Last week
was very short but it was very exciting. In the spirit of Thanksgiving I read
my students a book called, “One is a Feast for a Mouse.” The book is about a
mouse trying to balance plates of food on top of a pea while running away from
a cat and it was so fun to watch the student’s reactions during it. They gasped
and said they were nervous because they didn't think the mouse would get way. I love getting that kind of feedback when I am reading to them. The students also
colored turkeys and wrote what they were thankful on the feathers. A few of the
students came up and showed my partner and me that they have written our names
on the feathers. This melted my heart and was truly a light bulb moment for me
as a teacher. It showed me how much we actually matter to the students even
though we have only been visiting them a short time. I know for certain I am in
the right career field!
I also wanted to mention a little
about Class DoJo as well since this is a technology course. For those of you
who don’t know what Class DoJo is it is a point system where students create
their own avatars and then each day they can gain or lose points according to
how they act in class. The student’s parents can also log on and see how many
points their students have each day. This system seems to work very good in the
second grade classroom I am in. When someone is misbehaving my CT takes away a
DoJo point and it usually gets the students attention that they should switch
how they are acting. At the end of each day my CT also awards those students
who have 5 DoJo points or more by giving them a piece of candy or put in a
drawing for a new pencil. After seeing how well this system works in a real
classroom, I am for sure going to bring this to my own classroom. I hope
everyone enjoys their last week in their classrooms! I know it is going to be
fun but also very sad to leave all these wonderful kids! Good luck!
I also read the book "One is a Feast for Mouse" and my students enjoyed it as well. We did an activity with the book where students put the first 6 food items in order using a flip book. They wrote 1st-6th and the food names, and drew pictures in their flip book. That is so sweet that they wrote your name on the feathers. It's little things like that that make you feel like you're making a difference and in the right place. Enjoy your last day of field experience tomorrow!
ReplyDeleteThe DoJo system you talked about sounds like a very beneficial idea in an elementary classroom. This system would have been great in my field experience classroom because there were a couple of students that act up very often and/or lack motivation to work during literacy groups. These students have been a challenge to manage, I think that this system would be beneficial because it makes students want to change their own behavior so they can earn back any points they lost rather than have to sit in the 'take a break chair' that my classroom had.
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