Week 12

This is the final blog I am sad to say, but it was a great semester with great experiences! Today at field experience, it was rough not only because of the classroom, but because of the weather too. It was freezing out! Aside from that, our teacher showed us a couple of tips and tricks of the trade while the students were in specials. She had this great reading activities book where the bookmarks were actual quick lessons that could be used as meaningful time fillers and she also showed us a social studies lesson that she was going to present later on in the day. The great thing about the social studies lesson was that it was literature based. The students were to read a book based on the time when Indiana was first being settled. Based off of this book, the students were to make an oral presentation about what the book was about, as well as write as if they were founding their own settlement. They were to think about the types of things they needed to survive, what kind of buildings they lived in, and what kind of people would live there. It was a really neat activity and lesson for the students for sure!

Later on in the class, the students were holding their very first book club where they talked about the first few chapters of the book they read. I had the opportunity to facilitate the ladies who were reading "Misty of Chincoteague". We talked about what questions they had so far, and then we went around and read our favorite passages that we found. After that, we made inferences of what we thought might happen based off of what we had read. Their homework for the next day was to write three paragraphs: the first was a summary of what they read so far, the second was a description of the characters (horses), and the last paragraph was just about discussion questions that each student would like to bring to book club the next time. The one problem I had with this was that although I do agree that all of the students should be on the same pace, they didn't seem that challenged by the amount that they were reading. It seemed like they were bored by the pace they were taking, so if it were me, I would have had them read more each night.

Week 11

Today in class we made booklets for the students so that they could take down observations when they watch a movie later on this week about characterization. The students will be watching Scooby Doo and writing about each of the individual characters, their traits, and whether or not they think that character will solve the mystery based off of these traits. The teacher called it "sneaky learning" because the students would think that they were having a movie break before Thanksgiving, but really they're learning about literature. Later on during class, we worked with our kidwatching kid and helped them to catch up on work that they had not yet completed. They were learning about Native Americans and the different vocabulary words, and also recalling facts about what they had read. I noticed today that my kidwatching kid, although being a very competent reader, actually has a lot of difficulties recalling exact details and would often have to refer back to the texts to answer her questions. She also had to write a reflection about she thought about a sentence that the teacher had posted on the board. I wasn't sure if she couldn't read her own writing, but she had extreme difficulties reading her paragraph aloud to me when I know she is a strong reader. I guess I was just confused about what she was struggling with today, hopefully it was just sloppy handwriting.

Week 10

Unfortunately, I missed this week because I was sick, but interestingly enough, I ran into a student this previous weekend who seemed extremely excited to see me. He wondered where I had been, and when I explained that I wasn't feeling very well he was satisfied and then said he would see me next week! I was tickled because I felt somewhat like a real teacher for a moment. It always interests me to see how students are going to react to seeing a teacher outside of the classroom. Sometimes students are intimidated by seeing their teacher, but the fact that this student approached me like an old friend made me feel important and made me feel like I was missed. I can't wait for the student to approach me in the mall/grocery/wherever to be one of MY students.

Week 9

Today at field experience, our teacher was absent. So, because of this absence she left us an activity to prepare for the kids to do when they came back from specials. Basically what we had to do was cut out little cards from a sheet of paper and break the students up into groups of two. The cards each had clues using the definition and root of the word so that they would lead to the next card. One student would have the first card, the second student would have the other and it would go back and forth until the students ran out of cards. We were supposed to explain the activity to the class and then go around and answer questions, however the activity was a disaster. None of the students understood what they were supposed to be doing, and the cards were really mixed up. So, the other IU teachers and I decided that we were going to go through the cards as a class, and I thought the activity was much more fun. The first student read the first card, and if the students knew the answer they would raise their hand. If I called on them and they knew the answer, they would get to read their clue, and if they got it wrong, they would have to look through their cards and try again. I think when the class was thinking together like that, the energy was much better, and the activity was somewhat redeeming because the first attempt was such a disaster. I understand that sometimes lessons don't go exactly as planned, but the frustrating part was that we weren't the ones that came up with the lesson and neither the students nor the teacher knew how to participate. It was rough!

Week 8

This week at University I feel like I had one of the most productive days that I've had yet. Usually when it is my time to be in the classroom, my students are in their specials, and based off of what I witnessed last week, I am no longer going to observe their specials time simply because it makes me really upset to watch. So, I helped the teacher along with Tabitha and Adrian to grade the post-assessment on context clues. It was actually really interesting to see how students would select different words in the context to define the words that they didn't know, although it was also kind of disheartening because most of the students seemed like they were really struggling. Most of them were getting only about half of their answers correct, or maybe just a little more than half, but the scores were still very, very low.

When the students finally did come back into the classroom we had the opportunity to work with our kidwatching kid on a sketch-to-stretch activity which really helped me to get my kid a lot better. As it turns out, my kid is quite the artist and is also very good at articulating her thoughts. That's really been my first good conversation with her because I haven't had a lot of time with her.

Finally, the thing that's upsetting to me is now that we've figured out the best way to remedy the schedule issue with the specials thing, my teacher is going on leave for three weeks because of surgery. I feel like I'm really not quite getting all of the experiences that I was hoping to with the students or with the curriculum. I just want to have a part in the classroom! I am not a good by-stander.

Week 7

Ok, so the truth is I completely forgot to do this and we are now doing a blog for week 8. So, I am backtracking because I have something that I can't forget to write down that really bothered me last week. When I was observing the 4th graders in their specials last Wednesday I was absolutely shocked and appalled by the way the teacher was acting towards her students. To start off with, her class was barely being managed. Kids were running around, taking things from each other, screaming, and not listening to the teacher at all. Rather than correcting the situation, the teacher ignored what was happening and proceeded to talk over all of the students, which didn't solve the problem. The the teacher was talking about landscapes and brought up the artist T.C. Steele. The teacher began to question the class about the artist and as the children responded thoughtfully, she rolled her eyes at them, looking at them like they were stupid, saying things like, "yeah sure", and finally gave up on them. There was no guidance from her and it was really awkward because I don't think the students or myself understood what she was trying to get from the class. The teacher was also asking about some kind of order form that she sent home with the students, and when many of the students didn't have them to return to her, she said very condescendingly, "I knew you guys would do this to me" like it was a slap in the face to her. The teacher also was walking around the classroom and blatantly criticizing her students in front of other students. She walked up to a table of students and said to us "See this young lady here? I wish my entire class was just like her, then my life would be perfect." As soon as she walked away, the other students said to each other "I hate art, she's always criticizing us all the time." She also went around and said things like, "These trees are awful. I'm going to probably have to do a lesson just on drawing trees". I just think that its wrong for a teacher to make any child to feel like they are unintelligent. I also was extremely offended that the teacher was just writing off every student and their response and rolling her eyes. I don't know how that is ever ok to make students feel stupid for sharing their thoughts or opinions. I also don't know how a teacher like that has a secure job during such difficult times for teachers. I guess I was so shocked not only because that was the first bad teacher I had witnessed, but just the magnitude of how awful she was towards her students really made me want to say something. But then of course, I am only an IU student observing her classroom. That leads me to wonder, if I could even do anything about it at all?

Week 6

After thinking all week about what I was going to do for my multigenre research paper, I have now come to the conclusion that I am going to write about vegetarianism. I myself have been a vegetarian for the past four years and I am always asked "Why did you decide to become a vegetarian?", or "is that hard? I could never do that."I am hoping that by writing this paper and presenting all of the facts, I can help people to understand why I would make a lifestyle choice like that. Aside from the paper, I have been looking forward to observing an active writer's workshop this next week for our field observation. I think that although I remember doing it in elementary school, it will be a great refresher and will also help me to better understand how to apply all of the skills and tips we have been learning in our cluster classes. I also need to choose a child to kidwatch so I can start recording that student in class. I am still unsure who I want to select, but I'm thinking of one child who seems really intelligent, but also seems to get worked up really easily when he is stressed in the least. I think he will be really interesting to observe, and I feel like I can learn a lot of ways to work with his learning needs by learning more about his learning habits.

Week 5

For this weeks class, we had the opportunity to teach a lesson to our peers. I really liked my idea for my lesson, but I think once I was teaching it to the other members of the group and heard some of their ideas, I didn't feel as strongly about my lesson. I think that part of it was I simplified it a lot and just gave them the basic idea, so they didn't get the full idea, but I still didn't feel all that great about it. For the Multigenre research paper I was thinking about doing something about owls. I know that idea sounds somewhat random, but I was thinking the other day about a really great book called HOOT which is about saving owls from a construction site. I think that this could open up the topic of the affect of man on the environment, and also give me the opportunity to learn a little more about these unusual creatures. I guess I'll do a little more research to see if that's truly what I want to do, but I think it could be fun.

Week 4

Wow! I guess its been a while since I have thought about punctuation and its role in how readers understand what is written. Also, the worksheet about punctuation is a great tool for students to really demonstrate their knowledge about punctuation, but also describe it in their own way. I was also really happy to have read Up, Up Down as a class. That was a really cute way to have read a story like that, and I know that a classroom full of kids would have really enjoyed that.
This week was also the first week that we worked with our peers on our writer's notebook. To be honest, for some reason sharing my notebook made me kind of worried just because although its not too terribly personal, it still contains some of my own thoughts and observations. I guess I just would feel uncomfortable if someone read it right now because its still unpolished and my partner and I are still getting to know each other.
I also really enjoyed the Craft Lessons book and presentations. There were some really great suggestions about some really cool lessons, and it was great for me that I didn't have to read an entire book to learn about all of them because my classmates presented them to me! I really liked working in groups a lot for that part of the class.

Week 3

In class this week we listened to a story about an 11 year old girl who was telling us all about her birthday. I really enjoyed the rich, descriptive language that the writer used to describe everything, however I really felt sorry for the girl because she was getting made fun of by many of her classmates. I remember that was a hard time for me too, just because it was a time where you realized that you were growing up and that people who you grew up with and knew from school all of your life started changing and deciding who their "real" friends were.
We also began our field experience this week. I was so excited to be immersed in the classroom, and I am excited that I have the unique opportunity to help in the 4th grade classroom. Two of the fourth grade teachers and the librarian are working together so that they can help their readers to get the most out of their language arts time. The classrooms switch and get mixed around, and because the librarian is taking some of the students, the groups for each teacher are smaller, which means more one-on-one time for the students and teachers.
One teacher works with teachers who are low-level readers, one is working with students who are at grade level, and the librarian is working with the high achieving students. I sat in with the librarian this week and she did a really great job with the students. She is implementing technology into reading by having each student read a part of a story using their best character voices and turning this into a youtube video that they can share with their classmates and their parents. She chose some really interesting poems for the students to read aloud which really helped them to connect to the text by using different voices. For instance, she read a book about different dogs, and she passed the book around and let each student read the story in the voice that they thought the dog would have. It was really fun and engaging.
The fourth graders also go to their specials during the time that we visit the school, so we get the opportunity to rotate and see literature in art and music, and we also get to observe gym class. I just really enjoyed my first day in field experience and I can't wait to get back in the classroom!

Learning to Spell

I really enjoyed learning about spelling and the different techniques teachers use to help all students with spelling. I had never really considered people having trouble learning to spell using the typical spelling list, but I can see how there could be flaws with a system like that. It was also really interesting to learn about the process students use to figure out how to spell words that they don't know. I guess I never thought about how student use a misspelled word as a place keeper, or how students with higher level thinking skills substitute other words when they can't figure out how to spell the original word. Switching gears: I really, really enjoyed decorating my writers notebook because it was such a great way to personalize something that stores my personal thoughts and ideas. I just feel as though I connected more to the notebook as MY notebook instead of just another notebook for my class notes. I can't wait to fill it up more both on the cover with pictures and inside with thoughts.

First Day of Class

Today in class we looked at several pieces of literature. We started the class by reading two books The Relatives by Cynthia Rylant and The Leaving Morning by Angela Johnson. They were both really interesting stories to begin a new class with because they talked more about leaving something, rather than starting something new. In other classes where teachers have chosen to start a class with a book, its usually one that I have heard of or at least one with a very optimistic and exciting feeling. I don't know if I got that feeling from either book, but it did get my attention. It also left me wondering why exactly both of those books were chosen.

Toward the end of the class, I really enjoyed reading the little bits of House on Mango Street by Sandra Cisneros and Never in a Hurry by Naomi Shihab Nye.  Although I don't like writing an analysis, I really do enjoy analyzing literary works, so I really liked

that everyone got a chance to share what they got from each work in terms of what each author said and also what the text

structure itself said about the work. Talking about this as a class and then writing our own piece about our name was a  

smart way to help us to not only think like a writer, but also to practice writing in our Writer's Notebook. 

Overall, I really enjoyed the content of the first class with the exception of the length (which I'll have to get used to), and I'm

actually excited to start writing and documenting things on this blog and in my notebook.