Student Teaching Weekly Log Week: 5

1. How did you spend your time this week? What responsibilities did you have?

This week, I taught 5-6 lessons each day. I was responsible for teaching both sections of kindergarten, one of 1st, one of 2nd, one of 5th, and one of 4th. I only taught the 4th grade section for one day. That day, one of our 4th graders was having some problems, so my mentor teacher asked me to take over the class while she helped that student. I also planned all of the lessons for kindergarten, and helped plan the lessons for the other grades.

2. What were your most satisfying experiences? What were your most challenging

experiences? I really enjoyed working with the kindergarteners this week. I read stories, and

played games with them, while focusing our activities on their sight words and the alphabet. I learned that I have some students who know most/all of their letters, but many students who know only a handful of letters. I don’t think any of my kiddos have any real understanding of letter-sound correspondence, and a lot of them do not recognize their lowercase letters. Going into student teaching, I was nervous about working with kindergarten ELLs. I have found, however, that they are some of my favorite students to work with. I feel like I am able to be so much more creative when teaching kindergarten than I can with 5th grade (I do really enjoy my 5th graders, though!).

One particularly satisfying lesson was a quick 1-on-1 with a kindergarten boy. His lowercase “e”s, which he was copying from a word card, looked far more like lowercase “a”s. I took the time to tell him that he was doing a really good job, and would he like to learn something to help him get even better? He said yes, so I wrote a little “e” on his white board. I told him to try to copy the “e” 3 times, making as look as much like mine as he could. He complied, and his third “e” was just about perfect. He rewrote the “e”s in the words he was copying, making each more perfectly than the last! It was really gratifying to see how a simple lesson like that could produce such results.

By far my most challenging group is my second 1st grade section. There are three boys in this group that play off each other and can get pretty loud/crazy. None of these boys are bad kids – far from it – they just need a bit longer to (re)learn the expectations. One of them in particular has extenuating circumstances at home: I learned that in his culture, children are meant to be seen and not heard. This has understandably caused him some confusion about what he is supposed to be doing at school. It seems to me that his blurting can be easily attributed – at least in part – to his life at home, where he is rarely allowed to express himself. The struggle I have with this group is not that they do not want to learn. It is more that they are learning so much, and making so many connections, that they are not yet able to contain their excitement to share. While this causes some management problems, I think this group will continue to become easier to manage as the school year progresses.

3. What are the plans for the upcoming week?

This coming week, I will be teaching bell-to-bell. Each day, I will have two sections each of K-2 and one of 4-5, as well as a newcomer group. Wednesdays, I will also have on section of 3rd graders. I am responsible for planning instruction for all of these lessons, though my mentor teacher is helping me with this.

Moving forward, I need to continue to focus on expectations, while not skimping on the educational content. My mentor teacher keeps telling me that reinforcing

expectations/routines/procedures at the start of the year is what makes the rest of the year run smoothly. This definitely makes sense…

Student Teaching Weekly Log

Week: 5

1. How did you spend your time this week? What responsibilities did you have? This week I taught all sections bell-to-bell. I had some help with lesson planning,

but was responsible for the majority of the planning as well.

2. What were your most satisfying experiences? What were your most challenging experiences?

On Wednesday, I taught my 5th graders a lesson on homonyms – multiple meaning words. I gave some examples of homonyms, and had the students partner up to think of the multiple meanings of a few given words (can, leaves, and squash). Then I gave each pair of students a set of cards; each card had a match in the pile. The cards each had one meaning of a homonym, and the goal was for the students to find both meanings for each word. The catch: the target homonyms were not given to the students – they had to generate them for themselves. (An example of a matching pair would be: the sound a dog makes, and the outer covering of a tree). The students struggled with this task, so I made an example match, then had the students help me make a match. After that, the students were really involved in the task. It seemed to me that most of the kids ended up with a pretty good grasp of what a homonym is, and they also enjoyed the lesson.

I did end up having to move a couple of students’ clips down this week. In one situation, I was showing the class an illustration from a story – the picture was of a mother and daughter, possibly of Asian decent. A 1st grader pulled up the outer corners of his eyes and said, “Asian eyes!” I had him move his clip down, and explained to him that what he had done was not appropriate and why. Another student whose clip I had to move was also a 1st grader. The whole class was being noisy and running up the stairs, so I made them practice the stairs (3+ times) until they could get it right. Finally, it was just this one student who continued to be disruptive. I told him that he needed to make some better choices, or he would have to move his clip down. Throughout the whole lesson, this student was continuously blurting and bothering other students, so I had him move his clip. On the way back downstairs, I told him that I wasn’t mad at him, he just needed to think about how he could make better decisions next time. The third student whose clip had to be moved was similarly disruptive throughout the lesson. He is a 2nd grader, and has been at Howe Elementary since kindergarten. He knows all the hallway expectations, as well as Mrs. Kaiser’s expectations, but he tends to choose not to follow them…

I try to give each class a fresh start. If I have a really trying session with one group, I do my best to reset myself before getting the next group. It seems that that is the only fair thing to do. It is especially hard to reset my mood between the two 1st grade sessions, because there are identical twin boys, on in each group (they even dress identically) who really try my patience. I have to remind myself that they are individuals – not the same child, and each deserves to have me at my best. This can be quite difficult, however, because it seems like one picks up where the other left off! That said, it is only fair for me to give each of these boys the respect of treating them as individuals, which I try my hardest to do.

3. What are the plans for the upcoming week?

This week, I will be teaching all sections bell-to-bell, as well as planning all of the lessons (with some assistance from my mentor teacher). I think that the 2nd grade student who chooses not to follow the expectations is desperate for attention. He tends to act out in most class sessions regardless of who is teaching. When I had him move his clip, I made sure to tell him that I was not angry with him; he just needed to make some better choices in the hallway and the classroom.

The 1st grader whose clip I moved (one of the aforementioned twins) is one who really tests me. He is a great kid, but he cannot contain his energy and is constantly blurting out. We have been over the expectations for appropriate sharing in class (many times) but I don’t think he can help himself. I’m trying to think of a way to get him to raise his hand, but so far all I have come up with is continuing to reinforce the expectations and to call on him/praise him when he does raise his hand.

Student Teaching Weekly Log Week: 7

1. How did you spend your time this week? What responsibilities did you have?

This past week, I taught bell-to-bell. I also planned for each lesson (with assistance from my mentor teacher).

2. What were your most satisfying experiences? What were your most challenging experiences? The most satisfying experience I had last week was when my 1st graders understood the ideas of characters, settings, and events. I had been teaching this concept for probably two weeks, and decided to assess on Thursday. Well, it quickly became clear that the task I had set for students was too difficult. I had talked with my mentor teacher and we had decided to see if the kids could read and categorize short phrases from a story I had read to the class. The reading proved to be too much, so with the second group, I read the phrases to the students. Still, the students did not understand the concept well enough to complete the task, so on Friday I retaught. I used more visuals and gestures the second time around, and by the end of the lesson, the students seemed to have the ideas down. I had a very frustrating time with one of my groups of second graders. They were supposed to be reading a nonfiction text and pulling out details, but they could not/would not settle down, so I ended up having to confiscate the books and read to them instead. Fortunately, my next group was much better behaved…

3. What are the plans for the upcoming week?

I am teaching bell-to-bell again until Wednesday, which is my last day. This coming week I will be focusing on management with a couple of my groups – first grade yellow group and second grade blue group. These groups continue to test my limits, and would likely benefit from some reinforcement of the routines/procedures in our room. With my first graders, I think I should go over the character/setting/event concept to be sure that they fully understand it and can generalize the skill. My 1st grade twins are still blurting, but it seems to be less frequent. I think that with continued reinforcement of the expectations, the blurting will continue to decrease in frequency.