During our science content coaching cycle, we had to come up with a goal for ourselves. I've really been focusing on questioning throughout all my content coaching cycles because I really want to become strong in higher order thinking questions and scaffolding questions for my students. During this cycle, my focus was learning how to scaffold questions in case my students couldn't understand the higher order thinking question I would ask. This was a hard lesson to create because as a teacher you have to think about what do my students need to be able to answer in order to answer the higher order thinking question. As you read my lesson on stars, you will see throughout the lesson how I scaffolded questions for my students.
It is still unreal to me that graduation is right around the corner. As the year has been coming to an end, I've been lesson planning as much as possible to get as much practice in before I have my own classroom. Attached are the lessons I have taught this past week. The first lesson attached below is a science lesson. The students were just started a new unit on properties of stars and my engage was made through prezi. Through my prezi, I was able to make it appear as if the students were looking through a telescope and zooming in on the stars to make their observations. The students thoroughly enjoyed learning about stars through the Promethean board, the engage allowed them to visual what scientists see and make accurate observations. The results were that the classroom was richer because the students were more motivated, engaged, and willing to participate.
The next lesson I have attached is a lesson my collaborating teacher and I planned together. In this lesson, we taught our students how to see the relationship between stanzas in a poem. My students love figurative language and surprisingly pick up the language very well. They love poetry and they loved learning how stanzas build off of one another.
This week started the unit on time. I was very nervous to teach such a crucial life skill to my students, but as I planned the unit with my collaborating teacher, I felt more prepared for the concept. I designed this anchor chart below to introduce time to my students. Essential Question: How can I tell time to the minute precisely? To start off my lesson, the class and I went over the essential question. Then I went over what the parts of the clock were. We discussed the minute hand, the hour hand, and the seconds hand and how each play a role in telling time. After the parts of the clock were understood, I explained that 60 seconds equals a minute, 60 minutes equal and hour, 30 minutes is equal to a half hour, and 15 minutes is equal to a quarter of an hour. One of my students made the connection that a quarter hour is 15 minutes and that happens 4 times, just like 4 quarters equals a dollar. This comment lead to a great classroom discussion and I used it as a teachable moment. This discussion led right into the next part of the lesson. On the anchor chart above, the 4 clocks were completely blank to start my lesson. I went through with my students and showed them how the minute hand moves from 5 minutes, to 15 minutes, to 30 minutes, and a whole hour. This gave them a great visual and they were able to see with the colored shading how much 5 minutes is versus how much 30 minutes is. After the anchor chart engage, I passed out half sheets of paper and had my students work on filling in their own clocks as I modeled under the elmo. Here are the finished products below. As a class, we started off by shading one full rotation or 1 hour on our clock in a light color. My hour is represented in yellow. Then we shaded in a half hour, which is represented by the color orange. We continued by shading in red to represent a quarter of an hour and then finished the shading with 5 minute increments. Once our clocks were shaded, I taught the students how to jump from number to number and count the minutes of a clock. Once they understood the jumps, I went into further detail of how to tell time to the minute precisely. I explained how to count the 4 minutes in between each number as well. Once I felt my students were ready to move on, I used the clock below to give my students some practice. This clock is a magnet and is on our whiteboard. To give the students some practice with telling time, I would put the hour hand somewhere and the minute hand somewhere and ask them to write the time on their notebook paper. My CT and I would walk around and took anecdotal notes of which students were getting it, which students needed some support, and which students were completely off. After a few rounds of practice, we went into some word problems on a powerpoint and passed out individual clocks so the students could make the time themselves. Below is the individual clocks student had to practice during the word problems posted. Using so many different manipulatives and ways of learning about time, gave every learner's style a chance for success.
In my seminar class, we have gotten into CFG's, critical friends groups. What these groups are meant to do are encourage collaborative communication among teachers about teaching and learning. CFG's operate through protocols and norms. Their work is a valuable resource for teachers who want to form and strengthen their research. My CFG's protocol was called What? So what? Now What? In this protocol, I said What the problem was (I have a student who does not fit our classroom behavior system, what could I do to help this child's behavior improve?), my peers and I discussed So What will the plan of action will be and during this discussion, they told me to talk to the student about his likes and set up a behavior plan with the student. Next week, I will come back with follow and we will decided Now What, as in where do we go from there. I love the CFG's because I can open up about my struggles and get feedback on how to overcome any obstacles I may be having.
After meeting with my CFG, I felt inspired to truly get down to the nitty gritty and start a plan of action started right away. That afternoon when I returned to my classroom from my college classes, I had a brief discussion with my CT about my ideas and she thought what I had in mind was a great idea. I pulled the student aside and started the conversation off positively. I asked him what he likes and we wrote down his interests. These are what I would use for his rewards. He told me that he really liked sports, especially football, and dancing. I asked him if he would like Ms. Weber to teach him a dance and he loved that idea. I also told him that I have a alot of sports books I can bring in and we can read together because Ms. Weber loves football too. He thought this was all terrific. He was so happy! But I told him that we need to have a conversation about behavior. I told him that I had noticed that the classroom point system wasn't effective for him and that I wanted to help him. We started to discuss his behaviors and and actions and he told me that when he gets upset, he gets very angry and I told him that we could set up a behavior system to help him with his anger. He really liked the idea. I wanted to give him as much responsibility and control of his actions, so I allowed him to set up his own system. He came up with the system pictured above. Getting a smiley face and a sad face in each subject area and after lunch getting a reward for 3 smileys and at the end of the day getting a reward for 2 smileys. His new behavior plan he put into place got me thinking, what does it take to earn a smiley face and what would it take to earn a sad face. I had the student come up with his own ideas of what he would need to do to earn a smiley face and had him determine what behaviors would get him a sad face. The list he made is pictured above. In the smiley face column, the student listed calm down. When I saw the student right this, I asked him to list some ways to help calm himself down. He wrote: take deep breaths, count to ten, and sit in red chair (chair in classroom that faces away from other students). I told him that he could refer to this paper if he ever needed to remember how to calm down. I put his behavior system and checklist in a folder and titled it _____________'s Secret Folder. He felt special and like he could do this. Later that day, he did use one of the calming down strategies and I praised him for doing so. I thought this system could actually be effective. But.... I knew with this plan, the first time he got a sad face and couldn't earn his reward, there would be a meltdown, but I would have to follow through with this system because he created it. Day 1 of this new plan was put into effect on Friday. The student earned a smiley face for morning work, science, and when it came to math, he couldn't understand it, so he started banging his desk and pouting. After math was over, I walked over and asked him what he deserved, he said nothing. I put a sad face in that section and asked him what actions led me to put a sad face. He said nothing. He was furious. It hurt me to know that he couldn't get his reward, but when he does earn it, it will make the reward that much more meaningful. As our teacher inquiry class started, I was talking with a fellow classmate, Brianna Burt, about what her inquiry was on. Her inquiry got me thinking and made me wonder if this would work for my class. She has been timing her students to keep them focused and taking notes on a few students during each timed session. Starting at 10 minutes and decreasing the time over weeks as the students become more focused. Friday morning came and my students were given one math problem to solve for morning work. They had to look at a bar graph and read through 5 options and choose all that were true about the graph. To set up their math problems, my collaborating teachers, has the students draw their paper into 4 squares. QISC. Question, Information, Solve, Check. We have been noticing our students will write down the question and information and pretend to solve. Some will stare at the board, some will pretend to write, some will wait until the teacher does it. My collaborating teacher and I decided that this wasn't going to slide and when we came back from specials, we had them solve a similar problem again. This problem went better, but it took the students an half hour to solve. Then came time to work out of their iReady workbooks. This book helps students learn test taking skills and strategies to carry with them for future practices. The students have been learning to scan and after teaching the mini lesson, my collaborating teacher had the students read a small passage and answer 5 questions on the story. After a half hour, some students hadn't even figured out the first problem. We told them the key words in the question to scan for and some still had no motivation to do it. My collaborating teacher and I didn't know what to do. Same problem occurred during writing a theme during shared reading. We have about 4 students who have behavioral issues, several that stare off into space when we say get working, and many others who don't have the motivation. I thought back to the previous day, about Brianna's inquiry and how I could incorporate this into my classroom. I told my CT how Brianna started her students off with a certain amount of time, took anecdotal notes on a few students, noting whether they were playing with their shoes, talking, etc. Then after the times up, give the students a concrete grade. Brianna has been able to work the time down because her students have gotten more focused because of the timer. She is now taking notes such as only talked for a couple seconds, staying on task, etc. After discussing this with my CT, she loved the idea and told the students after the long weekend, we would be starting this new strategy because many of us don't like to get to work right away. We are going to create slips to tape onto the student's desk, having each area of the day: Morning work, Science, Math, iReady, Shared Reading, and Independent Reading. During morning work the students will have X amount of time to complete their work and after that time, we will grade their work. During math, there will be one problem we time, after every timed session, the students will receive a 3,2,1,0. After the week, the students will take home their slip and get their parents signature to show their guardian how focused they have been during their school work, but more importantly than that, the student will be able to monitor whether they are focusing and staying on task each day.
Every Monday morning from 7:30-8am, the residents discuss with our content coach what the week is going to look like, schedule times to plan and get observed, and talk about how our lessons went. Today Brian Flores, our literacy content coach, came and discussed this weeks plan. We discussed my writing lesson I was teaching today and I showed him the student's performance task. The students were going to be reading two texts, one being about having a pet bunny and one about having a pet dog. After reading each article, the students have to decide which pet is more challenging to take care of and have text evidence to support their opinion. I was sharing my lesson with Brian about how I was going to model two articles I compare and how I underlined reasons to support my opinion. He loved my plans but asked me who was my student's audience when writing their opinion piece. He restated his question by saying, who is their audience? I was puzzled and answered with because its the performance task? This really got me thinking, the students would have no motivation to write this essay. Brian explained to the residents that students need an audience or they are going to feel they are writing for no reason. He told us to think about college papers we had wrote about and when we knew a professor wasn't going to take their time to read it. He asked did we put 100% of our effort into our writing and we all answered no. So I thought about my class and who I could make their audience be. I explained to Brian that my students adore Mrs. Wulf and get so excited when she comes into our classroom. I told Tracy that my plan was she was deciding on either getting a pet rabbit or a pet dog, but couldn't decide which one and she wanted my students help. When I told my students this they were so excited to get the articles and start reading, they were underlining reasons of why each pet was difficult to take care of, then making their final opinions as to which pet would be more difficult to take care of. They were so excited to start writing their essays so Mrs. Wulf could read them. I had to tell them that today we were just reading our articles, underlining evidence, and picking which animal is more difficult and that tomorrow we would get to start our pre-plan and essay. The rest of the week will go as followed. I will model my pre-plan and how I would write my introduction, they the students will write their introduction. Then I will model my first middle paragraph, then the students will do their first middle paragraph. This process will continue and when we finish the conclusions, the students will be able to give their essays to Mrs. Wulf. I love how guided this process will be because my students are struggling with making a pre-plan and writing four paragraphs on their own, so my making our pre-plans together and going through each step of the writing process daily, the guidance and support will help their writing pieces in the future.
Growing up, we knew this day in the classroom as "Career Day", but today it is known as "The Great American Teach-In." During the Great American Teach In, people from the local community come into elementary school classrooms nationwide to talk about why education is important, what their career is all about and how children can grow up to be that profession. Yesterday we learned about an music engineer , a nurse, a businessman/black belt in taekwondo, USF flag twirlers, and a DJ. As a learner of the Great American Teach In, I learned the steps it takes to put a song together, what areas have the most germs in our daily lives and how to prevent germs as much as possible, the 5 components of taekwondo, and a few karate moves.
Although this day was fun for the students and I won't deny that I had fun as well, but when the school day was over, I asked myself, "Was today beneficial for the students?" "Did they learn anything" and my answer was no. As a teacher, we were given a schedule of each person's last name and what time they would be in our rooms from. That schedule was given to us the morning of the Great American Teach In. As a teacher, I would've loved to plan with the professions coming to my class and discuss their presentation, tak about classroom management ideas, and what words they would need to go over in order for the students to understand. For example, the music engineer kept referring to the studio and that panel with all those buttons and knobs and the students had no idea what he was talking about, the businessman/black belt was using words such as CPA of his company, integrity, spiritualism, and more for students to find their balance and they had no idea what he was talking about. I would've loved to plan with these speakers before they came to speak to my students so that my students could truly tap into their informal learning experience. The USF flag twirlers and DJ came after lunch. This was just a big party because the students learned nothing from the USF flag twirlers because they just sat and watched and with the DJ, they just danced to the music. It was heartbreaking to leave the Great American Teach In thinking that my students really did not take away anything from a day that could've been so beneficial with some planning, prepping, and organization. I've been taking the lead in science and math most everyday now and I've gotten so much better on my classroom management of whole group instruction. Today during my math lesson, I was up teaching while my CT sat at the back table with a small group who needed more support on this concept. Once my lesson had concluded, my CT had left me a sticky note of strengths and what I could work on and we went over it at the end of the day. She told me that my questioning, wait time, and whole group instruction has really improved. She loved the higher order thinking questions I was asking, the wait time I was allowing students during problems, when they were up at the board explaining their thinking, and that my whole group instruction has gotten better because I've bee working on my classroom management skills. After observing my lesson, she told me that when I would walk around and support students during each problem, I would have my back to my class and that students would start to goof off, she made me realize my positioning when I'm working to support a child. She showed me how to stand and to keep putting my head up to check that students are staying on task. I never realized this and it made me aware of how powerful positioning of a teacher can be. She also told me that I shouldn't spend too much time supporting one student at a time. She said if one student at the table has got it to have them teach it to their classmates so I can get around to monitoring as many students as possible. I spent too much time trying to get a couple students to understand why they were stuck and couldn't get to the rest of my students. These two things are what's she wants me working on for these next couple weeks. I love receiving feedback on my lessons from my CT, she is so wise and is helping me become a great teacher.
Well....I can check off substituting off my bucket list because today I was in my third grade classroom by myself for the first time. I could not sleep all night knowing I was the "teacher" tomorrow. I woke up early, like it was Christmas morning, reviewed my plans, looked over my lessons, I was so excited. I left my apartment 20 minutes earlier than I usually do, so I could get into the classroom and take it all in that I was the teacher. I walked in and stood at the front of the room thinking how amazing this career is. My students started to trickle following the bell and the day began. I had morning work prepared for the students to work on as they came in and made sure they worked on it silently because I believe how they act in the morning, sets the mood for the rest of the day. I told myself if I could keep morning work to level 0, I would have a great rest of the day. My students didn't seem to be bothered that my CT was out and acted as if I was just the other teacher, I felt extremely respected and it was a great feeling. After morning work, I called my students to the floor for our morning meeting and though this wasn't on my sub plans, morning meetings are apart of our daily classroom instruction and though they weren't on the plans for the day, I decided to have one because morning meetings are extremely valuable in my eyes. Morning meetings will be done every morning in my classroom because of the community they build within a classroom. My CT and I take this time to go over valuable lessons such as helpful vs. hurtful hands, how words are powerful, what being absent and tardy can do to our learning, etc. During my substituting today, I had the students set goals for attendance because my CT and I feel it is important for students to set their own goals to try to achieve, I told my students to write down how many times they wanted to be absent and tardy in the month of November and at the end of the month, we would see if they each met their goal in private conversations. I had a morning meeting that asked why coming to school is important and how being absent or tardy can affect our learning.
Following the morning meeting came Science and it went extremely well. I had the students finish taking notes on the properties of matter that they had started yesterday and since this wasn't going to take up the entire hour of science, I decided to have the students do a "Show What You Know". I told them in their science notebooks to pick any object and to tell me all of its properties. I modeled and drew an apple. I wrote its color, shape, texture, size and hardness. I then had the students write about their object and its properties. I had them write a paragraph that must have a topic sentence, transition words, and a conclusion sentence. They really enjoyed using what they have learned to draw an object of interest and write about it. After science was over, I had them put their science notebooks on my desk to be graded. Math came after science and it too went very well. I was teaching halving today and used a Promethean lesson to teach this concept. I had my students make GET charts for each problem I presented, G-what is my group E- what is my number in each group, T-what is my total? Then I had my students make arrays for each problem and write a matching division equation. After a few problems and having the students come up to the Promethean to make their array or write out their equation, I went back to my essential question and asked, "How is halving represented by division?" They noticed the problems they had been doing and were able to figure out that halving is like dividing by two. To help my students remember this concept, I made up a rhyme and hand gestures to go along with it. The students were respectful, engaged, and eager to learn for the whole duration of math. Then came MTSS, during this half hour in the computer lab, I walked around and made sure my students stayed on task and that they were clicking fastly through any lesson on the computer. After the computer lab, we came back to the classroom and took our ERT (vocabulary) test. I am always in charge of administering this test, so the students were use to the drill. T I was hoping after lunch, my students wouldn't be all wound up because usually they are able to go play and eat outside, but since I was a substitute, I wasn't able to take them outside for lunch. When lunch was over, I left the teacher's lounge, where I was grading papers and when I got my students, my three personality dominant boys all were upset by being yelled at by the lunch lady. As we walked back into the classroom, I thought quickly on my toes of how I was going to handle the situation, I had one boy crying and two boys visible angry about what had happened in the lunch room. When the students got back into class, I had everyone put their heads down. I was not going to start our performance task because I could see some of my students were flustered by the lunch chaos. I decided to address to the class that I'm not sure what happened today at lunch and that I didn't want to know because it is over with and we are going to move on from it. I said let's all just put our heads down on our desk, cool off, and enjoy a read aloud. I read the book, Pancakes for Supper, the students were extremely engaged, quiet, but their eyes could not be taken off the story I was telling. My read aloud was not only full of expression, but I was using body language, creating voices for characters, and truly making my students get lost in this book. It was the perfect transition they needed before focusing on taking an hour long performance task. After the read aloud, I explained thanked them for their behavior up until this point and how my CT will love to hear the report I'm going to give her if we can continue our good behavior through reading. I explained the performance task and how they were able to use their notes to compare to the essential message of two texts they had read. I was so pleased that for the full hour my students were working quietly and extremely hard to get this performance down to the best of their ability. I reminded them to use their topic sentences, transitions, and conclusion sentence. After the performance task was over, it was independent reading time and that is how the day went. I had no behavior issues, I did have to take a couple student's points, but they were minor issues. I was extremely pleased with how well my students behaved. The only problems really came during line procedures with students talking and trying to walk by their friends instead of in ABC order. To address the problem, I stopped my line and had to get firm with my students that we know the line procedures, we know where we stand and what our order is, and I waited until my students were in ABC order and quiet and facing forward. They got the idea very quickly and that was the end of that issue. Coming into today, I kept thinking to myself that I am not ready to be a teacher, but after today, I realized I'm a lot more prepared than I thought I was. Can you believe it's already November?! This school year is flying by! It's amazing to see how far I've come when I look back at past blog posts and see the growth I've made. It hit me that I'm making progress this week when my CT asked me to come up with next week's science plans and earlier this year, it would've taken me hours to plan one lesson, but I was able to put these lessons together in 20 minutes because of the 5E lesson template my science teacher, Jeni Davis, gave us in class. I can't wait for science next week and see how it all goes. These are my plans for next week:
Monday: STEM FAIR Tuesday and Wednesday: ( this is the lesson I planned around the 5E model and will be teaching for my content coaching cycle) Engage: Start by putting the students into groups of 4. Then once they are in their groups, explain that you will be giving each group a baggie of objects and you want them to sort these objects based on their similarities. After every group has sorted their objects (some may have sorted by color, shape, size, weight, etc.), allow the students to walk around and observe and take notes on how other groups sorted their objects. Tell students that science is social and that scientists learn from each other. Have a quick discussion about what the students observed between groups- similarities and differences. Ask for some examples of properties from groups. Explore: Teach vocabulary words based off what they just did. The words- properties and classify Tell students they will be working with their group members to fill out a worksheet on the objects in their baggie. Explain that this worksheet will help them for the next activity they will be doing and they must make sure their information is accurate. Explain: After the worksheet is filled out, have students classify their objects into new groups based on a different property. Have a few groups share how they reclassified their objects and why. Be sure they use their chart as evidence (NOS- Science demands evidence) Extend: Ask- How else can we classify objects by their properties? We know about color, shape, texture, hardness, size, etc. **Get students to think about properties such as ability to float, weight, type of material (answers will vary) Evaluate: In Science Journal- Pick 3 objects in the classroom and explain what property you can use to classify them in a group. Thursday: Have students use their books to take notes on each property. Pages 194-203 Friday: Make a foldable on properties of objects. (Depending on your class, you may want to pre-make quick foldables for your students to fill out) The foldable should have six flaps consisting of the property of object, definition, and example. Size: How tall or wide something is Example: Tall- skyscraper Wide- whiteboard Color: Property you observe with your sense of sight Example: blue, green, red, yellow Shape: The external form of something or the outline of a figure Example: round, square, oval, rectangle Texture: Describes the surface of an object Example: fuzzy, rough, bumpy, smooth Length: How long something is Example: pencil- 8 inches long Volume: The amount of space an object takes up Example: milk jug- 1 gallon |