Filed under: Uncategorized
On Friday April 11th, I was able to attend the Melrose Carnival. When I entered the school it took me back to when my school would have fun fairs on friday nights and how excited I was for them. The classrooms at Melrose were rearranged so that the desks and supplies were out of the way and games were set up in each room. There were a large variety of prizes that each student could win as well as raffle baskets that classrooms put together in order to raffle off. I enjoyed seeing the students in this environment outside of the classroom. I was able to relate to them and get to know them for who they are without having to be instructing them and making sure they behave. I also enjoyed seeing how much the entire community came together to put this event on. There were many parent volunteers who put their time into preparing, setting up, working the event, as well as cleaning up after the event. It was great to see them involved in their children’s education in a fun way where teachers/students/and families are able to interact in a fun environment. It provided a family fun event where all family members were able to have a good time with each other as well as other family friends.
Filed under: Field Journals
This Thursday was the final day at Melrose elementary in Mr. L’s 1st grade classroom. There were ups and downs for the week including a lesson by myself in everyday math in which I felt like I was constantly trying to pull the students back into the lesson after being distracted. But overall it was a good week. As far as my overall experience at Melrose, I really enjoyed it. It was great working with Angela and Danielle within the classroom especially when using everyday math manipulative items as well as checking math hw during the lesson so we could move on. It was also fun to bounce ideas off of each other for other lessons and see other teaching styles. One issue I found was that the 1st graders had trouble seeing us all on an equal level of respect for us during out lessons. Maybe this is just my opinion when I was teaching but I felt that the students were just overtaken by all the outside help that they saw me as more of just an outside helper and not a teacher because I was only in there for a couple hours each day whereas Angela was in there for the entire day, everyday. I also found it hard to get opportunities to create lessons in other topics outside of everyday math. Angela was doing an awesome unit in social studies with traveling the world and seeing different cultures. Because of this I only was able to have options teaching math lessons.
Overall I enjoyed working with the two other girls but with the few downsides I would suggest maybe keeping the max of field teachers in the room at 2. That way working on team teaching is avaliable but it also limits the amount of people the students are exposed to.
Filed under: Field Journals
I was able to teach my first everyday math lesson in the first grade classroom this week. Lets just say it could have gone smoother. The first problem that I saw within the lesson was that everyday math assigned 2 manipulative items into one lesson, pattern blocks and geoboards. There was a frenzy when the pattern blocks were put out and not one student seemed to be listening in my mind. When those were cleaned up, the geoboards were then distributed and it was the same situation. They were not listening even though I felt as if I tried every technique possible to keep them with me and because they were not listening they were not able to complete the activity correctly. The excitement with both items caused too much of a frenzy within the classroom which took away from the grasping of the overall concept. If I were to teach this lesson for a second time I would not use both items even though everyday math told me too. What is also hard is that everyday math doesn’t account time for spreading up lessons and expects you to follow each days lesson and move one. So splitting them up would push of off schedule but I feel the students would have gotten more out of the lesson if that was done.
Filed under: Field Journals
This week was the week of the math manipulative. Math lessons this week consisted of using real money and rods/flats/cubes. The lessons were good for learning the concepts but offered many problems with classroom management. It was a learning experience for myself and something to keep in mind when using any math manipulative.
Angela, the student teacher, taught a run lesson this week in social studies where the students “traveled” to Brazil. They have been learning about different countries and this week was Brazil. The students re-entered the room after recess to find music playing over the voice amplifier from a youtube video playing Brazilian music. Each student enjoyed the music and really got excited about learning about Brazil. I thought this was a great use of technology and resources. She also was just going to play the music through the computer but Mr. L had the idea to use the voice amplifier which worked perfect for making sure every student could hear the music. I wasn’t able to stay for the entire lesson but I enjoyed what I saw and so did the students.
I was able to teach a lesson this week with the calendar problems and read a story. The students were a little rowdy for some reason and just did not want to seem to sit still and listen. But even with this the lesson still went well and they enjoyed the story I read.
