their learning processes. She might be fine and it might not be a problem for her, but it just brought up the issue and really got me thinking about how home life does really affect school life.
Our reading this week was all about the importance of reading!!! I think it is great that there was a whole chapter denoted for reading. I was always a poor reader growing up, and it definitely had a negative impact on me, so I definitely want to do everything I can to make sure my students do not face the same issues as me!!!

Week Seven

So this week I taught my last lesson of the semester :( At the beginning of the semester I was worried about being in charge for a whole hour and a half, but honestly I was not worried at all when it came my turn to do it. My lesson this week was all transitions and behavior management though. I was glad of this fact though because I feel this is where I need the most work. I have done three semesters of lessons so I was ready for the challenge of transitioning the students multiple times within the hour and a half. I " taught" from 1030 till 1200 and here are the following transitions I did with the students : from the cafeteria to the classroom, from the classroom to the computer lab, from the computer lab to the classroom, from the classroom to recess, from recess back to the classroom, and then from the classroom to special area (music). I went really well but I can not take most of the credit for that. My cooperating teacher has done a super job preparing the children for transitions and most of them know exactly what to do and where to go with minimal help. The only thing I could improve on would be to better use some of the downtime between transitions. There were two points when inside the classroom where the children got a drink of water and then used the bathroom. Instead of having the children just wait on the carpet while both of these toke place, I could have involved them in a simple game or review some of their vocabulary words. I definitely thought about the Lemov book for that one, the "every minute matters" thing again. I also thought about the Lemov book because it has a whole section on transitions and how important they are, and how it really saves time and effort to have them run smoothly and quickly. Transitions will definitely be something I concentrate on right from the first day of school!!!

Week Six

I decided to go into the field early this week (@10 instead of 1130) and boy am I glad I did!! I got to see so much more of the children's day and really get a feel for what being there an entire will be like. I got to go to lunch with them which was an interesting experinence to say the least. One thing I noticed right away was that the children were actually allowed to talk! For some reason my placement last semester would not allow the children to talk during lunch. I found this very sad and odd so I was glad to see that was a school thing and not a Charleston thing. I also got to see a lot more transitions since I was there for a few more hours this week. The children are literally in and out of the classroom all day long! One awesome rule my cooperating teacher has taught the students though is that everytime they transition back into the classroom they are always to go sit on the carpet first. It's great that the kids have this rountine in place because there is never any confusion coming back into the classroom so no time is wasted.

I really liked what our Lemov book said this week about "Every Minute Matters". I completely agree that one of the biggest things against us as teachers is time. I also completely understand that by the end of the day you will be exhausted and therefore just letting the last 5 minutes go by would be nice as well. But I love the suggestion our book gives about making those last few minutes kind of game like. For example while the kids are packing up their stuff to go home, a teacher could totally review simple vocabulary words or other big points she hit that day. I think using this game like approach would be also great for the children because they too by the end of the day will be exhausted and not want to "learn" anything else.

Week Five

So I taught my one hour lesson this week. I taught thirty minutes of "Grade Level" which was about using the pictures in the book to help understand new vocabulary words, and then I taught thirty minutes of "Fluency" which had to do with community helpers this week. I got to work on more transitions this week. I picked the children up from PE, lead them back to the classroom and then had them transition from the carpet to the tables, back to the carpet, back to the tables, and then back to the carpet once again. The overall teaching of the lesson went well. The children are getting a little more comfortable with me so this week they were definitely pushing the limits and seeing what I would allow them to get away with. There was some definite resistance when it came to the second assessment activity that I had them do. They were to look at the picture, decide which community helper it was a picture of, and then write that community helpers name down onto the blank line provided. I provided them all with the names and the spellings but most of the children really did NOT want to write. It is always so amazing to me how different the skills of the individual students can be. Some know letters and how to write words with no problem, and others do not even know what the letters are called, let alone where to begin to write a word. But I am happy to say that after some time and a lot of one on one attention (provided by me, Kerri, the teacher, and the teacher's assistant) all children had successfully written the names of four different community helpers!!!

Week Four

This week was Kerri's turn to teach her first lesson. Her lesson was on environmental print! It went really well and she did a great job of making the lesson very interactive! Besides that not much happened while in the field this week. The children had music as their special area but Kerri and I stayed back to help our teacher with some paper work. Then in the afternoon the children went into their centers which we got to walk around and interact with them during that time.

I actually got to witness one of the techniques from our reading this week!! Our teacher used the 100 Percent technique! This is the one where "There's one acceptable percentage of students following a direction: 100 percent. Less, and your authority is subject to interpretation, situation, and motiviation. Mrs. E was explaining directions to the students, she asked them all to be quiet yet a few were still talking. She actually stopped talking altogether and waited for those few kids to be quiet. She was sending the message that what she had to say was important and that she was NOT going to talk over the children, or give them the impression that not listening was an option! It worked really well and all the children got the hint and payed attention. I really enjoy watching and learning from her about classroom management...she does a superb job of it!!!