Observations

Over the time I have spent in my class I have gotten to watch the kids grow. I have gotten to see how they have advanced as readers and how they now fly through their working math work. I have also gotten to see how they have become more comfortable with me by asking questions and telling me about their families, things they like, and things they don’t like. Building bonds with students and making them feel comfortable is such an important part of being a teacher and I’m glad I learned how to do that.

Learning Experiences

While I was teaching I had kids in my class who came from a good home but were bad an I had kids who came from a bad home but were the sweetest kids you’ll ever meet. This just proved to me again that you never know what any kids are going through. Each kid has a battle of their own even though they are so young and you really have to be there for them because you may be the only role model they have.

Reflection

I am glad I got placed with the teacher that I did. She has so much teaching experience in all types of schools. She taught me so many good lessons and gave me so many pointers. She was always trying to help me in any way she could. She was such a great example of the kind of person a teacher should be and I am very thankful to have been with her. I will definitely remember how she treated me and hope that one day I can help someone like that.

Stories

On my last day when I was leaving, I was saying goodbye to my teacher and thanking her for what she did. When I said goodbye to my class they all ran up to me and gave me the biggest hug. It was so sweet and made me feel so loved. I was so happy and it made me think about how I can’t wait to become a teacher.

Observations

During my full lesson, I noticed how interested and invest my kids were into hearing what I had to say. I think because of how interested they were that is why my lesson went so well. I don’t think they were interested in compound words but I do think they wanted to know what I had to say about them and the activities I had planned.

Learning Experiences

While I was teaching my full lesson I realized that when you are teaching having something for every type of learner is so important. My video really got the attention of the visual and musical learners, my game helped the kinetic learners, the chart helped the visual, and the flipbook helped the artistic kids really see what they are learning.

Reflection

The assessment I use for my lesson was a flip book and they had to draw the two separate words with a picture and then they had to draw the compound word with a sentence. I will defiantly remember to use this because it was such a great way to see who fully understood the concept but also show me those that can actually use the new word in a sentence.

Stories

The problem kid in our class never likes to listen to the directions or follow rules while playing games. During my lesson, I was really scared she was going to act out but she didn’t. She played the game correctly, she answered questions, was engaged, and colored her flip book correctly with a little encouragement. It made me so happy that my lesson went smoothly, and it made me even happier that when I was leaving she told me that she really liked my lesson and had fun learning about compound words.

Observations

This week I got to have my full day with my class and it was so much fun. I got to do so many fun activities like reading woith them, helping them with math, an we made tissue paper butterflies. I m really glad I got to stay with them for a full day to see how teachers use their time all day while they are teaching but also getting planning time in.

Learning Experiences

While I was there all day not only did I get to have more time with the kids I got to see what being a teacher is like all day. While the kdis were at recess and special areas I got to have planning time like the teachers do. I used that time to work on my full lesson and it was helpful to see that teachers have mulitupule opportunies to get work done during the day so they dont have to take the work home. The maounts of time they get are small but they do have many small opportunites.

Reflections

Most people when they think about teachers and what they do during the day would never want to do it but while I was there for the full day it made me realize how much I am looking forawrd to haveing a classroom of my own. Watching my teacher teach all the subjects and me being able to help my kids, and be there with them all day made me super excited to build bonds with students of my own one day.

Stories

When I was there all day I really tried to talk and bon with the kids who are quiet and dont necesserily go out of their way to talk to me. There are a couple boys who dont always talk to me when im there in the mornings but when I told them that we were going to be making butterflies they got very excited. They were asking for my help, what I thought o their butterflies, and what colors I thought they shoudl use. Being there for a full day really helped me get to know some of the sudents I didnt know all that well.

Observations

This week I got to give some reading comprehension tests to the kids. It always shocks me to see what kids perform well. Some of the kids who are in special reading groups or the ones who go to speech do really well and it confuses me. I don’t understand why those kids are sometimes performing better than the kids without learning disabilities.

Learning Experiences

There is a girl in my class who always is misbehaving. Mrs. McClure told me that while I am there she is on her best behavior just so that I will talk to her, help her, and do different activities with her. When I leave she likes to act out, be mean to the other kids, and not do her work. I can’t address the behavior when I’m there because she acts that way when I am not. I just wish she would act the way she does when I’m there when I am not there.

Reflections

This week has been really good with my class. I enjoy the fact that I get to go to one class in the morning on A days and another in the afternoon on B days. I get to see all the subjects being taught and I get to see all types of students from two classes. It helps me to see all the different types of kids and different issues in the classroom.

Stories

There is a really quiet little boy in my class who I have been trying to get closer to and nothing was seeming to work. Then one day when I was leaving I told them all goodbye and when I was just about to close the door he ran up and hugged me. I was so happy when he did that because I felt like I had made some progress.

Observations

I get to be there for the morning meeting and it is so much fun to see all the different things they talk about. They watch the announcements and then they go get their mini whiteboards and write the answers to the questions or topics that we are talking about. In class, we have also been discussing using details in writing and noticing how authors use detail, so it is very interesting to see how if it is a subject or topic they are excited about their answers will be better and more in detail rather than if it wasn’t something they cared about.

Learning Experiences

This week I thought a mini-lesson. I started off the whole day by doing the morning wake up song we play every day and then watching a Go Noodle. They get all their morning wiggles out before we start morning meeting and then the day begins. It was the day of the school carnival and they were very excited, so the class before I planned out what I was going to say. I ended it by asking them a question:  “What is your favorite food at the carnival?”. It seems like it has nothing to do with learning but after they all answered we found the three most popular and then we took a “survey”. It was because during math they were going to be talking about surveys so I was introducing them to the math lesson without them even knowing. I thought this was a really good way to introduce them to new vocabulary and topics without overwhelming them and tying it into something they care about.

Reflections

After doing the mini-lesson I am very excited to teach a whole lesson to them. Thinking back to it I remember the kids that weren’t paying attention and having trouble sitting beside the people they were. I think to make sure that my lesson goes super smoothly I am going to need to keep those kids in mind when I am planning everything and how to keep them engaged.

 

Stories

There are a couple girls in the class who ask me every time I am there if I am staying all day. I always say no but that the day is coming up soon. One of the girls asked me why I stay in another teachers room all day and not theirs. I had to explain to her that she doesn’t see me in the morning in the other room an that I only come in the afternoon for another class. She got very upset because she thought that I just didn’t want to stay with them all day. She was under the impression that after I left I just went home, and that I didn’t have school. It is funny sometimes when the kids have no concept of time.

Observations

This week since I have had more time in the room I have really noticed that they have such a good morning routine set up. The kids come to the door in the morning and they do the morning greeting, it is different for each day for the week. Then they come in and unpack, put up their lunch boxes, and start on morning work. There is never any confusion in the morning about what they should be doing and when it is time to watch the announcements, they go to the carpet quietly and sit quietly. Each student also has a classroom job which also helps things run smoothly.  This made me realize when I become a first-year teacher I need to figure out how I want my room to run, and I need to establish a strong classroom management plan.

Learning Experience

This week I gave a math assessment to the students and I could only read the question to them. It was interesting to see how well the high-level students did, only making some silly mistakes, but also how the lower level students did. Giving assessments like that really shows how different each student in the class is and how every student is in a different place academically.

Reflections

This week I read two different books to the class. I read Horton Hears a Who, and Hop on Pop both by Dr. Seuss. When I read Horton Hears a WHo the class was full of energy because the book is so exciting, but when I read Hop on Pop the energy level was so low. Even though I tried to make it exciting and then talk about the rhyming in it they just weren’t as involved in it, and it reminded me of all the read alouds we did where some peoples books were way easier to e involved in than others.

Story to tell

There is a child in my class and he is just a very slow kid. My teacher was asking the class a question about who had finished their number book and another student answered her saying that he had. My teacher then asked him 5 times if he had finished it and he didn’t answer her until she walked up to him. He wasn’t ignoring her or being rude he just wasn’t paying attention an that is just one example of how almost all of them are.

Observations

My teacher is so kind and thoughtful when she is speaking, and teaching. She has been teaching for around 20 years so she really knows what she is doing. I can tell that she took the time to get to know every student and learn what barriers they would have in the classroom. Her room doesn’t have a theme but it does have posters all around that relate to spelling and reading. She also has a word wall that is in alphabetical order that shows their sight words they need to know, ad they have been working on those since the beginning of the year. She has a timer going on the smart board to show the kids how much longer they have, and she usually has background music playing while they work at their desks.

Learning Experiences

On my second day, I got to take three kids out into the hallway individually and give them a sight word test.  A sight word test is where their sight words are in columns of two and they start off with the easy ones and it gets harder. It even goes all the way to the words they haven’t seen yet but will need to know by the end of the year. The kids sit there and read them off while I am copying down if they get it correct or if they say something incorrect and how they say it. It was interesting to see all the words that they had trouble with. After  I was done testing them I brought the last one in, my teacher and I looked at who missed what and she explained to me why those students missed those words. One of them was in reading intervention and was behind, and the other one had dyslexia. It was interesting to see how those educational barriers affected them.

Reflections

My teacher has a student in her class who has constant behavior problems. She stuck her tongue out at the art teacher,  she turned to the class after my teacher said something to her and said: “HOW DARE SHE??”. She behaves this way because she has been diagnosed with ADHD, and she is defiant because her mother doesn’t discipline her at the house. She is a perfect example as to how not only a learning disability but also problems at home can have a huge impact on a child’s learning.

Story to share

That same student I just talked about may have a lot of behavior issues but she does all that when I am not paying attention. The teacher gave her instructions and told her to finish up her snack and start writing because everyone had been done with snack for about 10 minutes now. She didn’t like that so she threw her pencil and missed and looked over at me to make sure I wasn’t matching and she notice I saw and came over to hug me and tell me “I’m the best” just so that I wouldn’t tell my teacher. She is very manipulative, and after I told my teacher she got sent to the office and pitched a fit.

Read Alouds

None

Learning Experiences

This past week Bri and I finally got to teach our lesson to the class. I would have to say it went very well. I feel like I was very prepared to teach the lesson and because I was prepared it flowed very smoothly.  It was also a good thing that we were able to go back and watch a video of our lesson to really see it from another perspective. In our lesson, it was good to see how many side conversations and background talking was actually going on. If I was really in the class with kids I can look back at that and plan out what can be done to prevent some of that.

Current Event

https://www.nytimes.com/2019/02/27/education/school-districts-funding-white-minorities.html?rref=collection%2Fsectioncollection%2Feducation&action=click&contentCollection=education&region=stream&module=stream_unit&version=latest&contentPlacement=7&pgtype=sectionfront

This article was very sad to read and think about because it discusses the fact that all across the United States the school districts that are predominately people of color receive $23 billion less than those of white people. Reading something like this breaks my heart. I understand that some areas are richer than others but every child should be presented with the equipment they need to really succeed and be able to do great things.

Quote of the Week

I picked this quote because as we get closer an closer to graduation I am getting more and more tired of school. I have been thinking that I was getting tired of all the work we have to do but then I realized that the amount of work we are doing is not changing at all if anything it has gotten to be less. I am just getting tired of waking up early and doing the same thing every day. I enjoy the work I do and I like to learn new things but I am getting tired of doing it in the same location I have been in for the past 18 years of my life.

Observations

As college gets closer and closer I am getting so excited. I am also getting nervous. I moved to Florida when I was going into 6th grade and it was really weird being the new kid for the first time in my life. I was thinking about how I am going to feel that way again but at the same time, everyone is going to feel that way so it will be okay.

Reflection

Going over all the rules and instructions has only made me more excited for Feild Experience. I am so excited to meet my class on Monday. I am looking forward to teaching my own lessons and really realizing what going to an elementary school every day is like.

Read Alouds

There were no read alouds.

Learning Experiences

The last two weeks we have been working on our lessons. Bri and I picked a MAY lesson that had to do with symmetry in fruits. It was such a good way to learn what making lesson plans is like, what preparing a lesson is like, and what organizing a room for a lesson is like. I think that it will really help us when we go to our classes because it shows us what it takes to prepare a lesson that will actually keep the children involved while helping them soak up all the information they need for a specific standard.

Current Event

https://www.usnews.com/news/education-news/articles/2019-02-14/denver-teacher-strike-ends

The teachers in Denver went on a three day strike for the first time in 25 years. It was over the fact that teachers get bonuses based on if they get good test scores or evaluations. The teachers were striking because they realized it caused uncertainty in their pays and believed that they should be paid more but not just on student performance. At the end of the three-day strike the teachers received a pay increase of 11.7%, teachers in high poverty schools would see $3,000, and the incentive for teachers filling hard to fill positions would be $2,000. I think that seeing this increase in teacher pay is a really good step towards all teachers seeing a pay increase.

Quote of the Week

I really liked this quote because when we were planning our lesson I realized that it was not super easy. When we become grateful for how hard our teachers work to have a lesson for us, not just one day but every single day we can appreciate and understand the lessons better. We become more involved in what we are learning if we can appreciate how hard our teachers are working to teach us.

Observations

Observation day at the elementary schools was so much fun. It was really interesting to see how the grades differ from each other but also how each school is different. At some schools we would just stand or sit in the back of the room and watch, others they had us walk around and see what the kids were doing at their desks, and some they had us work with them, ask them questions, and read to them. It was so cool to see how some of the schools are really similar and some were super different.

Reflection

With all my deputies paid, my roommates found and accepted students day at CofC coming up I am so ready to be done with high school. It is so sad because I really am trying to enjoy the last moments but I just want to get out. Now that I am for sure into CofC all the school work is starting to feel pointless to me because I know college is right around the corner. I am going to try and enjoy the last quarter of high school and get to the finish line.

Read-alouds

There were no read alouds.

Learning Experience

This week the South Carolina Teacher of the Year, Jeff Maxey came to talk to us about his teaching experiences. It was very interesting to hear him talk about everything that happened throughout his career that shaped him into the teacher he is today. Hearing him talk about everything that has happened to him with such enthusiasm really shows his passion, and love for teaching.

Mrs. Aplin also came to talk to us about using technology in the classroom. It was really nice to see all the ways that it can be used. It will definitely be helpful when it comes time for field experience.

Current Event

https://www.usnews.com/news/national-news/articles/2019-01-25/shutdown-resolution-averts-school-lunch-crisis

This article talked about how during the government shut down schools that had many students who relied on school breakfast and lunch had a hard time. They had to budget and account for all the students who needed it. Some schools needed the government to open when they did because they might not have made it much longer on what was left with the budget.

Quote of the Week

I really liked this quote because it relates to where I am in my life right now. I need to start making good habits in my life at home and in my school work. If I start making good habits now they will stay with me when I go to college making it easier to adjust to college life.

Observations

After talking about the different types of assessments in class it was very interesting to see what types my teachers use. It was even more interesting to see how they use it in elementary school. The younger students don’t take many quizzes or tests so it was interesting to see how the teachers call them up to the smart board or use whiteboards to see how the students were doing.

Reflections

Graduation keeps getting closer and closer and I am getting really excited. I am so excited to make new friends and new experiences. I did realize I am really going to miss my mom. We are very close and we do everything together. We are going to the beach together over spring break and I think that will be a very fun experience for both of us.