Roll like Dough

This week our dyad went to the Children's Theater followed by a half day Thursday and parent conferences.  The field trip was wonderful! I have been on several field trips, but usually I am in the background.  Teachers have suggested to me that when organizing a field trip yourself, it is best to not give yourself a group in case your need to be somewhere in an emergency.  However this time I was given my own, and it was really fun.  When we were waiting for the play, one small girl in my group (who looks a lot like me when I was 8 years old) was beat box rapping.  "....Because you stink like garbage and you roll like dough!".  Across the theater, the other student teacher sat next to a student who gave her a thirty minute recap of a bugsy bunny cartoon.  When the play started he said: "Ok i'll pause, and i'll tell you the rest later- about 40 minutes are left".  During the play the villain cheated in a bad race, and the audience yelled: "Boo!"  A little girl turned to me and asked: "Why is everyone yelling and upset? He's the bad guy! Of course he is going to do that!" This is why I'm becoming a teacher.  Life is never boring around kids.  The job gets hard, but you will never be bored.

My dyad placement is a great school, and has convinced me that I want to teach second grade.  I'm excited to see my kids again at the main placement too! Both teams of teachers seem to have a steady stream of ideas bouncing around between them.  Yesterday I learned about glyphs.  At first they appear to be an art project, when in fact they are used for graphing.  For example the class may all cut out a turkey, however the colors of wings used signify different experiences.  Purple wings mean I have been to a thanksgiving parade in person, yellow means I've seen one on TV, and green means I have never seen one.  There are many parts of the turkey (glyph) to graph as a class once everyone's project is done.  Such a wonderful idea!

Glyphs by Susan R. O'Connell

Honoring Veteran's Day

Peter Loos 

My Maternal Grandfather- Served WWII on the U.S.S Taney

Yesterday my dyad placement celebrated Veteran's day in the classroom and in a school wide assembly.  This day is especially significant to me because both my grandfathers were WWII veterans, I have several family members who were in the military over the years, and my boyfriend is a Iraq veteran.  I'm proud of their service, and in my own classroom i'll have the opportunity to share about their lives as well as the vets from the families of my students
The second grade classroom I was in chose to highlight a paragraph on Veteran's day for their classroom activity.  Honestly, after the first sentence, it had little to do with the men and women who serve our country.  I've been therefore thinking of other ways to meaningful incorporate lessons on Veteran's day into my future classroom.  For example, a reading on the American flag, when veteran's day began, how veteran's serve our country, and a class discussion of who we know who are veteran's.  Skype would be a powerful tool to bridge the generations.  For Veterans too old to visit our classroom, I feel kids would be excited to talk with them via a computer.  It's also important to represent veteran's in service today as much as veteran's from the past.  Essentially reading, writing, and social studies would be easily incorporated when studying this holiday.
The assembly went well, although it was too long for the second grade to sit still.  I had to opportunity to practice monitoring the class by myself, which I really appreciated.  The school showed videos of veterans, and the drama club performed a skit on POWS.  At the end Veterans were brought to the front and introduced.  It would have been great to shorten the assembly and invite our guests of honor into the classrooms!

The Highlight of My Week

Running Records

Some how the work we have accomplished in 409 keeps connecting to my dyad! For example, I mentioned in class last week that my dyad teacher was teaching VC, CVC, CV patterns to her students. This was especially helpful to me, of course, since I have never learned phonics. Now this week I was excited to observe my teacher using running records to assess student reading levels. The Benchmark literacy program provides running record assessments according to reading level. The teacher times the student as they read, and then follows along on a separate page marking errors, repeats and self corrections. After a few pages the student finishes the book silently. Then the teacher reads from preselected questions to prompt the student for comprehension: "Within the Text", "Beyond the Text", and "About the Text". Overall accuracy, self corrections, fluency, reading rate, and comprehension are taken into consideration before a child is "moved up" to a new level reader. A second student was assessed on Thursday and I was able to follow along. It was difficult to keep up and remember all the symbols! Overall I find the assessment more helpful than the DIBELS assessment I completed in my main placement. There appears to be more information specific to their attributes as a reader in this assessment.