Post #3

During this short week before Thanksgiving, I found how schedules can get so switched around to make room for themed activities to go along with upcoming holidays. With Thanksgiving coming up, my cooperating teacher planned a group mural activity to be done during the normal language arts time. The task was to create a mural that shows what they are thankful for that is in their class. Most students did a really great job with this, and it was fun seeing what they appreciate about their classroom. One boy drew what looked to be some random drawings, and I asked him what they were. He didn't really answer so I asked him where they came from. He said they were in his notebook. He took that assignment to an extreme and picked out such small details that it made me laugh. Unfortunately there was a significant behavior issue that interrupted the project, so it will be interesting to see how my CT responds to this time delay this coming week.

In another one of my classes, the professor asked us to observe what teachers do on days before breaks. One of the most common activities to do is to watch a movie. This is what my CT did, and it seemed to work well. I was nervous at first that the students would be chatty, but they settled down once it got going and enjoyed it. Since it discussed the historic origin to the Thanksgiving holiday, it was a way to tie in some social studies content, which is something that tends to not receive enough attention.

Blog

Hi everyone. Happy Thanksgiving and have a nice weekend. We already have our field experience for a month and that is really unique experience to myself. We get familiar with our cooperating teacher and lovely children. As time goes on, i can feel we are a part of the classroom. Seeing these children's smiling faces every morning is one of my daily enjoyable things. When Daniel and i had our first morning meeting, these children looked really nervous. However, now we can always sit down and listen to each other. Our cooperating teacher is a perfect role to me and she teaches me how the profession looks like. We almost finish our morning meetings and read aloud, and participate in every class and small group activities. Hope we can do well until finishing this field experience.

Post #3

This week has been a lot of fun and crazy with all the energy the students have had in the classroom! On Monday I noticed how important it is for Kindergartners to have some playtime in the classroom. The students took longer than usual with their word work and writing, so they weren’t able to have their little bit of playtime. It was very evident that the students NEED that time during the day to let loose, otherwise the students attention span, listening skills, and their attitudes get affected greatly.  It’s hard for students that young to come into the classroom and be expected to sit and learn all day without a break. 

I’ve noticed that each week/day is very repetitive with what the students do on the smart board. It’s very understandable since each day the students work on different skills with a few words or letters then the next day it’s the same skill but with different works or letters. The students seem to really enjoy each of the learning games on the smart board. Some students raise their hand even if they don’t know the answer because they just want to use the smart board.  

Post number 2

Hello everyone! I hope you are all enjoying your Thanksgiving break. I cant believe we are approaching our last week of field experience. I have truly been having an amazing experience and have been learning a ton. One major thing that I have noticed within Kennedy Elementary is that their internet is super slow. When I say slow, I mean it takes 5-10 minutes for a single page to load. This is causing many students to fall behind as they wait for their pages to load. It is very important to include things such as tumble books where the students have a book read to them online, but it is not possible because of the delay. Mrs. Wilger continues to use the smart board and I have seen more students interact with it as my time here continues. I have been able to do a few lessons and a few read alouds and also work very closely with small reading groups.

Post 2

         This last week, during the three day week, I found it to be pretty cool. On Wednesday, I got to take part in a feast with the kids. Since they could not use the word Thanksgiving, They decided to use a different name for the feast it was called a Friend-Ship feast which I found to be really awesome. The kids were all really excited and into the feast. Before we did the actual feast, we had to prepare it. So the kids separated into different groups to get the there part of the feast done. One group worked on the fruit salad, another worked on the cranberry jam, another group buttered cinnamon bread. One group set the table, and my group made the lemonade for the feast.  It was really fun time and really cool to see.

        On Tuesday, Jeff and I did a co-read aloud for the kids. I really found that to be pretty fun. We read the book Duck, Rabbit. The children were really into the book. They were laughing with the voices that we used during the book, and we even had to read to them the story again for a writing project they had to do after we read them the story.

Numero #3

Since my last post, many interesting things have happened. One day, due to the teacher having to attend a meeting, we had a substitute teacher. As soon as I entered the room I was able to tell that the children were going to be wild. It appeared that the presence of a substitute teacher caused the children to well, forget every rule. All the children were noisy, not cooperating and etc. However, my partner and I got to help the substitute teacher throughout the morning. I had the chance to teach the children a lesson. It wasn’t as nerve wrecking as I initially thought it was going to be. I was actually quite comfortable. One tip that the substitute teacher gave me was, “ Don’t let them see your fear”.

I also decided to stay a full school day last week Thursday. I got to attend the once a week art class that the children have. It was really interesting the way another children handles these kids. She seemed a bit harsh but I understand why she was as strict as she was that day. The children got to create clay bowls, and well, 1^st graders with clay can get really messy if you don’t get control of them. I also thought it was interesting how all three first grade classrooms mix students around and place them according to their math level for a math lesson.

As sad as I am for only having 3 days left with these little kids, I am also really excited to not have to wake up at 6 am.  I have learned a lot from this experience as well as gain more confidence as seeing myself as an educator. I look forward to hearing about everyone’s experience in class J

Blog Three

Hello everyone! 

Last week a lot of my time was spent working with a group on their research project! I only have the high English L.A. group for this project. This project has been really beneficial because I was able to let them choose their project, and have them read on their own with purpose. It's thrilling to see the beginning of "read to learn," and the "learn to read" starting to phase out for these students. 

This week we had Thanksgiving! The students only had school Monday, Tuesday, and Wednesday, but those days were very full of Turkeys! For readings we had the Turkey set by Steve Metzger. This set includes three books about three Turkeys and their hilarious adventures! I would highly recommend this set. On Wednesday my class also had turkey trivia, and a "Friendship Feast." For the Friendship Feast we made placemats on Monday (using perimeter), and then made food as a class on Wednesday and ate as a class! My cooperating teacher also had the class make a toast and say that on this Friendship Feast they are all thankful for their new friends this year. It was a very touching experience and I truly believe that it helped bring the class together. By making this celebration a "Friendship Feast" and a class tradition, my cooperating teacher also eliminated many issues involving students celebrating different holidays. I was very impressed by this take on Thanksgiving and hope I am able to implement it in the future with my classes! 

Post 4 - Kyle Vanoverbeke

This week, we had a whole-school assembly. During the assembly, individual students were rewarded for showing exemplary behavior throughout the month. There is huge benefit in recognizing individual students for doing well, as it helps empower them to be good role-models long after the recognition-giving is over. When I become a teacher, I want to make sure that I give my students the encouragement they need to succeed as individuals.

In our classroom, we also led small reading groups today. While we were reading, we had our students gather information about differences between American life back in colonial times and American life in current times. The student groups each gathered information from a different book, and then we all came together and shared what we learned. This provided a good opportunity for social learning.While we were coming together for the jigsaw, one of the kids in the class had a mild anxiety attack, so I worked with him individually in the back of the room.

One more week of field experience to go!

Post #3

Field experience is still going absolutely great and I am really sad that it is coming to an end soon! I can't believe there are only four days left! I couldn't be more happier with the class I am with. Yesterday was fun because we got to go watch the second graders practice their Christmas concert and it was so fun, all of the students really enjoyed watching them perform! It was nice that I got to sit in on that!
The students do a lot with Tumblebooks, which are online books and the students bring their headphones to the computer lab and they can listen to it and then take an AR test. I remember taking AR tests when I was in elementary school, I am surprised they still do it and haven't switched to something else! There are many stories on Tumblebooks, I really like the website, it just is no fun when the computers are slow and some students get done long before others have even started. It can get frustrating, but everyone has a chance to read it and take the AR test.
I really like that my cooperating teacher allows me to go in small groups and do mini lessons all of the time, I enjoy this because I love working in small groups, the students that are in my group are always so excited, I think they like to get out of the classroom once in awhile. I get asked all of the time by many students if they can be in my group or if I am reading them a story today. I love that they are so excited to have me in their classroom! I am really happy with everything my cooperating teacher has allowed me to do and all the things she has let me try. I have learned so much and can't wait to put my field experience binder together!

11/25/14

In class today the teacher used the smart board for a new type of activity.  It was used with the entire class participating and working at the same time.  It was alphabet bingo.  The class had used the same activity yesterday but to learn math.  It seemed to be very popular, the game pronounced the sounds of the letters and students used the smart pen to select eh correct letter.  If the students were correct a small monster appeared in the space where the letter used to be, if they were incorrect a buzzer sounded.  Once five correct letters had been selected, in a row, and a bingo was formed, the game celebrated with music and the monsters danced.  The game then provided feedback on how many correct the class got and what their percentage of correct answers was.  The students seemed to really enjoy it and all of the little animations.  While the game was designed as an individual activity it worked great as a class activity.  The only limitation seemed to be others shouting out answers when it wasn’t their turn.  This hurts the chance for students to learn but this would just take patrolling of students talking.  It also moved on automatically so this made it hard to hear the sound at some points but there is a repeat button that restates the sound when pressed.  

Field Experience

Lately in my classroom, I've been trying to build stronger relationships with the kids and work with them one-on-one more often. A lot of them have problems at home and come to class and still don't receive a lot of individual attention, so I've been trying to provide that for them because I think it's important, even if it's only for a couple minutes. I spend a lot of time doing small group read alouds. I read about 3 books a day to small groups of kids. They really like being read to, and I like the practice.

Technology is a really big part of the way this classroom runs. All of the teacher led lessons are done on the smart board. The kids each have their own school provided ipad to use. They have tons of apps on them and apps for every single subject. They use their ipads to listen to reading, write spelling words, play word games, math practice, math quizzes, and the teachers incorporate them into their guided reading lessons sometimes as well. There's been a few times when the smart board hasn't been working or the ipads are being fixed, and the kids don't really know how to respond. They use the technology so much, that they aren't really able to function the same when they have to use paper and pencil or read from a lesson book. I think they're a little too caught up in the technology, so when I work with them one on one, I try to stay away from ipads and bring them back to basics if I can.

wild little ones

I missed class yesterday since I was not feeling well. Because of that and the weekend, I felt someone disconnected from the class. I don’t like missing school. I never have. I come back feeling like I have missed something. I feel like an outsider.

Today was a crazy day. I felt like there was a lot of out of control energy in the class. I had one boy taking off his shirt, another refusing to join us. During reading time students were chattering and I would stop to recollect them. It took about a minute before they were off and chattering again. I feel powerless when this happens and think there has got to be a better method for reading out load to children this young and many in numbers. 

Maybe breaking into smaller groups would be more effective. Since there are 24 in the class; groups of 12 seems natural. This would require two teachers/educators during read aloud time, but students would get twice as many books read to them. I know this method has drawbacks but after today, I am left questioning, how can we do this better?

Tomorrow may be my last day with my teacher as she has been summoned for jury duty. I hope that is not the case as I enjoy sharing the class with her but I think it would be a good experience to witness the class with a substitute. I would also like to ask the substitute about her experiences as a sub. The class functions on a predictable routine and I question how smoothly the class will go with an unexpected teacher.

I can't believe we have less than a week left in our classrooms. The time has gone by quite quickly! I hope to stay connected with the students after the field experience. Anyone else feeling like they will revisit their class?

Blog Post Number One

Hello everyone! I am sure some of you have been wondering where I have been on this blog. I had a few complications with my gmail account, but no worries I'm still here :)

I was placed in Mrs. Wilgers 3rd grade class with Kayla, and it has been a fabulous experience to say the least. Her classroom is a large classroom with 28 students. On the first day we got to jump right in and lead small group reading with a short story about Elijah McCoy. From the first day on, we have helped out with a variety of different things such as observing a counselor talk about being a coach and a critic of yourself, pumpkin carving, read alouds, assessing, grading, copying, lesson planning, snow day, holiday, and classroom management.

I was very nervous to teach my first lesson plan and to even read a book aloud to the class, but it is so fun to be up in front of a third grade class doing my natural thing. It was very interesting to experience a snow day... I will hopefully land a job somewhere near the place I live because I am not a fan of driving in those conditions.

As far as technology goes, Mrs. Wilger uses a smart board every single day for math. The students use the smart board to see her lessons. I would like to see her involve the class more with using the interactive white board. Other than the smart board I haven't seen much use of technology in her classroom.

I think I can speak for both kayla and myself when I say that we have gotten very lucky with our placement and the experiences we have had so far.

Field Experience Post #2

My field experience has continued to go well.  One day school was closed because of snow, the students were all excited and happy to go play in it.  I got to celebrate Veteran's Day with the first graders.  Since their schedule was switched around that day, I got to accompany them to their music class.  I played instruments with them and sang.  It was nice to get an opportunity to see how another teacher teaches and get to experience a different subject.  In our classroom, the students have been learning about comparing stories, making predictions, different kinds of buildings and materials, odd and even numbers, and skip counting (by 2s, 5s, and 10s).
My cooperating teacher has continued to integrate many videos and songs into her teaching.  One video that she uses to teach skip counting is to the song Whatcha' Gonna' Do (Bad Boy).  Here is the link to it: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vq3cDj3Uj3I.  The students love it and sing along while getting practice with their numbers.  My teacher also continues to use iPads and videos for literacy.  The students usually use the ABC Magic app on their iPads (there are many different versions of this app that are all downloaded onto their iPads).  My teacher does not really use her smart board for anything other than videos.  However, one day I was placed in a different first grade classroom to help the teacher with individual testing.  I noticed that this other teacher had her students take turns coming up and playing a fun interactive game on the smart board. This seemed like a really awesome way to get every student involved while keeping everyone interested.

Blog #2

This past week has been crazy! My partner and I got the opportunity to teach the 3 hour literacy block in our class for the entire week. We spent a lot of time planning the week before and for the most part I think it turned out great. We gave 2 mini lessons on soft and hard “c” and “g” sounds and the difference between common and proper nouns. We also talked about animal habitats which lead to my second read aloud about a coral reef. I taught the students what a food chain was and what some of the fish in the sea looked like. On Thursday I got to do a fun activity where the students used shaving cream to spell out their spelling words on their desks (they did a great job on their spelling test this week). Then on Friday I came up with an art project where the students made underwater habitats out of construction paper and paper plates. It was so fun helping them with that project. One girl even told me that this was the best day of school ever and I was her favorite teacher. That was so nice to hear! I really feel like I have such a great connection with my students.

Now to talk a little more about the technology aspect of my class, this past week I got to use a few different smart board activities with the students. One activity was having the students’ sounds out words with soft and hard “c” and “g” sounds and then they got to drag a dot to each syllable while it sounded it out for them. The students really liked this activity because they got to work with the smart board and they got to hear how the word is sounded out if they could not figure it out. Another activity they did was matching their vocab words to the definitions on the smart board for a station. I like how much my CT uses her smart board to keep her students interactive with her lessons. It is also good motivation for the students to behave because then they get to use the smart board.

Overall this past week of teaching has been great and it really reassured me that I am on the right path with my career. I hope everyone else is having a great time in their classrooms! I love reading everyone’s blogs! :) 

Post #2

My field experience is still going great! I can't believe there are only 6 days left! This last week I led a couple morning meetings, led four guided reading groups, and had two read alouds.

Morning meeting has been fun since they are just starting to add in the greeting portion. I kept it simple with the first couple by doing a high-five and the butterfly greeting.

I really enjoyed leading the guided readings. I worked with three different reading levels: emergent, early, and fluent. We have been working a lot on the order of things using 1st, 2nd, 3rd, etc., so this was the main focus for the two emergent groups. The early reading level worked on rhyming and the fluent reading level worked on compound words. Students in the emergent groups needed more instruction. For these groups I did a picture walk before letting students read alone or with a partner. I found out there is a lot of prep for four guided reading lessons. I made ordinal number cards (1-10), word number cards (one-ten), days of the week cards, and 12 compound cards. The early reading level were really engaged with matching the events from their story to the days of the week. For the fluent reading level there were several compound words in their book. I cut the compound cards in half and they had a lot of fun matching them.

One of my read alouds was with a small group. I read One is a Feast for Mouse. The mouse was collecting leftover food from Thanksgiving. The book kept repeating the order of the food: 1st was a pea, 2nd cranberry, and so on. Students made a flip book consisting of writing 1st - 6th, the food names, and pictures in the correct order. My other read aloud was with the whole class. I read the book The Plump and Perky Turkey. Some of the words and pictures were kind of confusing, so I made sure to ask many questions throughout the story to make sure students were comprehending.

Getting Ready for the Monday!

Hey everyone!

I can't believe we only have six days left of our field experience, holy cow did time fly!!

I have been given opportunities to read to my first grade class about five times a week on average along with giving instructions for the activities that go along with the book read. One of my books, The Deep Blue Sea, I read to both my first grade class along with Mrs. Ormsby's class (another first grade class). When I did this, I definitely changed things from the first class to the second class. The second time I did the lesson, I knew how to read the story better so that the children were more engaged and I was also able to run through the color activity I made better.

The color activity started with each student holding a card sitting in a circle. One side of there card had a color while the other side said, "I'm looking for… (color)." When the students color was called they got to say what color they were looking for. Once everyone had a chance to stand up and read their colors we ended back at the beginning. This activity went along well with the book, helped students with their reading, introduced new color words, and tied in with our adjective and describing words theme we had done the prior week in class.

On Monday, I am doing a  glyph activity with my first grade class. This is more of a math lesson but I am looking forward to it! The students are going to make a turkey based on certain things they eat for Thanksgiving, if they travel, if they will have dessert, what kind of turkey meat they like, etc. Just a heads up, if you are ever thinking about doing an activity like this from scratch and cut out enough pieces for the entire class you may want to plan a whole day to prepare!

I have a lesson plan to put together for Turk and Runt. I will be reading this to the class on Monday and will have comprehension questions to put together for it. So, my Sunday afternoon will consist of putting the rest of this together!

Hope everyone is doing GREAT! Can't wait to see you all in a couple weeks. :)

Kari Meyer

#3

Greetings all :)

On Friday I did my second read-aloud and my first lesson plan for a read-aloud and my cooperating teacher said I did a great job with the lesson plan, in fact with the way I did the read-aloud she said I could use the lesson plan to teach fluency and story elements(I taught story elements) therefore getting more than one day's worth out of the book/the lesson plan. I feel like I really impressed my CT which is big relief because up to this point I haven't been able to tell if she likes my teaching style or not.

We went to the computer lab earlier in the week and it was nice to see how the lab was set up and what programs the students use. The teacher linked the two sites they were using that day to her class webpage which I thought was a smart move because it allows for everyone to get to the right place in the same manner; without fear of landing on the wrong site or mistyping the URL in the address bar. I was disgruntled because it was not easy for me to maneuver around the computer lab in my wheelchair; making me question the likelyhood of landing a job in education. How can I be a teacher when I (literally) can't access my students. It was a horrible feeling, I felt useless.

To end on a good note, I feel like I am really making great connections with these students. It's tough because some of them are touchy-feely and I feel responsible to keep things in the realm of appropriateness... yes, the class comedian likes when things are appropriate. Has anyone else noticed this? The way I handle it right now is I tolerate it for a little bit and then remind them that we have bubbles.

Catch you next week,


Jeff

Post 3 - Kyle Vanoverbeke

After the third week of field experience, I am really becoming comfortable sharing my honest opinions with my Cooperating Teacher. She has been very good at explaining her mindset behind all the different methods and techniques she employs in the classroom, both instruction-wise as well as behavior management-wise. When we have conversations about this stuff, she has been very open with listening to questions I have about the way she does things. When I do ask questions, most of the time, she has very good justifications for why she does things the way she does; other times, though, she has said that she appreciates feedback on her teaching style because it helps her improve. Obviously, I am very polite when asking questions, and I am learning way more from my CT than she is learning from me, but the exchanges we are able to have because we are so open with each other have been very rewarding for both sides.

The read-alouds that we have been incorporating into instruction as of late fall under the umbrella of the folktale theme (make-believe stories that teach you a lesson about something). It is fun reading stories to the class and teaching (standards-based) lessons from those stories because the students are almost always entertained and engaged when something fun like reading stories is utilized by the teacher. During a recent story I read to the students, I had the kids laughing a lot, especially when I made funny noises and character voices to go along with the pictures. This type of learning--the kind that stems from having fun--is very memorable and will (hopefully) stick with them for a long time.

I am looking forward to the last stretch of our field experience yet to come.

Post #3

Hey all,
It's crazy to think that we only have six more days of our field experiences! This week had been going very well. I have learned a lot during out word work groups, which ended on Friday. The word work groups were created by the second grade teachers and they meet for 30 minutes each day. During my word work group, we focused on long and short vowel sounds. I learned a lot about effective ways to teach the vowel sounds and also some of the vocabulary that they use. As I was saying, yesterday was the last day for our word work groups. During that last meeting time the students took a post test on spelling words. The students then needed to apply what they knew about the long vowel patterns to help them spell the words. I was very proud of the students and how well they did with spelling the words. I did notice that many students struggled with the words, fright, taught, and flute. Instead many students wrote frite, tot, and floot. All and all, I am very glad I was able to take part in their word work groups!

Blog #3

Today students made thanksgiving art projects, the tracing your hand to make a turkey. The students wrote at the top what they were thankful for. I got a good laugh at some of the responses. One student said, "I am thankful for Christmas" another student said, "I am thankful for water". 

This week has been really fun in the classroom. The Veteran's Day presentation had been rescheduled and was this past Monday. The school assembly was very informative and interesting. The kids enjoyed singing the national anthem and other patriotic songs. The rest of this week has been spirit week; so today was pajama day. The kids loved being able to wear pajamas to school. 

This week a new activity was incorporated into the literacy activity group time. Students began working on writing full sentences and using proper upper/lower case letters and spacing between words. 

11/20/14

My experience has continued to go well.  I have been able to learn a lot but the thing that stands out the most so far is the need for scheduling and a consistency.  I don't know if that is only a thing in kindergarten or if it is in all grades.  I have seen it mainly through issues when the schedule is different. The students get anxious and squirmy even if the smallest thing is changed.  One particular instance I remember was when we took the class for a bathroom break earlier that normal.  Usually the class goes right before lunch, but this day we took the class about 40 minutes earlier than normally.  This caused all of to think it was lunch time.  When we informed them that it wasn't they all got upset.  A simple change seemed to be the end of the world for them.  I have also noticed that they want things done the same all the time.  Today I got the chance to run and activity that my CT normally does.  It was a worksheet to teach the students how to write a letter of the alphabet.  I was unaware of exactly how my CT ran the activity but i did my best to run it and do things as I thought would work best.  I found the students wanted me to do things the exact way my CT did them.  Even non-important things that had no affect on the lesson.  I quickly learned to do things the way they were used to, and the activity went much smoother.  

Field Experience

So far my field experience is going really well! There are 26 second graders in my class, so there is always a lot going on. For the most part, I spend my day working one on one with a few kids while they work on word work, iPads, or other parts of Daily 5. I'm in a co-teaching classroom, so there are always two teachers leading the lessons. When you add in the students, 2 teachers, my field experience partner, and myself, there are always 30 people in the classroom, so it gets pretty chaotic real fast. So I also spend a lot of time trying to control the chaos and calm the students down. I think a big reason for the chaos is them wanting individual attention, and acting out gets them that.

I have done one read aloud so far, and it went really well. I read 5 Little Monkeys Wash the Car because my book needed to be about families working together. They really liked it. Today I also co-led a guided reading lesson with my CT. Eventually I will lead my own lesson, but since I've never seen one done with little kids before, she helped me the first time. I'm looking forward to doing it on my own next time.

Post #2

My field experience is going great! It was really interesting to see how the class reacted when their teacher was gone this week. In normal circumstances there would've been a sub teaching the class, but the sub canceled so the student teacher in our classroom, my partner, and myself were all able to help out as much as possible. There was another teacher who came in and out helping when needed, but after the students realized that all the normal rules were still in place even though their teacher wasn't there they began to listen better.

My CT uses a lot of little songs that he plays on the smart board to help the students get excited about learning different words. It helps because the smart board is very interactive so the students get to press on the certain words to make the song keep playing. We did a counting song where the students needed to press on the right number when the song got to that number. The morning meeting stays generally the same each week, which I think helps the students remember how to behave and correct body control. I think having that routine of the same morning meeting set up is good for this age group, but for older students you need to add variety and different things to keep the students excited! 

Post 1

Hello everyone,

Yes, I know I’m finally posting, but as everyone heard from Jeff already, my CT is very nice and caring.  Every staff member I've come across has also been very kind and easy to talk to.

My CT uses many different classroom management strategies in her classroom. When calling on students she tends to pull Popsicle sticks, with their names on it, out of a coffee jar to give all of the students a chance to answer. When students are not paying attention, she usually stops what she is doing and starts counting down from 3 then says body check. The students usually right hurry up sit up straight and cross their legs. The ones that are not doing what she says never get called out, she just says "there are 4 of you not sitting smart," and then they do what she says.

She uses the Smart board for pretty much everything. She has students work on math, writing, and reading on the smart board, she also uses the Smart board to go on a website called Go Noodle where the students get a chance to show off their dance moves, and sing along with the people to get their wiggles out. In this she plays soothing music to calm them down, and upbeat music when she wants to get them awake after they are sitting on the carpet to long.

She also has a tablet that she uses. She usually uses with her group during the Daily 5 for reading and every once and awhile for her daily four in math. In the daily 5 she uses it more for the students to read off of it for assessments and some other things. I don't know what other things because Jeff and I are walking around helping with the other students that are working on their other stuff.

Respect

Today we worked in stations and accomplished much. The stations were set up to incorporate technology (a game using shapes to make figures on I pads), sentence study, direction following skills, and sight word studies. Working in stations creates a productive and organized classroom. The students cheer when they get reminded that its centers day.

In my station we worked on following directions. Students were attentive and followed directions well, for the most part. When N came to my station, he started out by saying that he didn’t want to do the activities. I let him know that everyone has a choice and even if he decided not to do the activity, I expected him to remain seated and be in control. When I gave directions to color the turkey’s neck orange, he would color the neck blue. There were multiple instances where N semi listened but altered the directions. I was concerned that other students would follow suit, but they didn’t. They were happy to follow the directions as given.

I noted my desire to make N follow the directions without variation, but I also know him and know that pushing him rarely results in better behavior. So I loosened up and let him do his thing. I noticed that even though he wasn’t following the directions perfectly, he was listening and on task. As a teacher, I felt like I needed to acknowledge his rebel heart and let him express himself, as long as it was done in a safe and respectful way. Later on in the day, I sat down next to him and we worked on flash cards. It was productive and peaceful, more so than I expected. I’d like to think when I give, he will give, but that pattern hasn’t been consistent.

During stations I also noted how some children were using environmental text to help them spell. The students were asked to write the word on. We decided that o was the correct first letter and when C got stuck on the second letter, he started looking around the room. I noticed his eyes fell on the calendar which had November written across the top. He stared for a while, then returned to his paper and wrote a capital N. I asked him how he came up with that and he told me he match the end sound of on with the beginning sound of November. I appreciated seeing his thought process in action.

The field experience is flying by. I am still enjoying.