Mid-Week Hilarity

Yesterday, I had the class to myself for the afternoon. Nancy wants me and the students to get used to her not being there. I told her earlier in the day I wanted to start trying to play music while the kids worked. She showed me a CD that she had gotten in the mail from Stepping Stone Theater and said I could try it if I wanted to.

While the kids were working quietly on their hexagram designs in Math, I prefaced the music by saying a) this is a test to see if they can handle listening to music and still focus on their work and b) that I had no idea what was on the CD so we were just going to find out.

I pushed play and we heard some happy sounding theatrical music to start. Then there were a few strange sounds and the first line was: "Oh, it's good to be a goat!" We all proceeded to get the giggles - even me.

It was a nice, lighthearted experience to have after three weeks of a lot of discipline and behavior discussions with them. We had a discussion as they cleaned up their Math work about a music in the classroom plan. Some students had suggestions and I told them that if they could handle the music I bring in on Thursday, then we can have a Music Planning Meeting during Morning Meeting on Monday. Who gets to bring it, what's appropriate, volume, etc. We will see how it goes. But remember, it's good to be a goat.

The World at Your Fingertips

The hardest part about utilizing the many online resources available to educators is finding the best ones. Usually, if you do a Google search for an educational topic, your results are ad-laden commercially based sites that aren’t even close to “cool,” or they are so full of information, it is hard to know where to begin.

The National Geographic site is one of those it which it is hard to know where to begin. The key feature to exploring the National Geographic site is to know what your topic is. When you know your topic, the site seems to do the connecting of resources for you by connecting topics to its many interactive resources, photo galleries, blogs, etc. A good starting place for educators on the National Geographic sites is called Xpeditions. The Xpeditions site has lesson plans, activities and maps for topics ranging from oceans, droughts and presidential birth places. They are organized by grade level as well. My favorite most recent discovery on the National Geographic site is called The Infinite Photograph . It starts with one photograph, but when it is clicked on, becomes an infinite mosaic of other photographs. If you double-click on a photograph, you can find out the information about it. The Infinite Photograph would be a great filler or rainy-day recess activity. It may also work on a Smart Board and the students could then choose which part of the photograph to close in on.

The coolest sites always seem to be found by someone else in my experience. I write them down whenever I can in a file I call Ideas Galore. I have two favorites that aren’t necessarily the most educational, but can fill in holes in your classroom or in your day.

The first site I love is called Wordle. According to the Wordle site, “Wordle is a toy for generating “word clouds” from text that you provide.” A toy, yes, a toy. Click on ‘Create your own,’ ‘paste in a bunch of text’ and click go. I used this tool to create an addition to the Class Covenant sheet that we all signed at the beginning of the year. I highlighted words that we wanted to have present in our classroom such as listen, kind, respect, etc. Once you click go, you can even edit the font, positioning and the color scheme on your own.

The second site is for pure entertainment. I saw it used as a reward for good behavior in a 5th grade classroom. It is called Will It Blend. Silly things are put into a blender and then we wait to see what happens. Great for a room of 17 boys I imagine.

Social Studies was added!

I experienced my first field trip with the fourth graders. We went to a local park that employed naturalists. The naturalists divided the group into three smaller groups, and we went through team building activities and survival skills. The highlight for the students was when they got to build a fire, and they were even allowed to light the match. We had great weather even through it was suppose to rain, and the students really worked together throughout the day.

In the classroom, the highlight would have been teaching social studies. Since social studies only happens once or twice a week. I really tried to find interesting activities for the students to help with the engagement of the subject. We did a kinesthetic activity to start, and the students loved getting out of their seats. I want to sneak in more geography throughout the day, so my read aloud are going to include some information about other areas of the world. If we don't have time during the day for social studies, we are going to make time by being interdisciplinary.

Now I would like to share, some websites that I think are useful to have as resources.

The website that I use on a daily basis is Super Kids (http://www.superkids.com/aweb/tools/words/middle/ ). This website has a section with a word of the day for fourth through eighth graders. It tells the viewers the definition, gives an example sentence, and synonyms of the word. I print and display this word daily, and during morning meeting, we talk about the word with examples. This is one way to help them build their vocabulary.

In the area of math, I like to give them challenge problems to get the students thinking. Many times these problems comes right from their textbook, but in the future, I plan to use the website Figure This! (http://www.figurethis.org) At this website, you can find math challenge problems that can be displayed on the Smartboard. They even give hints and a page description with a few solutions. Some of the more advanced students may appreciate the challenge.

The other website that I have used is called Braingle. This website has many different brainteasers to get the students thinking in a problem solving manner. These activities are good when the students arrive in the morning, and they need an activity to keep themselves busy. These activities would also be good when the students have a few minutes between subjects.

At this point, these are the only websites I use on a regular basis. I might have other resources towards the end of student teaching. Right now, I am managing and teaching morning meeting, math, and social studies, so my resources are related to those subjects. Social studies was only taught once last week so there is not an abundance of resources in that area. Next week I will be exploring Matter and Energy with the students, so I move on to one more subject.

Transitions, transitions

During my second week of student teaching, I didn’t take official lessons. Instead, I took nearly all of the daily transition periods. Yikes. I assumed responsibility for Morning Meeting, Homework Planner and clean-up time, all hallway walking and continued to do Read Aloud. Our class (16 boys and 11 girls) has been having a hard time with transitions both in and out of the classroom. There seems to be constant chatter and a lack of listening in many cases. You can say “Voices off please, we’re in the hallway” and heads will turn and stop talking for a second and immediately go back to what they were saying before. The angels really came out of their shells during week two.

Together with Mrs. H, we drilled our behavior and transition expectations into the students’ brains. Mrs. H. reminded them, while together and seated on the floor in front of her, that they are fourth graders now and they have more responsibilities than they did in third grade. She gave them the task of deciding what behavior they needed to work on the most during transitions and to work on it.

I drew on Mrs. H’s talk with the students for the rest of the week. Before a transition time, I would remind the students that they are to be working on a behavior and our exact expectations of them. My first successful transition change was to and from Morning Meeting. The students all bring their chairs into a circle and it can be complete and sometimes dangerous chaos. I call two tables at a time when they are ready and remind them that I should only hear the noise of the chairs and there should be no chairs on heads. Returning to their desks is the same. I also say to them that they should be able to arrange all of the chairs in a circle without talking, but that they need to pay attention to those around them.

The Morning Meeting is one example of how attentive and consistent you have to be with your behavior expectations for your students. They do listen. They do want to behave-I just know it. As a teacher, we need to give specific instructions for each movement of the day. We also have to remind our students how important listening is. I stressed the need for the class to listen to their peers and the teachers by playing the telephone game in Morning Meeting on Thursday. If they don’t listen carefully, the whole game changes and it can be ruined.

I think our students were truly acting more respectfully by Friday. Or they were simply worn out from the first full week of school. I learned many approaches to respectfully remind the students what our expectations are of them. I also know that I need to find my voice. Mrs. H said it often gets lost over the hubbub. I don’t want to yell, but I need to be heard. I guess that is one more trait that comes with experience.

I will proudly add one thing. There was a substitute filling in for Mrs. H on Tuesday and I knew all about what the class was doing. She told Mrs. H at the end of the day that I was “pretty much in control.” I felt less pressure and more confidence without my cooperating teacher in the room. I told her this and added that I think it is because I know she is watching me and will give me feedback. She agreed and added that it took her many years to adjust to teaching confidently with other adults in the room. She told me that when my supervisor visits, she is planning on leaving the room-I don’t need two adults watching me so closely.

Tomorrow I begin teaching Math in addition to all of the other pieces I am doing. (Concave and convex polygons to be exact.) This means that I will be in control of the students and the classroom from when I pick them up in the lunchroom until I walk them to their last hour specialist class and then a few to the bus at the end of the day. I think this might be easier because Mrs. H and I don’t have to transition back and forth between one another. It will be more realistic for me and I will have to completely plan my supplies and flow from one thing to the next. I am ready.

Is that convex or concave?

In my first week of student teaching, I started teaching mathematics. The first unit was geometry, and my first lesson introduced them to polygons and the difference between convex and concave polygons. I looked over the teacher’s manual and made some changes. In my math methods class, I remembered using many tools to help learn about geometry ideas. I substituted Geoboards for making polygon shapes. The book had the students using straws that were placed together by twist ties.

I started the lesson with math problem review on white boards. Then they completed a short quiz on the information from the day before. After this, we always correct the homework, which takes a good 20 minutes. Once we finally started talking about the new information, I taught the students in a large group, but we only had enough Geoboards to work in pairs. I had them make a convex polygon, and they would hold up the boards for me to see. Then we did the same thing with concave polygons. I felt I was rushing through the lesson because I wanted enough time for them to work on homework. We had changed the schedule that day from 75 minutes of math to 60, and I had plans for 75 minutes.

Since I was moving to quickly through the information, I cut things out, and I didn't go over the information as thoroughly as I could have. The students ended up having 15 minutes to do their homework, and the advanced students that finished didn't have anything to help occupy their time. I learned quickly that the students needed something to do when they finish their work.

The next day as the students entered the room they were given a quiz to see what they remembered from the day before. We didn't have time for math on this day because the schedule was full of other activities, so I brought the quizzes home to assess how they did on the new material. There was a question asking the students to circle the convex polygons, and there were six shapes to choose from. As I correct the quizzes, I found out that only two students understood the material. This was shocking because I thought I did a fairly good job. The comment I remember from my cooperating teaching is that the noise level got high at the end of the period. Of course it got high, the students were done with their work and had nothing to do besides talk with a neighbor.

I am glad I quizzed the students because I took that information and recreated the lesson for the next day. I took a large block of time to draw polygon shapes, and talk about the characteristics of a polygon. Then I drew shapes of convex and concave polygons. At the end, I had the students tell me the answers to the quiz questions. I felt like after the review they actually started to understand the concept.

Every new teacher has surprises when teaching new information for the first time. I was so stressed out about the time that I did an injustice when teaching the material. Sometimes a lesson may have to spew over to the next day, and that is ok. This last week I spent a lot of time reading over the student reference book, so I understand the material well enough to teach it. I was always decent with math, but until now, I couldn't tell you the definition of a polygon, quadrangle, or a parallelogram. Maybe I should have these terms filed away in my brain, but I don't. I am surprised at the amount of information I need to learn to be a successful teacher. After teaching lessons, Ms. R and myself go over the good things and the areas that could improve. My word choice and verbiage are always an area that needs some work. Ms. R has taught for many years, so she knows these terms like she knows her daughter's name. Is it common for new teachers to learn some or a lot of the information before they teach the ideas for the first time? I know if I ever teach a geometry unit again, I will know more of the content.

After teaching for a week, I am making adjustments to the way I prepare for the next week. I am implementing a daily schedule of when I spend time writing lesson plans, preparing for the day, and correcting papers. I also have mandatory personal time in the evening. I have been doing work constantly, and I will not be able to keep up at this pace unless I take some time to myself. As a professional teacher, I will have to find that healthy mix as well, so I better learn to pace myself now. I am also going to adjust my lesson plans, so I can find a way to spend less time creating them yet still have them be effective. As teachers we are always learning, which is probably why so many people love this career. Let's learn on!

Week One

The fourth grade classroom I am working in was a lot of exhausting fun during the first week. My cooperating teacher and I have a lot of workplace standards and goals in common; getting stuff done effectively and efficiently, not forgetting to laugh often and being completely prepared for everything. Because Mrs. H is so prepared and organized in her classroom and her instruction I have gotten many ideas from her. I have tried to write as many of them down as I can! She has already relinquished some small duties to me (read aloud and a few hallway walks). This coming week I will take on Morning Meeting, continue with the daily read aloud, direct homework planner time and lead all of the hallway discipline direction. Having both of us in the classroom thus far has been beneficial for us both. We have had the chance to get to know the students a little more closely than we might have otherwise and we have ample bathroom breaks—a complete bonus!

The students in our classroom cover most of the bases as far as student diversity is concerned. We have 16 boys and 11 girls. We have one student that needs a lot of support—apparently a special education referral is in the works. We have three students that will receive ELL support once a day. The students come from all kinds of homes and family structures. Several of the students are children of university professors and at least one is the daughter of missionaries. All of the students have something intriguing about them, whether it is their taste in music, their hobbies or simply the way they sit attentively in their desks. It seems, so far, to be a well-behaved, active and bright group of students.

The parental presence and support in the school community is very evident even after only a week. Only five of the students didn’t come to the back-to-school open house and many of the parents walk their children to their classroom each morning. Each day our students get their homework planner initialed by either me or Mrs. H and must show us a parent or older sibling’s signature the next day. Homework packets are sent home each week with a letter to the parents and families letting them know what can be expected the coming week. The parental involvement thus far seems to be all positive. It will be interesting to see if the level of involvement of any particular parents becomes overwhelming to the teachers.

Mrs. H does a lot of team planning with the other fourth grade teacher, Mrs. B. Their relationship is strong and almost unexpected. They have different teaching styles and personalities but seem to work together like clockwork. Mrs. B is the adult-time comic relief and stresses to me that she is very open and blunt (clearly), but that she can tell I can handle it. Thanks Mrs. B. they often support one another by having whole fourth grade meetings and share many of the daily and weekly preparation activities.

I have many memorable stories from the week. Two of my favorite stories come from the same student—the already famous Daniel. As I noted in a previous post, Daniel believes that a pandemic is “a plague that is sweeping the nation.” In the terms of H1N1, I feel his definition isn’t far from the truth. My second Daniel story occurred in the hallway on the way to art class. A warning: I was breaking the rules by whispering back to him. He hung back with me when we left the classroom. He walked quietly for a moment and then asked me if I thought education was a right or a privilege. I responded that I thought it was both. He said that he thought public education was a right and that private education is a privilege. I responded with the right he has to a public education is a privilege. He must have been satisfied with my answer because he stopped talking then. I look forward to more stimulating (but only when appropriate) conversation with him.

I am in awe of a lot of factors about my first week in a classroom. The school I am in works. The students pass tests. Everyone is friendly. It is clean and comfortable. The teachers seem to come from examples in textbooks and the students respond as you would hope they would to research-based management and instructional strategies. The students want to learn and seem excited to be starting another year. I am still on the cusp of whether or not the experience will prepare me for a ‘real’ classroom. Will it be too easy? Is it not a realistic setting in comparison to where I might find myself in a year? Or will it be a great experience to see effective teaching and have plentiful opportunities to hone my instructional craft and teaching confidence without worrying so much about classroom management? I have always imagined my first student teaching experience have to be extremely stressful, exhausting and occasionally tear-inducing. Does it have to be overwhelming and ‘realistic’ for me to learn as much as possible? I don’t know yet. Like I said, I am still on the cusp.

Memories of Week One

My fourth grade class has twenty-six students with thirteen boys and girls. There are six students that need extra support from special education. As a result, a paraprofessional is in the classroom practically the whole day. It is sure nice to have an extra adult in the room to help with these students.

I feel very fortunate to be with a team of four teachers that support and work together to get things completed. They share curriculum and materials to make the workload a little less cumbersome. The school district has done a lot to give teachers resources to use in lesson planning, and these resources are available right online. This makes it a lot easier to do some planning at home.

The school climate seems overall positive. Like most schools, teachers seem to stick with their teams. Each grade has a different lunch period, and this is the time when adults can connect on a personal level. After or before school, teachers are busy getting ready for their school day, and there is always an abundance of work and not enough time to get it all done. I suppose teachers learn to pace themselves and take things off the list as they are completed. They live with the motto "What doesn't get done today, can wait until tomorrow!"

Something memorable about my first week would have to be the mini unit on Monarchs. Monarch eggs were bought from the local college, and pairs of students take care of the Monarchs by feeding them and cleaning out their temporary homes. The students get to see first hand life science in the classroom. They learn new vocabulary, see the lifecycle, and record observations. This unit is interactive, and it has the potential to be memorable for the students. I know I will remember it long after my student teaching experience.

Now that my first week is completed, I am surprised at the amount of work that goes into making the day run smoothly and how fast the day feels. It is hard to get all the subjects into each day and even each week. Part of this struggle is because it was the first week of school, and the routines needed to be established. Setting up these routines takes double the amount of time, and they need to be reviewed until they become natural.

Something else that surprised me had to do with the read-a-loud portion of the day. I was going to take this over on day one, but my cooperating teacher called me over Labor Day weekend to tell me she changed her mind. She wanted to do this for a few days first. Her reason was that everything that happens in the day was a learning experience for myself. After observing her leading the read-a-loud, I was glad she didn't have me do this right away in the first week. As she read, she practiced many high level-reading techniques with the students like predicting what would happen next. I didn't realize that even read-a-loud look a little preparation and thinking before it happened.

I am excited for week two to begin. I will get to take on more responsibility, and learn even more about how to be an effective teacher. Hopefully, I can manage to get a majority of my ideas into practice while I am student teaching. If not, I know that "What doesn't get done today, can wait until tomorrow!"

I student taught for 14 weeks with Ellen Applebaum (pseudonym) and her fifth grade class at the West Street School in Geneva, NY. I was a starry-eyed 21-year-old who had only discovered I wanted to be a teacher during my sophomore and junior years of college.

Mrs. Applebaum had a great reputation. She was probably the age I am now, but she seemed very mature and experienced (characteristics I don't necessarily embody all the time now). I remember that she was organized, a firm disciplinarian, and just a little traditional in her methods of teaching. At the same time, she was very warm toward me, gave me lots of responsibility quickly, and was open to my trying new things with her class. She said she liked having student teachers because they offered daily professional development around progressive pedagogy. I really admired Mrs. A. and soaked up all the mentoring she offered. We became close during that semester, and a couple of years later, when I got married in Maine, she was there!

West Street School worked in close partnership with the college I attended. I had done fieldwork at the school with grades K, 1 and 4 previously, so I felt comfortable in that setting from the start of my student teaching experience. I don't remember interacting with the principal at all, but I can still see her face (and not remember her name). The school was somewhat diverse with African American kids being the most visible racial group; socioeconomic status among all the children varied. Geneva was not an affluent town, but it was on the shore of Seneca Lake, which attracted wealthy 2nd homeowners, and faculty from the local private college sent their kids there. I remember feeling like expectations for hallway behavior were overly-emphasized (all kids walking in single file along one side of the hall, no talking and no dragging your hand along the tiled wall--seriously, who can resist running his/her hand along those cool, smooth squares with the rough seams at regular intervals? To me it was therapeutic.)

I remember my college supervisor said I would remember my student teaching experience in surprising detail for many years. He was right. I could write about lots of stories, but I'll share one management technique that I borrowed from Mrs. Applebaum and ended up using through my own tenure as a teacher for 8 years.

I learned about Mrs. A's freeze/share idea in the hallway--surprise, surprise. To help the kids practice appropriate hallway decorum (I mean really, they were in 5th grade. If they didn't know the expectations by now, they were NEVER going to learn), Mrs. Applebaum would line them up and take a demonstration walk down the hall. If she said, "Share", the kids were expected to keep walking, but to stop all talking. If she said "Freeze", they were expected to stop walking and talking. We never really used this in the hall, but it was good practice for the classroom where we used freeze/share a lot. For example, if the kids were working on a group math exercise using manipulatives, there were plenty of times when we wanted them to keep working, but to listen to instructional clarification or praise. In this case, we would say, "Share". At other times, if things were really off track, or if we wanted to add a new dimension to a task, we could use "freeze" to stop the action and redirect.

After a couple of weeks, we could practically whisper "freeze" or "share" and the kid were so attuned to these cues that they would respond immediately. Eventually, we invited the kids to use "share" if they needed the class's attention during an activity. At first, a few kids took it too far, but we were able to squash those impulses quickly and the word became a great community-building tool.

As I said, I used this strategy to great effect in my future classrooms. And I'll admit that at the beginning of every year I had my students practice freeze/share in the hallway!

I've always been attracted to management techniques that are respectful, purposeful and flexible. Freeze/share meets all these criteria. I'll be interested to know what you both embrace as management strategies in your classrooms this fall.

A Nine Year Old's Definition of Pandemic

The first day of fourth grade of course involved hand washing reiteration and importance, especially because of the flu. While the teacher was talking, the word pandemic was used. Mrs. B.: "Does anyone know what pandemic means?" Daniel: "A pandemic is a plague that is sweeping the nation." You might just be right Daniel.

Fifth Grade

Spelling has never been my strong suit. I can remember the massive spelling units each week that involved using the words in many different ways on worksheets. I despised the worksheets and spelling tests that were due each Friday morning. At the start of the year, my fifth grade teacher, Mrs. Christianson, introduced the spelling curriculum to the class, and then she pulled me aside to introduce a separate curriculum that I would be using. I loved the new curriculum. It was the easiest set of words, and there were no practice sheets. As a result, I didn't even need to study. She taught me that teachers set standards or expectations for their students, and in some ways, we need to start high and adapt to a more workable level. Starting with low expectations does an injustice to the students.

With this separate curriculum, there were fewer words to learn each week, and it was suppose to get harder as the year progressed. Mrs. Christianson should have pretested me at the start of the year to see where I should have begun. She assumed I would work through the easy words and get to my level quickly. I took a test a week like I did every other year, but I should have moved much faster. She should have been attuned to the fact that the first half of the year was extremely easy for me in the area of spelling. From Mrs. Christianson, I learned that teachers need to be observing, assessing, and changing curriculum based on the students needs. I hope to use this experience when working with those in my own classroom.

Mrs. Summers

Mrs. Summers was my middle school Social Studies teacher. She also taught social studies to all three of my sibblings. Three out of four of us won the school's Geography Bee. My older brother was (and could possibly still be) the only student in the history of our grade school to pass the ridiculously difficult test to make it to the state Geography Bee. He got his first question about a river in Iraq incorrect. We were all shy and studious students who were able to succeed at something in front of a crowd of parents, teachers and classmates. I think we owe our successes to Mrs. Summers. She encouraged us to come out of our shells and try harder at what she knew we were good at and truly enjoyed learning about. She helped us to focus on our strengths, while at the same time understanding the hesitation and insecurities we had about ourselves and our confidence as shy middle school students. She didn't make a big deal out of our winning and embarass us in front of our classmates. She addressed us individually. Mrs. Summers was certainly a no-nonsense kind of teacher, but that didn't hide her heart and her sensitivity to student's emotional needs. She helped me and my sibblings to grow personally by encouraging us-but not forcing or singling us out-to go beyond our comfort level for learning. What I take away from Mrs. Summers as a teacher now is that even though you know a middle-grade student could excel at something and might enjoy it, there are sensitive emotions involved in putting yourself out there and showing confidence in your brain, body and self. A Geography Bee is an extreme example, I know. But some students, instead of you pulling them aside in front of their peers, might appreciate a note on their paper or a book slipped into their desk or homework folder instead. I am glad to note that I did see Mrs. Summers a week before I started my first term at St. Kate's. She gave me a hug when I told her I wanted to be a middle school social studies teacher.

What Mrs. Burdick taught me about teaching (even though she thought she was teaching me about writing)

Mrs. Burdick was my 10th grade English teacher. Before the start of the school year, rumors floated around that she sometimes cried during class when she got overwhelmed; this information added a certain tension to every English class, and before Christmas vacation, the rumor was confirmed. Mrs. Burdick did cry sometimes, in frustration, annoyance, and just plain tiredness, I think.
It may be surprising to hear, given that opening paragraph, that the lesson I take from Mrs. Burdick about teaching is not that teaching can be so difficult sometimes you just “lose it”; instead, Mrs. Burdick taught me that effective writing teachers give substantive feedback. They respect each student’s piece of writing so deeply that they’ll spend hours and hours outside of class reading and responding to the writing to make it better. I turned in at least three drafts of an 8-page paper about Huckleberry Finn and every draft came back to me with streams of comments. Mrs. Burdick taught me that when you take the work kids do seriously, they’re more likely to take themselves seriously and work very hard to get the learning right.