Review for the Chapter 4 Test!

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The Spanish Colonies

The Virginia Colonies

The Plymouth Colonies

 The French & Dutch Colonies

Welcome to Winter

Week 2 began with a luxurious 3-day weekend for the Martin Luther King, Jr. holiday.  But then there were delays and a cancellation.  All of which are fine.  Except that it does pose challenges to completing units of lessons.  The disjuncture brought by days absent from the work hinder learning and simple remembering.  It takes away the cohesion of a cohesive unit.  It is true that students who miss more school have a harder time learning the content than students who are present consistently - the lessons really do flow from one to the next.  Unfortunately the winter weather has broken carefully laid plays into choppy games of catch-up, review, and often hurried attempts at pushing through the final material.  At least that is what I typically feel when faced with several snow days or multiple student absences.

Currently, these concerns have surfaced for me as I try to finish up a chapter in social studies about the colonies, pushing back the beginning of the next unit for another week!  On the other hand, I think the priority lies in learning the content at hand well before moving onto new material rather than rushing through a check-list agenda for the sake of "completion".  So I will take a breath and slow down as I lay plans and prepare to be flexible!  Speaking of progress, I must say the bulletin board I put together for the chapter on the colonies has be useful (I have been referring to it during social studies regularly).  I hope to add my QR codes to the bulletin board to link to the chapter review on prezi!

I also want to mention my awesome little desk and work station.

It has been great getting back into the school mode.  Now if Mother Nature would cooperate and give me more days!

Student Teaching Week 1 to week 2

The first week of student teaching is already over!  I can hardly believe I'm in the midst of planning for the second week of student teaching already!  I guess you could say time flies when you're having fun :)

The best parts of that first week included meeting the 25 students and getting to know them as individuals.  I gave a survey that most of the students have completed and that let me know about their learning likes and dislikes, learning styles, as well as some of what motivates them.  I hope to use the insights from the survey when I plan my actual lessons - I want to craft lessons that will resonate with the learner!  I also got to meet several of the staff including the other fifth-grade and some sixth-grade teachers, the principal, specials teachers, secretaries, and so on.  I am even remembering many of their names!  As for the students' names, I have studied them and can consistently call the right name for the intended student, and I only stutter on 2 or 3 names before settling on the right one.  My goal for week 2 is to learn their last names as well.  Wish me luck!

Capture this QR image to take the survey!

Because Monday is Martin Luther King Jr. Day, there will be no school, but that means I will be able to have the day to work on my Teacher Work Sample.  This is a paper that shows my thorough planning, and skillful application of the best practices I learned during my program.  As this is my second time going through this writing assignment (see my earlier post), I expect the process to be smoother than the first time.  I have already outlined a unit lesson in Social Studies to use as the focus. 

In the meantime, I wanted to set the stage for some lessons to come:
We will be focusing on the second of the seven habits: Begin with the end in mind.
We will be adding and subtracting mixed numbers in math.
We are reading Because of Mr. Terupt, by Rob Buyea in class as the teacher read aloud.
We will begin reading Holes by Louis Sachar in class as the reading assignment using small groups!
And we are learning about the Virginia and the French & Dutch colonies in Social Studies.

Stay tuned for QR codes and photos of student work in future posts!

Student Teaching at Lincoln

Wow, here we are at the final semester of my second bachelor's program!  I am so excited to be student teaching (again).  Not only because it is a great placement: Lincoln Elementary!  But also because student teaching really is a great program.  Student teaching allows senior education majors, who have had at least 50 hours of field experience in local schools working with a variety of students and classrooms to have two, uninterrupted, 8-week-long, full-immersion-with-the-natives, opportunity-to-teach-with-a-safety-net, learning experiences.  The "safety-net" is the established classroom teacher and her or his classroom.  That gives near-graduates the opportunity to really dive in and actually use the teaching ideas they have been collecting in their ed classes.  To me, it is a chance to teach with a highly-skilled and knowledgeable peer instructor, and to have this resources at my side every day.  What an opportunity!  

Founding Fathers working together (Photo courtesy of the Library of Congress)

I will be using this blog as I continue this semester student teaching at Lincoln.  This blog will be used to save teaching resources as well as a place to post pictures of student work.  I love seeing before-during-after pictures - sometimes the process of creation is so amazing!  You can look forward to seeing these!  I hope new readers check out my bio on the side panel, and stay tuned for interesting posts on teaching ideas and experiences as I finish my degree!