Engineering

This past week we had our last lesson at Brigham Elementary School. The same small group we had earlier in the year taught an engineering lesson to a very small group of Kindergarteners. We focused on design solutions and how different materials and different styles of ships could float on the water. We had a table full of recycled objects and let the kids pick what they wanted to use and where they wanted to put it.

I think our lesson went well overall. It was hard to keep control of the student because we only had four students and we had more teachers than that. It just made the lesson seem awkward. It is hard enough co-teaching with one other person but having five teachers is really hard to balance. Also there were a lot of groups in one classroom and the other groups were distracting the students in our group.

I think the best part of our lesson was how fun it was. The kids absolutely loved making their boats. They got to be creative and have fun. Also they loved getting to test them out in water. The thumbs up thumbs down worked really well. We had them guess if the boat was going to float or sink but putting their thumbs up or down. This was a great way to informally assess their understanding. There were also a couple good teaching moments throughout the lesson that allowed us to further their understanding. At one point a paper towel tube was in the water and it started to get wet. The boat sunk because it wasn’t put together properly and it heavier on the top. When we pulled it up we asked the kids why the paper towel tube looked like that. We had a discussion about how making a good boat had to do with the materials that we used.

My main goal for this year was to learn how to challenge English Language Learning students and find ways to challenge them in the classroom. I found this hard to accomplish because reflecting back on all the lessons I was only really able to challenge the students when I was the lead teacher of the lesson. I wrote in my last reflection that I felt that I had accomplished my goals but now looking back I'm not so sure. I was lucky to teach one of our last weeks in the classroom. I think that gave me time to become familiar with the classroom. I was also grateful to see how other students were doing it and be able to change my plans based on those observations. I think that I was on the right track to making progress. I think there were a couple things that would have benefited my progress towards my goals. I think only being in the classroom a very short amount of time in very far separated periods hindered us from really getting to know the students. Also we only got to be a part of the planning and preparation for the one week. I know this made the most sense for the class but I feel like it made the experiences less beneficial for all.

Exceeds:
Commented on two classmate's blogs.

Seasons and Weather

This past week Saralyn and I taught the Kindergarten class a lesson about seasons and weather. We focused on the four seasons and what kind of clothes we wear in each seasons. We also talked about what trees look like during that season. Overall I think our lesson went really well. The kids seemed engaged and we could tell by the formative and summative assessment that they were retaining the information.

I think our biggest strength was the ELL pieces we incorporated. Being in the classroom every other week we have gotten to see many different lessons. We thought that the lessons could have used a little more accommodations for the ELL students in the classroom. We decided that we would make sure that the students were set up to exceed in the lesson. We started by incorporating their native language into the lesson. We began the lesson by playing a song about the season in Spanish. You could tell the kids really loved it. Jennifer was dancing the whole time and she kept looking up at us and saying, “This Spanish? This Spanish?” It was cute to see her recognize her native language and get excited about it. We also had another student who asked if we could play it again. They really responded well to that video. We also had picture cards with an image of a tree in that season, the season in English, and the season in Spanish. We thought these cards would be very helpful to the students since it incorporated a visual and both languages. This was also helpful to the assistant teachers so they had the Spanish translation for the season. Since one of the big parts of our lesson was being able to communicate and draw different articles of clothing we included a vocab sheet. Each group had a laminated vocabulary sheet that included many different pictures of clothing with their English word. We were hoping that this sheet would help by giving the students some ideas for what they could draw. We were also using it as a tool incase the children did not know the English word for the clothing they could use the sheet to point to it so the teacher could help them learn the word. Another accommodation we made was to allow the students to draw what their person would wear. This alleviated some of the stress of having to rely solely on their ability to vocalize what they are thinking. I think it was these pieces that made our lesson as successful as it was.

There were a couple aspects of our lesson that I wish were stronger. Right in the beginning we asked the students if they could name the four seasons. It took a lot of encouraging for the students to even name one and most of the time they just kept saying the weather and not the season. Originally our lesson was a follow up to the first seasons and weather lesson. We were hoping to build off of their lesson by only going over the seasons and not explicitly teaching them. Even with that aside, I was surprised by their limited knowledge of the four seasons. I wish that we would have known that from the beginning so we could have restructured our lesson to allow for more time of explicit teaching of the four seasons. Unfortunately there really was no way of us knowing that. We had our lesson timed out and we did not allot any time to explicit teaching of the seasons. We were able to quickly review them and with the song I think the students ended up with a better understanding of the four seasons. One way this could be improved would be to take an initial assessment to see what the students already know and how we could build on their previous knowledge. If we were their everyday teachers that knowledge would be easier to gather but only being in the classroom ever other week made it difficult to know our students academic ability. Another thing we could have done would have been to ask their teacher if she knew what kind of knowledge they have on the four seasons.

Another thing I wish we had done differently was focus on either the clothing or the trees. Going through the stations in only four minutes really made it difficult for the assistant teachers to get to the trees and the clothing and in some cases they did not get to one. If we would have focused on just one it would not have been so rushed. Originally each group was going to be in charge of one season and that allowed for enough time to focus on each of the different aspects. We ended of switching it to shorter stations that all the kids were rotated through but we did not take the shorter time into account when looking at all the pieces they were required to do. One way to make sure this does not happen again is to just be very aware of time management. Before each lesson the teacher should review how long each piece should take. There should also be extra room allotted for any unforeseen circumstances like the students not being as familiar with the topic as we anticipated. This extra caution with time management could easily solve any problems with feeling like the students are being rushed through the project or having to skip pieces.

Overall I was very proud of our lesson and I think we did a good job of working with the ELL population, which was the goal from the very beginning. My personal goal was to learn how to challenge the students and engage them. I think I was able to accomplish these goals in my lesson. I was able to challenge students because anytime I asked a student a question I tried to find a follow up question to really make them analyze their answer. I also feel that we kept all the students engaged because we tied in elements of their native language so every student felt comfortable participating.

Exceeds:

1. Planning- Extra resources

2. Teaching- Laminated materials and gave them to the teacher after the lesson

3. Reflection- Responded to two classmates 

Clinical Science Lesson

This past Wednesday I completed my science lesson in my clinical placement. I am in a First Grade classroom at Benjamin Elementary School. I have been a little disappointed by how my cooperating teacher conducts science. I absolutely love my cooperating teacher and think she does an amazing job in the classroom. However, when it comes to science she kind of drops the ball. She scheduled science at the end of the day, which is when the children are the most out of control. That doesn’t bother me too much because I think that if done correctly science can be a time when children are very engaged. My biggest problem with having science at the end of the day is that it often gets shortened or completely canceled if another subject takes up too much time. When I told her how much I love teaching science she decided to let me create the next unit, which was centered on animal adaptations and life cycles. She told me to plan eight lessons for two weeks. I put so much work into the lessons and they often were cut short or canceled and bumped to the next day. I think when I have my own classroom I will make sure I respect the schedule more to ensure that no subject gets less attention.

On the day of my lesson I was worried that I would get less than the already short 25 minutes for science. Unfortunately I was right. We started eight minutes late because math took too long. Also my cooperating teacher had not finished the lesson from the day before and I did not want to leave that lesson without closure so I had to take the first couple minutes to wrap it up. I was left with so many great pieces and not nearly enough time to finish them. We ended up not having time for the final piece of the lesson, the evaluation. My cooperating teacher told me she would carry it over into the next day. This also threw me off because I was so worried about time that I was not fully engaged in the lesson. Aside from that, my cooperating teacher and I agree that the lesson went very well and I had many strengths.

One of the things I did well on was giving the students guidelines so they knew exactly how to act. Every time there was a transition I made sure all the directions were clear before they started moving; where they were going, what their voice level should be at, and what they were doing when they got there. They responded well to the clear directions. I was also able to praise one student with a ‘Bear Buck’ for following directions. Another thing my cooperating teacher noticed that I did well was redirecting students to reinforce our classroom rules. One boy called out in the middle of class, which is disruptive, but I hate correcting it because he usually has something very wise to say. However I know that I need to be consistent with all of my students so I told him that if he had something to say he needed to raise his had because I was still talking. There is another student who gets easily distracted and was playing with something at her desk. I did not want to make a big deal out of it so I called her name to get her attention and held up a hand to show her to stop what she was doing. This nonverbal redirection was good to use with her because she gets in trouble so frequently she does not need to be called out verbally every time. Additionally my cooperating teacher noted that the lesson got the children up and moving which is great after sitting still for a read aloud. I also did this because they have so much energy at the end of the day. During that time I was very worried because each group was working together and I was not able to facilitate every group. I thought it was chaotic but they did what they needed to do. I told my cooperating teacher after the lesson was over that I felt that it was a little chaotic and she completely disagreed with me. She was the perfect outside opinion to tell me that it went better than I thought.

There were a couple areas for improvement that my cooperating teacher noted. The book we read on the carpet was about food chains and food webs but we were only learning about food chains. I knew there wouldn’t be enough time to cover both. While on the carpet one of the boys asked what a food web was. I told him that we would find out in the book, which I knew was not true because we were not going to read that far into the book. I think I responded this way because I was still worried about time. Then when I got to the stopping part in the book I never addressed the boy’s question about food webs. My cooperating teacher suggested that I could have just showed him the page in the book and gave a brief description or told him he could read the rest during Read to Self time. I did not show him the page because I knew the read aloud could not take up any more time. I thought for a brief second of telling the students the book would be put in the “Books We’ve Read” bin so they could read it later but I did not want to make that call without talking to my cooperating teacher first. In order to make sure that does not happen again I will have to make a conscious effort to engage the students’ curiosity when it comes up. Another area for improvement was that during one of the attention getters the students did not respond to it as well as they should. Instead of doing it again I just kept moving with the lesson. I need to make sure that I am reinforcing the class rules and attention getter is one of those rules. Now every time I do the attention getter I wait to see if the response is good enough to keep going. 

Overall I was very proud of my science lesson. I love teaching science and I know that when I have my own classroom I will make sure that every lesson gets the time it deserves. As I continue working in this placement I hope to learn to be more flexible and continue to make science fun and engaging.

Clinical Lesson Exceeds: 

I made the materials durable by laminating them and gave the to my cooperating teacher for her to use in future years.

I also added additional resources to the lesson plan.

Preschool

This past week I was in the preschool classroom in Brigham elementary. This was the first week I had ever been in the preschool classroom and it was hard to engage the students. I feel like a lot of the time the students didn’t know how to express themselves. I don’t know if it was just the questions they were being asked or if this was a regular occurrence. My station was supposed to talk with the students about what different instruments sounded like. Some times the students didn’t respond and other times the students gave an answer that didn’t make sense. Since it was just my first experience with these kids I am not sure if they behave like this all the time or if it was just the nature of my questions. In order to make it easier for the students I wonder if I should have given them more options for answers. Maybe the question what does it sound like was too vague and the students didn’t really understand how they were supposed to answer. One student said every instrument sounded like a truck. I think their vocabulary just is not developed enough to express what they are thinking.

My goal in working with bilingual students was to find ways to engage them and challenge them in the classroom.  One step towards doing this is getting to know the students and see how they engage in the classroom. Since this was my first experience with the preschoolers I do no think I know them well enough to find ways to engage and challenge them but I was able to see how engaged they were in the classroom. One little boy in particular was really quiet in our small group so I asked him in Spanish if he spoke Spanish and he nodded. I asked his name but he was so quiet I could not hear him. I tried asking him the questions in Spanish and even though he did respond I could not hear a word he said. As I kept asking him I kept scooting closer and closer to try and hear him but I was unsuccessful. I felt bad that he wasn’t as engaged as the other students in the conversation. However, he did like playing the instruments and was smiling while doing it. But when it came to the speaking he clammed up and was not participating. I think it would have been nice to find some other way to allow the ELL students to communicate other than vocally. Maybe having some pictures he could have pointed to or trying to use yes or no questions would have made it easier for him to contribute.

Even though I felt that I was unable to challenge or engage this specific student I think I learned a lot from this experience. I learned that you need to give all students different ways they can participate and not limit it to just vocalization. Students still need to work on areas they struggle with but helping them to feel successful in the classroom is also important.

Exceeds: Responded to two classmates Blogs

Living or Nonliving

This past week my group worked in the Kindergarten classroom at Brigham Elementary. We focused on deciding what is living and nonliving. My goal in working with the Bilingual students at Brigham is to find ways to challenge them. I also wanted to find ways to engage them in the activities. Additionally I wanted to become better at accommodating for them in the lessons. I feel like it has been hard to accomplish these goals or even gage how I am progressing because the activity from last week was just handed to me. I was not involved in the creating of it and therefore I was unable to make intentional accommodations to the lesson.  The only accommodations I was able to make were on the spot changes I felt necessary to make the lesson successful. I think I was able to accommodate when we were looking at the picture cards and I was aware of the language barrier and I tried to accommodate for it whenever possible. For some of the pictures the students didn’t know the proper term for the animal or object and I was able to give them simple terms that were more on their level. One of the pictures was of a dove and one student called it a chicken. Instead of talking about the dove we just called it a bird. This was helpful because adding a word last minute to their vocabulary might cause confusion. Additionally since our target is Science I wanted to let them focus on that and not be hindered by the literacy complication.

I wanted to challenge the students and I feel like I wasn’t able to do that with the activity given. However, I do feel that I was able to engage them in the activity. In our small group we took turns going around the circle deciding if the card was living or nonliving. I made sure that every student was getting a turn. Some students at the table were more talkative than others and I made sure the waited their turn and let their classmates participate. When I’ve been in a bilingual class before I’ve noticed that some students are too shy to participate and they get brushed under the rug. That was the justification for my goal because I saw that happen and I wanted to learn how to keep everyone engaged. When I do my lesson I will make sure there are elements where all students will be able to participate. I will also make sure that all students are encouraged to participate.

One of my steps to accomplish these goals is to get to know the students. Unfortunately the limited time we’ve had with these students has prohibited me from gaining the understanding I need to tailor my lesson to their needs. I think it would be more successful if every week we were able to work with the same small group of kids. That way we would build relationships with the students and learn more of their needs. 

Exceeds: Responded to two peer's blogs

First Week at Brigham

This past week was my first week in a Brigham elementary classroom. My group was in the Kindergarten classroom for thirty minutes. In that time we did five stations on the five senses. We started with an introduction, which included a five senses song. Then we broke the students into groups and sent them through four-minute rotations. There was a station for each sense. In the hearing station they listened to different recordings on an iPhone and had to determine what they were. In the seeing station they looked at different objects and talked about the colors. In the touching station they squeezed balloons filled with different materials and tried to decide what was in them. In the smelling station they smelled different materials in paper bags and talked about what they thought they were. In the tasting station they tasted two candies and talked about the characteristics of each. Finally we brought it back together on the carpet and talked about what we did at each station. We talked a little more about why we use our five senses and how it helps us in the real world. We ended by practicing our song a couple more times.

I was in charge of the closing. My only plan was to review all the stations with the kids and review the song. I think the closing went pretty well. The children were getting antsy on the carpet but it wasn’t that difficult to bring it all together. They were also not that engaged in the song and I felt it was easier to practice the order of the pointing before we jumped into the song.

Looking back there were a couple things I would have done differently and I wished my group had done differently. I think one of the most important things is to spend a lot of time planning. Being intentional with everything done in the classroom can insure that the students’ needs are met. For the song I wish I had translated it into Spanish. I thought about it last minute and debated trying to translate it on the spot but I was worried I would make a mistake and embarrass myself. I also wish the visuals we had were bigger so the students could have seen them and used them as a reference. In the groups I think it would have been good to have different pictures of things to help the children understand better. Like in the smelling station one of the bags was perfume and if the students didn’t know that word they might have been very confused. Having a picture to pull out to help them visualize it would have been very helpful. Also in the listening station they played a piano and some of the children might not have been familiar with that instrument. I even saw one student pretending to play the piano but he did not have the vocabulary to express the word. Having the picture could have helped him participate.

My goal was all about keeping the students engaged and challenged throughout the lesson. I think this could have been accomplished more if I would have included their native language of Spanish whenever possible. Also the use of visuals would have insured that every student could participate despite their language ability.

Exceeds:

This video includes a lot of visuals when presenting the words in English which would have been very helpful during the lesson.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=o0cWhNPiZZI 

This is a bilingual video that would have been a great resource.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6A4qcu-Tc4Y

This image could have been printed out and posted at each center and also at the front of the room for the song.

My Science Autobiography

Hi! My name is Andrea Siefert and I am from West Chicago, Illinois. Originally I didn't think I had strong memories of my science experiences growing up but reflecting back has helped me to recall a lot of great memories of my science education. One of my favorite science memories is from elementary school when every year a science group would come in and do really cool experiments for all the grades. I remember that it was an anticipated day for all the students. One of the grades got to watch dry ice experiments. They put different things in the dry ice and we watched the changes. It froze a banana but when a balloon was put in it shrunk because the air condensed. Another grade talked about static electricity and did an experiment with tin plates and rabbit fur. One year in school we had a bug project which included catching, killing, pinning, and labeling bugs in a presentation. That was one of my worst science memories and I remember having to rely on my brothers and mom for a lot of the project. My mom was also very big into nature. In fifth grade one of the projects was making a leaf collection which was such an anticipated experience for my mom. She got to help four children make their projects and even ended up making one of her own one year because she loved it so much. We had to collect and label different leaves and put them together in a binder. I remember having to search forever through websites and books to find exactly what leaf I had found. Into high school I discovered my love for diving deeper into the main areas of science. Biology was my favorite because I had an awesome teacher who taught us a lot of things from genetics to ecosystems to cells. I loved learning about the world around me. Physics also helped me put a lot of things into perspective about how and why things work the way that they do. Informally my science exposure was based in nature. My siblings and I loved playing outside and collecting different plants and pretending they were food or medicine. My brothers also loved taunting me with bugs which I absolutely despised.  Looking back I didn't even realize how much my past science experiences influenced my love for teaching science.

Science is my favorite subject to teach. My philosophy on teaching science is to make room for it because it will be taught in my classroom and I won't let it be pushed aside. With the push for large blocks of core subjects, science and social studies frequently get very limited time during the week. In my PDS placement they only have a half hour every day to alternate science and social studies. Then we were told that that is also the time kids would be pulled out for intervention. Since most of this will be out of my control as a teacher I will have to integrate science into other subjects. Also science should be something very engaging for students. Science can be so boring if the work is based on a textbook. I believe science should be about letting the children have fun while actively exploring different things.

I believe my culture did have an impact on my learning of science. I am Christian and I attended a private Christian school from Kindergarten to 8th grade. I was only taught creationism growing up. I remember getting very limited information about other beliefs of how the world was created. We also got a skewed version of evolution. I don't think this had a lasting impact however because in my high school biology class we learned a lot about evolution and I was very open to learning and respecting different ideas.

I think that my background in education and learning science will only further my drive to make science a fun and necessary subject in my future classroom. I can be the person that gives my students something to look forward to like we did in grade school every year. Reflecting on my past science experiences I think I will want to teach as I was taught. I will want to give my students as many opportunities to explore and discover as I had as a child. I remember having ample time devoted to science and I think that background will help me push to get science recognized as a valued subject in my classroom.

Exceeds:
Every Thursday at Bent last semester I taught a science lesson in English for a mix of kids from all the second grade classes. My teacher didn't enjoy teaching science and was glad to turn the reigns over to me. I did many lessons but my favorite was a dinosaur lesson I did using artifacts from Milner Library. Milner has this great resource in the Teaching Materials Center called Educational Kits. Click the link to learn more about the Kits Milner has to offer. This is a great resource to take advantage of while you are a student. They have dozens of collections based on many history and science topics that you can check out from the library. I checked out the dinosaur exhibit and brought real fossils for the children to see. I also brought in resources for the children to do their own research on a specific dinosaur that they shared with the class. They were mesmerized by my materials and I was titled the "Cool New Science Teacher".