"The desire to write grows with writing." -Desiderius Erasmus I am excited to embark upon yet another adventure in our MCC Program – the Action Research Project. For a while, I wasn’t quite sure what this project would entail, I was just glad I wouldn’t have to analyze and respond to TPE’s!! To me, the Action Research Project promised to be much less intense, structured, and meticulous than PACT. We were told we would have more freedom regarding what we could choose to research, the methods we could use to acquire data and the direction in which we could lead our projects to go. Reading Chapter 3 of, “The Power of Questions,” by Beverly Falk and Megan Blumenreich helped me to narrow down all of the questions that I had in my head regarding who I wanted to be as a teacher and what I could do to help bring out the best in my students. First and foremost, I needed to turn to my current classroom, the students I am working with and their specific qualities, strengths and needs, in order to determine what my AR question would be. I took the advice of Falk and Blumenreich and began to go over the notes I took since starting my student teaching in Santee and continued to take notes of the things that excited me, bothered me and interested me. I am extremely passionate about math, science and children’s literature and originally thought that my AR project would center around one of these subjects. However, after looking through my notes, I noticed something quite unsettling about the students in my current class. While this group of students express a tremendous amount enthusiasm about their reading groups, math lessons, science lessons, and geography, every single student seems to avoid, ignore, or complain about creative writing. Why? Why would a group of bright, fun, energetic second graders (who love to talk and talk and talk) hate to write? Isn’t writing just talking on paper? That’s how I see it. But my students do not. Upon closer examination, I’ve noticed that while the students are given many different and creative lessons, resources, and activities regarding most of the subjects, writing is usually given like this: Here is a prompt. Write about it. Sometimes the prompts are related to certain aspects of the curriculum (i.e. Imagine you are a volcano about to erupt. Explain what is happening.). Sometimes the prompts are random. (i.e. Imagine you found a magic wand. What would you do?) . More often than not, students will write one or two sentences then say, “I’m done!” or “I can’t think of anything else!” Here is what I wonder—How can I get my students to be just as excited about writing than they are about the other subjects? Would having more of a direct approach to teaching creative writing help these students become more motivated about writing? What would happen if students were able to choose what they could write about? Would modeling different types of writing make the writing process easier for the students? These are the questions that I would like answered through my AR project. In order for my AR project question(s) to be meaningful to me as a teacher, it should not focus on what I want to learn about, but what will help my students become happier, more productive and well-rounded learners. There is currently no writing program in place in the classroom, which is an added benefit to me because that means I will truly have the opportunity to try certain writing activities and strategies that I have learned about in our methods and children’s literature courses. In terms of time, I could already see having at least 40 minutes, three times a week dedicated to writing. Now, I need to finalize my AR question(s) and map out how I will implement certain lessons and strategies in the classroom. I would love any advice, feedback or suggestions! "How lucky I am to have something that makes saying goodbye so hard." ~Carol Sobieski and Thomas Meehan, Annie Today was my last day at my practicum site for this semester. I was able to give the students an art lesson and it was a great way for us to enjoy our time together, talk and reminisce! I have enjoyed my time at this school and have learned so much from my cooperating teacher, the students, the grade level team, the resource teachers and the rest of the faculty members. I can't believe how fast the time flew by! For this blog, I would like to highlight some of my challenges and successes. CHALLENGES: As you know, the majority of the children in my classroom are identified as English Language Learners. One of the challenges that I faced this semester was constantly trying to find different ways to explain concepts to my students without relying on other students or my cooperating teacher to translate. I began bringing my lap top and smart phone to lessons so that I could show pictures of objects or places that the children were not familiar with or did not know the English word for. Paraphrasing, simplifying, using gestures and trying to relate new concepts to ideas that my students were familiar with was very difficult for me to continuously do. By the end of some days (ok, most days), I felt totally exhausted! However, seeing the look of understanding on my students’ faces and watching their confidence grow made everything worth it. Another challenge I faced was trying to find materials that my students could access and utilize. I ended up making a lot of my own worksheets, picture cards and flash cards for the students to use. While this was quite time consuming, I took pride in the fact that the students appreciated my efforts and gained valuable knowledge because of them. I do wish this school had formal and regular social studies and science programs for me to observe and participate in. I also wish I was able to observe project based lessons, the deeper integration of technology into the learning environment, and lessons in the arts. However, I am confident that I will be able to experience these lessons and practices at my next placement. SUCCESSES: This practicum site taught me the importance of using differentiated assessments for students. Just as different students learn best under different circumstances, students will also differ in the way they can most effectively communicate what they have learned. This is especially true of English Language Learners. I am fortunate in that my master teacher allowed me to put into practice the theories and strategies I have been learning this semester and offered me consistent and constructive feedback. She was a great source of knowledge and I felt comfortable going to her for support, guidance and ideas. I also learned that all children naturally want to learn and to improve. If a student is ‘misbehaving’ in class or acting disconnected from a lesson, it is probably because of internal factors (such as family issues, lack of sleep, unfulfilled basic needs) or the lesson I am giving is not engaging or meaningful. It is my job to know my students and give them an environment that is safe, encouraging, and engaging. The highlight of my experiences at this practicum site was getting to know students, families, and teachers from a variety of cultures and backgrounds. It made me realize that people from different cultures are more alike than they are different. Even though I could not communicate with my ELLs in their native language, I knew they felt my willingness to learn about them and appreciated that I acknowledged their culture and personal experiences. The more I learned about my students, the more I found that their families did the same things my family did and that their interests mirrored that of my own children. I truly believe that this is one of the reasons why I was able to establish such positive and meaningful relationships with the students in my class – I cared and I showed them that I cared. I will miss my students and my master teacher!!! Our goodbyes were bittersweet. However, I am looking forward to what is yet to come and the opportunity to learn new and exciting things! "Just keep swimming, swimming, swimming....." -Dori from Finding Nemo This past week has been filled to the brim with assignments and planning. By the end of the week, I will have taped all three learning activities for PACT, and I’m trying to figure out WHY I feel so anxious about this whole assignment! I am sure it has something to do with the unnatural feeling of being videotaped, so I’ll be glad when the filming is over and I won’t have to deal with the red light from the camera shining in my direction. In addition to working on PACT and giving daily math lessons, I have been teaching small groups during guided reading throughout this semester. Because my class does not have any formal history, geography or science lessons, I integrate basic geography, history and science concepts into our word study. For the past several lessons, I have been focusing on the five classes of vertebrates. My goal was for students to learn the definition of ‘vertebrate’ and be able to group vertebrates into the five classes based on characteristics such as body covering, respiration, reproduction, circulatory system and habitat. The lessons started off with familiarizing students with different types of animals and it was interesting to hear the misconceptions they had about certain species. Many students thought snakes were slimy and did not believe me when I told them that snakes have bones! (I showed them a picture of a python’s skeleton). Several students had trouble distinguishing the difference between fur and feathers. Other students surprised me with how much they knew about mammals (warm blooded, babies born alive, mother provides milk). Ideally, this unit would conclude with a trip to the San Diego Zoo so that children could see the animals through different eyes. Unfortunately, this will not be possible so I am trying to come up with a different culminating activity. I’m thinking maybe an art lesson (the students do not have any art instruction). Mona Brooks has a wonderful program that scaffolds drawing for children. She encourages artists (yes, we are ALL artists) to look at the environment and find straight lines, curved lines, angled lines, dots, and circles. She maintains that all drawings are made of these five basic elements of shape. I have given these guided drawing lessons before and the children really seem to love it. Perhaps I the kids could vote as to which class of vertebAny other suggestions? Good teaching must be slow enough so that it is not confusing, and fast enough so that it is not boring. -Sidney J. Harris I had a great Thanksgiving break, but I am definitely glad to be back in the classroom with the kids. The students were all excited to share what they did during their vacation and I anticipated this. However, I did not anticipate that they would be ready to dive right back into learning. My adult brain thought, “Okay, we just got back from a break. The kids may need to take some time to readjust to the classroom schedule and will probably need a refresher on the lessons they had before vacation.” I was wrong. When teaching math, my ‘review’ lesson failed to engage the students. Consequently, I could not keep their attention and found myself frustrated. Some students did not participate while others kept shouting the answers out. Some students interrupted my lesson with random comments while others repeatedly finished my sentences without invitation. At first, I thought, “Oh my goodness, the kids forgot their manners!” or “These kids are still on vacation mode!” It wasn’t until the end of the lesson, when a student said, “Ms. Alota, aren’t we going to learn anything new?” did I realize the main reason for their ‘misbehavior’ – they were bored. Now, while I know that activating prior knowledge is essential when presenting new lessons, I learned the hard way that perhaps spending an entire lesson reminding them of their prior knowledge could be unnecessary. And boring. And frustrating. For me AND for them! I’m sure there will be times when dedicating an entire lesson to review would be necessary. The first day back from Thanksgiving did not appear to be one of those times. In hindsight, I should have nixed my ‘review’ lesson and went straight into the next lesson where new material was being presented. Live and learn. The good news is that the next day, when I did present the new math lesson, the kids were ready, engaged, ready to go, and ready to learn. Moral of this story - Never underestimate kids. Among many other things, my student teaching experience has taught me the importance of having a plan AND having a backup plan. The students will truly dictate how a lesson will go and their reactions to a lesson is the BEST indicator as to whether or not it is successful. As teachers, we need to be consistently mindful of the feedback our students are giving us, whether it be direct or indirect, and adjust accordingly! "Follow the child’ does not mean let the child do what he wants. It is simply an acknowledgment that the child has his or her own pattern – that we need to take into account where the child is at, rather than impose our idea of what the child should learn now.” -Maria Montessori I had beautiful pictures of all the different types of plant life and animals that live in each region and was prepared to guide a discussion regarding climate and the natural resources in each region. During the first five minutes of the lesson, I knew that my lesson objectives had to change. The students have never had a whole class social studies lesson this year. The class has been covering some social studies topics during guided reading (citizenship, the election, branches of government, etc.). However, these lessons were given in small group rotations, with 20 minutes for each lesson, including transition time. Surface level learning took place, at best. More than half of this whole class lesson was devoted to defining and naming different continents, countries, states and cities. The students definitely had many different names of places stored in their brains: “Texas! Africa! Mexico! Tijuana! Los Angeles! Europe! Las Vegas!” But organizing them into categories was a whole other ballgame – Many of them thought a place was a place was a place. Seeing some of them connect that most places are within a place which is within a bigger place, and so on and so forth was pretty encouraging. One student said, “It’s like our classroom is in this school and the school is in our neighborhood and our neighborhood is in San Diego!” The students were eager to categorize the names of places that they have visited or knew of into continents, countries, states and cities. Who knew this would be such a fun topic to discuss? I was able to pull them back to the original lesson, focus on our STATE, California, and the different regions in the state. We did not go too much in depth after that, but I was able to show them visuals of the different regions and had them make observations of mountains, the central valley, the coast and the desert. They were also able to color code a map. What I learned from this experience is that teachers should plan careful thought out lessons – overplanning never hurt anyone! However, the teacher must continuously make formative assessments during a lesson and have that dictate instruction in terms of pacing, content and objectives. My beautiful pictures of big horn sheep, black bears, redwood trees, and California junipers have not gone to waste --- they will just be presented at a later time. "For a small child there is no division between playing and learning; between the things he or she does 'just for fun' and things that are 'educational.' The child learns while living and any part of living that is enjoyable is also play." Penelope Leach Update: Guided reading has been working as a good time to incorporate science and social studies lessons. Because the rotations during guided reading are merely twenty minutes (including transition time) only surface level learning takes place. However, it does give students exposure to common concepts, words and skills. This past week, the class worked on antonyms and synonyms. After the lesson, the students were given a worksheet with sentences. Each sentence had an underlined word. Students were tasked with finding a synonym and/or antonym of the underlined word. I noticed that when the students were completing their worksheets, they were expending a lot of energy decoding the words, comprehending the sentences and writing their responses. This seemed to take away from the lesson itself and many of them couldn’t remember what it meant if two words were antonyms or synonyms. In order to focus on the relationship between two words, I created word labels. I gave students some strategies to remember what “synonyms” are and what “antonyms” are. (Synonyms start with /s/ so these word mean the /s/ame. Antonyms and opposites - both words start with a vowel.) A student came up with another strategy to remember that antonyms are opposites. He said, “Opposite starts with the letter ‘o’ and antonyms start with the letter ‘a’. A lower case ‘a’ looks like an ‘o’ with a back.” I thought that was pretty clever! Once the students memorized the meaning of antonyms and synonyms, we played different games with the word cards in small groups (matching, Go Fish, Old Maid, etc.). I made sure that everyone could read the word cards and knew the meaning of each word. I gave reminders as needed. As students became familiar with the given words, I added new vocabulary words (damp, firm, energetic, etc.) This proved to be a successful activity as students were able to isolate the difficulty (finding relationships between word pairs) and improve vocabulary. The word cards allowed me to simplify or complicate games depending on the skill level of the children. However, I wonder if they will be able to transfer their knowledge of antonyms and synonyms to written work? I have also noticed that students have difficulty coming up with sentences to use a given word or new vocabulary words, so I am trying to come up with some fun games that address those needs. (Every time I say, "Today, I am going to teach you a GAME," the students immediately pay attention!) "I dream of men who take the next step instead of worrying about the next thousand steps." -Theodore Roosevelt I got the chance to be a “substitute teacher” two more days this week! It proved to be another great experience and I was able to try a few things to maximize time, reduce common interruptions and improve transitions. Every school day is strictly scheduled: After breakfast, the children have 1hour of English Language Development, 1 hour or Guided Reading, 1.5 hours of math, 1 hour lunch/recess, 1 hour of writing, half an hour of shared reading, and then closure/dismissal. Sometimes the children will have PE in the afternoon instead of writing. On collab days (which occurs once every two weeks), the children have pullouts that include PE, science, library and computers. My master teacher and I do our best to make the most of our time with the students for each content area. We try to create lessons that are organized, well planned and address the needs of most of the students. One thing I do notice is that a number of children often need to leave a lesson to go to the bathroom or get a drink of water. Some obviously need to go to the bathroom and others obviously don’t. Still, many of them go and do not come back for 10-15 minutes (the boys’ bathroom is on a totally different floor than the classroom). Consequently, they miss significant parts of the lesson and find it hard to catch up before the lesson ends. Another thing I notice is that when the children are dismissed to do their independent work, they do not know what to do and would ask me or my master teacher to repeat the instructions. No matter how well planned, organized, and relevant a lesson may be, if the student is not there to receive it, the lesson may as well not have existed. I know that sitting through 3.5 hours of lessons is demanding. So, I tried something in an effort to break up this time in doable segments. During my “substitute days” I gave the students a 5-7 minute break before moving onto the next subject. I told them, “You have five minutes to go to the bathroom and get a drink or take a break. In 5 minutes, I expect all of you to be ready for the next lesson.” While the children took care of their business, I played a game with those in the class that wanted to. I tried the “Yes/No” game – the kids loved it (Thank you Dr. Hansen). I would put words in the ‘yes’ area that had a commonality (i.e. states) and random words in the ‘no’ area. The kids had to guess what the commonality was. I found that the children would get their drinks and use the bathroom quickly so that they could participate in the game. I also found that there were ZERO interruptions during the lessons that had to do with going to the bathroom or getting a drink of water! To improve the children’s ability to remember instructions, I took the advice of Dr. Alexandrowicz. After giving instructions, I did NOT say, “Do you understand?” (Because the children ALWAYS say, “Yes.”) Instead, I asked a student to repeat the instructions. If he was missing a part or didn’t know them, I would ask someone else. Then, I went back to the first person to repeat the proper instructions. Sometimes, I would have to ask three or four children before the directions were repeated back to me, but that is much better than having six or seven children come up to me ten minutes into independent work time saying, “What do I do?” While these strategies seem to work for now, I know that they may not be practical all the time because of pull outs, schedule changes, and other factors. Still, I do consider these to be significant, albeit tiny, success :). My next goal: integrating social studies and science into the instructional day on a regular basis. . . Any suggestions? "This time, like all times, is a very good one, if we know what to do with it." -Ralph Waldo Emerson How fitting that next week’s reading has to do with time management. This week, I felt extremely productive in the classroom I am assisting in. I was the "substitute teacher" for two days and was able to incorporate some practices that we were taught in our Methods courses into the school day. The "real" substitute took notes as I taught and was extremely generous with positive feedback and compliments. She even said, “I am learning so many things from you!” That was certainly an unexpected and validating comment! The students were attentive and at the end of each day, several of them thanked me for teaching them. Because my master teacher is part of a group of educators who are working on the new Core Standards, there will be many more days where I will be given the opportunity to be "the teacher" as she attends these workshops. I was also visited by my supervising teacher this week. She was able to see my classroom, observe while I was teaching and offer encouraging words. Additionally, she clarified some questions that I had and helped me outline the rest of my observations. Despite all of these wonderful experiences, I am feeling a bit overwhelmed with upcoming assignments, case studies, readings, etc. Furthermore, I know that I am slacking in the department of wife, mother, and friend (I am currently writing this blog at a gymnastics meet in Orange County). I tried cutting down on my sleep to acquire a few extra hours--- that was a bad idea. I need to slow down and recenter and I am hopeful that acknowledging this challenge is the first step in recreating balance. Honestly, just writing about it makes me feel tons better. Dr. Inoue was right! I’m dedicating this blog to ALL the teachers, professors and educators who wish for more hours in their days but, instead, find creative, innovative ways to fit it all in. I admire you all for your service and dedication to your craft, and I hope that I will continue to learn from your experiences and ideas. “If you have an apple and I have an apple and we exchange apples then you and I will still each have one apple. But if you have an idea and I have an idea and we exchange these ideas, then each of us will have two ideas.” -George Bernard Shaw This past week, the students have been learning to identify nouns, verbs and adjectives in a sentence. Many students were having trouble differentiating between these parts of speech so during guided reading, I used an idea from Dr. Maria Montessori and presented certain symbols to represent different parts of speech. During guided reading, the students are grouped according to their needs and are given the opportunity to rotate to different learning centers to receive lessons in their small groups. My master teacher worked on reading comprehension with the students while I worked on word study. Two other centers consisted of independent reading and digital learning. For my activity I made sentence strips and separated the words that made the sentences. In the more advanced group, I mixed up the words and challenged the students to form a sentence with the words. I encouraged them to pay attention to punctuation and capitalization as they will offer clues. For other groups, I had the words already in order so they could concentrate on reading and/or decoding. Once the sentences were formed, I invited the students to symbolize the nouns, adjectives and verbs. I explained to them that the nouns were big black triangles because nouns are people, places and things. The black triangles remind me of the big pyramids that the ancient Egyptians built. Egyptians are people, Egypt is a place and pyramids are things. The adjectives are smaller blue triangles because adjectives describe nouns (same shape) and colors can be used to describe nouns. The verbs are represented by a red circle because the red circle reminds me of the sun. The sun gives energy to all living things and we use energy to do actions such as eating, running, dancing, etc. Verbs are action words. The children made several observations: They noticed that all sentences have at least one verb. They also noticed that adjectives usually come right before the noun(s). (The exceptions were sentences such as, “The girl is pretty.”). The children seemed to enjoy this activity and using the symbols to identify the parts of speech that they learned! Next week, I will be given the opportunity to be the “substitute” teacher for two days! My master teacher will be attending training regarding the new core standards on Wednesday and Thursday. I am excited for this challenge and will definitely write about it in my next blog! |
AuthorI am a wife, mother, military veteran, educator and current USD graduate student. Archives
May 2013
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