Conversation Wall

We have a wall in our classroom where students are able to post concerns and kudos for other people's actions in the room. We call it our Issue Bin. On Friday, our "class government" reads them aloud and we discuss all comments as well as problem solve any and all concerns. As you can see to the right we always have more kudos than concerns, which means we have more positive feedback rather than issues that need to be worked out, which makes a teacher happy.

This has been a practice since the beginning of the year and it is well understood by the students. The purpose of this wall is for our classroom to be a community, the wall allows for the students to feel as though they can share their issues and give kudos to those who have treated them well.

In the past couple weeks, I have personally dealt with an issue that I have not really had to deal with until this grade.

When the issue of bullying came up one day in class, it was very obvious that this was an issue that everyone has to face, not just the principal, not just the students, but the parents and teachers alike. Using a tool such as the issue bin allows the class to discuss big issues such as this come to solutions with collaboration, understanding, and guidance from the teacher.

Now we do not have huge bullying issues in our classroom at the moment, however what we do have are students who have feelings and sometimes do not know how to voice them. This wall allows the students to work on and build their understanding of how a conversation like this needs to be performed, the fact that your thoughts and feelings do matter, and how we can all treat each other better.

This issue bin has been a huge eye opener, allowing me to see how you can help, teach, and build confidence in students just with a little communication.

Hidden Treasures!

This week after my science methods class, I decided to head to the used book store around the street from the school site where my classes are held. I had been what you could call "a regular" there for a couple weeks at the beginning of last semester, however with a very tiny wallet I had discontinued my trips. With a new class, new curriculum, and a renewal of my curiosity, I thought I would return and find some resources for the plant unit I am about to teach. I found many hidden treasure this time around. Among the many fabulous books I found were the classics like: Heggity Peg, The Very Hungry Caterpillar, Sylvester and the Majic Pebble, and some really great books on American History for Children. However, I did not just find books for my students, I also found a couple books for my own education such as "Teaching Passionately" by Joan and Dawn Wink, and Differentiated Instruction- a resource book for educators. I am very excited to dive into both of these books and use them as references as I am building my teaching philosophy in the next month. After all of this book searching, I walked out with filthy dust covered fingers and fifteen dollars less in my pocket. I walked away thinking how amazing it is to have resources such as this little used book store where I am able to peruse and find absolute gems!!

The West Side

If you are in the field of education you know what Open Court is and what kind of reputation it has. However, this morning I was able to take a very dull story out of Open Court and make it something the students were able to delve into. The lesson was on the story The West Side, where a young Puerto Rican boy moves to New York to get a better education and it addresses the challenges he faces like culture shock, language barriers, and relationship issues. The story itself created the path for my lesson where I focused on heritage, culture, and feelings. We began the lesson with a visualization strategy where the students close their eyes and imagine leaving Long Beach and being placed somewhere completely unfamiliar. (Learned about this strategy in my reading methods course) We then made a circle map(I had a training on thinking maps last fall) of how we would feel if we were in the character's position. This anticipatory set got the students interested in the story and gave them a personal connection to the main character, Juan. During the audio play of the story, I paused the story and gave the students one minute to reflect/ explore what was occurring in the story(a reading strategy that I learned in adolescent literature at Cal Poly). Some of the responses my students gave to this activity were amazingly deep and truly showed higher order thinking and deeper meaning. All together I felt as though this lesson was one of the best I have ever taught because the students actually wanted to participate in it which isn't a habit with Open Court.

Survived the First Week of Fifth Grade!!!

WOW- This has been one crazy week. I feel as though all together it went by really quick although each day in itself seemed longer than usual. Well I think I should start with saying how amazing the new school is that I am at- I absolutely LOVE IT!!!! The school spirit, resources, teachers, and students are phenomenal. There is something so refreshing about teachers who love what they do and talk about their activities with one another.

Now on to describing my class in particular... well it is a fifth grade, average ability level with an amazing teacher that taught at the GATE level for many years prior. There are 35 diverse fifth grade boys and girls who are growing and extremely active and social. Their mere size is a huge difference from my last assignment with second graders, and many of them are almost as tall as I am. The students at this level are very interesting because unlike the lower grades, these kids really want you to work and show them why they should listen to you. I am currently working on being very firm, not their friend but their mentor. I have no problem standing my ground with the rules but am working on really focusing on who is on task and how to keep the students' interest. With this large amount of students luckily there is three of us to differentiate and really focus in on the students' needs. This week has already been exponentially eye opening, and I think this class will be the biggest challenge that I have faced just due to the amount of students and the difficulty of the curriculum and classroom management. I am stepping forward, excited to learn and can't wait for these students, my master teacher, and the school itself to teach me HOW TO BE A BETTER TEACHER!

New Assignment

With the conclusion of last semester, it is time to get prepared for the upcoming assignment- fifth grade at a new school in Lakewood. There are so many exciting features of this new assignment- to begin with I got moved to a great school less than four miles from my house. With good news, there is always a bit of bad news or stress, and so although I am extremely excited to be at a new school with a new teacher and a great cohort- I am nervous about going into fifth grade. I have had some great experiences with children at this age, however, I would not say I have had enough experience with this age to be completely successful yet. I very excited for this challenge. With a new school is also a new partner, her name is Andrea and she seems very friendly and organized. Leaving my partner from last semester was hard, we had gone through so much together, but I think that having another opportunity to bond and learn from another student teacher is really beneficial to my education and success as a teacher. I hope that I always have the opportunity to learn from and support my peers. This adventure has taken an amazing turn and I can't wait to begin fifth grade (for the 2nd time) as a teacher!

The End of B4

Sorry to have left you all with few posts in the last two months. Here is the massive much needed update. To begin with the time between Thanksgiving and Christmas break was the most intense few weeks of my student teaching. The reason for this is that we were attempting to get in as many standards as we could before our benchmark tests. We were also doing report cards, and trying to tie in as many multicultural holiday themed lessons as possible. Not only was the intensity in my classroom, but also outside of the classroom for Long Beach State we had everything due for all of our classes, so I found myself teaching all day and working on school to do lists every other minute.

Even though it was a very stressful time, I found that some of the lessons that i taught during this time were the best. We were able to really focus in on our small groups and target certain ability levels. I was able to excel in working with the new Daily 5 program that we had been trying to instill in our classroom, and I co-taught an amazing literature compare/contrast lesson with my partner Shannon, on Cinderella. This was an amazing experience because we have come full circle this semester and this was concluded and seen in this lesson.

To give you just a bit of information on how this lesson went: we both had a version of Cinderella, my partner had the traditional fairy tale and I had a Mediterranean version called Cendrillion. While the reading for this story was a bit difficult as it had some words in a different language, the students were enthralled in a new version of a story they already knew. We had also created visual input maps for us to do a storyboard on which really brought the visual component for our students. We each got the opportunity to do our own storyboard input and had the opportunity of teaching our part in on our own. This experience was amazing because in the beginning of our semester, we worked together to teach lessons often, however, we found that it was much more difficult to plan, build, and execute every lesson together, so we decided that we might gain more insight into teaching by producing and performing the lessons independently.

By coming together at the end of the semester to teach together and with how successful it was- I feel we truly demonstrated how far we have come this semester. This lesson demonstrated how much we had learned, how strong our collaboration and teamwork skills had gotten, and finally, how much we had learned as teachers. As for the end of the semester, it is actually the end of second grade and the end of the school for Christmas break. I am sad to be leaving the school and my partner- I am going to miss the kids a lot, and I know this is good training because each year you lose the kids you had and it is hard, especially if they leave the school all together. I am sad to be leaving this assignment behind, but I am looking forward to the new experience ahead of me.

Thanksgiving Week

This was one short week with only two days. However in those two days, we were able to get in making butter(which is quite an arm workout), making pine cone turkeys(pine cones that my neighbor had brought back from Big Bear, Ca.), some formative assessments, and a bit of Fairy tales. It has been an awesome week, another month and holiday is blowing past. It is amazing how fast the school year goes, I feel like I was just talking about Halloween and now it is already Thanksgiving. My next post will probably be about Christmas!! :) I hope all have a fabulous Thanksgiving week!