Parachutes take 2

The second time that we did the parachutes was great. I’m not sure if it was because the students were older or if it was because we had done the experiment once before and we understood it better and knew what to look for or a combination of both but I not only thought the experiment went much smoother but I also enjoyed teaching it a lot more. The kids were priceless! They had some really great answers to our questions and were very creative in trying to come up with reasons for why parachutes worked and what changing the weight would do and so on. One thing that I really noticed was that they loved it when I wrote names on the clothes pins that were going to represent people using the parachutes. At one point on little girl asked me to write her name on hers and for us both to use the parachute (her clothes pin and mine) and see what happened then. This only reinforces the importance of making personal connections for the students and their lives.

One thing that one group did the first time around that we did not do because we were not sure if we would have internet access was to show a video clip of a parachute deploying and have the students talk about what they saw when it went up. What happened to the persons movement when the parachute opened? What would happen if it had not opened? Having the students watch video clips allows them to see what should actually happen in the experiment occasionally and the videos might trigger some prior knowledge that they have and can contribute to the conversation throughout the lesson.

Flint chapter 12

“Working with struggling readers and writers” defines what I’m doing with my case study student so I was already interested in what this chapter was talking about. The first few sections are about the teacher’s beliefs and attitudes and motivation and engagement. I think that how a teacher feels about learning and a student can REALLY shape how the student feels towards learning and how motivated they are. I remember when I was in elementary school, I swear my third grade teacher hated me and I will swear to it until the day I die. She had one favorite student in the class and the rest of us were constantly compared to him and well… I didn’t compare really well to him and she was out to get me – no lie. She would constantly call me out for not being “on task” even though I was (of course there were a few of those that were warranted but that’s beside the point) and I dreaded going to school! What made it even worse was that I was pulled out for AIG in math and I’m pretty sure that they both hated me as well… sad  Other information was great for just creating a good classroom environment that the teacher and the students both benefit from and I really like that and it will be very useful in my classroom!

Flint Chapter 8

One thing that I really liked about this chapter were the independent and productive reading and writing tables on pages 220-221. They give examples of the standards that the students would be practicing and how teachers can help them master these standards in addition to things that teachers can use in their classrooms to promote those learning experiences. Word study is a big part of the fifth grade curriculum and they have extensive worksheets that have students looking up various word parts and this and that… stuff that these students don’t care much about and it means nothing to them. I would love to have really great word study program because I think that it’s really important for them to have that knowledge but I think they need to obtain it in a way that is relatable to them and is something they can actually complete because a lot of the students end up not even finishing the worksheets for each word and turning them in incomplete. The roots and branches activity is really great for the very visual learners and would be a fun break for them from what they’re used to. Homographs are another great thing for my case study to work on and other students in the class. The most common ones that I see when writing back to the students in their reading journals are the to/too/two and the there/their/they’re and it drives me up the wall!! There are so many incorrectly spelled words that are incorrect simply because they chose the wrong word spelling! The right word… just the wrong right word… weird right? Anyways… even creating a word wall with these on there so that the students can see them every day and refer to them when writing would be great! However, if there is limited classroom space then I can see how the dictionary would be the more practical way to go but I think the students (and the teacher’s sanity) would benefit from these!

Flint Chapter 11

Developing an inquiry based lesson was going to be a struggle for me when developing our literacy units. I completely understood how to build a science and a math inquiry based unit but how in the world was I going to do that in language arts? When I was in school, it was simple you do these readings from these books and answer the questions from the book and now we’re going to go over them, now read for 30 minutes on your own at home, and maybe we’ll read a book as a class right after recess for a bit before we start our lesson and then writing was just writing various stories. In my classroom now, the students do guided reading and independent reading and then they write on their own with writing conferences thrown in there. There were no integrations of technology when I was in school and there are not really in the classroom I’m in right now when it comes to literacy. There are various ways for students to illustrate their work, explore different aspects of work, and present work that should be used.

I know I’ve already talked about these but books on tape are AMAZING for students that are struggling readers and even those leap frog games. I’m in upper grades so I’m really hoping that is why I do not see these technologies being used and that they are actually being used in the rest of the school because I think they are just great for students! Younger students would LOVE playing with these things and they would be learning at the same time. I used to see the commercials saying that students would actually be learning while playing the game and I would laugh because it’s a game. Games are something you have fun doing like playing Mario brothers or something like that, there’s no learning going on right? Wrong, they’re great and kids love them and will love them!! Ok now I’m finished selling products…

Collins chapter 6/7

First of all… those pictures in the book by the students – adorable. Ok, these chapters were really great for me to read while working with my case study student. She is in fifth grade; however, she can be considered an emergent reader and writer. Her IEP indicates a speech problem which has caused a delay in her phonemic awareness and development. She particularly struggles with vowel sounds, which are pretty tricky if I do say so myself. However, this chapter gave great insight into how she is thinking and different ways that I can help her. One thing that was mentioned in the book was a technology aspect that made me think about books on tape for her. She struggles with reading because she gets caught up on words that she does not immediately recognize, can not pronounce correctly to give her something that sounds like a word she has heard before, and then she looses the impact of the story. Books on tape would be a great way for her to not only work on comprehending the story, but she can also see how words that she struggles with are actually pronounced.

I also LOVED the invitation for the classroom parts from these chapters. The one about flipbooks are really great for my case study student. During her reading intervention time, she is working on different word families and creating words from them. With these flip books, she could practice them and then having something fun to show for it. The sequencing questions and how do you know invitation for the classroom sections are great as well to work on her comprehension of stories. However, her main area of focus is comprehension while she is reading something so the activities would need to be individual and not whole group or they would need to be modified for that reason.

Flint 9/Collins 3

These chapters on assessment was incredibly helpful and informative for the work that we do with our students and for the kid watching project that we are completing. When I was in elementary school, I was fortunate enough to not struggle with standardized tests, and I never understood why my teachers disliked them so much. I’m doing well on them, what is the problem? However, now as a teacher and as an adult, I can see the huge down side to these tests. Teachers begin “teaching to the test” and the students loose out on various educational experiences as a result of it. I remember one day in class, we spent the entire class period just practicing filling in the bubbles for the end of grade test. I thought it was fun to fill in different patterns on the sheet but now I see that I lost out on some very valuable educational time.

There are several alternative assessments that are mentioned in the book that I think would be much more informative then a standardized test would be since you can see how the students are thinking about a certain piece of work or concept. Observation alone is a great tool that I think a lot of teachers over look. There are a lot of students in a classroom and there are generally a lot of things that are going on in the room and different things that the teacher wants to be doing but by taking the time to just watch students as they interact in groups with the material or seeing who is talking themselves through the material is fascinating and very beneficial. One problem that I see with miscue analysis and retrospective miscue analysis is that some students might simply answer the question the way that they think the teacher wants them to answer the question. If the teacher asks them why they skipped over a word, they might respond that they just didn’t see the word and they might not have seen the word, or they might have skipped it because they did not know how to pronounce it and they did not want the teacher to see that they could not read the word. Teachers will run into this in several different assessments but they should be able to tell which instance it is with the individual child. I really like these alternate assessments, but it would take a very meticulous and willing teacher to complete these and be able to accurately gage a student’s progress in order to ever replace standardized tests with something of this nature.

Differentiated Instruction

My classroom has a majority of academically gifted students in it and they are usually pulled out to go down to the AIG room and the remaining students work with the teacher in the classroom for the block. I had to go to the EC specialist at a school I volunteered at recently to find different resources because I don’t see any differentiation in my actual classroom. One great website that she suggested was the CAST book builder site that we used in our science methods class. She had compiled a folder with tons of books that she had been showed and created herself about many different topics and in every different grade level. These books are amazing – they help those that are reading below grade level by reading the book out loud to the students all while forcing the students that are on grade level to think more about the material with the questions that the animated characters pop up and ask and then those that are above grade level have challenging questions that they are asked to think about.

One book that she showed me in particular was great. When we created our books, we were told that we need three different characters that help students read the material, ask questions about the text, and that provides other science facts. For this book, there were three different characters as well, however, each character went along with a different reading group. The students sat in their reading groups while the book was being read and Pedro (the penguin) went along with the lower level reading groups, Monty went along with at level readers, and then Hali went with the above grade level readers. At the end of each page, each character would ask a question about that page in particular and each group would answer their characters question as a group and then share their answers with the class. This way the students do not know that they are answering questions at a different level – they just think that there are three different questions about the text and each group is answering one. The specialist suggested that in order for the groups to really think that they are just answering questions, you could have levels and the characters rotate so that the lower levels are not always answering questions from Pedro and so on.

Seasons - SAM video

With this video on seasons - the bird could be going on an adventure through the four seasons and talking about each season or you could simply list facts about each season as the bird travels through and you might want to slow the birds movement down as well.

Chapter 5 - Literacy

This weeks reading on writers workshop was EXTREMELY helpful for me in my placement. The students have about 45 minutes work of writing and about 45 minutes of reading during our literacy block. This is basically 45 minutes of reading and writing workshops and I have been very lost as to what I needed to be doing during the writing workshop. With the reading workshop, I have just been watching my teacher during her reading groups and then reading with a few of the students that are not doing their reading group. When it came to the writing portion though, I was not sure how to answer questions that the students were asking and how much grammar I should be correcting or how much content I should be addressing and where the story became mine instead of the students because of all of the “corrections” I was making for the students. This chapter really answered a lot of questions that I had and now, hopefully, I can become more comfortable during writing workshop and not just walking around watching the students write their stories.

There was also a section on sharing the student’s work which I LOVE! There is one girl in particular in my class that has some behavioral problems and it has become increasingly more difficult to deal with her during writing and reading workshop because she becomes very bored with what is going on and she acts out, disrupting the students around her. However, she has this amazing story that if she could put more detail in, it would easily be one of the most interesting and well written stories in the class. The big problem with her is that she thinks she is dumb. She regularly says “I don’t know, I’m dumb” and then laughs about it and goes back to her disruptive ways. Her classroom teacher had not had a chance to read her story and after school was out, I told her about the story and we both read over it from her writing journal. The next day, she was asked to read her story out loud to the classroom during sharing time. After each student shares their story, the class is to offer three good comments and three good critiques on how to make the story better for the student. I was told that after she shared her story, she got glowing comments about the story from her classmates and by the next time I was in the classroom, she had published her first story and was eagerly working on her second story. She REALLY wanted to share the story both with me and then again with her classmates. I really think that allowing the students a chance to share their work is a great way to encourage the students in addition to having the students help one another with their writing.

Parachutes at Hawriver

The second trip to Hawriver was much better then the first trip. I don’t know if it is because the students were older or if it was because of the different experiment that we were completing with the students but they seemed to grasp the concepts that we were trying to get across and they seemed much more intrigued by the lesson. The first time that we went, our students knew what a bubble was and how you made one, but they had never read or been introduced to a book about bubbles. When we began our lesson, we asked the students if they knew what a parachute was and they did not recognize the word right away. As we began describing what a parachute was, one of the students went “oh yeah we have a book on those!” and pointed to a book at the front of the room. Once they could make that connection, the lesson went much smoother and they were able to connect what we were telling them to something that they had been introduced to before hand.

Our students LOVED building their own parachutes and they definitely loved being able to stand on a chair and drop the parachute. The fact that they were making their own experiment pieces really got them more involved in the lesson. With the bubbles activity, everything was already made for the students and they were just participating in the step by step instructions of an experiment. With the parachutes, the students were able to tell us what they thought would work best and which ones would fall faster and slower and then they got to test their own ideas and to them, they were creating the lesson that they were participating in.

When it came to recording the data, we wanted to use an average of the three trials that were completed for each parachute. Here, we ran into a problem that we ran into with the bubbles experiment. We did not know these students and we did not know the different levels that they were on or what the students have been introduced to and what they had not been introduced to. The concept of an average was something that we thought third graders would have been introduced to but they had not heard that term in an academic setting. We then had to take some time to explain what an average was and in the end, we decided that it was too confusing for the students to use the average. We did not want the lesson to become about averages instead of parachutes. Another problem that we ran into was the concept of decimals/fractions. When we said that the parachute took 1 ½ seconds to fall, we asked them how to write that in decimal form and they did not know that ½ was equivalent to 0.5. They also could not determine which was more – ½ or ¼ and then they also struggled with whether 0.5 or 0.25 was more or less so we had to help them out with that.

Even though there were a few areas that needed to be worked on (averages and recording the data) I really think that the students understood our lesson and took away the concepts and the right meanings from the lesson that we were trying to get them to take away from it!!

Special Services Interview

The EC specialist at my school is amazing. She had all the time in the world to talk to us about the EC program at the school and answer any questions that we had. I guess that patience and kindness are two important qualities that an EC specialist should have. She began to explain the process and I was surprised at how simple she made the process sound but then talked about how long it took to get an IEP put into place. The first step was having a teacher recommend a child for special services. The teacher brings their concern to an SST committee. I’m fortunate enough to be working with a teacher that is on the SST committee and I have seen what questions are brought up in the meetings. Many of the teachers that are working to develop a students IEP have worked with the child or at least know the child and their behaviors – one of the benefits of working in a smaller school.

I guess I knew that parents have the final say in all of their child’s schooling but the EC specialist just kept saying “it’s all up to the parent.” Any time there is a change in the students IEP, the parents must be present at all meetings and must sign all paper work. They may also refuse the specialists referral into the EC program and they can withdraw their student from the program at any time. Why would a parent take their child out of a program that is has been designed specifically for their individual student. However, it happens more frequently then you would think according to the specialist.

I feel that as a future teacher the fact that I did not realize this is kind of bad but I did not know that an IEP was a legally binding document. I knew that teachers would get into trouble for not following the IEP but I did not know that legal action could be taken against the county if the IEP is not followed. Not following the IEP can get teachers into a lot of trouble, but what happens to those that work in schools that do not have the resources to meet the IEP. It’s not the teachers fault that the school can not hire enough specialists or order all of the materials necessary but they in the end, take the ultimate blame for the child not succeeding and the IEP not being followed. Not fair. I really look forward to being part of the SST committee and seeing the process first hand!

UDL in the Classroom

I think that it’s wonderful that people are starting to accept that not everyone learns the same way. What works for one student will not necessarily work for another student, especially those that are English language learners and those with learning disabilities. Through universal design, students that have trouble learning can learn the same material as those that do not struggle at the same time. For example, the text books that we are creating have interactive components that both English language learners and deaf students can benefit from and learn from – while the other students learn the material as well. They may learn it in a different way and at a different rate, but the material is being presented to all students at the same time and all students have the chance to process the material at the same time.

Unfortunately in my class placement, there are no English language learners that I can observe, but there is a student with a learning disability. The student struggles with their speech and as a result, also struggles with their reading comprehension. Their comprehension when a text is read out loud to them is much higher then when they read it themselves since they struggle with reading. I’m really excited to present the books that we are making for our science units because I really think that they will benefit from the interactive component with the characters that read out loud. Since there are no English language learners in the classroom and only one with a learning disability that is pulled out for about an hour each day during most of the reading and writing workshop time – my teacher does not have to modify any of the lessons really and there are also not a lot of different learning strategies used in the classroom. I really wish that I could see more of this universal design for learning in the classroom because I think its amazing and that a lot of students will benefit greatly from it!!

In between Bottom-Up and Top-Down

After reading this chapter, I started to think about what I am seeing in my classroom now and on what I experienced in my classes in elementary school. The classroom that I am in right now has a set up that is a mix between Ms. Teal’s classroom and Ms. Battle’s. The students are arranged in small groups and have very frequent small group discussions on what they have read and what they are writing about. While they do work together to work on their comprehension skills of various texts, they do complete many individual tasks such as silent reading and writing but they are always asked to share with their group members any ideas they have for stories and they are also asked to write letters to their teachers and myself talking about what they are reading during their silent reading.

Practice, practice, practice, words that I’ve heard over and over and over again from my parents and many teachers throughout the years. Whether it was about swimming, playing a musical instrument, or with my school work, I’ve always been taught that in order to master something, practicing it is the only way to learn it and it worked. When I was in school, learning how to read was about learning the different sounds that letters made and the ways they were shaped and how they were combined. We practiced this with worksheets and projects. Whenever a book or a passage was read, worksheets/questions from the book were assigned and I recall most of this work being individually and not in a group setting.

The bottom-up and top-down theories are the two extreme ends of the spectrum. I think that those in the earlier years that are learning how to read would do well with a bottom-up type of classroom such as Ms. Teal’s classroom. They learn to pick apart words and their meanings and they later on use this knowledge that they have learned to comprehend and analyze reading selections. As the students progress, they should be moving into more top-down theory classrooms like Ms. Battle’s. In these classrooms, the students can become more independent and take control of their learning through self selections in books and group discussions about these books. The only problem with this progression is that students learn at different rates, especially those students that struggle with reading and English language learners. In these situations, having a classroom that still incorporates some bottom-up instruction would be beneficial to those students but the students that are not struggling would still have the top-down instruction.

Misconceptions

It’s difficult to measure the student’s conceptual change from the bubble experiment because one, we did not know the students before hand and we did not know what they had been taught in their classes and two, because the students had never heard of surface tension before. When we asked the students what they thought it meant, all we got were blank stares. They had never heard of the term surface tension, we even had difficulty getting the students to understand what a surface was, and they just did not get what tension was in terms of emotions or in scientific terms. However, even if the students had known what surface tension was, I doubt they would have learned much from the bubbles activity and their misconceptions would probably still be intact because of how advance this experiment was and our lack of content knowledge.

As far as conceptual change that I have seen during science in my classroom, there is not a lot of time spent on science. They have science every other day and they are currently just taking notes on different types of forests. Based off of other subjects that I have observed it seems that the students are fairly willing to accept changes to their original beliefs when presented with facts. Another thing that I have noticed in the class that makes me believe the students are very accepting of changes is the way that the students take notes during their science and social studies lessons. They make a person KWL chart almost and then as a class they create a larger KWL class chart – most of the time sometimes they just talk as a class. The students are first asked to write down what they know about the topic on the left side of their paper and then the class creates a combined list (like they would for the “K” portion of a KWL chart) and then they write down any questions that they have about the topic on the right side of the paper and then share that part as a class (like they would for the “W” portion of the chart). At the end of the lesson, at the bottom of their paper, they write down a summary of the reading and any questions that they still have about the subject and then as a class they try and answer most of the questions. As a class, they then go through the facts that they had come up with at the beginning and see if they as a whole believe that these “facts” are still true. Many of the students that offered the “facts” at the beginning of the lesson correct their own statements before other students can.

Basal vs Literacy Day

I’m not sure if my classes in elementary school used the Basal reading series, but the descriptions of what a Basal reading class would look like sounds a lot like what we did. We had a series of books with passages in them; we answered questions before the passage, then read the passage, and then answered questions after we read – which is pretty much what the Literature based Basal series is. While it got a bit repetitive, it seemed to work and get the point across to our class and it did enhance our comprehension skills. Now with the debate between which Basal program is better, the Literature or the Phonics, I think it’s a tie. Both teach skills that are necessary and I don’t think that you can place a higher value on either one. Students need to phonemic awareness in order to read and in order to truly comprehend what they are reading, but they also need the comprehension skills because without the ability to comprehend what you are reading, reading becomes pointless.

In the classroom that I am in right now, the teacher uses A LOT of reader and writers workshops. One of the reasons is that we have a lot of AIG students in the classroom and they are not always pulled out so we have a lot of different students that are reading and writing on different levels and she needs to be able to work with each group individually. One of the things that I really liked was the suggestion to do individual reading for about 20-30 minutes and then partner reading. When the students in my class are asked to do quite, independent reading, there are some students that do read but for the most part, the students just want to talk to their friends. If the students were asked to do partner reading, they get to read possibly two different books, talk with their friends, and still work on their reading skills. I also really like the idea of having a literacy day maybe once every other week or maybe once a month. I think the students would get a lot out of spending one day every now and then focusing on different reading and writing activities. However, if you were to do this, I feel that doing it in a school that uses the Basal program would not be the best idea. They use a very set structure for their reading program and veering away from it might confuse students that were used to using the Basal readers, regardless of whether it is the literature based or the phonemic based one. But I do hope that one day in my classroom we can have literacy day and that the students will enjoy it as much as I would have!!

Teaching Peter

Teaching Peter was fascinating to me. You could not help but love him just from watching the video, regardless of his actions that were not always socially acceptable. While watching it, I tried to figure out how I felt about Peter being included in the classroom. I think that students with disabilities should be allowed to be included in a “normal” classroom, as long as the student’s behavior does not affect the other students in the classroom to the point of hindering their learning ability. Inclusion needs to benefit both the student with the disability and the students without disabilities. During the film, there were points in which I think both the students with out a disability and Peter were benefiting from the social interactions. The students seemed to really take a liking to Peter and became very protective of him. They also helped explain the class work and played with him during what appeared to be centers time or recess. However, there were also times in which I think having Peter in the classroom was harmful to the other students learning process. There were several times in which Peter had an outburst during class time and the students were distracted and the teacher eventually had to take time out of instruction to calm Peter down.

The teacher was remarkable, or at least from what I could see. She rarely got involved with Peter’s outbursts unless it seemed necessary. She allowed the students to work things out with Peter when there was a problem which built both the “normal” students and Peter’s social skills and abilities to deal with different situations. When Peter seemed out of control, the teacher dealt with the situation to the best of her ability and tried not to allow it to affect the students learning.

I think that inclusion is important for both the student with the disability and for the other students in the class. The students that do not have a disability learn to deal with different social situations and they can also learn the material by explaining the assignment and helping the student with the disability to complete the assignment. The student with the disability has the social interaction that they need and can learn how to interact with people that are different from them while getting an education. However, while I think that inclusion is very important, I do believe that there is a point at which inclusion becomes harmful to the other students in the classroom, and as a result, not beneficial to the student with the disability. If there is a student that disrupts the class so much that learning can not go on, the students in the class without the disability do not get what they need to get out of lessons. Additionally, if the teacher is spending more time disciplining the student with the disability, the student with the disability is not being taught. For those extreme cases I believe that inclusion is not the best idea for everyone involved. Peter was not an extreme case and I was really happy to see that having him in the classroom worked out in the long run for everyone involved!!

Oral Language

It was really interesting to read this chapter after our visit to Carrboro Elementary school! I have always heard that once a student reaches puberty, their ability to learn a foreign language is severely hindered. This means that while students are in elementary school, it is extremely important to teach students the correct sounds that letters make, the correct combinations of sounds to create words, and pretty much everything else about dialect that they will need to succeed later on in life. The two main influences that a student has in their development come from at home from their parents and at school from their teachers. All students come into the classroom with languages derived from their home culture and their various social backgrounds. These different backgrounds need to be recognized in the classroom as well as the “Standard English.” The correctionist approach works to correct a students “nonstandard” language to help them move towards “standard” English. This approach fails to recognize the different backgrounds that a student comes in with which need to be recognized considering the big influence that their home lives have on their learning. The contrastive approach on the other hand fails to recognize that children must know Standard English which is seen as the proper form of English and needs to be taught for standardized tests at least. I don’t know which one of these I agree with more, both taking a students home life into consideration and teaching them standard English are important.

When I got to the section on Cambourne’s conditions of learning, I couldn’t help but think about the classrooms that we saw at Carrboro. These classrooms are proof of how these conditions work to teach students different languages, English, Spanish, and any other languages they may want/need to learn. The first condition is immersion. This condition calls for the students to be surrounded by an authentic use of the language. Students need to hear and experience the language first hand which is what the students in the dual language classrooms have had since kindergarten. The second condition goes along with the first of immersion, and that is demonstration. The students need to hear how the language gets used in every day conversations and see that social interaction using the language. The third condition is the use of the language which the students at Carrboro have all but mastered. It was amazing to see these young students that have heard and interacted with a foreign language be able to speak it so fluently to their fellow classmates and their teacher. The rest of the conditions are also important and they were very apparent in the dual language classrooms. The students were taught in the foreign language, expected to speak and interact in the foreign language, and they were encouraged to ask questions in English about the Spanish words that they did not know the meaning of. These dual language classrooms are fascinating and really demonstrated what most of Chapter 2 talked about!

Teacher as a Reader #2

As I finished up the book, I realized that while I did enjoy reading it, I did not relate to the book that much. Most of the book is about Shakespeare and baseball, neither of which I am very interested it. I think that younger children, especially boys, would really enjoy it while being able to relate to the young boy, Holling, and his love of baseball. The book captures the reader with the underlying baseball story line, and then introduces them to Shakespeare. The students get to read about sports and they get to see that boys like them can also get into Shakespeare. The characters in the book are very much like many of the young boys in my class. They can relate to the main characters and see that they are very similar to them. The young girls on the other hand more then likely would not enjoy the book nearly as much as the young boys did. While I did enjoy it and there were some funny parts and there was a small romantic story line that went with it that might capture some of the girls, the majority of the book is Shakespeare and baseball.

After I finished the book, I started to think about whether or not I would have actually read this book when I was in 5th grade. Usually the first thing that I notice about a book is the front cover. In this case, the front cover and the book can be slightly misleading. The book looks like it is new and one might assume that it is about a boy in today’s times; however, the book is about a young boy growing up during the Vietnam War. Today, students might be able to relate to the characters because they are growing up in a time of war. The cover is not very interesting and does not give the reader a good idea about what the book is about. I also usually judged whether or not I am going to like a book based off the first few pages of the book. The first few pages of this book introduce the characters, along with the crazy different things that the students used to do to their teachers to get even with them which I think the students would really enjoy, I know I did! All in all, the book was interesting and may appeal to the boys more then the girls but for those that are into either baseball or Shakespeare, it is a great book!!

Bubbles, Bubbles, Bubbles

I was extremely nervous about the Bubble’s experiment that we were going to be doing with the students at Haw River. When we did the experiment in class, both I and several of my group members had a difficult time understanding everything about the experiment. If he did not understand what the experiment showed, how were we going to explain it to the 2nd graders that are more then likely not going to understand the experiment as well? I suppose that my worries with the experiment came from my lack of knowledge of surface tension, but the students had not been exposed to surface tension either and they knew nothing of it and I just think that this was a bad experiment to introduce them to it. They needed definitions and examples that we did not have time to give them BEFORE the experiment was done.

I was also nervous that Nicole and I would not be able to get the paper clip to float. If the paper clip did not float in the water, then there would have been no difference in the plain water and the soapy water. We did get the paper clip to float, but the students did not seem to grasp WHY the paper clip floated in the water and not in the soapy water. Part of them not understanding was mine and Nicole’s fault because we did not know as much as we should have about surface tension, but I wonder if the students still would have understood the lesson even if we had the knowledge to teach them.

This experience really taught me about how important content knowledge is!! The students did have a few questions that I managed to stumble my way through answering, but I was not able to answer them in a way that would actually teach them. I think that the lesson of surface tension was lost in our inability to teach the lesson and the student’s distraction with the bubbles. They LOVED blowing the bubbles both in the soapy water and then again with bubble solution. I think that this could be a good lesson to teach to students that are a bit older then second grade that have had the background lesson on what surface tension is, and if I knew more about surface tension and how/why everything in the experiment worked the way that it did.

Teacher as a Reader #1

I’m reading The Wednesday Wars by Gary D. Schmidt. The book follows a young boy living in what he calls “the perfect house.” His house lies exactly in the middle of the Jewish community and the Presbyterian community. Every Wednesday, half of the students at Camillo Junior High attend Hebrew school and the other half attends catechism at the Presbyterian Church. Holling Hoodhood however, does not and because of this, every Wednesday, Holling gets to spend the afternoon with Mrs. Baker. According the Holling, Mr. Baker hates him with a passion and because of that, she makes him read Shakespeare after school each Wednesday.

The book took a bit to get into. It was a slow start, setting up why Holling had to stay after school and why he hated staying after with Mrs. Baker. However, once the story really begins, the book picks up and I really am enjoying reading it. I can see why a student in elementary school or middle school might be able to relate to the book and as a result, really enjoy it! Everyone has had a teacher that they swear up and down HATES them and is always out to get them in everything they do. For me, it was my English teacher in middle school with diagramming sentences – and if I had to stay after school with her every Wednesday, I would dread going to school!! In addition to being easily relatable to the students, the language is very simple. Even the words that would be difficult for a younger reader, you would still be able to figure them out.

In high school, every year in English, we read a Shakespeare play… and I hated them all. Holling is being forced to read a variety of Shakespeare plays which he dreaded at the beginning. How can Shakespeare be fun?? As he begins to read it, it turned out that I had to read it again. There are passages in the book from the various plays that he is currently reading, and Holling even begins to talk like a Shakespeare play. It’s been some what difficult to get through reading the actual quotes from the plays, but once Holling started speaking it in his conversations with the other students and in his head, the book became somewhat difficult to follow.

Right now I’m about half way through the book and it just gets a little bit better with each chapter so hopefully it will continue to just get better!!

Literacy in the Classroom

The fifth grade teachers had their work cut out for them at the beginning of the year. The benchmark test results were not readily available for the teachers to look at and the fourth grade teachers from the year before had no records of any testing done. The reading and writing levels of all the students were unknown, and they had to test most of the students to figure out where exactly they were. The first week of school the teachers spent most of their time testing in reading, writing, and math. The results were some what surprising. There were some students that were way beyond their grade level in reading and writing, however, there was a group of students that were writing either on grade level or above grade level, while reading way below grade level. These reading levels will be used throughout the year in a program called “Reading Intervention.” The fifth graders are all broken up to different reading groups, those on grade level and then those that are above and those that are below. Each teacher takes a group of readers and they work to improve their reading scores and abilities. They had great success with it last year and I am interested in seeing how it works this year with this group of students.

The class has finished testing in math and writing, however, the testing in reading is still going on. The students read out loud to a teacher and the teacher makes notes about how the student is reading and their vocabulary throughout the passage. While students are being evaluated one by one, the other students are reading silently. They read for about 45 minutes to themselves. The only other literacy that I see is during the writing time and the time during what will eventually be reading intervention time. The class is currently going over what fables, tall tales, legends, and fairy tales are. The teacher usually reads them a book that falls into one of the categories and they go over what makes that book that genre. During writing, the class is focused on narrative writing and they are currently working on writing their own narrative stories. They are writing one as a class and then individually.

I am hoping that once the testing is finished that I will see more then just silent reading. There are some students that are genuinely interesting in the books that they are reading during silent reading. However, the majority of the students do not focus on their books. The students are allowed to sit anywhere in the room that they want and there are carpet squares that they are allowed to use as cushions. Some students sit with their friends and talk for the entire 45 minutes and since both the teacher and I are preoccupied with testing the students, they generally get away with it. Some of the other students (those that are not reading and talking) walk around the bookshelves to “find the perfect book.” Or so they say. For the most part, they are simply trying to put off actually reading. There are maybe 7 or 8 students our of 27 students that are reading during silent reading which means that about 20 students are not getting any literacy time in school – all because of testing. Hopefully over the next few weeks, I will see more literacy going on in the classroom.

Literate Lives: Chapter 1

I had not really thought about how technology has changed how students learn to read and write. I did not consider that my sisters introduction to literacy was that much different then mine thanks to cell phones, the internet, and pop culture. Today, students learn how to type and write mainly using instant messenger and text messages. I was watching my sister write a paper one night and she never capitalized her “I’s”, did not bother with spelling (spell check will fix that later) and at one point used a z in the place of an s – all thanks to instant messenger and text messages. The texts that I get from her are hard to read because of all the abbreviations and acronyms that she uses. Books that I used to read when I was younger, like my favorite Ella Enchanted, are now not being read but rather being watched on TV - which they ruined the book and did not follow the original story line in Ella Enchanted at all might I add. I never realized just how much times have changed.

As far as the industrial model goes, it seems to be one of the most ineffective models that is in place and sadly, the majority of the school systems are modeled that way. The No Child Left Behind program might just work, it were not part of the industrial model. If we could find a way to incorporate the No Child Left Behind Program in with the inquiry model, I feel that students and teachers would be much more satisfied with their learning/teaching experiences. Each child that comes in, comes in with a different background, they come from different home situations, different economic statuses, and different ethnic backgrounds. These differences shape their learning experience and if we do not cater to their different learning techniques and abilities, the lessons are ineffective and they fall behind. If the program really wishes to leave no child behind, we need to focus on ways to incorporate a child’s background and experiences into the classroom.

Literacy Autobiography

Frog and Toad, Pinky and Rex and Ella Enchanted
These are the only books that I remember reading in elementary school. Frog and Toad started it all. Every trip that my class made to the library in first grade, I would pick up the first Frog and Toad book that I could find and take it home. Every adventure they had, I was right there with them. Then one incredibly sad day, all of the Frog and Toad books were gone. Apparently one class was doing a project that required the teacher to check out EVERY Frog and Toad book in the library, I was devastated. What was I going to read now?? Then my teacher walked me over to a new set of books that also changed my life, Pinky and Rex. From then on, Frog and Toad could stay in that teacher’s classroom for the rest of the year for all I cared! As I was reading these books, new ones would come out and I would have to patiently wait for the next one to make its way into the library. The one that I REALLY wanted to read was Pinky and Rex Get Married. I had to wait almost a month for us to finally get it and I was beyond thrilled when it did. Then in 5th grade, my teacher gave me the first book I remember a teacher actually giving to me as a gift, Ella Enchanted. It grabbed me from the beginning and it is the first time that I remember not being able to put a book down. I read it in one night, and then again, and again, and again, and I actually just read it again about a week ago. These three books/series were the books that allowed me to develop my love for reading.

Battle of the Books vs. Textbooks
In my sixth grade language arts class, we had a class reading list. Students were only required to read 5 books off of the list, however, when the year started I had already read over half of the books in elementary school and over the summer. My teacher suggested that I join the battle of the books team. This gave me a list of books that I had not read yet and I was thrilled! I made the team in sixth grade and while the team did not do very well, I had a so much fun! For seventh and eighth grade I was at a different school then I was in sixth grade. There was a battle of the books team there too, however, my teachers were not very supportive of the team and those that wished to join it. The amount of reading that was required out of the textbooks for all of my classes severely diminished my “fun” reading time and I was not able to read as many of the books and I did not enjoy the team as much as I had in sixth grade because I was not as prepared for it.

Grammar
I might be the worst speller on the planet and I am TERRIBLE at grammar. Every paper that I turned in was more red then black when I got it back from the teacher. Because of this, I really disliked writing. When I was in 7th grade, in my AIG language arts class, we began diagramming sentences and my teacher was horrible. Not only was she a terrible teacher, she was a terrible person. She seemed to find one or two students that she really liked and the others, she wrote off as not being worth her time and sometimes not worthy of being in the AIG program. Sadly, I was one of the ones she wrote off and I was terrified of her class every day. I was not good at grammar or spelling, and that made diagramming sentences next to impossible. From then on, I dreaded every English class I ever took. This made the rest of middle and all of high school somewhat stressful considering I was forced to take an English class every year and write papers for all of my classes. To this day, I remember how much damage this one teacher did to me. I have always found it strange how much I love reading, yet hate writing…

Blog Post #2 - Science Readings

The four strands of science combine science content with science process, which in most cases, are taught as two separate things. The four strands being, understanding scientific explanations, generating scientific evidence, reflecting on scientific knowledge, and participating productively in science. In elementary school, we focused more on the generating scientific evidence and reflecting through the experiments that we did. However, it seems that as I continued on in school, we moved away from the experiments and the reflecting and moved towards understanding scientific explanations through definitions and readings and then moved towards a better rounded science experience by incorporating all four of the strands in high school. This might explain why I liked science more in elementary and high school then I did in middle school. These four stands really emphasis the importance of interactive science (experiments and such) while still getting the definitions and facts. I feel that these four strands also incorporate all different types of learners. As teachers we need to create lessons that help the visual, the auditory, and the kinesthetic learners and when you include all four strands into a science lesson, you really create a well rounded lesson for all of these learners. The visual learners get the definitions and facts from books, they see the data that they collect from the field, and they can write reflections. The auditory learners can talk openly and reflect out loud with a group of people on what they have collected and you could read the definitions and such out loud. The kinesthetic learners are actually doing the experiments and activities and learning from them, and then participating in the discussions that ensue. Incorporating the four strands might cause a lesson to take more planning time – however, the effects seem to be well worth time as we see in the “Biodiversity of a City Schoolyard.”

In the “Trouble with Textbooks” article, the problem with textbooks that many students have seen for years is finally brought out to the attention of adults and teachers. While I’m sure they were well aware of the size of the textbooks, this article brings up the point that these flashy, heavy, books “utterly fail to… teach science.” I remember having these really fun and colorful textbooks that had just a few pages of reading because of all the pictures and “side bar activities.” As a student, when a teacher assigns 5-7 pages of reading for homework and a worksheet (which were the standard homework assignments for me in elementary school), you groan and think about how long it is going to take you to read these boring pages. Then you open your book and find that really, when you subtract the pictures, the vocabulary words on the side, and the extra fun facts that are printed in the margins, you really only end up with 3-4 pages worth of actual text to read. What a waste!! The article also brings up the point of teachers picking the books that come with the most accessories, such as CD’s and pre-made test banks, which are all great resources for the teachers and when used properly can help the students but shouldn’t the students education come before flashy resources? The resources that come with the books are useless if the students are not comprehending the material in the book. While I do feel that books need to have pictures to grasp the students attention, we really need to find a compromise between the flashy non-effective text books and the “Matter and Molecules” text book formed by Michigan State – and quickly.

Science Autobiography

Starting in kindergarten, all of my classrooms in elementary school had class pets. In kindergarten, we had a hamster named Oreo and over the school breaks, the class voted on the one person that would get to take Oreo home and take care of him for the long weekend, or long breaks. I was lucky enough to take Oreo home for winter break. Throughout the year, the class talked about where hamsters lived, what they ate, and what we though Oreo's life would be like outside of the classroom. i did not realize until middle school that Oreo was actually a year long science unit. Whether it was in the standard course of study or not, talking about habitats, food chains, and adaptations and then seeing them in action with Oreo was in a way, a year long science experiment. Like my science experience with Oreo, the only times that I can remember studying science in elementary school, were times that we were performing experiments or completing interactive observations (such as Oreo). One year my class grew a garden, one inside where there was no light in a closet and the other outside, in order to learn about photosynthesis and light. At the end of the year we had a party where we were able to eat all of the vegetables and fruits that were grown successfully. There was another year when we had a class soap box derby like event where a guest teacher came in with supplies and helped us build cars that we were allowed to race for a force and motion lesson. Then there were simple experiments like our weather unit where we built the tornado like models using water and two soda bottles, and the time we built paper mache animals to go along with our reports or endangered species.

My father is a chemist and growing up, all of my babysitters where members of his graduate student group. With two of my babysitters, my sisters and I would do experiments, which consisted of adding anything and everything we could find in the kitchen and adding it together to see what might happen. There were also a few times when my sisters and I would get to go to my dad's lab with him. there, my dad would show us what happens when you put something in liquid nitrogen. We froze latex gloves and smashed them on the floor, balloons, bananas, and many other things. For birthday's, we would buy regular balloons and go to his lab and use their helium tanks to blow them up. My little sister loved hearing my dad sound like Donald Duck when he would inhale the helium and his voice would change.

As much fun as the experiments were, they were unfortunately, not very common in the classroom. Many of my science lessons were learning vocabulary, readings from the textbook, copying notes, and completing worksheets for homework about the lessons. Today, the focus of science lessons seems to be very similar. However, today some classrooms have a tool that we never had which can turn these boring note copying lessons into something a little more interesting and attention grabbing. SMART boards give teachers the ability to do interactive note taking lessons, where the students are still taking the notes and learning the vocabulary but they are actively participating in the lesson, and most of the students that I have seen interacting with the SMART boards, love everything about them, regardless of what they are actually doing. Not every classroom can afford SMART boards in each classroom, and similarly not every school can afford the materials necessary for completing experiments. As a result, teachers are left with very little options for making science lessons fun for the students, instead, they are forced to teach those note taking, textbook reading, worksheet lessons which students do not enjoy. Keeping the students engaged and actively participating in the lesson, whether it be with experiments or creating a fun way to present the notes to the students, is key to keeping a students attention and having them learn from the lesson.

Hello!!

Hey everyone! I'm Anna Toone and this semester I'm student teaching at Efland Cheeks Elementary school. I'm in a 5th grade class and I love it! I've never had a blog before so this is a new experience... still not sure how this thing works but I guess I'll have to figure that out! I'm really looking forward to this upcoming year and all of these new experiences!!