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...

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.

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...

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.

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?

Podcasting Friends-Day Two

Today will be our second attempt to podcast the book that we've chosen entitled, Friends. What we would like to accomplish today is to create a final product, meaning a podcast that will be the one we use from now on for this project and will eventually be submitted for grading. I haven't discussed the effective questioning assignment with my partner yet, so I'm not sure whether or not we will be podcasting those questions in addition to the story's podcast, or if we will incorporate the questions into our lesson plan in a different way.

Our first day podcasting we began to get the hang of podcasting even though it wasn't perfect. The few recordings we made were good, but they weren't great, so hopefully today we will be able to create a great podcast!

Podcasting Friends Day One

After a number of attempts to podcast the book "Friends" we've learned that we need to slow down the speed at which we read aloud for two reasons, we rush through the book and we rush through reading and miss words or misread words. Therefore, we were not able to complete our podcasting of ''Friends" today and will have to complete it in our next class on Friday. On other note, our method of taking turns reading one page at a time seemed to work out pretty well, so I think we will continue with this method, unless we come up with another better idea before Friday.

Pre-podcasting

For this podcasting assignment I am working with Leigha Ashmen and we have decided to use the book entitled, "Friends" by Rob Lewis. We just completed our introduction podcast and we're a little behind the rest of the class since we missed our first podcasting class on friday, but we seem to be getting the hang of it. Our plan for podcasting "Friends" is to each take a turn reading a page back and forth until the book has been completely podcasted. We may choose to alter this and have one person read certain characters and the other narrate, but for now we're going to try alternating reading pages first and see how that goes...

Podcasting Introduction

This is our introduction podcast!

http://christinedemed.podomatic.com/entry/2009-09-22T07_08_21-07_00

Podcasting

Honestly, I don't know much at all about podcasting. All that I know is what I've listened to in Dr. Luongo's Tests and Measurements class, were she did the podcasting and I did the listening. I also know that you can download podcasts to your ipod, however I've never done it.

Tests

I think that every teacher encounters the question as to what format (multiple choice, essay, fill in the blank, etc.) they think would best suit the subject, their students, and the information they want to test their students on. I've always been a supporter of the essay or fill in the blank tests for a number of reasons. In my opinion, I feel that a teacher can more easily identify whether or not each student obtained the information you've taught them or not. When you give an essay, the student is required to write about what they've learned and what they know about the topic at hand. In addition, fill in the blank tests also test their knowledge on a certain subject. Multiple choice tests on the other hand can never insure as much accuracy. Often with multiple choice tests it is better to guess at an answer then leave it unanswered an automatically get the answer wrong, but guessing gives you the oppertunity to hopefully guess right. In this case, as a teacher, multiple choice tests can't fully assess a students knowledge because you can't be sure as to whether they understood what was taught to them and retained the information, or if they simply were very lucky at guessing the answers.

In my classroom, I understand that I can not always be biased by using essay tests or fill in the blank tests, and that in some cases I will have to use multiple choice tests, however, I believe that essay and fill in the blank tests more accurately assess students than multiple choice tests so I plan to use these methods more frequently.

Portfolios

In my personal opinion I think portfolios are a really usful tool to track student development. Portfolios should involve both the teacher and student. You always want the student, in my opinion to choose the assignments, projects, etc. that they would like to include in their portfolio with the guidance of the teacher who should help them choose the material that will show the most development from the last piece included in the portfolio to now. So the teacher should give suggestions to the students including telling them what material s/he thought showed the most improvement and the most effort.

I also believe that portfolios should be passed on from grade to grade with an accumulation of portfolios for the student to have when they graduate from high school. This will allow students to see how far they've come and how much they've learned from the begining of the year to the end, in addition to see how much they've learned this year in comparison to last.

I would definitely consider utilizing portfolios in my classroom. I think they have a lot of really positive aspects to them and even if people don't believe in them, they will be a display of the progress of each student.

Homework

Homework--every elementary school student's worst nightmare! Homework in my opinion, can be a great reinforcement tool to help the students refresh and better understand the material that was taught in the classroom. However, when your student leaves your classroom, you can never truely know whether it was your student or his or her parent who has done the work. For this simple reason I believe that homework should be given as a tool for the student, and as a way to see who has done or not done the homework you've assigned, on the other hand, I don't believe that homework should be used as an assessment tool because you don't see your student do the homework in front of you so you can't be sure it was s/he who did it.

As a teacher I would definitely reinforce giving homework to my students because I do feel that it is a necessity to teaching students. Even as a college student I receive homework assignments daily from my professors, but as an elementary and high school student I never saw the point of homework until I wanted to be a teacher. Now, with most of my education classes behind me I see the importance of homework in the classroom and the effect it has on students. Homework, if both teacher and student do it right, should always have a positive effect on a students academic performance. A teacher should never assign something for homework just to give homework. Homework should be given to reinforce what was learned already in the classroom.

Teacher Expectations

Homework and teacher expectations in my opinion, go hand in hand. As a teacher, it is inevitable that we will be giving homework to our students, and as a teacher, one of our expectations will be that our students will complete and hand in the homework we assign to them. As an elementary school student, I sometimes thought homework was nonsense and a way for the teacher to give you things to do at home so that you didn't have to waste time in class doing it, but now that I'm on the other side of that situation now, I feel that homework is a necessity in any classroom. In my opinion homework helps the teacher and the student both. It helps the teacher to assess and see if her expectations are met by her students and it helps the students refresh what they have learned in the classroom, in addition, it will show the student whether or not he or she has fully grasped the concepts of what was taught.

Teachers always have high expectations of their students, and in my opinion, that is a characteristic of a good and effective teacher. As a teacher you expect your students to respect you and the rules of your classroom, you expect them to learn certain things throughout the year, you expect them to complete assignments that you have given them to enforce what they have learned (this includes homework), and you expect your students to respect themselves, their fellow classmates, and the policies of the school. I've only listed a few of the many expectations teachers have for their students, in my opinion these expectations are goals you would like to see your students reach, and if by the end of the year they have met all of your expectations, then they should be prepared, or atleast on their way to advancing to the next grade level.

Rubics (cont.)

I found the Rubistar website to be a great tool to use as a teacher, and I definitely plan on using it for my classroom. Overall, I believe that rubrics are always beneficial and can always assist a student in understanding what it is a teacher is looking for in any given subject or assignment. As a student I’ve always found rubrics to be both a guide and a resource because it gives you insight into the teacher’s mind, what she expects of you, and the grade you are likely to receive if you meet those expectations, so it’s all up to you, the student, whether or not you use this resource. I love this website, plan to use it in my classroom, and would recommend it to any other teacher as passionate about rubrics as I am!

Rubistar

, I found the Rubistar website to be a great tool to use as a teacher, and I definitely plan on using it for my classroom. Overall, I believe that rubrics are always beneficial and can always assist a student in understanding what it is a teacher is looking for in any given subject or assignment. As a student I’ve always found rubrics to be both a guide and a resource because it gives you insight into the teacher’s mind, what she expects of you, and the grade you are likely to receive if you meet those expectations, so it’s all up to you, the student, whether or not you use this resource. The Rubistar website is an amazing tool and I'd recommend it to any teacher who feels as strongly about rubrics as I do!

Rubistar

I found the Rubistar website to be a great tool to use as a teacher, and I definitely plan on using it for my classroom. Overall, I believe that rubrics are always beneficial and can always assist a student in understanding what it is a teacher is looking for in any given subject or assignment. As a student I’ve always found rubrics to be both a guide and a resource because it gives you insight into the teacher’s mind, what she expects of you, and the grade you are likely to receive if you meet those expectations, so it’s all up to you, the student, whether or not you use this resource. The Rubistar website is a really usful tool and I'd recommend it to anyone!

Rubrics

As a student I've always loved teachers you handed out rubrics because they allow you the oppertunity to see what the teacher is looking for and depending on the effort you put into the assignment, the grade you expect to receive. As a teacher I would definitely consider using rubrics as much as possible and where ever possible because you are giving your students a list of what is expected of them, and once you've given them the rubric it's up to them whether or not they're going to use it to further their grade or not.

Right now I'm still a little uncomfortable creating rubrics because I haven't had much experience with it, but hopefully later on today or tomorrow I will be able to view the rubistar website and create a rubric of my own. After creating a few of my own rubrics I think I'll feel more comfortable making them. The things I will probably keep in mind when writing my rubric will be to emphasize the most important content and processes of the learning targets, and for each achievement dimension's score, I will match the emphasis for that achievement dimension into my assessment plan. (Chapter 10 PP)