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.