Thankful for a Terrific Mentor Teacher

     This week was spirit week at the school.  Tuesday was celebrity and cartoon character day.  The students and staff had the opportunity to defy the dress code and be someone different for the day.  There was an anime character, a baseball player, a rapper, superheroes, and a Duck Dynasty reality show personality flocking our classroom.  I tried my best to dress up as a boy band singer that the girls in our class greatly admire.  I thought that the students would think it was funny- especially since I am a girl.  Our mentor teacher dressed up as a ninja turtle.  The kids went crazy with excitement over her costume.  Not just the kids in our classroom, but several of the kids at the school.  I just wanted to take the time this week in this post to recognizer her too.  She is not afraid to act silly or dress up if it makes the kids happy.  She is also a great teacher.  She is a real inspiration of how a teacher should be.  She creates a comfortable and fun environment in her classroom and loves her students.  It amazes me how much respect she is given from the students and the staff.  I hope to not be afraid to get into character and participate in fun events, like spirit week, at my future school.  I hope that I gain at least half of the amount of respect and admiration that my mentor teacher has earned.  I can see the impact that my mentor teacher has on the lives of the students that she teaches and passes in the hall each day, as well as the people that she works with.  I hope to be able to do the same when I officially become an educator.      

Florida History Lesson and Playwriting

     In our classroom this week, my co-teaching partner and I taught our first of three social studies Pathwise lessons for our fourth graders.  In our lessons, we are focusing on the people and important events that occurred during the time that Florida was a territory of the United States as well as when it became the twenty-seventh state of the U.S.
     For our first lesson, we had the students pre-read chapter five section one of their social studies textbooks.  The following day we presented a PowerPoint lesson for the students that directly dealt with the information that they had read.  We presented the information in a timeline format and included better visuals of maps and people discussed during the time period.  Each slide of the PowerPoint had a timeline at the top with the years 1821-1824.  We bolded and colored in green the year that we were specifically talking about on that slide.  Underneath the timeline, we listed important facts from the section in their textbook.
     After, reviewing the information with the students, we told them that we were going to put them into groups in which they would need to write a script for a play together about an event that we talked about in the PowerPoint and that they read about.  Then, we asked them what a play was and what needs to be included in a script in order to act it out.  After this discussion, we showed them an example of script found in the fifth grade reading text book and split them into groups.  There are three groups.  One group will be acting out what occurred when President James Monroe appointed General Andrew Jackson to set up Florida's government when it became a territory of the United States.  General Jackson only stayed in Florida for three months, then went back to Tennessee with his wife.  This leads to our second play.  Our second play is about President Monroe appointing the first non-military governor of Florida, William Pope DuVal.  The students will also be acting out an important meeting that took place between DuVal and the Seminole Indians known in history as the Treaty of Moultrie Creek.  Signing this treaty caused the Native Americans to give up many millions of acres of their land for incoming settlers and be forced to relocate to a small reservation in the middle of Florida.  Our last group will be acting out the time when Governor DuVal appointed two men to find a capital location of Florida.  The twist to this event in history is that the location that they found was a Seminole Indian Village...
     The students began writing their scripts after we divided them into groups.  We assigned characters, but gave each group the option to pick which members in their groups would act out each part.  We specified that if there was any fighting over parts though, that we would draw their names to choose who was which character.  There was a minor conflict in one of the groups, but the boys played rock, paper, scissors to decide who would play the character they each wanted.  This solved their issue.  The majority of the groups are very excited about writing their plays and are coming up with great ideas, remembering to include accurate information, and working well together.  One group with the only girl in the class is having difficulty though.  The boys in the group are not including her ideas or taking her input into account well.  I talked with them before the day was over about the importance of everyone in the group participating.  Fingers crossed everyone will work well together when we finish the plays and act them out next week.  Several of them even want to make props and dress up for their skits.  I am happy that we were able to create an engaging history lesson that will hopefully help them remember the information in addition to having fun.                  

Acting and Assessment

     Two weeks ago, the fourth graders in our class took the Florida Writes Test.  My co-teaching partner and I oversaw a reading lesson in which the fifth graders read and acted out a play from their reading textbooks while their fourth grade classmates were completing their test.  The play that the students acted out was an African story about a fisherman that tricked other salespeople from the market into giving him baskets and other merchandise.  He told them that a bridge that they needed to walk across to get to the market would break unless they lightened their loads that they were taking to the market.  He told them this lie because he could not find any fish to sell at the market in order to earn money to buy the goods.  The other salespeople ended up finding out that the bridge was not fragile and they played a similar trick on him in order to get back at him.  Overall, the students did a GREAT job acting out the story.  Most of them were very into character, read well, and used props found in the room.  Also, the fourth graders in our class completed their writing test and fingers crossed they did great too!

Fiction and Fractions

     This week in class my co-teaching partner and I taught two lessons together.  Our first lesson was a writing mini-lesson for our fourth graders.  The fourth graders are taking the Florida Writes State Test at the beginning of next week.  We took one last look at their writing and noticed that in their narrative stories, the students sometimes forgot the rules for using dialogue and quotations, such as what to capitalize and where to put commas and punctuation marks.  We also noticed that they needed to mix up their use of the word said with other words.  We made a PowerPoint of dialogue sentences and asked the students to tell us what was wrong or missing from the sentences.  The students were very engaged during the lesson, and we let them come up to the board and fix the mistakes in the sentences.  Then, we compiled a list of better words than said.  We gave the students two examples and let them run with them.  And that is exactly what they did.  They gave us over 20 GREAT examples of better words for said.  Several of them took note of the words and hopefully will look at them this weekend in a last minute preparation for the test.  This mini-lesson made me think a great deal about whether or not our fourth graders were prepared for the Florida Writes test.  It made me wonder if any of them will get test anxiety on test day and if there is anything we can do do relieve their anxieties.  It made me wonder how many of them will pass.  Ultimately, it made me think that they have spent an entire year preparing for the exam, and I am very hopeful as well as optimistic that their preparation will pay off on the day of the test.  You can do it fourth graders!! We believe in you.
     Lastly, my co-teaching partner and I taught a math lesson to the fifth graders.  The math lesson was on how to turn improper fractions into mixed numbers and vice versa.  Again, the students impressed us with their attention during our lesson as well as their grasp of the material.  We taught them a few tricks, with our mentor teacher's help, that hopefully made the lesson more concrete.
     Overall, I am greatly appreciative of the practice and guidance we are getting from this experience.  I feel more confident than ever in my ability as a teacher and more at ease teaching math.  Math has always been one of my weaker subjects, but getting the opportunity to break it down for the students is helping not only the students, but myself.  I understand the material and feel confident that the children understand it too.  Here's to another successful and fun upcoming week!
    

Greatest Common Factor

     This week in the classroom I taught my first individual math lesson for the fifth graders.  The lesson was on finding the greatest common factor.  It was also Valentine’s Day; therefore, I attempted to make it a Valentine’s Day theme.  I told the students that if friends or people like each other, typically they have interests or qualities in common.  In somewhat of the same regard, numbers have things in common too- called factors.  Their greatest common factor is the largest number that two or more numbers share. 

     The students’ desks are already split into three teams in the classroom.  I gave each team a series of di-cut hearts.  Then, I asked them find the factors of two numbers, find the common factors that the pair of numbers had, and write the greatest common factors on one of the hearts I handed out.  We repeated this activity two to three more times.  I thought it was a great ways for the students to work together and also assess the students’ understanding of the concept.  The students also had to try to use the greatest common factor to put a fraction in its simplest form.  Some of the students found factors that the numbers in the numerator and denominator had in common, but they were not the greatest common factor, so the students had to divide both numbers multiple times.  I explained that if they had found the greatest common factor, they would only have to divide both numbers once in order to put the fraction in simplest form.  Their original method would get them to the correct answer, but finding the greatest common factor would eliminate unnecessary steps. 

     After my math lesson, the students had a class Valentine’s Day party in which they enjoyed several ounces of sugar.  I was surprised by their focus during my lesson when they knew that their party was going to be right after math.  Despite the fact that they focused well during my lesson, I do not know if this will always be the case when students are looking forward to fun activities that may happen later in the day.  My wondering for this week is how do you keep students’ attention during lessons when fun activities are scheduled later in the day? 

Three Lessons + One Day= Excellent Practice

     Last week we hit the mother load of lesson planning.  My co-teaching partner and I planned and co-taught three lessons in one day.  Planning and teaching three lessons may have been difficult a week prior, but we were ready to tackle the challenge.
     We ended up teaching a writing lesson first.  The fourth graders in our class are gearing up for the Florida Writes Exam and are frequently practicing expository and narrative writing.  We edit several stories of theirs a week and noticed that some of their stories were missing a certain sparkle.  The need to fulfill the minimum number of paragraph and sentence requirements was overshadowing their ability to add detail to their stories.  In response to this, we taught the students a mini lesson on the importance of adding detail to your writing along with some helpful pointers and examples.  We explained that detail helps the reader visualize their stories more clearly.  My co-teaching partner thought of a great method to explain how to add detail to the students.  She wrote a very basic sentence on a poster board and asked the students who, what, where, when, and how questions in order for them to help her add information to the sentence.  I followed her lead with another sentence.  I also told the students to utilize the many vocabulary words that are posted throughout the room.  The words are excellent resources to spice up their writing.  After the demonstration, the students worked with a partner, then independently, to fix sentences in stories that they had written previously.  The students seemed very engaged throughout the lesson, and hopefully their writing this week will reflect that.
     Following the writing lesson we taught a review lesson in social studies.  This lesson was also taught to the fourth graders.  It was more of a game format.  The students were in three teams and were asked questions that related to the chapter they were going to be tested on.  If they answered correctly, their team was able to role dice to determine the number of spots their team would move on a giant chutes and ladders board.  This lesson made me wonder how effective playing review games is.  Is it more effective than having the students look over a study guide?  Furthermore, can you teach students study skills or are study habits innate qualities?
     Lastly, my co-teaching partner and I taught our pathwise lesson to the fifth graders in our class.  We chose to teach a math lesson, so our teacher asked us to teach the students a lesson on prime and composite numbers.  The textbook version of the lesson was very confusing even for us.  So, we decided to start from scratch.  We used some of the information in the textbook lesson as a resource, but we created our own powerpoint lesson.  We taught the students the key vocabulary and concepts and had the students gradually participate more (I Do, You Do, We Do approach).  We assessed the students with independent worksheets at the end of the lesson.  The main portion of the lesson was a group activity in which the students had to sort prime and composite numbers.  They had to work together.  Some of them assigned certain numbers to each other and checked them over together once all of the numbers were sorted.  I thought it was a very useful activity that helped solidify the material.  It made me wonder about the pros and cons of group work in the classroom.
     Ultimately, last week was filled with several exciting moments, wonderings, and one particularly busy day.
            

A Week of Chemistry, Class Community, and Comprehension

     Several exciting moments happened this week in class.  At the beginning of the week, a chemistry professor performed different experiments for the fifth graders.   For instance, he demonstrated the reaction between potassium and other elements with fire.  He turned on a blow torch, sprayed potassium on it, and the fire turned bright purple.  This was an excellent example of how to engage students in a lesson.  Rather than solely reading from a textbook, or watching a video, it was captivating for both the children and adults to see an expert perform these experiments in person.    
     In addition to the exciting experiments, our class participated in another unity day on Thursday.  Since our class is a combination of both fourth and fifth graders, our mentor teacher tries to do several things to try to build a class community.  A couple of weeks ago, she had all of the students wear red shirts.  This week, each of the students wore blue shirts.   Despite the fact that there are two different grade levels in the class, they are ONE class.  I thought it was a great idea for the students to feel proud of their class and a part of a community.  Our teacher also had someone at the school take a class picture of them to remember the event.  This class activity reminded me of a wondering that I read this week from the book, Leading and Managing a Differentiated Classroom by Carol Ann Tomlinson.  The wondering was, "How do I contribute to my students' awareness of their core similarities and their individuality?"  This unity building activity helped the students see that they are all unique individuals that share the same space.
     Another wondering from the reading that was reflected in my class this week was, "How do students come to encourage, support, and celebrate one another's growth?"  Our mentor teacher had her fourth graders participate in an author's chair exercise.  The fourth graders are working on improving their expository and narrative writing.  She had each of the students sit in a tall computer chair and read one of their stories to their peers.  The peers clapped for each of the students after they finished reading.  I thought this exercise was an excellent way for students to showcase their writing and get a positive response and support from their peers.
     Lastly, I taught my first lesson on my own this week.  The fifth graders read aloud and answered comprehension questions from the short story, Goin' Somplace Special, in their reading textbooks.  Overall, I thought it went well and received positive feedback from my teacher.  I was able to improve my time management from our first reading lesson.  I will work on circulating the room more during future reading lessons to ensure that the students are paying attention to the story.