Bringing it All together

Overall, my knowledge on pedagogy and other aspects of a classroom has grown substantially.  After being in my CT’s classroom this semester, I see a lot of things I will take into my future classroom and something’s I will definitely keep out.  While I was at Sheridan, I noticed a lot of behavior management systems that I absolutely despised! They follow a whole school behavior management system.  The students get “Super Sharks” if they are behaving in a “safe, ready, responsible, or respectful” manner.  I think this is super vague and the students do not really respond to it.  When I first got to Sheridan, I noticed that the students have “Behavior Folders”.  This is a folder sent home every day that says what color the student is on at the end of the day.  The parent must sign it and return it.  This creates such a time consuming task every day at the beginning and end of the day, for something I consider pointless.  I think there are other ways to have parental involvement in the classroom.  For example, in my last clinical, my CT would send home a paper everyday typed.  It said what the student did and what they should be doing for homework.  It also included special happenings.  I thought this was great because the parents would sign it every day and write any notes they may have for the teacher.  It was a great way to stay organized.  I also saw a lot of literacy and math worksheets in my clinical.  I found how boring it was for the children and how much they did not learn. I implemented my literacy lesson with hands on materials and the students seemed to really respond.  This was one of my goals that I really wanted to accomplish this semester.  I also gained the goal of knowing all of my students.  Although I did not gain the connections that Mrs. Bohac has with her students, I feel as if I went in the classroom every Wednesday and made a difference. This always made me feel good and I really feel as if this is what I am meant to do. Mrs. Bohac also taught me a lot about transitions.  Since this is one aspect that I really wanted to take away from this semester, I was happy that transitions went well in this classroom.  She always dismissed in a unique way.  It could be what color shirt they are wearing, vocabulary words in a lesson, or by row color.  I always saw the students engaged during transitions, and fascinatingly I never saw a meltdown, which I expected being in a kindergarten classroom.

                During this semester, it is safe to say I have strengthened my relationships with teachers and staff out in the field, as well as my peers.  I feel as if I have a safe and secure network of people I can rely on to vent to, ask questions, bounce ideas off of, and for them to also do the same.  I am so sad that I will not be seeing this group on a daily basis, because we already practice these aspects of being a professional and having a network.  I believe that throughout the activities and lessons presented to us at ISU we will be able to keep on following up with each other and looking out for each other.  I could not ask for a better group of teacher candidates to share in our adventures of getting through student teaching and learning so much!

My Final Formal Lesson!

I implemented my lesson plan focusing on word families today in my clinical.  I had objects from two different word families, such as sock, lock, and clock for the ock family and log, hog, and clog for the og family.  These were mixed up in a bucket and students from the small group chose objects out of the bucket and categorized them in the correct word family bucket.  The students then placed the objects in the corresponding buckets and then wrote it on their white boards.  I got through two small groups, the higher ability level and the lower ability group.

            As the lesson was going on, I felt very confident in it.  The students were all very engaged and they understood the concept of the word families being used to spell words.  I did have to make many “in the moment” teaching decisions, however.  During this lesson a few students did not know what the object was.  For example, they thought clog was a shoe and hog was a pig.  They were confused as to what this language was and as I gave them hints as to what it was they still were not getting it.  I decided to “chop” the word to help the students figure out what it was and how to spell it.  This helped them a lot and I think that it helped to build their vocabulary. I thought that the materials worked great for this lesson.  It gave students a hands on concept and real life example of the words rather than having them on a worksheet.  I also think that the students’ general learning of the concept of using the ending part of the word to make words went very well.  The students in the higher ability level really seemed to grasp this.  They were writing down the names of the objects very quickly and as I noticed this I stopped this part of the activity.  I had the students instead jump to their sentences.  While they were doing this, they used the word families to create new words, so they showed higher level thinking in doing this.  As this was the main goal of the lesson, this was a positive.

            The students learned more about the two specific word families.  They rhymed the ending and they created new words, which are skills they are able to use in their writing and even reading.  The higher group also worked on their skills of writing sentences and substituting the beginning sound to actually make a new word.  The lower ability level students were able to categorize and identify the word family in each word.  They were all able to do this.  When a student had a tough time with these skills, I chopped the word or pointed out the buckets that were labeled with the word family to help them be able to spell it.  I was able to see that they met the objectives by having them write out the objects’ names and the sentences.  I was able to see where students were having trouble and where I needed to intervene to help the students learn from their mistakes. I think that changing this lesson would make the learning better.  I would use this as a supplement lesson for hands on learners in my classroom.  I would have the students have word family books.  There would be a new book for each word family and the students would be able to draw a picture of it, write the word, underline the word family, and write a sentence.  These would be great for assessment purposes and also for a reference material for students.  The students would be able to pull these books out when they had trouble spelling a word, or when they needed some extra practice on word families.  It would also be a great permanent product to show families what the students are learning in literacy. With that being said, I would use this hands on activity along with the word family books so that students get a real life connection to the word.

            Through this lesson, I learned a lot about myself as a future teacher.  After doing this lesson I noticed that I really need to focus on doing a conclusion.  Throughout the past two formal lessons I have had, I forget the conclusion.  I believe that it is because I am under supervision, time restraints, and stress, but I need to ensure students grasped the major things they learned from the lesson so that they can apply it in their writing and reading.  After doing this lesson, I also realized I need to be very prepared with academic language and vocabulary that may come up.  Since I did not know how to create references to prior knowledge for students to come up with the correct words for things such as hog, I felt unprepared. I think this knowledge will come with having better pedagogy and also knowing my students better.

I also learned some positive things that I do as a teacher.  I learned that I was very responsive to the students.  Whenever they had a question, I was there to answer it.  I was constantly referring the students back to the word family bucket label so that they could get the connection between spelling, word families, and creating these words along with new words. I also feel that my introduction to the students was strong.  In the introduction I told students we would be talking about word families, I asked them what word families were, and how they help us to become better spellers.  I also “hooked” the students by asking the students what two previous word families’ words had in common.  For example, I listed off ox, fox, and box.  I asked the students what these words had in common.  They all said “they rhyme” or “they’re a part of the same word family.” I connected this back to what they learned the previous week and they really seemed to understand it.  The transitions also went smoothly.  I transitioned the students to come to and from my group by shaking a tambourine.  All the students stopped their literacy centers and put their hands on their heads.  I called the students I needed, and they came without a problem. All in all, I believe this lesson went very well.  I would definitely implement it again as I see it being a major concept and skill that emerging readers and writers need to possess.

Science in My Clinical

What have you noticed about science instruction and assessment in your setting?

• When does it take place? Does it take place? Think critically.
• What does it encompass?
• During science instruction, what does your CT do/ say?
• What do students do/ say? How do they respond?
• What are your opinions/ feelings about this?
• How does what you observe about science at this site connect with past clinical experiences/ early childhood theories/ and or science practices you have been learning about at ISU?
• How does knowing this inform what you will do when teaching and assessing science (either this semester, next semester in student teaching, and/or next year)?

After being in my clinical for this amount of time, I have only seen one science "lesson".  This was during my first week of being there and I had a substitute teacher.  This "lesson" was to be used as a time filler.  The sub had no clue as to what to talk about for the topic of simple machines.  This topic was way over the children's head.  The sub read a non-fiction book to them about simple machines.  I found this to be a developmentally appropriate practice as the students were connected to the book.  It was simple with real life pictures.  When I was watching this lesson, I noticed the students had A LOT of questions.  When the sub did finally call upon a student to ask their question, she had no idea on how to answer it.  After the reading of the book, the sub put up vocabulary words on the board.  I found this to be a great practice, if it had pictures next to it and the vocabulary was explained, however it was not.  After this, the students were given a worksheet.  I would say this worksheet would have been appropriate for a first or second grade level, not kindergarten.  When the sub noticed the kids could not read the worksheet and were struggling, they did it together.  During this time, the sub basically just gave the children the answers because they were unable to figure out the answers.  I believe science is not focused on because my CT does not see the importance in it.  She said that most science is too complex.  I think if she even just added a scientific book, it would be better than what the students are receiving now.  The day at my clinical revolves around brain breaks and literacy.  I have only seen math three times for a very short time.  I find this so surprising because math and science go hand in hand in a lot of careers.  These subjects are so important and can be so fun for the students.  I will be discussing with my CT this week.  In preparation for that, I have been looking up ideas to come prepared to share ideas.  I think that by using some hands on or engaging lessons, the students will see how great science is and hopefully spark an interest.  Below are a few ideas I have found.  I really like the cloud idea because weather is something at circle time that is ignored.  I think it is important for students to go to the window and see what the weather is like so that they begin to understand weather a little better.  We talk in 276 about how important it is to create visuals for students to reference in science.  I think these would be something that could be kept up while they are learning about clouds and weather.  I also found this idea to wrap students up in toilet paper and they pretend they are breaking out of a cocoon.  In 277 we talk about what a great idea kinesthetic learning is when referencing lessons.  I think reading a book and then having students do this would be a great thing for them to connect their learning to something physical.  All in all, I am so excited to implement my science lesson in the next few weeks.  I hope I can reach one of my goals for the semester of using what I have learned in my classes to clinical.  I also hope that I can show my CT how fun science can be and how you can integrate subjects, even if there is not a lot of time! This is also a skill I would like to carry me through student teaching as I would love to show science in a different light because I see how often it is not being done.

 

My 1st Lesson Reflection!

After completing my social studies lesson in my clinical, I feel a lot more prepared for what social studies looks like in a classroom.  I implemented a lesson about doing things on accident and on purpose in my Kindergarten classroom.

            When I began my lesson, I felt a little uneasy.  I had been rehearsing what I was going to say and do for the past week.  When I got in front of my students, I realized that this lesson would have to be a little more flexible considering there were three students gone, some behavior issues, and overall being in the classroom with my cooperating teacher once the week before, the same week I met her. I was still unfamiliar with simple routines such as how she calls students, how they sign to go to the restroom, and how to address the noise issue.  I started out my lesson at the SMART board playing a feelings game with the characters from the television show Arthur.  I chose one student to start the game and had her choose a friend to come up next and so on.  Since this was the introduction to my lesson, there was no way all the students would be able to come up to the board, and I believe some students got frustrated at this fact.  Reflecting on this experience, I think a better way to handle this game would be to have the students show on their hands which answer to choose on the board, one, two, or three. This would have been active engagement by all of the students and allowed everyone to voice their opinion.  After the game, I introduced the silent video clip that shows a boy doing something on accident and fixing the problem himself.  The students were very engaged in this aspect of the lesson. When I posed the question whether what happened in the video was on purpose or on accident I would have rather used the method we just observed in my 277 class, which was students holding their hands up to their mouths and “blowing” the answer they wanted to share in and then all say the answer as a class, allowing every student to answer.  When I asked what the boy did to fix the accident, I should have done a turn and talk.  This would have allowed every student to reflect on this question and it may have possibly lead to a further discussion.  After the video talk, I went to the board and wrote a t-chart with “on accident” on one side and “on purpose” on the other.  I asked students to share examples of each and I wrote it on the board under the respective column.  During this time, I think the students would have benefited from me reading the words aloud and possibly having the students turn and talk when I asked for examples.  After, I gave the students an example of what they would be doing at their seats, which was looking at a problem card and writing on a piece of paper if it was an accident or on purpose and drawing a solution on how to fix it. When I released them back to their seats, there were some issues with partnering since there were absences and also with the clarity of the instructions.  The students did do very well with analyzing the photo and drawing a solution.  This was supposed to only last seven minutes, but I went over while I was helping groups and then the students were released back to the rug and shared out.

            My objective for this lesson was: “Students will be able to identify what to say when they do something by accident.  Students will also demonstrate saying how they can think of ways to fix things that happen “on accident” or “on purpose”.” I do believe I met the later objective, but I did not focus in on what to say when something happens on purpose or accident, due to the fact I abandoned my conclusion because I ran over the time limit. My assessment tool was using a checklist to see if they correctly identified the problem and drew and accurate solution based on the picture.  Over all, all but one group achieved this goal. I think it was a good assessment tool because it can be used as documentation.

            All in all, I definitely earned a lot from this experience.  I learned that I need to focus in on better time management skills, which I will do next time by having a time timer or a watch and sticking to it.  Another thing I learned was that although I used thumbs up and thumbs down for checks for understanding, which is not the only thing I have to use.  It made me feel a little overwhelmed and then I went back to having the students raise hands, which is not effective because I am not seeing if the whole class is learning.  I will use the checks for understanding tip sheet on the Wiki to better my skills with this for my future lessons.  I will also use more turn and talks and also try the “blowing the balloon” method. The major thing I learned as well was that I need to repeat instructions multiple times to be sure all students understand, especially in this grade level.  Since it was my second time meeting my CT, I do think that it was a disadvantage that I did not know all her routines or pick up on how many times I needed to give instructions. I would definitely implement this lesson again, just with the mini-lesson and workshop model.  I think it would be more effective to have this as a workshop that students visit over the course of the week and that I could work one on one with the students with it.

Social Studies in My Clinical

SOCIAL STUDIES FOCUS
At this point in the semester, you have been learning the components and importance of social studies in ECE in TCH 277. Additionally, you have considered when and how you will conduct your social studies lesson in your clinical classroom and may have observed social studies practices there. Draw on this knowledge and these experiences in this discussion.

What have you noticed about social studies instruction and assessment in your setting?

• When does it take place? Does it take place? Think critically.
• What does it encompass?
• During social studies instruction, what does your CT do/ say?
• What do students do/ say? How do they respond?
• What are your opinions/ feelings about this?
• How does what you observe about social studies at this site connect with past clinical experiences/ early childhood theories/ and or social studies practices you have been learning about at ISU?
• How does knowing this inform what you will do when teaching and assessing social studies (either this semester, next semester in student teaching, and/or next year)?

After being in my clinical four times now, I have realized I know very little about how Social Studies usually runs in the classroom.  As many of you know, I had a sub the first two times I was at Sheridan.  I taught Social Studies the day I met my teacher, and today was my first formal lesson in Social Studies.  I learned that Sheridan uses Second Step, which is a scripted lesson template.  It uses script, puppets, and scenarios with the children.  Since I have never seen Mrs. Bohac teach this subject in person, I was nervous to begin with no prior experience ever.  Usually, this subject takes place in the morning around 9:30ish.  The first time I taught a lesson, I did it with puppets and completely scripted.  I was unprepared, and very out of place.  Puppets, in my opinion, was not the way to teach social skills to Kindergarteners. I believe they need real life experience and hands on activities to get them thinking about situations.  Mrs. Bohac says that prior to me being there, Social Studies has not taken place since November.  I think that the students are getting used to me teaching and getting used to my style of teaching.  Since I was not comfortable with the puppets and script, I have decided to incorporate video clips, hands on activities, and class engagement.  I think this will allow students to bounce ideas off of each other and hopefully learn a lot more from the lessons.  I will be taking over Social Studies for the remainder of the semester, and I will be writing a lesson plan each week to show Mrs. Bohac what I am doing.  I find this a bit intimidating since I have not seen her teach the subject before, but also a bit relieved because I am able to make it my own.  The students seemed to respond a lot better to these activities, such as the video, game, and group discussions than when I did the lesson the previous week.  I feel like Kindergarteners definitely need to learn these skills and about these topics so that they can handle situations better.  Since I have never seen Social Studies before, besides one lesson right before Thanksgiving in a second grade classroom, I am learning by doing.  I see how different Social Studies is between grades, while Kindergarteners are learning social skills, second graders are learning about explorers to America.  From what I have seen in my clinical, I do not think it relates to what we are learning about in 277.  Social Studies should be a social thing, where students work together in small groups, and in my classroom it is not.  I also think that the lessons should be brought up by relevancy to what is happening in the class, not going strictly by units.  I believe we should be taking advantage of teachable moments and using that to plan lessons.  When I am teaching further into the semester, I know that I will continue to feed off my ideas from today and make it an engaging lesson.  I want students to come away from the lesson knowing skills they can use in real life.  I do not want that knowledge put in the back of their mind or them forgetting about it.  That is another reason I believe that the lessons should be taught from experience in the classrooms.  I will also be better prepared next semester for student teaching and the future since I will be teaching these lessons every Wednesday so I hope that it will help me to become a stronger teacher.

Below I have included my ideas for my lesson on Caring and Helping coming up the week after spring break!
http://teachers.net/lessons/posts/2820.html
I thought I would read the story to them.  Ask the students what ways Horton helped the whos, why he cared about them, etc. I would bring in a premade flower like the book and ask the students to come up with ways to protect their friends who are on that flower, instead of them making their own. Any suggestions would be awesome!

Blog Post 2- Literacy in my Clinical Placement

     Although this is my second week at my clinical placement, I feel as if I still have not gotten a real feel for the way things go in the room.  I was placed with a substitute teacher again, as my cooperating teacher was gone.  The first day I was there, we did literacy for about thirty minutes.  This was a worksheet booklet that worked on students' color words through Valentines Day worksheets.  The substitute on that day also read aloud four books.  The students seemed as if that was pretty normal to their day to day routine.  Today, I showed the substitute how to work the SMART board and we were able to go more in depth with the lessons.  The students took turns coming up to the SMART board and choosing words that began with D.  They also played a sight word matching game.  We also read aloud four books before the students started to get really restless.  Afterwards, they went back to their seats and did worksheets for an hour.  Both times, literacy has occurred in the morning starting at 9:30.  The substitutes mostly just walked around the room demanding the students be silent during this time. The students seemed to be very restless and not enjoying the worksheets.  They also seemed bored with the worksheets on their sight words that included "for" today and reviewing past ones.  I thought this was totally not developmentally appropriate.  Just watching the students complete this busy work made me cringe.  I could not imagine having my students sit in desks most of the morning until lunch doing worksheets.  I understand that there were substitutes both days and she wanted to give them something easy to do, but I thought this was a more difficult route than just giving the teachers the lessons to actually do them.  I saw so many behavioral issues and the students had to keep getting up and moving their clip down both days ( which made me cringe as well).  I now see how that is not an appropriate method for correcting behavior because the students do not get it.  Both times I have been there the same students were on that level.  I will be curious to see if that is different with my regular CT is there. Even though my  clinical placement in second grade last semester was totally different, I see how this site could be different.  We focused a lot on guided reading last semester, and it seems as if my CT this semester uses Daily 5. (I have not had the chance to really speak to her so I am not one hundred percent sure.)  I see both methods as great ideas for the classroom.  The students get a change to differentiate their reading in Daily 5, and in guided reading they acquire new skills and are leveled.  After my experience the past two weeks, I realize that I will not use worksheets as the main activity.  Frankly, it makes the day drag and a lot tougher.  The kids were pretty out of control, they were bored, and they all complained of how easy it was.  I saw no collaboration and sharing of ideas.  I saw not paired reading.  I mostly saw "literacy overkill".  They did not really gain new skills, just practice over and over old skills.   Since seeing this, I know that I need to be very diligent in making substitute plans.  I will not underestimate the ability of the sub.  I will make sure my students are still learning when I must be gone, and that it is not just a free day. After seeing all of the worksheets, I saw some ideas on Pinterest that my CT could have used and the students could have played instead of the worksheets.  (Pictures below.)

Blog Post One

 

Hello! My name is Jordan Manley and I am a senior at ISU.  I am majoring in ECE because I love working with children and helping them to learn new things.  Since high school, I have wanted to be a teacher after working with at risk kids in elementary schools.  I work at the YWCA in the three year old room and I absolutely love it.  I have worked there for about a year now.  I commute from Minonk to ISU.  I have a Maltese along with an older brother. My family means the most to me and I always strive to make them proud.  I am also obsessed with country music and concerts.

 I have a few goals for myself.  I hope to excel in this class by learning fully about my students in the clinical.  I hope this opportunity will also allow me to find out more about myself as a future teacher.  I hope this will take me far in my teaching career.  I want to learn more about how to transition into different subjects.  I think this is a really important skill to have to keep students engaged in what they are learning and also to not create too much chaos. 

 I also hope to establish a secure network in which I can rely on to help me during my student teaching and also during my teaching career.  I believe this will be established in this clinical block.  We are creating this blog to help set connected and also to connect to other early childhood educators.  We also will be creating this through Pinterest this semester.  I already have created some great lessons from ideas on Pinterest in my three year old classroom at the YWCA. 

I also hope to take away all that I learn in all of my content classes and take that material into the clinical site.  This will happen by completing the many lessons we will be creating this semester.  I think that I will gain a lot of knowledge of reflecting and how to better prepare lessons during this time. 

I hope that I will learn from my CT and I also hope that she can learn from me.  I really hope I will learn to become more confident in all of my classes so that way I can reach my full potential as a teacher.  I think part of this will be involved in establishing a better foundation of teaching.  By that I mean, being confident in how I teach and also what I teach and why.  This semester also includes another learner’s demographic assignment that will help me to know what the makeup of the student group is.  I think this also helps me to find out how to better meet their needs. 

I think this semester will be a great learning experience.  I cannot wait to get into my clinical placement and implement more improved lessons than I have in the past.  This semester is already looking bright!