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