Week 11

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

This week one of my student's parents volunteered to come in to share about her career of owning a bakery. She came in and brought a model cake to show the students. In her presentation she described what a typical week looks like for her. I think one of the most valuable things she taught the class was life skills that are necessary for her to be successful. Some of the things she mentioned were having time management skills. Some of the students struggle with this so I think it was important for them to see that this is an important skill to have in order to be successful. She also talked about taking notes and being organized. I have noticed that some students are struggling to keep organized and hand in homework, which is why I think it was great for them to hear this advice from her. She was also kind enough to bake a class for the class for everyone to sample her work! It was delicious and showed students that hard work really pays off.

In my class we use the phonics program Words Their Way. This program can get pretty routine and boring for the students I noticed. To make their phonics practice more fun and engaging I tried a new activity called roll and spell this week. Each student got a sheet that had a key on it. The key told them how they had to spell one of their phonics words depending on what number on the dice that they rolled. The students then shared dice with a partner and they each wrote down their words on separate sheet of paper. As I walked around observing, I could tell that the kids really enjoyed the change up from the normal routine and helped them practice their spelling in a fun way.

The social studies chapter we just finished up was on comparing the colonies. Their were three colonial regions we learned about: The New England colonies, the Middle colonies, and the Southern colonies. We specifically discussed the colonies of Massachusetts, Rhode Island, New York, Pennsylvania, Maryland, and Georgia. Within each colony we discussed the reason for founding, geography, economy, and government while filling out a chart. After we discussed the two colonies from each region I had the students create a billboard focusing on one of the two colonies from that region. The purpose of the billboards were for students to persuade people to come to their colony. They had to include a logo/slogan for their colony, and information about areas discussed in class: economy, government, religion, geography,etc., This was not a multiple choice test but still allowed me to assess what students had learned. In order to meet the criteria of the rubric they must have a good understanding of the region and colonies chosen. I'm excited to see the creativity of students as they show what they learned!

 The grammar skill of focus this week was prepositions. Prepositions can be a tough concept for students. The activity shown in the picture below is students doing an activity in which they chose a lego figure and plastic cup. Then, one partner would place the lego figure somewhere on, in, or near the cup. The other partner would create a sentence using a preposition to describe where their partner placed the lego figure. For example, "The lego figure is sleeping in the cup." Again, this was a fun way for kids to practice grammar in a non-worksheet form. 

What I learned 

Since this week was the week before Spring Break it was important to wrap some things up in order to leave each subject at a good stopping point. I was planning doing both Science and Social Studies this week, but only ended up doing Social Studies because that is just what ended up working out best. I think it is pretty neat to think back to last semester when I expected everything to always goes as planned and struggled with flexibility to now learning to be extremely flexible to do whatever is best for student learning. 

This week I also learned that having summative assessments that are not multiple choice and short answer are both good for students and me. I enjoy getting to grade projects such as the Social Studies billboards, which allows me to see the students creativity while still showing me what they have learned. Also, it is much more enjoyable for the students as well. Therefore, I am going to look for more ways to avoid the traditional assessments as much as possible.  This addresses IPTS 8, which states, The teacher understands various formal and informal assessment strategies and uses them to support the continuous development of all students.

I also learned that it can be easy to fall in a routine of certain ways that have become habit, such as Phonics. However, I have to remind myself to switch it up and change it up to keep students engaged because otherwise they will get bored of the same old routine all the time. 

Goals 

I did achieve my goal of using math centers that review math skills that students previously learned to keep their skills fresh. I had a station for adding and subtracting decimals, order of operations, multi-step word problems, and an independent station in which students practiced Measurement and Data problems on their iPads.  I am on Spring Break this upcoming week, but when I return, one of my goals is to try out centers in Science class. My students have thoroughly enjoyed them in math and handled them extremely well.  We are discussing the Water Cycle and weather. The text is often split into sections that would be able to split into different stations where they can discuss instead of just reading it all as a whole class.