Grace Furlong's Student Teaching

4/16-4/20 Classroom Confidential I plan to use community in the classroom by making connections to the class' community to the different subjects they are learning whenever possible. To help students better understand their community, I can see myself having my students do a similar project to what Schmidt described. She states that having students complete a brochure helps them turn their knowledge and learning into a useful product. While students create the brochure, they are learning about their community and also working on promoting others to visit or live there. Also, the brochure can be distributed throughout the community as well. There are many compelling reasons to integrate community in the classroom. Some reasons include students are learning hands-on, they are able to connect learning to the world, and the possibilities are endless with how community projects can form. Making learning for students meaningful is so crucial and community integration help...

4/9-4/13 Classroom Confidential- Chapter 12 Personally, I work towards being a lifelong learner by reading/researching, participating in professional development opportunities, learning from students,  and collaborating with professionals. I specifically liked the idea tag team. I think it would be great to work with another teacher by combining are classes here and there. I think that I would learn great strategies from the other teacher while being able to offer my ideas as well. It allows me to still be exposed to other strategies and learn new methods even when I have my own classroom.   What Happened Round 2 of PARCC was this week. The students had a PARCC test each morning. It was pretty neat to see how much the class was persevering and not complaining about all the tests. The school has done a great job of encouraging the kids to do their best and show what they have learned thus far.  This week was up and down with the weather and it w...

4/2-4/6 Classroom Confidential The big deal about social justice is that there may have been cases like Plessy vs. Fergeson, but there are still areas where social action needs to be taken. Many kids are hearing the social issues that occurring in society. As teachers, it is our job to address and discuss them instead of leaving students to ponder them alone. We often try to create real world experiences for our students related to the curriculum. It is important that we do this will social issues as well. I thought the book gave some great ideas for incorporating this in the classroom through projects, primary sources, and images. I think that it is important for a Christian teacher to include ideas like the ones mentioned in Chapter 10 to help students be able to discuss and try to understand the social issues in today's society. It also helps them understand how they can become apart of social justice and as their teachers ...

3/19-3/23 Classroom Confidential Chapter 6 gave some great ideas for writing that I can see myself using. I especially liked the idea to utilize read aloud to enforce writing. I often thought of a read aloud being mainly helpful for students to hear my expression in my voice being modeled and hear the vocabulary. However, it makes so much sense to use a read aloud for writing discussion. I plan to use this strategy in the future to have students see certain aspects of writing, such as how an author picks certain words and his purpose for writing. I also really liked the self-praise activity for my group of students. Sometimes the class struggles with confidence in their work. I think it would be great for them to go through their writing and assess their work to find something they think they did well to boost their confidence. The more confident they become in their work, I think that their writing will become better as well.  What Happened T...

3/12-3/16 Classroom Confidential I do teach social studies and loved the idea that chapter 8 gave about using images to get the class talking. We have many images in our social studies textbook and try to talk about them as much as possible because the kids are always interested in them. The pictures help them visualize what they are reading about. However, the possible questions that the chapter offered will be really useful in our next conversation about a painting or photo. Some of the questions I really liked were what does the mood of the group seem to be? What's the message? and what do you think the photographer was trying to tell us? I think these questions would really engage students in the image and the topic we are discussing to make the text more meaning.  I specifically liked the idea of using masks to incorporate the arts. My class is a artistic class and enjoys creating things. I can see them loving this activity. It could be beneficial...

3/5-3/9 What Happened This week was not a normal one. There were many special events that changed up the schedule for the week so many adjustments were made. It was great experience to be able to adjust lessons and use flexibility to adapt the week. Some of the events this week included Robert Crown (health education lesson for all fifth graders), Accelerated Reader movie viewing, PARCC practice, and a Chorus field trip/assembly.  The fifth graders were visited by a Robert Crown teacher who presented to the students on puberty and the reproductive system. Many of the students were very nervous prior to the presentation. My class is pretty quiet and reserved. Therefore, this type of thing is pretty far out of their comfort zone. I was impressed at how the presenter handled the situation. She was very relaxed and comforting to the students. She reassured them that it is okay to feel uncomfortable or awkward, but it is a part of life so there is no need to stress abou...