Week Three In Mrs. Young's Class

This week in the field was great. I am learning more and more each time that I go and I truly am enjoying watching Mrs. Young. She has taught in several different schools because her husband is in the Coast Guard and because of this she is soooo knowledgeable. I have almost learned all of the names in my class which I think is so helpful for when I will teach next week because this class has a lot of behavior issues and I think that calling out the children who are not following directions is a technique that works very well and it is hard to call the children out if you don't know names! Hopefully by next week I will have them all down pat. Virginia taught her lesson this week and she did a great job. These children are a handful and one of the most difficult tasks can just be walking in a line to transition to lunch, recess, etc! She did a good job reminding them of what they should be doing and managing their behavior. I just hope I can do the same next week!

I have read the first chapter of our new book home, school, and community collaboration and so far I love this book. It is so well written and the first chapter was filled with so many interesting statistics that are helpful for teachers to know. I never realized how many single parent households there are in the US! This first chapter has really allowed me to see the benefits of forming a positive relationship with the parents of your students. I have always known how important it is to keep the parents informed and involved but I never realized the actual benefits that come from the students grades and test scores. To see the actual statistics that show how much good can come from a positive and involved relationship between the teacher and the parent was so eye opening and really gives me the motivation to make these connections strong in my own personal teaching experience.

Week Two in Mrs. Young's Class

This week I really enjoyed my field again. I really feel like I am starting to get to know the students in my class and they come from such diverse backgrounds it is so refreshing to see such a different group of children that can work so well together. I am still amazed at Mrs. Young's classroom management. These children seem to get very wild at times and she can refocus them with the snap of her fingers. It is such an amazing thing to see and I am learning so much from her. It is making me feel a little more confident about my first lesson that I will teach because it is mostly focusing on transitions and lunch time which is mainly about managing the class. I was able to observe the children during math centers again and this time we each got to choose and lead a center. It was so great to work in small groups with the children because I was able to do a little bit of assessing of my own to see where each child stands in the class. This class is on very different levels academically to say the least.

As far as class goes, I am loving the teach like a champion book. I feel like I am learning so many techniques that I will be able to use when I am teaching and I also like how we are being challenged to include the techniques into our lessons. For this week, the technique that I liked the most was the hook. I think it is so important to get the children interested in what they are learning and as teachers we get so involved in just teaching the standard and getting mastery we forget to get the children involved and interested in the topic first. Especially with early childhood education this is so important and I think can be forgotten. It reminded me to try my best to get the children interested in what you are doing even if it is something as little as a small story to hook them onto the topic.

First Day at Summerville Elementary

I had a wonderful first day at Summerville Elementary. My lead teacher has so much teaching experience and she has the most amazing classroom management skills. It is such a diverse and interesting class but so far, all of the students seem so great and eager to learn. My co-operating teacher almost immediately introduced herself and her assistant and then so perfectly explained to the class that we would be observing on Thursdays as we were learning how to be teachers just like her and the students seemed to love the explanation. I think the children are very excited to have us in the classroom and I can tell already it is nice for our co-operating teacher to have a few extra sets of hands. We were able to observe the students during a writing lesson which was very neat, as well as during their math centers. I am so excited about this semester in that we will not be teaching just a lesson, that we will be actually taking over the class for a certian amount of time. I think that this makes more sense as it is so much more realisitc of teaching, I am very excited about this.

In class this week I really enjoyed reading a lot about the cases in our book. I particularly loved the two cases that talked about parent teacher relationships as I think that this is one of the scariest parts about being a teacher, building a positive relationship with our parents. I learned a lot more about communicating with the parents, keeping them as informed as possible, and most importantly remembering that as teachers it is our job to keep the parents updated and inform them of any problems. I think it is difficult to remember that it is the teachers job to initiate the communication which I think can be difficult at times. I am excited to learn more techniques for communicating with the parents as I know how difficult this can be.

It's a New Semester!

I am so excited about this semesters field placement. My first choice was kindergarten and that is where I will be. Going into this whole graduate experience, I was dead set on wanting to teach the second grade. I have had experiences with this age group before in babysitting and I felt like it was just right for me. For my second field I was placed in was first grade. I found that I loved this age group and working with them. They are so eager to learn and are so excited about their reading and writing and are just starting to get the hang of it. It is such a rewarding age. I am so excited for this semester to do kindergarten because I think I will get even more of that excitement for literacy. I have never been in a kindergarten classroom and I currently teach for work in a pre-K classroom so I am so excited to see what happens after they leave my classroom and to become a part of that. I am even more excited about teaching at such a great title one school that seems to have so many goals set for the year.

As far as the course goes, I am truly enjoying it. I love the feeling that the two classes are really connected and that it is really just one class together. I am loving the Lemov book so far. I know we are just getting into it but I love that it is directed at teachers specifically and that instead of completely new ideas, it describes techniques to enforce what you already know about teaching. I think that because of this the techniques are so applicable, helpful, and easier to remember. Although I have not agreed with all of the details of each specific technique I have agreed with all of the techniques that I have read about and I think that each teacher can make the techniques his or her own in the classroom. I have found that I am doing a lot of the techniques already in the classroom that Lemov has described, I just have never been able to describe them as well. I look forward to reading more and learning more techniques for teaching.