Week Four: Halfway out the Door :(

Monday, January 28

Today FLEW by. Part of the reason I think is because it was my first day of teaching full-time—which I was extremely nervous for! All last weekend was spent writing lesson plans, and preparing for the upcoming week. And let me say, though it took forever and a day to write all those lesson plans, I am grateful I spent so much time preparing. I felt ready for today’s lessons, and am happy to say that I think they went pretty well. Reading was the subject I was most nervous to teach, and it ended up going good! Goes to show that God is good and hears us in our cries of distress J
 

Our school also had their first lock-down drill with the police today. All went well, and the students cooperated perfectly. Sitting quietly waiting for the drill to be over gave me a moment to remember Sandy Hook and send prayers up for the remaining loved ones. I cannot imagine the pain the school is still going through, and as I looked over my students while waiting for the “a-ok” over the intercom, I feverishly prayed that CPCS would never experience the same hurt and anguish. As it turns out, a bullet had been found in one of the windows this morning before school. The bullet left a distinct hole through the first window pane, but did not go through the second; it lay in between the two windows. Because it was found just this morning, it’s prayed that it was an accident and that no harm was intended, but at the same time, it definitely causes a tremendous amount of worry. As I taught in our Bible lesson today though—God hears all prayers, and will always keep us safe.

 

Tuesday, January 29

I got to experience my first power outage at school today! Right after lunch, the kids were having some free time at centers (every day after lunch, they get to play with some games Elaine chooses before we go right into class) and all of a sudden, the lights went out—causing all the students to completely freak out. After the initial chaos, the students loved it: “This is so much more fun playing in the dark!” “I like playing in the dark! But I don’t think it would be so fun to learn in the dark—we should just play all afternoon!” About ten minutes after the power went out, the principal told everyone over the intercom that this opportunity would let us think about what it was like for students before electricity. It made the students even more excited about the ordeal. An hour later, they were bummed to see the lights flicker back on.
 

The whole experience though made me think about how those type of things can really impact a teacher’s lesson. I was teaching Bible later that day, and had planned on showing a quick video at the end to show what Solomon’s temple looked like, so my thoughts immediately went to that when the lights went out. I was nervous that the kids wouldn’t be able to see the video, and wouldn’t be quite so impressed with just hearing a description of the temple. At the same time, I was thankful that I didn’t have any lessons that required technology the entire time! We ended up being able to watch the video and the kids truly did love it. They were enthralled with how big the temple was, and how beautiful it must have been. Overall, today was a great day J

Wednesday, January 30

100 Day! The kids celebrated 100 days of being in school today. Almost everything all day long dealt with the number 100. This morning during morning work, the kids were given a hat to make that looked like the number, and were given a list of 100 tasks to complete that included things like stand up & stretch, get a drink from the drinking fountain, sharpen your pencil, etc. The kids loved it! So during math today, I had the lesson deal with 100 Day also. For the independent work, the kids needed to fill in the missing numbers of the 100 grid and match written numbers to the actual number for 10-100 (so, match 40 ---- forty, 50-----fifty, etc. ) For the game today, I had them do Roll to 100 (roll dice with a partner, and move your penny that number of spots up—first partner to 100 wins). Because we learned about centimeters on Monday, in my small group session I had students estimate what objects would be less than 100 centimeters, equal to 100 centimeters and more than 100 centimeters. They looooved that activity! Some of their answers were a little ridiculous (e.g. 3 cm is less than 100 cm, the equator is more than 100 cm) but they were right on the money with the responses! It was really fun to see them so excited about math.
 

In other classes, students just need to bring in 100 objects of something, but Elaine added a twist—they needed to bring 100 objects and also 100 foods to add to our class trail mix! Some of the food brought was 100 pretzels, 100 M&Ms, 100 Valentine hearts, 100 marshmallows, 100 Kix cereal balls, etc. It was neat because none of the kids brought the same thing, so the trail mix was a huge hit at lunch. I brought to school three bags full of candy—one had 100 Smarties, one had 143 Jolly Ranchers, and one had 167 Starbursts. We made a chart then with the students’ guesses as to which candy had exactly 100 candies inside. Some of my students showed how smart they are—they asked if I meant each individual candy for the Smarties, or if 1 package counted as 1. The four that guessed Smarties were pumped at the end of the day when they found out if they were right—but all soon joined their excitement when they realized they got to take some of each candy home that night J

I don’t remember having 100 Day in any of my classrooms when I was younger; I love the entire idea though. The kids were so excited all day long, and though not everything got done in all of its entirety today, its okay—having fun days like this is what kids look most forward to, and I think that it’s extremely important to have such celebratory days. It has been so fun to see in the younger grades how much it adds to the classroom when little days are made a big deal. For example, Groundhog Day is this weekend, and we are doing a special art project and will read lots of books about Groundhogs during reading time on Friday. I honestly probably wouldn’t even know it was Groundhog Day if we weren’t making a big deal out of it, but the kids get SO excited about that type of thing. It just makes everything more fun for everybody!

Thursday, January 31

As I have mentioned before, every Wednesday after school, all three first grade teachers have a team meeting in which they discuss the upcoming week to make sure everyone’s on the same page. I know I have said how great it is to see such awesome, detailed collaboration, but it truly is AWESOME. It’s great because all the teachers bring their own strengths to the group, and add their own contributions. Elaine says that the best part is simply how well they get along. They all value one another as colleagues, but also as friends, and that has been such a blessing to witness.

I have also seen how teachers can educate one another! One of the other first grade teachers has used the system Words Their Way for a couple years now, and loves it so much that she is teaching the other two teachers how to incorporate it into their classes. Though myself and the other two teachers are trying to figure it out yet, I think I have grasped the basic concept:
 

-- every time a spelling assessment is given, the teacher checks for each letter in every word;

-- each correct letter gives the student a “point”;

-- the manual that comes with the program then has a checklist that organizes the words so that based on the “point” system, the teacher can discover what sounds the student is struggling with (ex. short A, long O, etc.)

-- students are then divided up into groups based on the sound they are struggling with

-- students work with groups throughout week so that they get a lot of practice with the sound

-- spelling tests are done quite differently than typical ones! Every time assessments are given, there are as many different tests as there are groups (so if your kids were in 4 groups, you will give 4 different spelling tests). Sound confusing? Apparently, the colleague says it is GREAT and the kids actually stay in tune better than for a typical spelling test because she calls out the group name before saying the word, so the kids have to listen the entire time in order to know what words are for them (ex. Group White Rhino, love. Write the word, love).
 

Overall, I think the system sounds really cool. I’m excited to learn more about it! Elaine just gave the initial assessment to figure out what sounds students are struggling with last week, so hopefully they can be scored soon and put into their groups. I just hope I get to see it play out before my time is up at CPCS!

Friday, February 1

It was yet another indoor recess day and in the morning recess, the kids played Silent Ball, an all-time favorite. Today was an Atrium Lunch day though, so we got to go to the teacher’s lounge with other teachers. Everybody was talking about how crazy it has been lately with all these indoor recesses, and one teacher said what her class has been doing is Just Dance. Just Dance is a game for the Wii in that there are people dancing, and you are supposed to mimic all their moves. When playing on the actual Wii, you hold a remote so it can “grade” you on how accurate you are following the dance moves. In her class though, she was pulling up YouTube videos of Just Dance for Kids, and the students needed to follow the dance moves as best they could. Because it’s not with the actual Wii, it’s just for fun, and no one gets graded, but she said her class loved it, so we decided to try it during our afternoon recess.
 

And they absolutely LOVED it!! Because some of the kids have the game at home, they were requesting songs and telling everybody how great it was—getting all the other kids psyched too. Elaine said in the beginning that if you don’t want to dance, you don’t have too, but everybody wanted to do it! It was a lot of fun and a great way to get the kids moving around, without getting too crazy. Elaine told them they had to stay next to their desks while dancing, and they did awesome. For being a school full of Dutch kids, this generation sure got the dancing gene! Elaine and I joined in and tried some songs too, but my first graders were by far more skilled than I! It was a lot of fun, and I am happy to share that the class found a new indoor recess game that gets them moving and helps them blow off some energy—perfect for everyone J
 

This past week was also my first week taking over full time. I was nervous to start, but it ended up going great. Each day flew by so quick that I barely realized I was doing everything. It was fun to be in charge all day, and I’m excited to do it again this upcoming week. Elaine has done a great job of leaving periodically for random spurts of time throughout the day, and the students don’t even notice anymore which I love. The lessons have gone smoothly, and I feel as though I am able to start/end each lesson easier because I just taught the previous one. I’m confident this upcoming week will go just as well! Being that this is week four, it means I am over halfway done at CPCS and only get to stay for another 3 weeks :(  I am so bummed about this! I love my placement-- my cooperating teacher, my students, the supporting staff, the school atmosphere overall-- everything has been awesome. I am sad to think that I won't be here much longer!

Classroom Confidential

The third chapter in Schmidt’s book is all about student behavior. According to her, all behavior is motivated by one of two things: to seek pleasure, or to avoid pain. As a teacher, there are two main things that I can do to help my students accomplish their learning goals: 1) create an environment where they can learn using appropriate accommodations and 2) help them develop the courage and confidence they need to give up the camouflage and tackle the task of learning.
 

When reading this chapter I immediately thought of two very different students in my class. The first is Laila; Laila is constantly ready to learn. The moment I say “Do it now” she throws open her desk to get out whatever material I asked for. She is quick to be ready, and once she has that book open, she folds her hands on top of the desk, waiting for the other students to be ready. Laila almost has a physical accommodation that Schmidt talks about—she arranges her material in a precise order before folding her hands. She self-accommodates herself to be ready.
 

The second student I thought of is Gise; he loves to put on the camoflague of being the class clown. Anytime he can, he’ll throw in a little comment to make the other students laugh. For example, in morning meeting, I tell a riddle that the students need to guess. Two weeks ago, all the riddles were about people so the students needed to guess who the riddle was describing. Every single day, Gise would guess Justin Bieber—and every day the other kids would laugh, so he thrived on that. Elaine talked with him about when it’s appropriate to be silly, and that during school, it is usually not the right time. This past week though, I wrote a riddle just for Gise about Justin Bieber—“Canada is his hometown, his music make people jump up and down, be proud if you’ve got the fever, and love to follow Justin Bieber!” And wouldn’t you know, the one time the right answer is actually Justin Bieber, he didn’t guess it! All the kids did laugh when I told them the answer, but I’m hoping now that Gise will no longer guess him because Justin Bieber was already the answer once.
 

There are many other students that fit the descriptions that Schmidt gave. I’ll definitely start looking for ways in which I can help them accomplish the learning tasks, by asking myself what the students are hiding, or what they are seeking. I know there’s a motive behind every action, so now I am equipped to help them accomplish their learning goals!