Tuesday, August 21, 2007
Week 1 Reflection
On our first day back at West Milford, the interns accompanied the rest of the Harrison County teachers to view a presentation by Doctor Willard Daggett, President of the International Center for Leadership in Education. Dr. Daggett’s presentation was quite illuminating for a number of reasons.
First and foremost, Dr. Daggett is simply an entertaining and engaging presenter. He knows how to keep an audience captivated and attentive. But more importantly, Dr. Daggett’s message was an important one. He argued that the practice of today’s educators are outdated when compared to the information input that today’s children are now used to, going so far as to compare the majority of today’s schools to museums. His point was well founded and echoed some of the sentiment we’ve heard before regarding the shift towards 21st century learning.
As educators, we have to find a way to incorporate this new technology into our classrooms so that kids truly are better prepared for the world around them. For some teachers, that can be an uncomfortable change in practice. I consider myself rather fluent in technology, but even I was mesmerized at some of the advances Dr. Daggett referenced in his presentation, new discoveries that were just around the corner. The world is changing and advancing at a pace that most of us are not used to, but if we want to properly educate the students of the future for the world in which they will live, we need to do our best to adapt to the changes we see around us.
First and foremost, Dr. Daggett is simply an entertaining and engaging presenter. He knows how to keep an audience captivated and attentive. But more importantly, Dr. Daggett’s message was an important one. He argued that the practice of today’s educators are outdated when compared to the information input that today’s children are now used to, going so far as to compare the majority of today’s schools to museums. His point was well founded and echoed some of the sentiment we’ve heard before regarding the shift towards 21st century learning.
As educators, we have to find a way to incorporate this new technology into our classrooms so that kids truly are better prepared for the world around them. For some teachers, that can be an uncomfortable change in practice. I consider myself rather fluent in technology, but even I was mesmerized at some of the advances Dr. Daggett referenced in his presentation, new discoveries that were just around the corner. The world is changing and advancing at a pace that most of us are not used to, but if we want to properly educate the students of the future for the world in which they will live, we need to do our best to adapt to the changes we see around us.
Week 2 Reflection
After having a three-day week to start, this week was the first full five-day week at my PDS school. We started on Monday and Tuesday with kindergarten home visits, had one final day on Wednesday to make any final preparations, and then the students had their first two days of school on Thursday and Friday.
Being able to go on the home visits to meet both parents and students was a very interesting experience. From a generic standpoint, I experienced about what I expected to see – a broad range of living conditions and parent involvement. I saw some things I was quite happy about, and other things that I was disappointed with.
But all in all, being able to go into the homes of these children and see first hand what their home life is like does give me additional insight as to what could be going on around them on a regular basis. I was able to see what kind of resources each of the children had and what kind of instructional support they’d receive at home. I was pleased by the number of parents who had sent a kindergartener through West Milford before and thus knew the routine.
The first day of school was a challenge, but one that was alleviated in some manner by most of the students attending open house earlier in the week. Because of that, the room was not completely foreign to them. But we still had to walk each of them individually through the classroom procedures for when they arrived in the morning, and the rest of the day was spent familiarizing them with the general calendar. It was encouraging to see how many of them already knew things such as days of the week, months, money and coinage, and colors.
Day Two seemed to be a bit more demanding, at least from my perspective. The students were slowly getting used to the school and the classroom, which meant not only were they more comfortable in opening up to us as teachers but they also wanted to test their limits and see exactly what they could get away with. In an effort to perfect a new school-wide positive approach to discipline, my host teacher would award a clip (which counts for five minutes of recess/free time) to an individual student any time she witnessed an exceptionally good behavior (as opposed to the first day’s strategy of awarding them to the entire class for group good behavior).
This individual strategy proved difficult, as some kids who were not behaving badly did not earn many clips simply because they were not the first to be noticed. It seemed by the end of the day, my host teacher, her aide, and I had determined that some kind of middle ground needed to be reached, and we will likely spend the next week or so continuing to test strategies until we find an effective one.
Being able to go on the home visits to meet both parents and students was a very interesting experience. From a generic standpoint, I experienced about what I expected to see – a broad range of living conditions and parent involvement. I saw some things I was quite happy about, and other things that I was disappointed with.
But all in all, being able to go into the homes of these children and see first hand what their home life is like does give me additional insight as to what could be going on around them on a regular basis. I was able to see what kind of resources each of the children had and what kind of instructional support they’d receive at home. I was pleased by the number of parents who had sent a kindergartener through West Milford before and thus knew the routine.
The first day of school was a challenge, but one that was alleviated in some manner by most of the students attending open house earlier in the week. Because of that, the room was not completely foreign to them. But we still had to walk each of them individually through the classroom procedures for when they arrived in the morning, and the rest of the day was spent familiarizing them with the general calendar. It was encouraging to see how many of them already knew things such as days of the week, months, money and coinage, and colors.
Day Two seemed to be a bit more demanding, at least from my perspective. The students were slowly getting used to the school and the classroom, which meant not only were they more comfortable in opening up to us as teachers but they also wanted to test their limits and see exactly what they could get away with. In an effort to perfect a new school-wide positive approach to discipline, my host teacher would award a clip (which counts for five minutes of recess/free time) to an individual student any time she witnessed an exceptionally good behavior (as opposed to the first day’s strategy of awarding them to the entire class for group good behavior).
This individual strategy proved difficult, as some kids who were not behaving badly did not earn many clips simply because they were not the first to be noticed. It seemed by the end of the day, my host teacher, her aide, and I had determined that some kind of middle ground needed to be reached, and we will likely spend the next week or so continuing to test strategies until we find an effective one.
Week 3 Reflection
After having the students for only two days in week two, this past week was really the first "full week" where they came to school. I hesitate to even call it a full week since we had Labor Day off, but the rumor floating around was that if they made it on Tuesday without crying, we'd probably be doing pretty well. We still had some tears through the week as students still got used to their routine, but I think they're all adjusting quite well to the classroom and are beginning to recognize the faces of their teachers and students.
I was rather surprised at how quickly they picked up on some of the classroom routines, such as unpacking their bookbags in the morning as well as putting their homework folder in the proper filing slot. Perhaps their success in accomplishing these things so early can be attributed to my host teacher's strategy of showing each of them individually how to do these things rather than just reviewing it as a group.
During Week Three, I began baseline assessments for my action research. I will go into more detail about my findings in my Action Research section of the blog, but I did seem to find a wide range of student knowledge when it came to upper and lower case letters as well as numbers 1-20. When I look at the information I collected and then recall the environments I encountered in the home visits, the results tend to make a fair amount of sense.
I was rather surprised at how quickly they picked up on some of the classroom routines, such as unpacking their bookbags in the morning as well as putting their homework folder in the proper filing slot. Perhaps their success in accomplishing these things so early can be attributed to my host teacher's strategy of showing each of them individually how to do these things rather than just reviewing it as a group.
During Week Three, I began baseline assessments for my action research. I will go into more detail about my findings in my Action Research section of the blog, but I did seem to find a wide range of student knowledge when it came to upper and lower case letters as well as numbers 1-20. When I look at the information I collected and then recall the environments I encountered in the home visits, the results tend to make a fair amount of sense.
Week 4 Reflection
It seems this week we’ve had some real behavioral concerns with some of the students in our classroom. Initially we were instructed that the school would be switching to a positive reinforcement to discipline, and I think in moderation that is a necessity for students to be recognized when they’re doing a good job. But additionally I feel students need to be told whenever they’re not following the rules and need a system in place where a misbehavior results in a negative consequence, and our initial tests of the new system did not provide that. Thus, we had some students who simply did not grasp what was and was not acceptable in the classroom.
Even now that we’ve instituted a balance discipline policy, there are students in the classroom that will be told not to engage in a behavior, and then seconds later will be doing it once more. The home visits for some of these students did not reveal an environment where such defiance is tolerated, and thus far the parents seem to be willing to help regarding this problem. While I certainly did not expect perfect behavior from all of the students in this classroom, I have to admit I am rather surprised by some of those consistently making outbursts, even when they experience the consequences of those outbursts.
Even now that we’ve instituted a balance discipline policy, there are students in the classroom that will be told not to engage in a behavior, and then seconds later will be doing it once more. The home visits for some of these students did not reveal an environment where such defiance is tolerated, and thus far the parents seem to be willing to help regarding this problem. While I certainly did not expect perfect behavior from all of the students in this classroom, I have to admit I am rather surprised by some of those consistently making outbursts, even when they experience the consequences of those outbursts.
Week 5 Reflection
This week was the first in which I took responsibility for teaching the Circle Time portion of the day, which in my opinion is one of the most important aspects of kindergarten primarily because of the number of topics and concepts one has to cover.
When you stop and think about it, it can really be quite overwhelming. They're learning about days of the week, the month they're in, all the months of the year, place value, money, weather... there really is a lot for their minds to absorb, which is one of the reasons why I think repetition in a routine throughout the year is so important here. Eventually all of this becomes second nature to them, and they've learned so much without really knowing it.
One of my biggest fears for circle time was the idea that I might forget to cover something during the routine. In order to try and combat this, I created a small cheat sheet of circle time topics to hit, which I placed on the back of my Benedum intern name tag. It was pretty funny at first to have to peak at the back of my name tag every now and then, but I was just so nervous about forgetting something that I wanted to be sure I covered the most important things. In the end though, especially because of the additional work we're supposed to do from our new reading series, there will be days when you simply cannot cover it all.
When you stop and think about it, it can really be quite overwhelming. They're learning about days of the week, the month they're in, all the months of the year, place value, money, weather... there really is a lot for their minds to absorb, which is one of the reasons why I think repetition in a routine throughout the year is so important here. Eventually all of this becomes second nature to them, and they've learned so much without really knowing it.
One of my biggest fears for circle time was the idea that I might forget to cover something during the routine. In order to try and combat this, I created a small cheat sheet of circle time topics to hit, which I placed on the back of my Benedum intern name tag. It was pretty funny at first to have to peak at the back of my name tag every now and then, but I was just so nervous about forgetting something that I wanted to be sure I covered the most important things. In the end though, especially because of the additional work we're supposed to do from our new reading series, there will be days when you simply cannot cover it all.
Week 6 Reflection
This week's new addition to my teaching was math time, which I was looking forward to. This was the week where we began apple week, and we had a special apple activity that my host teacher told me the students always seemed to enjoy.
We read the story Ten Apples Up On Top and then used pictures we'd taken of the students earlier in the week to have them stack apples on top of their heads. They would glue their heads to a large piece of construction paper and then stack paper apples (all with numerals on them) on top of their heads. I think the students really got a kick out of this activity, as I think they enjoy something that's a little more hands on but also more personal. Being able to use their picture in this math project seemed to be something they enjoyed and were motivated by, and that's something I can remember for later lessons when thinking about student motivation.
Additionally we also had an apple taste test this week, and for elementary grades I love the idea of reinforcing the concept of graphs and grouping by attributes with a taste test. It's enjoyable for the students because they get an extra little treat, but it also shows them about sorting objects and creating graphs to represent data. This is really such a fun math activity, and whenever it can fit in with the theme of the classroom, it's certainly worth incorporating!
We read the story Ten Apples Up On Top and then used pictures we'd taken of the students earlier in the week to have them stack apples on top of their heads. They would glue their heads to a large piece of construction paper and then stack paper apples (all with numerals on them) on top of their heads. I think the students really got a kick out of this activity, as I think they enjoy something that's a little more hands on but also more personal. Being able to use their picture in this math project seemed to be something they enjoyed and were motivated by, and that's something I can remember for later lessons when thinking about student motivation.
Additionally we also had an apple taste test this week, and for elementary grades I love the idea of reinforcing the concept of graphs and grouping by attributes with a taste test. It's enjoyable for the students because they get an extra little treat, but it also shows them about sorting objects and creating graphs to represent data. This is really such a fun math activity, and whenever it can fit in with the theme of the classroom, it's certainly worth incorporating!
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