| The End |
[Jun. 7th, 2007|07:32 am] |
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Wow, I cannot believe everything is coming to an end. I am happy and sad at the same time. I am happy that I am finish with student teaching; but, I am sad because I will miss my students. I think my students are the cutest things ever. They make the entire student teaching experience so much better and happier. They make me smile every time I go in and teach. They always have random and silly things to say; it cracks me up. I still cannot believe I survived through an entire year of student teaching. But, I am still really nervous about teaching because I do not think the program has truly prepare me to be a teacher and have my own classroom; but, I do notice the growth I have received through the program. I am a lot different than who I was in the beginning of the school year. I am very proud of myself and all student teachers for sticking with this for a whole year. It was definitely a lot of work especially this last quarter when we had to teach actual full days. From this experience, I learned that I have a lot of trouble handling the little ones. I have always thought I wanted to teach the lower grades because I love kids; but, no that I have seen both ends, I like upper grades more because the students do not do weird stuff behind your back. Lastly, I have to truly thank all the supports I have received from my friends in my cohort. Without them, I would not know how I have gotten through the entire student teaching. I am really thankful to be a cohort with such amazing people. I sure had a lot of fun making friends. Also, I would especially like to thank my cohort friend, Letticia; she is awesome! I am looking forward to the adventure of teaching. I’ve learned that teaching is not as easy as it seems. |
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| Social Studies Lesson - Maps & Directions |
[Jun. 6th, 2007|06:45 pm] |
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Today, I told my cooperating teacher to observe me for my social studies lesson. My lesson was on the four cardinal directions and compass rose. My lesson was scheduled for after lunch. When I entered the classroom, I noticed that my teacher was not there. Then, I saw a note on the board saying that she was a meeting with parents who showed up early and that she will be back as soon as she can. When I saw that note, I got a little disappointed because I had planned a lesson and I thought she was probably not going to observe me because by the time she came back to the classroom, I was half way done with my lesson. The part when she came in was the teaching of the compass rose part. I thought that part was a disaster because a lot of my students were confused and some were off into their own world. I had trouble keeping their attention. I tried so many different ways to explain how to use a compass rose on a picture map; but, a lot of the students were confused by the wording of the questions for the compass rose. I felt like I should have written my own worksheet; but I did not have the time to do so. But, surprisingly my cooperating teacher gave me a pretty good evaluation. I was thinking that she only scored me pretty well because she felt bad for missing the beginning part of my lesson. I was so happy when I saw that my evaluation was 1’s and 2’s because I felt like it was; no of my students were listening no matter what kind of strategies you use with them. They are still the same. |
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| Visual and Performing Arts Lesson - Rhythm Sticks |
[Jun. 1st, 2007|09:04 pm] |
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For visual and performing arts lesson, I told my advisor to come in to observe me teaching my students how to play rhythm sticks. I really love rhythm sticks; so, I knew from the beginning of this quarter that I was going to do rhythm sticks with my students. But, on the other side, I was worry the whole time and stressing about how I have to present the rhythm sticks. Prior to the lesson, I was worry about the students taking the sticks and beating on each other. It took me a long time to plan the lesson. I kept thinking that something was going to go wrong because the students never played with rhythm sticks before. Also, I had to search around for a simple rhythm sticks song and with simple movements. It was a lot of thinking for such a short lesson. But, since I went out to buy the sticks, I made myself go through with the lesson even though I was really scared. At the end, my lesson went really well. My students enjoyed the lesson a lot because they never get music lesson. In addition, I broke down the songs and movements into parts; this really helped my students understand the movements and to enjoy the fun of rhythm sticks. The students also did a good job at handling the sticks. I warned all my students that if they do anything else but tap their sticks together, they will receive a detention and have to sit on the side while we all play with the sticks. That worked really well because I repeated the rules and expectation several times before passing out the stick. The best part of the lesson was having fun with my students. I thought it was so much fun. I will love to do this in the future with my future students. I think the rhythm sticks are the greatest invention of all time! Lastly, did you know that rhythm sticks are from Africa??? I found that out while searching information about rhythm sticks online for my students. |
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| Substitute Teacher From Heaven |
[Jun. 1st, 2007|07:23 pm] |
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On Tuesday, I had another substitute teacher in my classroom because my teacher had to go to another conference. I was so happy when I got to school and found out it was a different lady subbing for my class because I really did not like the lady that came the previous week. This substitute teacher was super nice and helpful. I told her in the morning that my advisor was coming in the afternoon to observe me and that I have double duties this week. She volunteered to help me do my afternoon duty so I can set up for my lesson. In addition, unlike the previous substitute teacher, she did not try to take over my class. She represented my teaching and was only there to assist. She helped me a lot during the guided and independent practice portion of each lesson. She would also teach me strategies on how to calm my students down. And she would tell my students to give their full attention and respect to me. She was truly an angel unlike the devil that came last week. Furthermore, she was very positive about everything. When I talked to her about some of the problems I have been having as a student teacher, she would tell me things I can do that might help with my problems. She is probably the best sub ever. If I had to choose the people I work with, I would definitely pick her because she’s hardworking, smart, and friendly. Even though I just met her that day, I felt like I can tell her everything about me because she is very approachable. |
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| Substitute Teacher From Hell |
[May. 31st, 2007|07:52 pm] |
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Yesterday, I had a substitute teacher because my cooperating teacher had to go to a conference. At first, I was excited to get a substitute teacher because it was a break from being observed by my cooperating teacher; but, as the day when on, I found out it was not so fun to have a substitute teacher. I did not like the substitute teacher I had because she tried to take over my class when I am supposed to be the one teaching. My students ended up just listening to her and not me. All my students show her their finished work and not me. It mad me more sad than angry because I felt like my students did not care about my opinion or something when they did not show me their work. The substitute teacher kept talking to my students trying to be their friends. It was not a fun day for me. Toward the end of the day, during SFA hour, I just told her to teach for me because she was taking over my class anyways. So, the last hour of school, I told her to do part of the SFA lesson for me. I was so glad when the day came to an end. I wanted my cooperating teacher back and my students back! Next week, I will be having a substitute teacher for Tuesday because my teacher is going to another conference. I am praying that it is not going to be the same substitute teacher or I would go nuts! |
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| A Very Fun Art Lesson: Edible Color Wheel |
[May. 30th, 2007|04:05 pm] |
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Last Friday, my cooperating teacher observed my art lesson. I did my art lesson on primary and secondary colors. The activity I did with my students was creating an edible color wheel with wafers and colored frosting. I had to do a lot of preparation work for this lesson. I went to school early to set up everything because it was the first thing the students were going to do for the day. I had to separate cups of frostings and squeeze red, blue, and yellow food coloring into different cups. Then, I had to separate them into sets of colored cups for each team. My students had a lot of fun because they do not usually get to do art and this lesson they got to have fun and eat frosting. A lot of my students wanted to take the cups of frosting; but, I did not let them because I did not want them to get sick from eating too much sweet stuff. I even had a student who picked up a cup of frosting from the trashcan and I had to tell him to throw the cup back in. I cannot believe a kid will actually want to eat something out of a trashcan. I guess kids really like sweet stuff and they will do anything for it. I thought the lesson went really well. This art lesson was a lot better than my P.E. lesson. It was a lot smoother; even though, I still had minor problems with students. The two main problems I had with this lesson were that a lot of my students wanted to lick and eat the frosting as they were mixing them and that some of my students had trouble stirring the frosting to create secondary colored frosting. I had to walk around and monitor and supervise a lot during this lesson. But, this was definitely better than my P.E. lesson. I received a lot higher scores for this art lesson which made me really happy. I would love to do this lesson again if I ever have the opportunity to do so. It was a lot of fun and the kids enjoyed it. |
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| First P.E. Lesson Ever! |
[May. 28th, 2007|07:26 pm] |
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For my P.E. lesson, I did it with my friend who is also student teaching a first grade class. We combined our classes for a relay race lesson. This was our first P.E. lesson ever and we were both being observed by our cooperating teachers. We started the lesson with stretches and warm-up activities. Then, we split our students into 2 groups per class. While the students were breaking into groups, I ran off to set up the course of the race with cones, jump ropes and bouncy balls. I thought that might had made us look bad because we set up on the spot whereas I thought we should have set it up prior to the students coming out onto the field; but, I am not even sure it is possible. Then, we demonstrated the replay race course for the students. As my friend orally stated the steps and procedures of the relay race, I ran the race for the students to visually see what they had to do for the race. Overall, I thought we did a good job. The only problem was that a lot of the students had trouble jump roping. I tried to assist the students who were having trouble jump roping as much as I could. Because I did assist my students in jump roping, it thought I did a good job for my lesson. But, this was not true when I received my cooperating teacher’s evaluation. I received really low scores on my evaluation. She did not think it was a good idea to ask students to jump rope and bounce balls on the grass. I guess she would have like our lesson more if we broke it down even more like have a lesson on just jump roping because the students are still developing their motor skills. |
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| Mother's Day Project |
[May. 26th, 2007|12:15 pm] |
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I originally did not plan to do anything special with my class for Mother’s Day because now a day’s many students have very complex family issues; so, I did not want to come into contact with such a touchy issue. But, my cooperating teacher asked me to do something with the students for Mother’s Day. I asked my cooperating teacher how I should explain Mother’s Day to those students who do not live with their mom or do not know their mom. My cooperating teacher told me to just say what Mother’s Day is about in general and to tell those who do not live with their mom to make it for a special female in their lives. For the Mother’s Day project, I decided to make a card with my students. The card was sort of like a collage card because it required different kinds of papers. I pre-cut all the shapes and papers for my students because I wanted the cards to look nice. After I was done cutting, I felt like I have done too much for the students because all the students had to do were to paste the papers together. But, on the day of the card-making day, I found out it was the best idea ever because my students actually had a lot of trouble with simply gluing the pieces of papers together and following the steps. It actually took my students a very long time. I originally thought this project was only going to take less than an hour; but it ended up over an hour including clean-up time. I learned that the younger students need a lot of time to clean-up especially after an art project. When, I first planned this project, I thought fifteen minutes were more than enough for clean-up; but, in reality, it was not. I think for art projects, students need at least twenty minutes of clean-up time because they have to put away all the materials, clean their desk, and throw away trash. |
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| New Quarter & New Challenge: Money Unit |
[May. 25th, 2007|07:21 pm] |
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This quarter, I am student teaching in a first grade class. I have twenty students; 10 girls and 10 boys. I started teaching the second week of student teaching. The first two subjects that I took over was math and English language development. For math, my students were learning money. My students had a lot of trouble with money. We spent about a month on money. My students had no trouble identifying the coins and their values. But, once I combined coins, they had trouble counting the total amount of a group of coins. Even though, they know the coins’ values separately and individually, they were unable to count the coins together to get the total amount. I used different strategies to try to help them count groups of coins; but, a lot of my students were still struggling. For the few students who were not struggling, I was losing them during lessons due to boredom. I tried to come up with different money games to reinforce and re-teach counting groups of coins; but, toward the end, I was running out of ideas. And, I could not ask my students to play games twice; I had to come up with a new game each day. There was one time that I told my students to play a game that they have already played, the students were not very happy about it and was not very “into” the game. So, from that, I knew I had to come up with different games each time. Plus, I was unable to give my class just plain lectures because they are first graders and they do not like sitting for a long period to just listen to the teacher talking. The one thing I learned during this math unit that I thought was cool was the using legs to count nickels, dimes, and quarters. The legs method is basically counting by fives for nickels, dimes, and quarters because most students have not trouble counting fives; they know how to count fives than counting by any other numbers. The legs method is basically drawing legs on the coins; nickels have one leg, dimes have two legs, and quarters have five legs and each leg equals to five. |
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| Reflection of the Quarter & Next Quarter |
[Mar. 15th, 2007|11:04 am] |
Last quarter, I set a goal to work on classroom management. This quarter, I think I improved a lot with my classroom management. I think I had better control over my students compared to last quarter. I think I had more control because I set the stage from the first day I entered the classroom. Even though, I was not teaching the first week, I set the stage for students to view me as a teacher or someone with authority. I walked around the classroom and when I saw students who are off-task, I will go up to them and tell them to do their work. I did not do this last quarter. When I saw students who were off-task or talking, I just left them alone and let my master teacher handle the problems. So, I learned that it really helps with discipline if you set the rules from the beginning. Even though, I think I improved a lot with my classroom management, I do not know if I can say it is all fully due to only me because I was with a different group of students this quarter. In addition, the group of students I taught this quarter was a lot older than the students I taught last quarter. This quarter I taught fifth graders while last quarter I taught second graders. It is possible that I did not improve on my classroom management and that the students are simply just better listeners or it could be half and half. I do not know. I would only truly know if I improved is if I was teaching the same group of students.
The one thing that I think I did a great job at is building student-teacher relationships. I felt like the students were able to come up to me and chat about their lives and problems. It made me feel really special that students were able to come up to me to share their problems with me. Just the fact the students were willing to come up to me and chat made me happy. I felt like the students saw me as an important person.
Next quarter, I plan to continue working on classroom management. I think classroom management is an important aspect of teaching. I learned that if teachers do not have any discipline over their students, learning cannot occur. Teachers need to have their students listening in order for the students to even begin learning. |
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