Welcome to Germany and our Blog!
Hello Kara, Katrina, Alyssa, Samantha, Cheryl, Sierra and Devon,
Welcome to our blog! Each of you has had a chaneto familiarize yourselves with your classrooms, cooperating teachers, administrators and your students. I'm anxious to hear all about it.
For your first posting, please share about your first week. Give us an overview of your classroom, a bit about your cooperating teacher and how you are settling into life on a military base.
Remember the way this works--you post your comments and then respond to at least two other postings. We will do this weekly sometimes to a specific prompt and often reflecting on your week and sharing a highlight and a challenge.
Looking forward to hearing from each of you.
Chris
posted by Chris @ 8:51 PM
32 comments
32 Comments:
I have been at the Ansbach base for a little over two weeks now. The staff has been really nice and welcoming. The classes I am teaching are Personal Fitness and Physical Activity and Nutrition. The kids are all pretty good kids and actually seem like they want to be in the classroom. Personal Fitness teaches the students how to lead healthy lives by introducing a variety of different forms of exercise. This week we focused on the importance of a warm up and why dynamic strectching is better for you than static stretching. We also introduced the students to the proper body position when squatting.
In the Physical Activity and Nutrition (PAN) class the students get to learn about extra things that can keep them active like yoga or dance. The class also covers the health topic of nutrition and how it connects to exercise, lifestyles, and a variety of other aspects of your life. This week we reviewed dynamic stretching and started the students in their juggling unit.
My cooperating teacher is really nice. Besides teaching these classes he is also the athletic director, junior class teacher rep, and he and his wife coach cheerleading. After cheerleading season ends he also coaches track. He is a pretty young which is nice because our teaching styles are pretty similar.
Last week I was also able to attend the teacher work week and the daily meetings. During those meetings the administration introduced a new look at assessment. The lessons were on Stiggins and his views on assessment. This was nice because it was all review for me so I had background knowledge on what the school is starting to implement this year.
The base is pretty nice and my apartment is walking distance to everything so that has been nice. It would be better if I had internet in my place but I have found a building that has free wifi. I am the only student teacher here so I have the apartment to myself. Overall I have enjoyed my first two weeks here and am excited to see what the rest of the semester has in store.
I also got to teach two lessons this week! Both lessons were done with the freshmen class, and for the first one, we worked on complete sentences and fragments. We went over what complete sentences were, how to write a complete sentence, what fragments are, and how to turn a fragment into a complete sentence. I really thought that this lesson was one that was one the freshmen should have already been capable of, but they definitely needed this lesson! I thought that the lesson went OK, but I also thought that I could improve. In the second lesson, I was able to teach the freshmen about run-on sentences and how to fix them. I thought that this was a good lesson, but there’s still room for improvement too. For my next lessons, I’m going to think of ways to “jazz” the lessons up a bit. And speaking of the next lessons, this weekend I am preparing some lessons for George Orwell’s “Animal Farm”, which the freshmen will start reading next week. The students are going to be doing a lot of analyzing with “Animal Farm” and will be comparing it to the Russian Revolution.
I really like life on the military base. Everyone here is really friendly and I really do feel as though I’m still in the United States when I am on base. But once I get off base, I know that I’m in a foreign country. The weirdest thing to get used to on base is that everything closes super early. Most things are actually closed by the time we get home from school, so we generally stick to the apartment at night. Before I got here, I thought that the base would be in just one place, but the Heidelberg base is really spread out. I live on one base, but teach at the high school on another base. So figuring out how to get to and from school each day has been a mess. The shuttle bus that we could take would get us there an hour late, and the school bus just didn’t sound that appealing. All week, Cheryl, Katrina’s teacher, drove us to school, and it worked out that we found a ride from school each day too. On Friday, though, the PE teacher was able to hook us up with some nice bikes, so now we can go to and from school on the bikes, and we can also use the bikes to get around town so that we don’t have to pay the expensive taxi anymore!
Overall, it’s been a great week, but a tiring one too. Most of the student teachers went travelling around Europe this weekend, but I decided to stay behind so that I could get some rest, get some work done, and catch up with some family and friends on the phone. I already did a lot of travelling for two weeks before I got here, and there will be plenty of opportunity for more later!
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I think my is still spinning and will not stop until sometime after I get back to the states.
This will be the second week with the kids. First grade is different for me. I have done practicums in first before, but only the short ones where you see them only in the morning or afternoon once a week. Its a shock how different they are to third grade. I like it, and it is a good learning experience even though I cant help but miss my third graders from advanced practicum.. why I just teach them until they graduate?? I am sure I will be saying the same about these first graders in December! The first week blew my mind the amount of work goes into setting up a classroom. My mentor teacher decided this was the summer to clean out all her old curriculum and stuff she didnt need anymore, so I got to experience setting up a classroom from almost ground zero. I walked in the first day and EVERYTHING was in piles in the middle of the floor. It was hard work, but we got it done!
It is nice to be next door to Cheryl because we get to experience two different mentor teachers.
They are both very calm and laid back and super nice, the real main difference is their age and what technology they use in their classrooms.
I absolutely LOVE my mentor teacher, she is the older one so we are learning the smart board together! She is so nice and will help me out in any way that I need. I am truly lucky to have been placed with her. She is awesome. Also, she is from Spokane and that is where her kids and grandbabies live! So we have Washington State as something in common and already are setting up plans to meet each others families in the summer.
Other than setting up the classroom on the first week, there were a lot of meetings and training. They just got a new math curriculum called Everyday Math. In advanced practicum they had just gotten Bridges. So I have already experienced this chaos a little bit and the programs are very similar. I like them a lot actually, and that is good since I am doing the Math TPA.
The first week of school went well. I couldnt ask for anything to be have gone differently. My mentor teacher says she can already tell we are lucky with the kids we got and predicts and awesome year.
Alyssa-
That is funny that you mention Stiggins! I love how everything is coming together once we are now in the field.
Have you been able to get out and do things in the evenings or on the weekends?? I heard you went to Austria this past weekend which was probably really fun. Are you going to start helping with cheerleading? I think that would be fun even though I was never a cheerleader!
I am sorry you have to live alone. But, i am sure you are having a good time anyway!
Kara-
I love that you have already been thrown into teaching lessons! Stressful, but you are getting the stressful first few lessons out of the way and you will be a pro before us all!
I have started small routine things in the classroom like an anti violence/bullying and making friends curriculum that consists of 15 minute lessons that are laid out for me. Which was a good start for me! Next week I get to start on the real stuff!
I am in a first grade classroom, which was a last minute switch for both my teacher and I from third grade (a week before school started). It will be a really good experience because I’ve never worked with the primary kids before and may end up getting a job in a primary grade. It’s amazing the resources and technology the classrooms have here. Our classroom is really large—about twice the size of my sixth grade classroom I was in for advanced practicum. Each classroom has a Smart Board as well as a document camera. My teacher is really into using the smart board, which is great because I feel like I don’t have enough experience using the Smart Board to actually use it in my class. We do calendar on the Smart Board every morning and my teacher often shows the kids tumble books on the Smart Board. The books are on a website; for the kids it’s like watching a movie, but it’s just a recording of the book being read and showing the pictures on the screen. My teacher says that once the kids get going in reading more, the Smart Board activities also become a center for literacy time.
Danielle, my teacher, is very into centers for learning. I’m excited to see this because I haven’t done centers in any of my practicums before. She was telling me with centers that sometimes it’s hard to immediately see the learning, but in a few weeks, you know that it has taken place by comparing what the kids are able to do now to what they were able to do at the start. Last week we were doing Kindergarten review with our kids of letters and site words. We had a matching game of lowercase and capital letters, a site word recognition game, computers with literacy centers, practice spelling site words using the play dough, and a collage of magazine cutouts for the different letters. While the kids went through the centers, Danielle did some letter recognition testing with most of the kids.
Danielle and I get a long really well. She is very helpful. She is a lot more laid back than my advanced practicum teacher was, however, so it’s a really odd shift. We wrote out our lesson plans for next week, which was good to see how Danielle does it using centers. She’s a lot more laid back about prepping after school and does most everything on her prep periods. In first grade we have extra prep time too, because the kids have Spanish twice a week, in addition to daily specialists. I am very spoiled with all the extra time.
Adjusting to life on the military base hasn’t been too difficult. The big shift is all the paperwork and hoops we had to jump through to get situated to life here. A lot of the time I feel like there are lots of unknown rules that I don’t know about and am afraid I am breaking though. The commissary is just a block away and past the middle school, so is easy to get to and not too far to carry groceries back. There’s a big library on base, a movie theater and bowling alley, a post office, a small rec center, and a small shopping center. This base is all spread apart, though, so it’s hard to get to the PX because that’s on another base. However, teachers have been really helpful getting us what we need and other military families have given us rides if they see us walking on and off base, which is really nice. It’s been nice working in the elementary school because it is about a 7 minute walk from the front door of our apartment. I am really excited to see what the rest of the semester has in store and am excited to see how first grade progresses.
Alyssa-
The classes you're teaching sound super interesting! It'll be cool to teach both the regular Fitness classes as well as the PAN classes. You'll get good ideas and experiences for whatever health/PE class you end up teaching in the future.
It's nice that you got to review assessment before you started. We surprisingly didn't have many meetings the first week. The first day of teacher in-service we had two big staff meetings and then a grade group meeting the last day before we started. It's interesting to see the difference between the amount of meetings this school has compared to where I had advanced practicum.
Katrina said you would be meeting us in Ireland and I hope to see you on other trips too!!! We will be sure to let you know what other trips we take!
I am in love with Germany and this Heidelberg military community. It is such a strange and fun experience to live in a slice of the United States but walk 10 minutes and be in a different culture. Most of my time has been spent on post or traveling between posts. One thing that surprised me was that the base is actually located in different parts of Heidelberg and is not just one single area. I live in Patrick Henry Village but the high school is on Mark Twain Village and they are more than 3 miles apart. Starting tomorrow the 6 interns at the high school will be biking to shool. It is going to be an adventure. Everyone I have interacted with on base is helpful and nice. I think that we must have new student teacher written on our forehead because we have been picked out at almost every encounter.
My teacher has been at Heidelberg High School for 10 years and has been teaching in the DODDS system for 16 years. My teacher grew up in a military family and moved around a lot when she was a kid and she was a private in the Army, giving her insider knowledge of different aspects of military life. She is married to a sweet man from Alabama and they have one son who is in the Air Force. This year she is implementing standards based grading and placing more emphasis on summative assessment over formative assessment. We are teaching one section of Algebra I, one section of Algebra that we are co-teaching with the Special Education department, and three sections of Discrete math. The Algebra classes are mostly freshmen while the Discrete math classes are mostly seniors. Our classroom has 28 desks and these are all full for three of the classes, which definitely makes the room a bit tight. There is a SMART board in the room and she uses it during lecture in order to make the lecture interactive.
Last week I mostly observed and worked with small groups. I take attendance and grade work. We gave a pre-test and it was eye-opening to see just how varied the skill level in each of the classes is.
My roommates are awesome. There are 4 Cougs and 1 Hawk living in a space with 1 bathroom so we are getting to know each other quite well. It is so fun living in an apartment full of other interns. We swap stories and give each other encouragement. I am definitely a fan.
Katrina-
I am interested to hear about how coteaching with the SpEd class works; I'll ask you more since you are currently sitting across the table from me.
Are you worried about the different skill levels you have in one classroom? Do you have plans for how you will work with it?
It's interesting that your teacher is teaching such a wide array of classes--our high school teachers always taught only one or two different math classes for the entire school day.
It sounds like you are really excited about your new experiences and seeing how everything works! I am excited to hear more about your math classes (and swear I won't get you sick!)
Alyssa -
There is such a difference in our living situations. You are by yourself and I live in an apartment complex with 16 other student teachers. I have come to depend on them to keep my in line and on track. The P.E classes you are teaching sound nothing like the ones that I took in high school so it is fun to know that there is something else out there besides "just" PE.
Your cooperating teacher sounds like a great fit for you and a very involved teacher. I like him based upon your description.
I am wishing you the best of luck as this week begins. Stay cool.
Cheryl -
My first grade teacher used a chalk board and a giant notepad to teach us letters and numbers. I thought it was the coolest thing in the world to get to write on the chalk board and now you are using a SMART board to do the calendar. It's kind of nuts.
I completely agree with you about all of the paperwork hoops. After all, I had to get my ID card made twice. Can I just say that I wish I only had a 7 minute walk to school.
First grade is not the grade for me and you had to do a last minute swap from third to first. I guess that is just how teaching is going to be, always on our toes and adjusting to what comes at us. Now you know all about that. Have fun with those first graders. I loved being in first grade because my teacher was awesome so just wait until these kids are all grown up and they can say that they loved first grade because Ms. Fredericks was awesome.
Alyssa,
I was also going to say that your classes sound nothing like any PE classes I ever took in high school. These ones sound as though they will be very interesting and engaging for the students.
As for Stiggins, I guess it is kind of neat to see something this come out in the field, since we were using his books in our classes. What kinds of new assessment is your school looking in to?
Cheryl,
I think it is so neat that you are able to use to smart board to engage your students. In the school district I was in back home, smart boards were reserved just for high school classrooms because the district felt they would be put to better use there. But I think it is neat to see them in almost every classroom here, and they are definitely an interesting tool to use when teaching. I was able to use an ELMO the other day, and that was way cool. The ELMO is basically the 21st century version of the overhead. You place a piece of paper under it, and you can write on it and it will all show up on the smart board. It's pretty neat. I've also noticed that the schools here seem to have a lot of technology in them--at least more than I am used to seeing in any classroom. These classrooms definitely seem to have some of the latest technologies, which will be awesome for us all to take advantage of.
Cheryl,
It sounds like your classroom teacher has done a good job incorporating technology into her classroom in a way that is actually useful. From my experiences I have seen teachers attempting to use technology but it never really seemed to benefit anyone or they didn't really know how to use it right. After seeing the smartboard used in a classroom in a variety of ways do you think that you would be more comfortable using it in your classroom?
Katrina,
I would agree that our experiences are very different in the way things are set up and our living situations. I noticed that you said that your teaching was putting some focus on how she is assessing students and changing some things up. My school as a whole has been asked to look into formative assessment, how to use it better, and including it in their classrooms along with summative assessment. Has your teacher mentioned how she plans to implement these changes in her classroom or why she is deciding to make some changes?
My first two weeks here in Bamberg have been absolutely amazing! I feel so blessed to be in Bamberg with such a warm community at the school who has been so gracious and welcoming to Sierra and I. I participated in Camp Adventure last summer on a military base in Germany, so living on base was not a hard adjustment. After traveling, it is nice to feel as if you are coming home to the states. Sierra and I are the only student teachers on our base, so it is just us two in our apartment located in family housing. We are finally all settled in and it feels like home. We have been very active everyday after school going to the fitness center, walks with teachers, going out to dinner and trips to the px and commissary. As mentioned earlier, the other teachers and staff have been so generous with their time making sure we have everything we need and helping us feel part of the Bamberg community.
I am in one of the 6 first grade classrooms at our school. My cooperating teacher has been teaching for 30 years in the DoDEA system, with 10 of those years being at Bamberg Elementary. She has also had many WSU student teachers. We have 16 students in our class and so far they have been an absolutely wonderful class! I have loved getting to know each of them and it has been very easy because class sizes are so small at our school. My cooperating teacher Sandy has been so helpful showing us around Bamberg, taking us out to dinner, introducing me to all the staff at our school and even giving us a wonderful travel bag full of goodies for our first weekend trip! We have hit it off really well, which makes me excited about the next four months working together. She has gradually been giving me more responsibility including taking over calendar in the morning and the daily story time. I am looking forward to implementing the new math curriculum, Everyday Math, in two weeks after our day of training next week.
Even though living on base has not been difficult, it has been an adjustment getting used to how the DoDDs schools are run. It is always funny hearing teachers complain that their class size is 20-25, when back in the states it seems that 28-30 students per class is becoming the norm. They also have so many supplies including smart boards in every room. My previous practicum schools have had nowhere near as much of a budget. It was also surprising to learn that an attendance policy was just created and that there had never been one prior to this school year.
Every morning walking in Bamberg Elementary I am excited to start my day because the staff have made Sierra and I truly feel like we are part of the staff and an asset to the school community.
Cheryl,
I have had the same experience with the smart board in first grade. Every morning we use the calendar found on starfall.com to help with our calendar routine in the morning. I am so looking forward to having a smart board in our classroom, because I have never had a practicum where our classroom had one. My teacher knows the basics of how to use it, so I am looking forward to investigating more programs myself.
I am so happy your teachers have been so helpful. Our adjustment here on base has been so great with the teachers being so willing to help give rides. I can’t wait to visit your base!
Sam,
I had the exact same situation walking into my classroom during work week. Everything had to be packed away during the summer so they could clean. We had piles of things all over the classroom, but after a lot of work in the extremely hot, humid Bavarian weather we got our classroom all set up! I am so happy we are doing our student teaching in the Fall so we could see how much time and effort it takes to set up a classroom. As a student you do not realize the prep that goes into making each nametag, folder and poster in the classroom. If only there were a classroom fairy to set it up for us! It is also great to hear you are getting along so well with your teacher. What a small world that she is from Spokane! Looking forward to seeing your base hopefully soon!
WOWHA! Let me just say that living on a military base has been one of the largest culture shocks I have experienced. The first week of school was great and went by incredibly fast, and it’s hard to even comprehend into words how much has happened in only a few weeks out here in Bamberg, Germany. My mentor teacher has been in the DOD’s school system for over 30 years and has a great approach to teaching the curriculum as well as aiding to the needs of students affected in positive and negative ways by the military. My teacher has a strong belief in creating a family in the classroom, and I was able to assist in many ways the set up of the classroom, and partnering students up into her “buddy system”.
These students are together to not only create friendships but to establish accountability in the classroom and a great management technique I have never seen before. I am transferring from my last practicum, which was fifth grade, to second grade, which has been a challenge. Yet, my teacher is very knowledgeable and has a great trust in me, and therefore setting up management rules and creating a great start to the year has been awesome.
We have two new curriculums that school has just purchased, one for social studies that connects with the new “Reading Street” curriculum, and now the school uses “Everyday Math”. I am actually meeting with all the second teachers tomorrow to discuss how I executed Everyday Math in my last practicum! The supporting and nurturing community has been awesome. My teacher and others have been so helpful, warm and inviting. Including Devon and I not only in extra activities after school but taking us around town and off base, it’s been awesome.
The students are great! My teacher and I only have 12 attending and waiting for 3 more to arrive. The small class size has created a much more in depth curriculum and a smoother transition into second grade for the students. I also have enjoyed the trust I have built with the kids, and therefore it has been easier for me to take on the classroom by myself!
Sam-
I think that is awesome that your teacher is active in using the Smart Board! Almost every single teacher in our school here in Bamberg has one. My teacher has not felt the need to extend a proposal to receive a smart board, but I am going to try and convince her.
I wonder if the all the DOD's schools in Europe purchased Everyday Math? It is new to our second grade classroom as well, but I actually used Everyday Math in my last practicum! That was pretty much what I ended up teaching almost everyday during the last part of my practicum. It’s a fast paced curriculum; so if you need help or tips don’t hesitate to ask!
Cheryl-
I totally understand the adjustment you are going through. I have basically worked with fifth grade the last year (last two practicums) and planning and executing lessons for the primary age is very different. I noticed there is a lot of basic self-management skills the teacher and the classroom has to establish in order for lessons to be successful. My teacher tried the centers for the first time actually last year with a student teacher! She said she is interested in doing that again, so if you have any tips I would love to know! The immense amount of hoop jumping and paper work has also been a big adjustment for me living on the base. A lot of clearance just to receive the okay to go get groceries on base. I can’t wait to hear more about your primary grade experience!
A+ to each one of you!! I have thoroughly enjoyed reading your posts and responses to each other. Since there seems to be questions being asked that haven't been answered, I am going to have you continue in this post so you have the texts to reference as you respond to each other's questions.
Alyssa, I can't wait to tell Tariq and Zan that the school is using Stiggins--you can be a resource! Sounds like PAN will give you some "healthy living" instruction so that could be subbed for health class if it is going to be hard to get into another teacher's classroom.
Kara, Isn't it amazing that the frosh classes need work on complete sentences, run ons and fragments? You would think they would have that foundation from middle school. Animal Farm/Russian Revolution--I can't wait to hear what you do with that! And it's pretty cool you all have bikes. It will certainly increase your mobility and independence. But I remind you and Katrina to not ride alone and watch out for traffic!
Sam, Being in a first grade classroom with Cheryl doing the same grade and just across the hall is going to be a great resource. I'd like to hear more about Everyday Math. It sounds like Sierra can be a help since she used it in her Adv. Prac. I agree that setting up a classroom is overwhelming. My daughter was hired the week before school started in Clarkston and I saw and helped with what looked impossible to begin with!
Cheryl, I was interested to learn about showing a book being read using the SMART Bd. Since you will be getting a real education in using Centers, be sure and share, especially with Sierra since her teacher has "caught the bug" what you are learning.
Katrina, you can be our expert on how to implement "standards based grading". It appears you may have the biggest classes which is more realistic to what you will experience back here and add 5! As I mentioned above, biking will give you much more flexibility but be careful and always go with at least one other and make sure your roommates know where you are going and when you plan to return. Keep us posted regarding more focus on summative assessment than formative.
Devon, I had no idea there were 6 first grades at Bamberg. I think you will all be amazed at the supplies and technology at these schools. This is certainly the time to become familiar with as much as it as possible. You should have ideas to share about Centers with your peers because Sandy uses them. Sixteen students, remember add 8-10 and you are closer to back here. I mentioned my daughter, Emily, was hired in Clarkston. She has 18 boys and 6 girls with 2 autistic and 1 with severe emotional problems. Enjoy what you are able to do with smaller numbers.
Sierra, talk more about the culture shock--to the miitary or to Germany? You also have small numbers so profit by really getting to know your learners and how to effectively work with them. I think the student teacher last semester got your teacher going with Centers. It sounds like Devon and Cheryl can be good resources. Since you are familiar with Everyday Math, this might be where you want to take responsibility first or co-teaching.
Keep the conversations going. Your additional post is to give us a brief overview of this week, a success and an stretch.
I'm proud of all of you!
The website we use for the SMART board books is www.tumblebooks.com. It’s literally just a narrator reading the story and the pictures in the book are what are shown on the screen (think Reading Rainbow). The tumblebooks also display the text, highlighting the sentence being read.
Over the past two weeks, I’ve been learning how to set up centers. My teacher has a few “rules” for creating centers. 1) She does not do just games and coloring (such as a make-believe center or an “art” center, where students just draw). We do play games at centers, but they all have a purpose related to standards. For example, while we are doing kindergarten review, we have a matching game (like the game Memory) in which students practice matching lower case letters to their capitals. 2) The centers need to be self-sufficient. Once we finish kindergarten review, we will have the students in flexible reading groups. During literacy centers, Danielle or I will be working with guided reading groups while the students go through literacy centers. There is no specific order they have to go in or set time students must spend at each center. However, we do expect the students to go through all the centers for that week. If children are independent in centers, the teacher is free to work with guided reading groups. 3) There cannot be too many new centers at one time or the kids will not know where to go and what to do. 4) When first starting centers, the kids need to learn routine first, so having just a few is better and you can add to them over time.
This week has been good. I managed to get a cold already, so have been pretty tired. Danielle and I have figured out lesson plans for the upcoming week twice now and I am feeling much more confident about planning for first grade and for starting to take over the class. We had open house Thursday night. We set up our room so the kids came in with their parents whenever they wanted during the hour-long open house. It was the students’ job to show their parents our classroom and routines. We were there to talk to parents who wanted to, but we had met most of them the Friday before school started.
This week we also had to do math pre-testing. The test was really frustrating as a teacher because, not only did the kids not know the math, it was developmentally inappropriate (20 multiple-part questions that took about an hour to do and reading that was way too advanced). We did the test in small groups so that we could read it to them. We were told to teach the kids how to write question marks for problems they didn’t know the answer to. At the beginning of the test, we told the kids that the test was not a big deal and it was okay if they didn’t know the answers. Some kids got so defeated when they put down a question mark it made me feel awful.
We do Morning Meetings in our class and today I lead my first Morning Meeting. This was definitely a stretch for me! I have taught a few math and social studies lessons so far, but morning meeting is completely self-directed because there is no set curriculum to follow. It also seems to be one of the times management is more important because we are still working on turn-taking, being a good listener, etc. During the meeting, there is a time when one student shares show-n-tell. Students get the item from their backpack during the meeting (to avoid distractions). After I sent the student to get their item, I realized I didn’t know what to do while we waited. Danielle always has something while we wait, which is what I need to work on in Monday’s meeting. I felt the meeting went relatively well though; it was also my success for the week. I successfully went through the meeting smoothly, didn’t forget any part of it, and managed to keep the kids engaged through the whole meeting.
This week went really well. I have been taking over more and more as the days go by. I have found that the school day goes by so much faster when you are teaching lessons. I have fully taken over the anti-violence program. It’s been fun adapting it to larger lessons that incorporate other subjects. We got scholastic News magazines and I have been using those for social studies lessons. It’s been fun. The highlight of this week was to see the kids come in after a three day weekend and remember their routines. They knew what to do when they came in the morning and when they entered the classroom after lunch recess. It was amazing how much they remembered. Just getting up in the morning is a stretch. I have been so exhausted lately. I think it is a combination of things, but mostly I think it is my body fighting off all the new germs. I have been taking lots of vits and going to bed early, but I can still feel my body dragging. A school related stretch would be the Everyday Math assessment. It was just so hard on the kids, it broke my heart. It was way too advanced for children who have never taken a test before. Not only did they not know the math, they didn’t even know how to fill in a bubble! It was awful.
I have mixed feelings about Everyday Math. It is designed to send a lot of homework home. Which I and my mentor teacher think is way too much for poor little first graders. We do however still send it home and it is up to the parents whether or not they do it. We do not usually ask for it to be sent back. Along with the homework, it has the students “journal” every day. Their “journals” are workbooks filled with worksheets. We have them try a page every day. It’s hard at the beginning of the year because they are still much like kindergarteners… most of them haven’t ever seen a worksheet before! Other than those two daily things, it just had us give the students an assessment. It was ridiculous. Most of the kids broke down crying out of frustration. The majority of the assessment consisted of things my third graders in adv. Prac. were just beginning to learn. I felt so sorry for them. Even though we told them it wasn’t a big deal and that they could leave the ones they didn’t know blank, we still had criers. What I do like about this program is that it is spiraled and has a lot of hands on learning. I love the games it has the kids play and the kids seem to love playing them which is good.
Devon-
Oh my gosh, wasn’t the weather when we first got here just awful?! I couldn’t believe it! I had only brought one pair of shorts! In my mind, Germany is covered in snow at all times!! Haha! I am glad to hear you survived getting the classroom ready also! We started to print labels with all the kid’s names on them! That way we just started sticking them on everything! The only thing we didn’t use them for, was the name tags on the desks. Other than that, they are on EVERYTHING! They were really handy! I hope you can visit soon! We will have to go do something fun with my mentor teacher! She is awesome.
Sierra-
Isn’t it crazy the resources DODs has????? I can’t believe it sometimes. They have so much more than any district I have ever observed. My school has a smart board in every classroom, in the library, the specialist’s classrooms and extras in the supply room!!!! Its nuts! And they are closing our base in 2 years… I wonder where all these resources are going to end up. I hope somewhere useful. I will def. be asking you questions about Everyday Math since that’s the TPA I am doing! I take over math next week and then the week after I am going to film myself for the TPA. This Sunday we plan on having a “TPA party” (HAHA!...party…) and get as much done with Task 1 as we can before we teach our lessons.
The biggest change that my teacher is making in her grading system is to make 90% of the grade summative assessments like tests and projects and just 10% for formative assessments including homework and quizzes. She has run into a bit of a snag as we start actually putting grades on papers. She is using a scale of 1-4 when grading quizzes and homework with a 3 meaning that the student is proficient. When we put these in the grade book however, it obviously comes in at a 75% which is not what we want to communicate to the students. It is frustrating because we want to try something new but the online grade book that we have to use is restricting our options. What we want the scores to mean is that a 3 says that the student has met the standard and is proficient and a 4 means deep understanding. Students should see a 3 and be proud of themselves but always be striving for a 4. We passed back the first homework with these scores and the students were confused and frustrated because students that only missed a few questions were getting a 75%. Cheryl has revamped the grade scale to make it fit with the grade book, so now it is a little bit of both worlds. What she really wanted was to be able to put in strictly letter grades, that way a 3 would translate to a B. So now she has assigned percentage points to each number and included plusses and minuses. This is how it will be graded, but what still gets me is that a 2, meaning that the student has not yet met the standard, is now a 75% and that is a passing grade. This will mean that students could pass the course without actually mastering any of the standards. We have been talking through this system and Cheryl still isn’t happy with it but I think this is how it is going to have to be for now. I graded the homework and quizzes this week and I really do like looking at the assignments holistically to determine if the standard is met instead of making it based just on the number correct. I think it is a more accurate assessment of student understanding. Which problems students missed and what their mistakes were can really tell what they understand, but the number 11/15 doesn’t really tell me what they actually know. The moral of this story is that I think standards based grading is a positive, but grade books have to be set up for them otherwise they just end up being a percentage once again.
I absolutely love the SpEd math class. There are 8 students and four adults in the room (my teacher and I as well as the SpEd teacher and her student teacher). This means that each of the students gets plenty of one-on-one time. So far I have not really seen any collaboration between the teachers. When I take over my classes (which I am starting next week), my teacher has said that I should design my lessons along with the SpEd student teacher. I am really excited for this because I am going to learn about accommodations and adapting lessons to fit a variety of student needs. I know that we covered this in our teaching classes, but the “real world” is just not the same. What I told my teacher was that this experience is so much different because it is no longer theoretical, but there are actual students with real needs and desires that will be learning from the lessons we set up.
My stretch for the week was leading my first lessons. My teacher had a substitute on Thursday and she told me what she wanted to happen and then left me to it. It was good to jump in like that. I was so nervous for being in front of the class and facilitating a lesson, especially since my teacher wasn’t even going to be in the room if I had questions. No worries, there was a substitute in the room. It seemed that everything I had learned flew out the window. Afterwards I had a laundry list of things that I wish I had remembered or done differently. The students were great and there were no problems, but I know I could have led a better lesson.
Well, I still want to be a teacher and I have been spending my Saturday working on a unit plan for the first chapter which we will be starting next week. It is great to hear that everyone seems to be having a great time on our adventure in Germany and in our classrooms.
This past week went pretty well. Since my cooperating teacher is also the athletic director he has a lot of responsibilities to keep up with on top of his classroom responsibilities. He has let me pretty much teach the classes his lessons. He usually will teach the first period of the day. Then observe me teach the second class and give me feedback and then from there he will bring his work and get work done while I teach, still giving me feedback and asking how I thought the class could go better. I like this because it is giving me some control of the classroom before I start using my own lesson plans so that I will be in practice. I also like that he asks for my feedback. He doesn't always just want to know what I could do differently he honestly wants to know what my opinions are of his lessons and how he organizes things.
The weather this pack week was crappy so that made me make some changes to the lessons. We usually like to have the students warm up outside because we don't have enough gym space for the middle school students and the high school students to warm up at the same time inside. With the weather so cold we didn't want to make the kids go outside so we had to get creative with warm ups in the available space we had. I still need to think about how I am going to do that because this week we used the hallway and I didn't like how that worked. There wasn't enough space and the students didn't really get warmed up.
I had to split my post up because it said it was too long.
Sam:
My cooperating teacher has been really nice and welcoming. He and his wife have taken me out to dinner and actually had me over to their place a couple weekends to stay. One weekend they had a dinner party type thing with some of the other teachers and a few of their friends. That was really nice because I got to interact with a few teachers outside of the school.
Besides that they have also taken me into the town of Ansbach and to some other places like Rothenburg. Which has been really nice not having to travel alone. I also just got a roommate this week. She is the coordinator for Camp Adventure and the other people working for the camp moved in to the apartments around me. It has been nice having people around and they came with internet and a phone I can use to call home so that was a huge plus also. We actually went to Nurenburg this weekend for a day trip and had a pretty good time. Although the base is a ways away from the actual town of Ansbach I have been pretty lucky in finding ways to get around!
Cheryl & Kara:
The differences in school meetings is surprising. My school is currently involved in a Continuous School Improvement process (CSI). So they have more meetings a month and before school to show the data from the previous year, analyze the data, and discuss what they need to do differently to improve student success. This is why they introduced Stiggins and assessment to the teachers before the school year started.
The administration wanted the teachers to learn and understand a different view on assessment then what they learned when they were in school. I found it interesting that they are learning now what our college education is teaching us. It was interesting to see them struggle with some of his concepts that were so different then what they have been using and are comfortable with. The administration was really pushing the importance of using formative assessment and not just summative along with benchmarks. They want the teachers using more frequent forms of assessment to show whether or not the students are learning and understanding the content before they give the summative assessment.
They also discussed the importance of including the students in the assessment process. The teachers really seemed to struggle with this idea. It seemed like it was almost to abstract of an idea for them that students would be a part of their own assessment. When they were asked to discuss ideas of how this could be done they really didn't come up with any ideas. My cooperating teacher was actually pretty excited that I had learned about Stiggins before so he could see my understanding of the concepts.
Katrina:
The PE classes are really interesting here. At first I wasn't sure how I was going to like them because the standards for them are very different than the classes in Washington and they are set up so differently. After spending a few weeks in them I actually really like them. They take the important aspects of a physical education class and really give students time to perfect them. Also I like that the PAN class includes health within it. A lot of times I feel like the information students learn in their health classes never translate to their physical education classes or life outside of school. The PAN class goes over the importance of nutrition and how proper nutrition impacts physical activity. We introduce the topics along with the physical activity so students see first hand how it impacts them.
Sam-
I agree, it was awesome to see the kids come in this past week and remember their routines and the general flow of the classroom. The scholastic magazine sounds like an awesome idea! That might be something fun to incorporate into our class, too. It’s good you’ve taken over some parts of your class already! I have taught lessons, but have not taken over anything yet. However, next week I think I will start taking over more components of our day.
Katrina-
Your and your teacher’s grading dilemma was really interesting. I never have really thought about running into that problem before, but it makes sense. In my 6th grade advanced practicum, the kids only got computer grades recorded for summative assessments (for their report cards) and all the homework/formative grading was just on paper. (This was per district requirements.) But this meant that that was never really a problem we had to deal with.
Working with the SpEd class sounds like a great resource to learn about accommodations and modifications. It should be really interesting and helpful! I agree that it gets a whole lot harder and different when you’re working with real people instead of your theoretical classroom and kids you’ve been talking about the past few years in the COE. And once you add in pacing and time (when things take longer than you’d planned for and such).
I had another excellent week in the first grade. I finally have the routine down of what we do everyday including the timing of recess, lunch, specials, etc. The kids are also starting to understand the routine and rules, so they need fewer reminders. We are still in the process of assessing each student and giving assessments throughout the day to determine the levels of each of our students. Even though we have a small class with wonderful students, they are a very low group. We have come to realize that out of the 16 students only 5 received a score after STAR (reading) testing, while the other 11 failed and did not even receive a score. We have a lot of work this school year!
I have also been given more responsibility this week. I have taken over the morning meeting and lead calendar every morning. This has been the stretch for the week because there are so many aspects to calendar in the morning that I don’t want to forget! I also want my students to be engaged and excited, even though we are repeating the same routine everyday. I also help with classroom management throughout the day especially while my teacher is assessing a student or needs to leave the room. With this greater responsibility, I have noticed the students really view me as an equal to my cooperating teacher Sandy. This has to be a high point in the week, because in past practicum experiences coming in after school has started it never seemed that the students viewed me as playing the same role as my cooperating teacher. It is the best feeling to have students say how much they enjoy you as their teacher and want you to eat lunch with them and play games at recess. Being a first grade teacher with so many kind and loving students sure is a great ego boost!
My cooperating teacher Sandy uses centers everyday and they are a great success. We have computers, the smartboard, magnetic wall, listening center (books on tape), art table and writing center. We are just getting the students used to each center and what they can do at each center. They seem to really like each one and with such a small class, every student has an opportunity to visit the different centers many times. I will update you all more on the centers once they are being used more later in the school year.
Going into my third week, I feel like it flew by again, maybe even faster! Considering my specification of whether my culture shock has been from the country of Germany or living on the military base, I believe it has come from living on the military base more so. Through building relationships with my students, and following in my teacher’s philosophy of creating a “family” in the classroom, I have listened to children’s stories of parents being deployed, of traveling all over the world, and there are even children that don’t know what state, country or continent they were born on! I am also completely mesmerized by the immense funding the government provides for the DOD’s school system. As stated earlier, I used the program “Everyday Math” in my last school, with decent funding. Yet, when I assisted in unloading the boxes of Everyday Math and all the games, extra computer programs, and posters that was to delivered to Bamberg elementary, I was in shock! These schools, students, and teachers are so lucky to have so many resources, and almost infinite funding to buy more.
This week I actually taught my first mini math lesson in class from the new curriculum. Dr. Greenwald (my mentor teacher) was extremely supportive in collaboration and planning of this first “test” lesson from the Everyday Math Program. It went great! The students got really into it, and I even added a little improv into the first lesson (since it was review) and I feel as though I added something different to such a planned out curriculum. This would definitely be a success for the week!
A stretch would be my classroom management skills. Since my classroom is still so small (only thirteen now, and hopefully one more is showing up tomorrow!) I have been able to create a repertoire with each student. Yet, there are a few students where I have tried multiple management strategies, and it is still a battle almost every other day. Dr. Greenwald is terrific with her unique management strategies. This week we emphasized the usage of the classroom “certificates”, and using these certificates as rewards and taking them away as a consequence. It is sometimes a challenge for me to be firm, but letting the students know that I care about them and want them to do well usually helps the students understand why there are consequences.
It really was over all a great week, and I am very excited to start the Everyday Math program more consistently! I helped Dr. Greenwald put together the new Weekly Newsletter and let all the parents know how great their children are doing in the classroom and how we will be introducing and implementing a new math program.
It really did amaze me that the freshmen classes needed that sentence practice. And they still need more! As I said, last week we worked with complete sentences, run-ons, and fragments. This week, we worked with compound sentences after I saw some errors in the ways that students fixed the run-on sentences they were given to edit. That lesson seemed to go well, and for now, the students have graduated from sentence practice. So now comes grammar practice! On Friday, I taught homophones to the students because I noticed in their sentences that they could not use the proper form of it’s/its, or their/they’re/there, or your/you’re, or to/too/two. I taught them about the proper time and place to use the homophones and that lesson seemed to go well. The students now seem to have a basic grasp of those, although I noticed that most of them were still having trouble with to/too/two. Because of the block schedule, one of the freshmen classes haven’t had this lesson, so they will have it on Monday and then we will move onto some more mini-lessons with grammar. Allie, my cooperating teacher, wants the students to be working on grammar and sentences for a while, so I think I will be doing some mini-lessons with these for a while. This week, we will be starting the Animal Farm/Russian Revolution unit, which should be fun. I have five days of lessons planned for this, so it will take two weeks to complete because of the block schedule. We will mainly be doing discussions of the book and drawing connections between it and the Russian Revolution. One thing I am excited to do with it, though, is quote analysis. I am going to display a quote on the SMART board each day for the students to look at and analyze. The students will need to answer questions such as who said the quote, what the context of it was, what the importance of the quote is to the overall story, and if the quote may be foreshadowing any events for later in the book. This will be a sort of entry task for the students to do, and the quote will also relate to the discussion for the day. I hope that this lesson will be able to teach the students how to analyze at more than just a surface level and really get them into Animal Farm.
The last week was busy and I am still exhausted from it! This whole week was just a stretch. I was nice and relaxed after staying in Heidelberg for the long weekend, but then the week started up and I was exhausted from the get go. I didn’t sleep well for the most part, and was just busy in general. I was also trying to keep in contact with my family this week to keep up to date on my brother, who suffered a traumatic injury to his right arm on his day off of school on Monday. The time difference for keeping in contact with my family didn’t help that since I wanted to be in the know with what was going on with him because he had to have surgery. So the whole week was a stretch, but this one should be better because I will get more sleep.
A success for the week was that I survived it! In all seriousness now, a success for the week was getting all my work done. I felt overwhelmed with the amount I had to do because I was trying to get lots of grading done, and then trying to plan my grammar lesson, and then trying to plan my Animal Farm lessons at the same time. But I had it all done by Friday, and now I’m just working on some tweaks to the Animal Farm lessons and will be done with those tonight. I’m looking forward to another good week, and hopefully it involves more sleep!
It really did amaze me that the freshmen classes needed that sentence practice. And they still need more! As I said, last week we worked with complete sentences, run-ons, and fragments. This week, we worked with compound sentences after I saw some errors in the ways that students fixed the run-on sentences they were given to edit. That lesson seemed to go well, and for now, the students have graduated from sentence practice. So now comes grammar practice! On Friday, I taught homophones to the students because I noticed in their sentences that they could not use the proper form of it’s/its, or their/they’re/there, or your/you’re, or to/too/two. I taught them about the proper time and place to use the homophones and that lesson seemed to go well. The students now seem to have a basic grasp of those, although I noticed that most of them were still having trouble with to/too/two. Because of the block schedule, one of the freshmen classes haven’t had this lesson, so they will have it on Monday and then we will move onto some more mini-lessons with grammar. Allie, my cooperating teacher, wants the students to be working on grammar and sentences for a while, so I think I will be doing some mini-lessons with these for a while. This week, we will be starting the Animal Farm/Russian Revolution unit, which should be fun. I have five days of lessons planned for this, so it will take two weeks to complete because of the block schedule. We will mainly be doing discussions of the book and drawing connections between it and the Russian Revolution. One thing I am excited to do with it, though, is quote analysis. I am going to display a quote on the SMART board each day for the students to look at and analyze. The students will need to answer questions such as who said the quote, what the context of it was, what the importance of the quote is to the overall story, and if the quote may be foreshadowing any events for later in the book. This will be a sort of entry task for the students to do, and the quote will also relate to the discussion for the day. I hope that this lesson will be able to teach the students how to analyze at more than just a surface level and really get them into Animal Farm.
The last week was busy and I am still exhausted from it! This whole week was just a stretch. I was nice and relaxed after staying in Heidelberg for the long weekend, but then the week started up and I was exhausted from the get go. I didn’t sleep well for the most part, and was just busy in general. I was also trying to keep in contact with my family this week to keep up to date on my brother, who suffered a traumatic injury to his right arm on his day off of school on Monday. The time difference for keeping in contact with my family didn’t help that since I wanted to be in the know with what was going on with him because he had to have surgery. So the whole week was a stretch, but this one should be better because I will get more sleep.
A success for the week was that I survived it! In all seriousness now, a success for the week was getting all my work done. I felt overwhelmed with the amount I had to do because I was trying to get lots of grading done, and then trying to plan my grammar lesson, and then trying to plan my Animal Farm lessons at the same time. But I had it all done by Friday, and now I’m just working on some tweaks to the Animal Farm lessons and will be done with those tonight. I’m looking forward to another good week, and hopefully it involves more sleep!
Sierra,
It’s interesting for me too to hear about the kids who have parents deployed and who have moved so much. These kids have seriously been to so many places, it’s insane! I had a bit of culture shock on the first day of school because the teacher asked, “so where did you all travel to this summer?” In the states, I’m used to hearing that kids maybe went down to Oregon or California, and you’ll occasionally have the kids who went as far as the east coast. But the answers were more like, “I went to Spain,” or “I went to Italy,” or “I went to England.” It was so weird hearing those answers because that’s just not normal back home. These kids have an amazing opportunity to see some of the world, and I’m jealous that they are getting to do it when they are so young!!
I’m also amazed by the funding here. These schools are well taken care of and have the best of just about everything! It’s really neat to see that and be a part of it!
Katrina,
I’ve been learning about some accommodations to make with students too because I have a lot of students in one class on IEPs. Most of them just get extra time on their assignments. It was frustrating for one of the kids today because he needed more time, and there were three assignments given in the time that he was trying to finish the first! So he missed the instructions for the second and third ones, which made it hard on him. But I will be working with him this week to catch him up. I think that it is really neat that there is an entire math class that is dedicated to these students who need the extra help. Those students are really going to benefit from that, especially since they have so many resources with all of their teachers!
Another great week of postings. We are learning so much about each others experiences. I hope communicating with each other is supportive and beneficial.
I feel like there are some common threads that are beginning to develop. 1. Getting run down and picking up new germs is a real challenge for teachers. Make yourselves drink lots of liquids, eat healthy and make sure you are getting plenty of rest. I am hearing the same concerns stateside. Try not to let yourself get rundown which is easier said than done! 2. Each of you talked this week about being given more responsibility in the classroom. Be prepared that the students (regardless of age)will push you. I have found that if you are "firm, fair and consistent" with first graders or freshmen they usually respond well but it may take time especially as each of you takes over more of the teaching role. 3. Resources are plentiful and won't be like that in stateside classrooms. I am amazed at the supplies students are asked to provide. It isn't unusual for students to be asked to provide two reams of paper for copying materials and many other items that are necessities. 4. Some of you have unusually small classes. Sponge up all the experience you can get working with fewer students becasue you will have at least twice as many in a classroom here.
Now-responses to each of you:
Alyssa--Having the lesson modeled and then you teaching it is exactly how my student teaching was structured! It gives you confidence to begin with because you are watching and then mirroring your mentor. I'm glad you are being included in out of school activities. I went with three student teachers to Rothenberg years ago and loved it! I'm glad to hear there are other people joining you as guests on the base. As I mentioned earlier, you may use teh PAN class for your health component if you would like.
Cheryl and Sam, you shared some of the same issues--frustration with the math pre-testing and its failure for some kids. What can you take away from that experience? I loved that Sam's learners returned from the 3 day weekend and could still remember the new routines. Both of you have experienced challenges with teaching the new math curriculum. Hopefully you can rely on each other and get pointers from Sierra! I love tht you are arranging a TPA Party to work on Task 1.
Katrina, I am delighted to hear you are enjoying the SpEd math class and that you and the SpEd S.T. will be developing lessons together. I smiled when I read your accountig of teaching your first lesson and that you had a laundry list of things you wished you had remembered to do or do differently when you reflected. That's part of the learnig process so hang in there.
Devon--taking over the morning meeting/calendar sets the tone for the day. I'm glad you are getting the full Center indoctrination. As you can see from your experience, learning just doesn't happen and if you do centers, it takes tons of time to establish them and maintain them as well as train the kids how to use them and circulate from one to the next.
Sierra, I have been impressed with Delome's "creating Family in the classroom". Chidren learn life skills that many aren't getting at home. Classroom mangement will get better!
Kara, how is your brother? It's hard to be so far away when there is a famiy emergency. I'm anxious to hear about how teaching Animal Farm goes--I think your entry task ie quote analysis is great.
Thanks for continuing to communicate with each other.
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