I {heart} technology. This dual purpose blog is a green method of responding to written assignments for all of my Portage High School students. The second purpose is to share my love (and frustrations) about paper crafting.
Saturday, October 08, 2011
Reflection #3! Whew, time is going fast!
Please enter your reflection for week #3. If you have time, take a look at the previous posts, especially Emily's and Kaitlin's. Nice job of thinking things out on paper. Don't forget to turn in your journals, too :)
8 comments:
Emily Casella
said...
This week I went to Mrs. Falk, and I absolutely loved it! The second graders were really fun and I liked how Mrs. Falk ran her classroom. The class was doing like a poetry unit, and with grandparents day coming up, Mrs. Falk assigned students different poems, which they get to say in front of the grandparents. The other reason, she told me was to help them with public speaking, which I thought was a grand idea. Personally, I have a horrible time speaking in public, so I thought it was really smart for her to do that. Another way she helped with public speaking was when I first arrived. They were sitting at the gathering place (I am not sure if that was what the group area was called) and I went to sit in a chair next to them. So Mrs. Falk told them to stand up, say their names, and what they liked to do. They had to look at me while there were saying it, so they can learn eye contact. Back to the poems, I got to work with this student name Sonny on saying his poem. He was doing really well actually. He was so cute, he kept mixing up different stanzas and he always would say, “Man I got mixed up.” I got to hear other kids do their poems and they were really quite good. They were reading these really big words like communication and salutations, I was really impressed. The next thing that I really, really loved a whole lot was the lady who came in to read them visual stories. First of all, the Teacher (who I regrettably do not recall her name), was the best person anyone could get for a story teller. She looked like she just popped out of a fairy tale and she sang or danced or other physical moves to bring the story to life. She made them close their eyes as she read the about four to five, very descriptive sentences. Then, she would let them come up with questions to ask the class about the story. They came up with some pretty awesome questions. Then, they went to their desks and worked on pages that went with it. Each time they finished a question we had to stamp their pages. The Teacher only comes on Tuesdays and Thursday. Thursday, was really fun. It was also Sonny’s and Victoria’s Birthday so it was pretty cool to be there for their Birthdays. I am not picking favorites, even though I already mention Sonny twice, I thought it was more, well Sonny and other students really warmed up to me this week. I was so excited. But before I go on to a tangent, Thursday. Thursday, we got to make snow cones with the visual reading teacher. A week ago the students read a story about a lady making snow cones, so the teacher and Mrs. Falk brought there tools to make some to show the students what it would actually look like. The reading Teacher brought a meat mallet, the kids got to learn what that was, and Mrs. Falk brought a nice snow cone make machine. So then reading Teacher showed them how she used to make snow cones with her own kids with the mallet. Then we used Mr. Falk’s snow cone make to make cups of shaved ice with white grade juice (purple grape juice would be too messy). So I got to help make the ice and then passed it around to the students. It was a blast. That was really how Elementary should be taught. Not only just because of the snow cones, but because Mrs. Falk made the students feel smart and never downed them, she got what needed to be done, had fun with her students, but also had a handle on how to keep them under controlled. The students were the greatest. They learned and did what they needed to do. I just really enjoyed that week. I felt really comfortable and a part of the classroom. It was a great time. –Emily Casella
This week I was in Mrs. Tosch's class and it was an amazing experience. Mrs. Tosch is a great teacher, she helps the kids with anything they are having problems with. My time in the class she helped them with the weather outside, then she helped them with their letters. I got to work with 5 kids the first day I was there, I helped them with writing their names, then I got to help one of them with his colors. I really loved being with that group of kids. They were really great the four days I was there. Mrs. Tosch was an amazing teacher, she made the kids feel confident. The kids were so happy when they would come into the room because Mrs. Tosch would greet them in the nicest way possible. I felt great being involved with the kids this week.
Second grade was awesome this week! Mrs. Cruz has a class of mixed students, some with higher academic ability and some that are average. It was a great experience to work with both academic types. You could tell which ones were the higher because they were the ones who would get their work done first and not struggle and their spelling words were different from those that weren't what Mrs. Cruz called "Challenged." As i went through the four days, I have become more comfortable being around little kids and learned not to be so nervous when teaching them. I helped a little girl named Star with her word pyramids and I played with ways to explain the word clues for her to understand them better. I used rhyming association, situation description, and letter clues to help her pick up on what the worksheet was asking. I can see myself coming in to my own as a cadet. With each new class I'm becoming more and more confident on what I'm doing and I'm asking more questions to the teachers themselves to help better prepare me for the future that lies ahead. Listening to how the teacher interacts with the kids and how the kids interact with the teacher is helping me see what I should be doing. I'm modeling myself after their good habits and their reactions to the actions of the kids. It's been helping a lot and I've started to take that away and use it also in different aspects of life. These aspects being at my job at the YMCA and in class with fellow students. I've been practicing on the students in my Biology II class and it's been helping a lot. I'm seeing what wouldn't work, what would, and altering it to fit the age groups I have. -Jasmine Sleaford :)
This week was my first week out of the "classroom" and in the gym. Working with Ms. Zielinski. She really shined a light on how important physical education is and how much the kids look forward to it everyday. Throughout the week I was priviledged to see all different grade levels. When working with kids in kidergarden or even first grade, they couldnt be given as much freedom. Everything they did was much more straight forward and continusly monitured. I could definitly tell that the young kids had a much shorter attention span and games and activites with very basic instructions helped the class run smoothly. When working with the fourth and fifth graders we had more opportunities to make games a little more difficult. They played a game where I would toss a ball out in the middle of the gym and call out a number. Then the kids whose number was called run out and play a traditional soccer game. These fourth and fifth graders showed many similarities to older kids and became very competitive. Some boys would get angry at things that happened and I had to learn how to calm some of them down. One of the hardest things to do was calm down some of the students who had been "hurt" during the game. I learned that when someone falls down or gets hit with the ball and came to me crying or complaining something as simple as a trip to the water fountain would make them feel better. The walk gave them a short time to relax and get their head on their shoulders. This week was a great experience because I was able to see the behind the scenes aspects of being a physical education teacher and how important it is. Most people do not get to see all the work these people put into getting class ready and working with all the students.
During the week of October 3rd I was at Kyle Elementary School in Ms. Montgomery's Special Education class. I have never had any experience with elementary level Special Education. Ms. Montgomery had a method of teaching that i have never seen before. What she would do is have students do an assignment and when they would finish that assignment they were given ten minutes of free-time to do as they pleased. Speaking education-wise i dont think its effective. Only because if a student know they have a free-time coming up, they might rush through their assignment and not grasp the standard they have to learn. Besides that, during the time I was in the classroom there were only about three or four students. Since there was such a small amount i had alot of time with them individually. Robbie is one boy that i speant ALOT of time with. Every break he got, he wanted either me to read to him or he read to me. He always told me that he couldn't read, but he would always end up reading to me. Being in Special Education was a good experience for me to have. I also really like it! I thought I was going to go crazy, but i didn't. But I really like how all this is going so far(:
This week I was in Mrs. Grant's first grade class. It was interesting teaching first grade two weeks in a row. It gives you the opportunity to observe how first grade can be so different by just switching teachers. It shows you how teachers really do determine the climate of the room. Mrs. Grant had a great group of students. The students were really well behaved, and you could tell they enjoyed her ways of teaching. The first part of their day is focused on writing. During the week I was there, they were writing stories based on who, what, when, and where. The students came up with some pretty basic stories, or some really bizzare stories. It made me laugh reading some of their outrageous stories. Mrs. Grant made a chart giving examples of who, what, when, and where. Therefore, while the students write their stories, they could put down an example from the chart. The chart really helped the students with their stories. On Thursday the students wrote letters to their grandparents. They were told to write about what they do with their grandparents. After the students wrote their letters, I did arts and crafts with them. Mrs. Grant took a picture of each student before I came in the classroom. She gave me cardboard picture frames to decorate with each student. They were so excited to decorate their picture frames. I had a lot of fun decorating with the students. However, some students made a big mess, but I knew that would happen. On Friday, the students grandparents came in to watch the them perform. I helped put the students in line and tell them how to act on stage. It was a great opportunity to see the students personality.
This week was my first week at a different level than first grade. I was able to experience education at a fifth grade level again and it was interesting to think that I was that young at one point. The kids were working on context clues for the whole week and it was difficult for myself at points like when I had to help them figure out what "philanthropy" meant, which was really difficult since I never knew the word either. All the kids were sweet and of course a little obnoxious, but its always great to see it from different points of view and to experience all age levels of education.
My third week of cadet teaching was very different from my first two. This week I was with Mr. Lesich's fifth grade class. I was only in his class for three days because I was sick one day, but I still learned several things. When I first walked in all of the students barely acknowledged me, which was a huge difference from the two other classes I was in. On my first day Mr. Lesich was giving his class a short review before they took a quiz over long division. I was not allowed to help the students so I just graded papers most of the time. On my second day, Mr. Lesich was teaching the students about prime numbers and factor trees. I helped several students with the worksheet they were assigned. On my last day in Mr. Lesich's class, I helped students with a worksheet that involved using context clues to figure out what a word means. Overall, my third week of cadet teaching was successful. I feel like I'm learning new things every day.
8 comments:
This week I went to Mrs. Falk, and I absolutely loved it! The second graders were really fun and I liked how Mrs. Falk ran her classroom. The class was doing like a poetry unit, and with grandparents day coming up, Mrs. Falk assigned students different poems, which they get to say in front of the grandparents. The other reason, she told me was to help them with public speaking, which I thought was a grand idea. Personally, I have a horrible time speaking in public, so I thought it was really smart for her to do that. Another way she helped with public speaking was when I first arrived. They were sitting at the gathering place (I am not sure if that was what the group area was called) and I went to sit in a chair next to them. So Mrs. Falk told them to stand up, say their names, and what they liked to do. They had to look at me while there were saying it, so they can learn eye contact. Back to the poems, I got to work with this student name Sonny on saying his poem. He was doing really well actually. He was so cute, he kept mixing up different stanzas and he always would say, “Man I got mixed up.” I got to hear other kids do their poems and they were really quite good. They were reading these really big words like communication and salutations, I was really impressed. The next thing that I really, really loved a whole lot was the lady who came in to read them visual stories. First of all, the Teacher (who I regrettably do not recall her name), was the best person anyone could get for a story teller. She looked like she just popped out of a fairy tale and she sang or danced or other physical moves to bring the story to life. She made them close their eyes as she read the about four to five, very descriptive sentences. Then, she would let them come up with questions to ask the class about the story. They came up with some pretty awesome questions. Then, they went to their desks and worked on pages that went with it. Each time they finished a question we had to stamp their pages. The Teacher only comes on Tuesdays and Thursday. Thursday, was really fun. It was also Sonny’s and Victoria’s Birthday so it was pretty cool to be there for their Birthdays. I am not picking favorites, even though I already mention Sonny twice, I thought it was more, well Sonny and other students really warmed up to me this week. I was so excited. But before I go on to a tangent, Thursday. Thursday, we got to make snow cones with the visual reading teacher. A week ago the students read a story about a lady making snow cones, so the teacher and Mrs. Falk brought there tools to make some to show the students what it would actually look like. The reading Teacher brought a meat mallet, the kids got to learn what that was, and Mrs. Falk brought a nice snow cone make machine. So then reading Teacher showed them how she used to make snow cones with her own kids with the mallet. Then we used Mr. Falk’s snow cone make to make cups of shaved ice with white grade juice (purple grape juice would be too messy). So I got to help make the ice and then passed it around to the students. It was a blast. That was really how Elementary should be taught. Not only just because of the snow cones, but because Mrs. Falk made the students feel smart and never downed them, she got what needed to be done, had fun with her students, but also had a handle on how to keep them under controlled. The students were the greatest. They learned and did what they needed to do. I just really enjoyed that week. I felt really comfortable and a part of the classroom. It was a great time. –Emily Casella
This week I was in Mrs. Tosch's class and it was an amazing experience. Mrs. Tosch is a great teacher, she helps the kids with anything they are having problems with. My time in the class she helped them with the weather outside, then she helped them with their letters. I got to work with 5 kids the first day I was there, I helped them with writing their names, then I got to help one of them with his colors. I really loved being with that group of kids. They were really great the four days I was there. Mrs. Tosch was an amazing teacher, she made the kids feel confident. The kids were so happy when they would come into the room because Mrs. Tosch would greet them in the nicest way possible. I felt great being involved with the kids this week.
Second grade was awesome this week! Mrs. Cruz has a class of mixed students, some with higher academic ability and some that are average. It was a great experience to work with both academic types. You could tell which ones were the higher because they were the ones who would get their work done first and not struggle and their spelling words were different from those that weren't what Mrs. Cruz called "Challenged." As i went through the four days, I have become more comfortable being around little kids and learned not to be so nervous when teaching them. I helped a little girl named Star with her word pyramids and I played with ways to explain the word clues for her to understand them better. I used rhyming association, situation description, and letter clues to help her pick up on what the worksheet was asking. I can see myself coming in to my own as a cadet. With each new class I'm becoming more and more confident on what I'm doing and I'm asking more questions to the teachers themselves to help better prepare me for the future that lies ahead. Listening to how the teacher interacts with the kids and how the kids interact with the teacher is helping me see what I should be doing. I'm modeling myself after their good habits and their reactions to the actions of the kids. It's been helping a lot and I've started to take that away and use it also in different aspects of life. These aspects being at my job at the YMCA and in class with fellow students. I've been practicing on the students in my Biology II class and it's been helping a lot. I'm seeing what wouldn't work, what would, and altering it to fit the age groups I have.
-Jasmine Sleaford :)
This week was my first week out of the "classroom" and in the gym. Working with Ms. Zielinski. She really shined a light on how important physical education is and how much the kids look forward to it everyday. Throughout the week I was priviledged to see all different grade levels. When working with kids in kidergarden or even first grade, they couldnt be given as much freedom. Everything they did was much more straight forward and continusly monitured. I could definitly tell that the young kids had a much shorter attention span and games and activites with very basic instructions helped the class run smoothly. When working with the fourth and fifth graders we had more opportunities to make games a little more difficult. They played a game where I would toss a ball out in the middle of the gym and call out a number. Then the kids whose number was called run out and play a traditional soccer game. These fourth and fifth graders showed many similarities to older kids and became very competitive. Some boys would get angry at things that happened and I had to learn how to calm some of them down. One of the hardest things to do was calm down some of the students who had been "hurt" during the game. I learned that when someone falls down or gets hit with the ball and came to me crying or complaining something as simple as a trip to the water fountain would make them feel better. The walk gave them a short time to relax and get their head on their shoulders. This week was a great experience because I was able to see the behind the scenes aspects of being a physical education teacher and how important it is. Most people do not get to see all the work these people put into getting class ready and working with all the students.
-Abagail
During the week of October 3rd I was at Kyle Elementary School in Ms. Montgomery's Special Education class. I have never had any experience with elementary level Special Education. Ms. Montgomery had a method of teaching that i have never seen before. What she would do is have students do an assignment and when they would finish that assignment they were given ten minutes of free-time to do as they pleased. Speaking education-wise i dont think its effective. Only because if a student know they have a free-time coming up, they might rush through their assignment and not grasp the standard they have to learn. Besides that, during the time I was in the classroom there were only about three or four students. Since there was such a small amount i had alot of time with them individually. Robbie is one boy that i speant ALOT of time with. Every break he got, he wanted either me to read to him or he read to me. He always told me that he couldn't read, but he would always end up reading to me. Being in Special Education was a good experience for me to have. I also really like it! I thought I was going to go crazy, but i didn't. But I really like how all this is going so far(:
-Keri Kochvar
This week I was in Mrs. Grant's first grade class. It was interesting teaching first grade two weeks in a row. It gives you the opportunity to observe how first grade can be so different by just switching teachers. It shows you how teachers really do determine the climate of the room. Mrs. Grant had a great group of students. The students were really well behaved, and you could tell they enjoyed her ways of teaching. The first part of their day is focused on writing. During the week I was there, they were writing stories based on who, what, when, and where. The students came up with some pretty basic stories, or some really bizzare stories. It made me laugh reading some of their outrageous stories. Mrs. Grant made a chart giving examples of who, what, when, and where. Therefore, while the students write their stories, they could put down an example from the chart. The chart really helped the students with their stories. On Thursday the students wrote letters to their grandparents. They were told to write about what they do with their grandparents. After the students wrote their letters, I did arts and crafts with them. Mrs. Grant took a picture of each student before I came in the classroom. She gave me cardboard picture frames to decorate with each student. They were so excited to decorate their picture frames. I had a lot of fun decorating with the students. However, some students made a big mess, but I knew that would happen. On Friday, the students grandparents came in to watch the them perform. I helped put the students in line and tell them how to act on stage. It was a great opportunity to see the students personality.
This week was my first week at a different level than first grade. I was able to experience education at a fifth grade level again and it was interesting to think that I was that young at one point. The kids were working on context clues for the whole week and it was difficult for myself at points like when I had to help them figure out what "philanthropy" meant, which was really difficult since I never knew the word either. All the kids were sweet and of course a little obnoxious, but its always great to see it from different points of view and to experience all age levels of education.
--Cait.
My third week of cadet teaching was very different from my first two. This week I was with Mr. Lesich's fifth grade class. I was only in his class for three days because I was sick one day, but I still learned several things. When I first walked in all of the students barely acknowledged me, which was a huge difference from the two other classes I was in. On my first day Mr. Lesich was giving his class a short review before they took a quiz over long division. I was not allowed to help the students so I just graded papers most of the time. On my second day, Mr. Lesich was teaching the students about prime numbers and factor trees. I helped several students with the worksheet they were assigned. On my last day in Mr. Lesich's class, I helped students with a worksheet that involved using context clues to figure out what a word means. Overall, my third week of cadet teaching was successful. I feel like I'm learning new things every day.
-Riley (this is the second time I've posted this)
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