Week/s in review for December
Hi Ladies,
Hope all is well in Bamberg and that you are finishing up your projects and readying yourselves for your final week in the classroom as a student teacher. You are about to embark on your career - are you excited????
Please let us know what's been going on the last couple of weeks since the Thanksgiving Holiday, and then tomorrow I'll go ahead and give you your final prompt to think about over the weekend and post sometime next week.
Take care!
Heidi & Chris
posted by Heidi @ 10:37 AM
2 comments
2 Comments:
The last few weeks have flown by! We've been in the process of transitioning back to Sandy to doing most of the the teaching while my role has become less. The kids have been adjusting really well, but they are also making it difficult to leave. One little girl wrote me a letter saying "Please tell me why are you leaving?" and gave it to me with tears in her eyes. I'll want to stay in touch with the class, maybe I can write them a few letters or something of the sort. I have finished all of my assignments with the exception of the positive impact. My mini-unit orginally planned on the students making a map to show what they've learned about the continents by mapping where postcards came from. In the beginning of the unit they wrote postcards to family members asking them to send a postcard to help us learn about geography. I also wrote to my family and friends in case some of the kids postcards didn't come in. My family and friends have been great and have sent about a dozen postcards from different places that they have collected. Unfortunately, even though they were sent two weeks ago, none have come in. As this is getting into crunch time I'm going with plan B of mapping where the students have lived. This final part will happen tomorrow so I can finish the positive impact. Even though the timeline didn't go as planned, I've learned that while connections like this are great, when there are external factors such as the mailing system and busy people a plan B is always needed. I still hope that the students receive postcards and that it will help make geography even more real to them.
I have also been doing a lot more observing which has been great. I've seen several different grade levels and different styles of teaching. There haven't been any two classes that were exactly alike, but I have noticed that the kids are still excited about learning in each and still want affirmation from their teachers.
Other than that, Kyla and I are working on moving and I'm reminded off how much I dislike the act of packing. We fly out on Tuesday, but have to be out of the apartment on Friday. The teachers at the elementary school have been very supportive and there is a 5th grade teacher who is letting us stay with her and giving us a ride to the airport. I'm very grateful for this experience and the support that others at the school have given us.
The past few weeks have been very busy, but successful. We finished up some team teaching and I started to give Delome back the class. I have been spending less time in my classroom this past week to help get the students get use to having one teacher again and I have been observing other teachers. It has been interesting to observe other teachers; everyone seems to have their own strategy that works for them. I have found the experience of visiting other classrooms very beneficial, because I have learned many new ideas that I really like.
One idea that I learned in a class was to call students alternating between boy, girl, boy, and have every student participate in the class discussions. The students can either volunteer or they can get randomly called on but everyone participates. I took this teaching idea and implemented in to my classroom, I like it because it holds all of the students accountable and checks to see if all of them are paying attention. Another reason I liked this strategy is because it made me very aware of whom I was calling on since I had to make sure all of my students either got called on.
This past week was kind of stressful but it has given me experience of what it is like to have a student who is getting a referral. The paper work process is tedious. I made it my mission to try different intervention strategies with this student; it was tiring but again a great experience. I spent a lot of time asking the special education teacher for ideas to help this student. I sat next to him and made this student my buddy for two days. We set up a plan to try and keep him on task. I would check his progress every 10 minutes, if he was making steady progress he would earn a certificate, if he was not making steady progress then he did not get a certificate. This strategy was not affecting him, he still did not care. My next strategy to try was to put a timer next to him and set small goals to have finished and if he was night staying on task then he would have to finish his work during recess. It took him 15 minutes to write 6 words, which was frustrating because he can work faster when he wants. I told him that he was not earning his recess and he needed to work fast so I told him he had 10 minutes to write 5 ideas on the graphic organizer, he completed the whole graphic organizer (13 sentences) in 7 minutes, he thought that if he finally started working he was going to get his recess. That motivation only happened once and now it does not faze the student.
It is stressful because I am putting all my time into one student trying to make progress and nothing is working and it is taking away from all of the other students. However, the extra energy that I have been putting into this one student is beneficial since it is information to put on the referral that could help him get this help he need
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