Wrapped in Charlotte's Web

This week I was able to participate in a nostalgic part of being a teacher. I was able to put together a bulletin board that is outside of the classroom. The students have been participating in finding research about animals and their life cycles. From this unit my CE is reading Charlotte's Web to them.
The students had an assignment working in groups they were assigned a certain farm animal. The students research books, and other resources to find out specific details and characteristics about their animal.

The groups were cows, chickens, horses, turkeys, pigs, and sheep. Once the groups completed the research they were than able to turn the information into a summary of the animal. The students worked in groups to write a paragraph about their animal.

What I did not realize is how much work goes into the process of bulletin board making. My CE told me that making bulletin boards is sometimes thrown to the back burner because of the necessity to teach the standards. My CE told me that making bulletin boards were important for the self-esteem of the students. In making a bulletin board in which their work is displayed shows students that you are proud of them, and helps boost quality in work, if they feel that this will be put on the bulletin board.

Anyway, back to being hard work. The students had the easy part of doing the research and writing a paragraph. Once the paragraphs were written I had to go over each letter with a permanent black marker, so that it would be legible once posted on the board. Once this was completed the students had colored a huge picture of their animal so I had to laminate both the paragraphs and the pictures. After that I had to take down the previous bulletin board that had been displayed. Once everything was laminated I then had to put all of their work up on the board. As a reminder I am 5'7", and the bulletin board is as high as over six feet. I had to stand on a chair and work with a stapler and glue gun to reach all over the board.

I am so thankful that I have able to participate in creating this because it gives me an idea of what teachers do other than just making lessons and teaching them. I would probably attach this learning experience to standard one of the NCTPS, teacher demonstrates leadership, in which I am empowering students to be proud of their work.

All You Need for a Snowman

Today, I had the pleasure of starting a new book with my ruby reds. I have four students in this group three boys and one girl. This new book is called, All you need for a Snowman by Alice Schertle To begin our group I had the students do some pre-reading vocabulary. We went over the definition of mound, thousand, stacked, triple, couple, and wool. The students did very well in mastering the vocabulary. Two of my students in the group can read much better than the other two in the group, so I made sure to reinforce the definitions of  the words, and had each child tell me the word and its definition. 

Once we completed vocabulary I had the students imagine a time when they had created a snowman. I asked them questions like, What did you use to build the snowman?, What did he wear?, etc. I had them think about the questions but not to answer them. After the students imagined I read the book aloud to the students. I made sure to check for comprehension by posing questions such as "How many snowball did they create to make a snowman?, What type of hat did the children choose for the snowman?" I also made sure that they had grasped vocabulary by asking the meaning of the words once I read them. Next, I had the students take turns on reading the pages. As I said two of my students are better readers so they very quickly read the pages without hesitation or problems, whereas the other two had problems with the words and with fluency, so while one of the slower readers were reading my better readers wanted to act up, so I had to make sure that they stayed on task and followed along while the other students were reading. 

Once completing the reading I asked the students more comprehension questions and had them find the answers in the book before we moved on. Finally I had the students do a who, what, where, when chart so that we could break up parts of the story.

Who	What	Where	When
The children	built a snowman	outside	in winter

  The main goal for the group is to be able to create a summary of the story that they had read. We were not able to complete the group work today, so tomorrow it will be completed for group time. 

This is a great book to read for second graders. 

Math with whiteboards

Today I was able to observe math instruction in the classroom. Now, I have seen my CE do math in class before but this was a little different today. Monday she had the student's take a math test. If the student's made a 4 or 3 they passed. Most of the students did well but all of them seemed to have problems with the backside of the test, so my CE modified her math instruction to reinforce what was on the back of the math test.

The students were having trouble with do vertical two digit math problems. My CE gave each student a whiteboard and a marker to do the learning experience. The CE wrote out math problems on the page enough for each student to participate in solving one. The students will work along with the student that was at the board solving the problem. This class has a few short songs to help with addition such as "always always do the ones and then the tens" and " when you make a ten the 0 goes down and the 1 goes up in the tens place" From this learning experience I was able to gauge which students seemed to be struggling and what they were struggling with.

One of the students' had a problem with the regrouping and totally forgot about the ten that she had added to the tens place, which of course made the answer ten short. By guidance from the other students and the CE, she was able to see what she did wrong. The students were really struggling to do the math problems vertically. The students wanted to solve the math problems horizontally which was greatly confusing them since they were regrouping with the tens. For solving math problems vertically my CE has a specific way that she wants the students to solve them.  First they are to to draw an Capital I, write the problem within the I, label the ones and tens place and then solve the problem. I noticed that some of the students did not need these steps to solve the problems whereas others were struggling just to label the place value for each side.

Seeing behind the scenes

Today I was in my classroom until lunch time. Many times teachers are viewed as getting up in front of the class and just teaching to the students. I, myself have been guilty of thinking that teachers are just getting up and teaching because I have not had the experience of seeing behind the scenes. Now I do know that the longer I am in this education field the more I am realizing how much work is put in it or should be put in it. Today I had the pleasure of laminating pages for a game to be played in the classroom, helping a little boy with reading, assisting in AR testing, and being present during the student's MAP testing. This all happened between 7 am and 11 am.

The most interesting part was to be able to see the MAP testing. MAP testing is a computerized adaptive testing system that tailors tests to a student's achievement level. Each student takes a test that is dynamically developed for him or her as the test is being administered. Just to remind you I am in a second grade class, and the questions on the test were asking " what is the simile in the paragraph?" and asking students to identify context clues within the story. I knew without a shadow of a doubt that my student's did not know this information yet. My CE also knew that these second graders did not know some of the information. I noticed after the testing that some of the student's seemed to be a little on edge.  So today when I made it home I went on the search for more information about MAP testing, and how to better equip student's with taking the test. 

Here is what I found: 

Science and Investigation in the Classroom

For this week I have only been able to be in the classroom for one day because of family circumstances. I was in my classroom on August 31st. My CE has allowed me to work with a group of students, and Monday I was able to work with the ruby red's. This group is considered to be the students that are above grade level or academically gifted. I was able to obtain UV beads from Dr.McKinney, and with the approval of my CE I was able to conduct an experiment with this group.

I had the students to create a chart in which they would predict what would happen, tell what really happened, and tell why it happened.  I explained to the students that the sun puts off UV rays that allows for our skin to either tan or burn. I allowed the students tell to tell which happened to them. I proceeded in letting them know that we were going to be scientist, and predict what would happen to the beads if we were to go outside. Some students said melt, others said that they would change colors, etc. I taught them that by predicting we were hypothesizing, and I explained to them what an hypothesis is.

Once, we filled out the first part of our chart, I had the students to take a handful of beads and we walked out side. The group was amazed that the beads began to change colors because of the rays of the sun. I explained to the students that just because their hypothesis was not correct does not mean that we stop trying to predict things that would happen because that makes the best scientist. Once the students found out the beads changed colors they were able to explain to me that the UV rays from the sun caused the beads to change colors, and then the students started creating other hypothesis based on different scenarios that the beads could be used in.

It amazed me that after participating in the investigation that the students were able to connect better with the science experiment and also make their own inquiries about other possible scenarios.