Monday, September 27, 2010

Week 3 Student Teaching

Tomorrow is back to school night and I'm having mixed feelings. I am excited to experience it yet hesitant as to what parents may think about me teaching their children. That being said I'm sure things will go better then I expect. I'm also excited to get more involved in teaching and taking over more responsibilities! Tonight's post will be brief and I apologize but there is a great deal of work to be done!

Until next time...

Monday, September 20, 2010

Week Two - Student Teaching

Week 1 of student teaching went very well. I am enjoying working with my cooperating teacher Miss Keeler and getting to know the students as well. I would say that I know about 75% of the students names right now, and they are starting to warm up to me and the idea of having a second teacher in the classroom. Miss Keeler has assigned The Witch of Blackbird Pond, as the first novel for our eighth graders to read, and I must say that I hope the students enjoy reading it as much as I am! Although, I have noticed, and in discussion with Miss Keeler, pointed out that the students need much more background history on the time period then I thought they would need. In addition, I've also noticed that the novel, although rated at a sixth grade level, is more difficult for the students to read then expected. Miss Keeler has included reading aloud to the students for the first two chapters in her lesson plans so as to firmiliarize the students with the language used in the novel. I've processed this in my mind and have come up with the explanation that students in today's technologically advanced world have little to no desire to read for pleasure any longer due to the fact that television, video, and the internet can deliver this information to them much more quickly then reading a book can. This saddens me because even though I've grown up with the development of much of this technology, I still had a passion for the written word and the discovery of whole new worlds with the turn of every page. My hopes are that the novels that these students read with myself and Miss Keeler will show them how much enjoyment they could get out of reading and book and hopefully turn them onto reading other things for their own enjoyment.

Monday, September 13, 2010

Day One Student Teaching!

Today was my first day of student teaching and I've already learned so much! My cooperating teacher, Miss Keeler has started me down an excellent path in preparing the teacher's books, novels, and information needed to have a successful experience. I've also learned a great deal about standardized testing and the NJ ASK for Grade 8. It looks as though I'm off to a great start, and I hope to update as often as possible throughout my experience with things I've learned and can share with my peers. Until next time...

Tuesday, December 1, 2009

Reflection

For our lesson for Dr. Luongo's teaching language arts class, Leigha and I took a number of different steps to prepare for our lesson. First we recorded then rerecorded our podcast, we created a lesson plan, then individually prepared for the lesson. The objectives for our lesson included: students will be able to recall characters names and hobbies, and students will be able to create their own encounter with Oscar using their favorite activity and the story paper worksheet. We chose these objectives as introductory activities to this book based on the grade level that we chose (grade 1). Our assessments for this lesson coordinated with the objectives, to assess the first objective, we made a worksheet for the students where they chose the characters name and drew a line to the picture that went along with the name. To assess the students work, we created a smiley face rubric that was based on the completion of the worksheet. The second objective was assessed using a check, check minus, check plus rubric, also graded upon its completion.

Our lesson plan, when put into effect in the classroom, wasn't executed exactly as we had planned or as it was written, but thankfully we did get through everything we had planned to do by the end of the lesson. The most important thing we tried to teach our students during this lesson was the importance of what it takes to be a good friend. Overall, I think the lesson went well, and if we had a classroom of first graders rather than college students, the students would have been much more excited and interseted in the activities we did in this lesson. The only thing that I would have done differently in this lesson, would have been to enstill more dicipline in the classroom since some of the students went off topic and were starting to get a bit out of hand. To make this lesson more effective, I would have inforced our classroom rules and our classroom rule song more.

I think that there is always room for improvement, but the only thing that I would have done differently in comparison to this particular lesson, would have been to try to integrate using the smartboard in our lesson. The one piece of technology I really thought worked well was the use of our podcast in the lesson. Leigha and I planned to use the podcast as the reading to the book we chose and we created a powerpoint show of the pictures to go along with the podcast reading. By doing this we were able to have the students listen to the podcast and were also able to allow all of the students to see the illustrations. We did finally decide to use both the podcast and the powerpoint in our lesson and I personally think it went well!

The students were really well behaved during the podcast and powerpoint show and seemed to thoroughly enjoy both. I thought it went well because the students were paying attention and took the characters, story, plot, etc. away from the reading. I don't know if there could have been a better way to infuse the podcast into the lesson more effectively, however if I did choose to use this in my classroom, I would probably make copies of this on cd for students to listen to as they needed.

In conclusion, I hope to use podcasting in my future classroom and eventually (depending on the grade level I teach) teach my students to podcast on their own.

Tuesday, September 29, 2009

Day Three- Friends

Today Leigha and I blogged our effective questioning assignment and wrote a rough copy of our lesson plan that will be associated with the book that we've chosen (Friends). We have our objectives set and our assessment and assignments planned out and everything seemed to fall into place after we decided what our objectives were and how we planned on assessing our assignments. I'm really looking forward to this lesson plan and eventually teaching the lesson. I feel that it will be both educational and fun for our students.


In addition, we would like you to listen to Episode 2 & 3 and give your feed back as to which podcast you think we should use for our lesson, thanks!

Lesson Plan Tools

http://www.first-school.ws/theme/printables/story-paper-drawing.htm <-- story worksheet

Effective Questioning Assignment

Questions for before we read Friends:

1.) Can everyone tell me one activity that is your favorite thing to do? (Give an example for yourself such as: My favorite activity is playing soccer, or reading, or painting, etc.)

2.) Now class, what do you think you would do if didn't like to do the same thing you like to do? )Offer suggestions such as: Would you play by yourself? Or take turns doing the your activity then doing your friend's activity?)

3.) Has anyone ever moved to a new house or new school and had to make new friends? Was it easy or hard to make new friends? What did you do to make new friends?

Questions for after we read Friends:

4.) Do you think that Oscar was being selfish or only thinking about himself in the begining of the story? (If students answer yes, ask them to explain how he was being selfish by giving examples.)

5.) What would you have done if you were Oscar, would you have done the same thing or act differently? How would you act differently? (Explain)

6) What did we learn from Oscar's experience with meeting new people?