Parent-Teacher Conferences

Throughout Tuesday Experience I have always wondered how to tell a parent about their child’s strengths and weaknesses for conference time. The teacher I am working with says that conferences are one of the hardest things to do because no parent wants to hear that their child is lacking in an area or is not working to their best capacity. Last Tuesday I was able to sit in on a conference which was such a wonderful learning opportunity. The parent that let me sit in was so excited to have me there it was just such a great experience. The teacher that I am working with showed me how to set up a conference folder and what types of examples of student work to include in the folder. She also showed me what their report cards look like, even though every school is different, so that was very interesting to look at. She explained to me how at Aiken the parents do not receive the report card until conference night. She said she likes it this way because she is able to just go through the report card and not have the parents wondering why certain areas on the report card could be lower or higher than their child’s last one. It was great to see how important it is to have clear cut examples of student work to show to the parents and let them take home. I feel that this really shows the parents how involved you are in their child’s learning and shows them examples of where they may be excelling and where they may need extra help. I was so happy that I was able to sit in on one conference because it let me really see one way to do a conference since I had never seen one done before.

One thing that she really explained to me was that not all parents are accepting of what you tell them, they may come in with complaints and issues that you are going to have to deal with right there. I learned that you can never be too prepared for a conference. This really helped me since I am more of a visual learner, but I wondered if anyone else was able to sit in on any conferences and what the teacher may have done differently or the same. I look forward to hearing what you have to say!

Classroom and Time Management

In Tuesday Experience, I am learning a lot about different teaching methods that I could apply in my classroom. I am also learning that sometimes things do not go as planned and you may need to adjust or re-teach certain subject material. For example my teacher was not sure what to do for a math lesson, so I was able to talk to her about a math lesson that I could do. We both decided on a math lesson based on counting coins, since the children have a hard time switching from one coin to another. It turned out to be a very good lesson but I feel as though sometimes even the best teacher may be unprepared. I am really learning a lot about having good time management. It is so hard to fit everything into a day never mind if you don’t know what lesson to do. Another aspect of teaching that I am learning a lot about is transitions. It is so difficult to transition to children from one subject or activity to another. They seem to be all over the place, not listening, and not prepared for the next lesson. The teacher I am working with has discussed this with me and has even said that transitions are very tough for her. Does anyone have any ideas that may be useful for a first grade classroom for transition times?

The one subject that I am learning so much about is language arts and writing. I did not quite understand how reading groups worked until I was able to take over a reading group. I did not realize how many different reading levels children in your classroom may be at. I also did not realize how difficult it may be to find books for children in a reading group. In being able to work with all four reading groups in my classroom it is making me feel more comfortable with what I need to do when I become a teacher. As I have written about in Professor Chatel’s Blog writing is a very important aspect in her classroom. I talked about the different types of writing activities my teacher incorporates into her classroom and how responsive the children are to them. I am learning so much just be being in the classroom it is unbelievable. I do not think that I would know as much as I know now if I was not able to be in Tuesday Experience. We have learned so much in all of our classes but actually seeing it applied makes a huge difference for me since I am visual learner. I hope that as Tuesday Experience comes to a close I can take away a lot of useful information that I will be able to use in my classroom.

Read Aloud

In the first grade classroom that I am working in for Tuesday experience, the teacher loves to do a read aloud book almost everyday. When I am there on Tuesday’s, I am the one reading the read aloud book while the children listen carefully. During the read aloud a student is able to ask questions or talk about the book only if they raise their hand and it really does pertain to the story being read. As I have witnessed in this room the children seem to like being engaged in the story and it helps them to focus on what is going on in the story. For example when Miss Rausch just reads the book, the children seemed to get bored and they became inattentive, but when they were able to interact during the read aloud they were more attentive, focused on the story and also what was happening in the story, rather than out the window. This is very important because it helps facilitate the students to understand and comprehend the story that is being read. I also like that Miss Rausch mixes up the stories that she reads, or has planned for me to read. She reads both non fiction and fictional stories, and even the students are able to read the stories. I think it is great that the students get exposed to so much different literature at such a young age.

You can tell how much her class focuses on reading and writing. Every free moment that the students have in that classroom is either focused on reading or writing. They are able to work on the stories that they are writing, or read a book if they finish their work early. You can see how much the students really enjoy reading, especially when they get to read in front of the class. They love sharing their stories with the class. It is amazing to see their faces light up when they are called to read their story. I love how Miss Rausch gives each student a chance to read their story and if they do not want to share they do not have to share. I am really learning a lot about different comprehension styles and different techniques to try to facilitate reading comprehension. I am learning so many different ideas that I can use in my classroom someday and I am really taking so much away from this experience.

A Way of Expressing Your Feelings

At first, I did not fully understand how blogging worked until I saw how it is like a conversation. I really like this idea because sometimes students are too shy to add in comments to a conversation. This is a great way for them to be able to speak their mind, without actually speaking. If a child feels uncomfortable saying something to the class, the student could post it on their blog and then the other students would be able to read it. I also think that a blog can be used for so many different things, whether it is a book discussion, or just their own way of expressing their feelings.

I also believe a blog would be great for the parents in your classroom. This would let them express their ideas anonymously and could give the teacher in the room great insight to other activities that they may want to incorporate. It could also help to get parents talking and involved in their students work. The parents would be able to see their children’s blogs to see their progress as well as the teacher.
Blogging can have many different uses and I think that it could fit in anyone’s classroom, it is just about figuring out a way to incorporate it into your classroom. Another useful resource is to go on a look at other schools blogs. It is interesting to see how other schools are incorporating technology, including blogs, into their classroom. This is a great resource and I feel that more teachers should be utilizing this resource.

Developing as a Teacher

The more and more I am attending Tuesday Experience the more I fees as though I am developing into a teacher. When I first started at Tuesday Experience I was not as confident in myself as I should have been. I was not sure how everything was going to play out. As I have been attending Tuesday Experience more and more I feel much more confident in myself and my teaching abilities. As the weeks progress I am doing more and more in the classroom. For example I am able to lead lessons, and work one on one with the children who need help. I am also able to work with reading groups which is such a great learning experience.

I am really learning a lot about classroom management skills. The teacher I am working with says she does not have very good classroom management skills, so it is interesting to me to see how she runs her classroom. She also told me that she would like me to be able to take over the classroom for a day. She would like to see how I would run the classroom so she can also get new ideas for how to run the classroom.

However, with as much new information that I am learning, I do not see a lot of technology use in the classroom. The teacher I am working with does not incorporate any use of technology into her lessons. I find this a disadvantage for both the students and the teacher. Although this is a first grade classroom I feel as though the teacher should incorporate some sort of technology into her lessons. She has two computers in her room, but I am not sure if she lets the children use them any other day that I am not there. I think that in my classroom I would like to incorporate the use of technology in at least one of my lessons per day. This helps keep the students focused and it is an exciting new way for students to learn.

Assessing Students Writing

One important thing that I learned is that you cannot tell what student's writing is the best by how neat it is. That is not what is important. What is important is the content of the story. I also learned that it is important to evaluate students writing samples so that you can figure out what you need to work on with that child or a group of children. I found the worksheet that we did in class to be very helpful because it let me understand how to evaulate students writing. I learned about punctuation, organization, the stages of spelling, and so much more. I did not know that there were so many different ways to evaulate spelling. I think that by learning this material it will help me to become a more knowledgeable teacher because I will be able to help students progress in their writing abilities.

In Tuesday experience they are working on writing their first stories. The teacher gave them a scenario that they foun a 100 dollar bill and they needed to find out who it belongs to. While I was there she had the students share their stories or what they had already wrote. I was so surprised to hear what the students came up with. There were some very interesting stories. Also, the students knew about puncuation and capitalization from the morning messege and from posters around the room. In the morning messege the teacher does not put in puncuation nor does she capitalize the beginning of the sentence. She asks the students if they can figure out what is wrong with the line and then they come up to the white board and correct it. Also, if a letter needs to be capitalized they put three lines under it and then capitalize it. I found this to be very interesting. She has also talked about having a beginning, middle, and end in their story. She read them a story and had them tell her where the beginning, middle, and end of the story is, and how to put in little problems and solve them. I thought that was a great way for students to learn about putting a beginning, middle, and end into their stories.

Now that I know more about assessing students writing I can look more in depth at the students writing during Tuesday Experience. I believe this will help me in my own classroom because it will give me the knowledge to know what to work on with my students.

The Girl With the Brown Crayon- Tuesday Experience

Before reading this book I never would have imagined that Kindergartners would be able to start and hold a conversation with such insight and detail. I thought it was very interesting that Reeny’s Grandmother Ettie comes into the classroom to tell them a story and that she is so orientated with the children because she herself was a teacher. I find that in my Tuesday experience classroom, the teacher I am working with has parent volunteers come into the room, but they do not get the opportunity to read to the class, or tell them stories. Instead, she has them grading papers for her or working one on one with student’s who need help. While reading this story though I find that it would be a great experience for the children to have another adult figure reading and telling them stories. I believe that by having another adult read them stories or talk to the class they can come up with different points and opinions to share because their view could be very different from your view. This does have its good and bad qualities but I believe that for the most part it would be beneficial and exciting for a child to have someone they know come in and read a story. I also like how she had her Grandmother come in on her birthday. This made Reeny feel extra special because she got to share a part of her life with the class.

I also found it interesting that Reeny chose Swimmy to be her birthday book. In the book it states why her grandmother thinks she chose that book. It does not surprise me though that Renny chooses a Leo Lionni book. As you can tell throughout the whole book, she loves listening to his books and has a lot of very knowledgeable insight for her age. The more and more I read this book the more I am getting a feel for what the structure of a classroom conversation should be. It seems like everyone is involved in the discussion on the books which is something that can be very hard to manage in a classroom setting. Overall, I feel that this is a great resource because it lets you see how to integrate everyone in the classroom into a lesson.

I am really enjoying Tuesday experience. I am learning so much from my first grade teacher it is amazing! It is very interesting to compare some of her methods of teaching with the way that Paley teaches her class. It is so useful to be able to learn about all these different types of methods for teaching your class because one method may work for a class you have one year but then another year you may have to use a different method. I am having a great time and the children seem to really like having someone else new in the room. It has been a great experience so far and I hope that over the course of the semester I can learn and grow into becoming a more educated professional.

The Girl With the Brown Crayon

The Girl with the Brown Crayon covers important topics that cannot be learned in any college course but they can be acknowledged through experience. When reading the Girl with the Brown Crayon it gave me new insight on how Kindergartners can think. While I was reading I could not believe the topics that Paley gets her Kindergartners to discuss through the stories by the author Leo Lionni. For example they discuss topics such as race, identity, gender, and essential human needs to create and to belong. As Paley begins to discuss Reeny you begin to realize what type of child she is right off the get go. She does not take the teachers suggestions but she has a form of self-identity that most people do not come across until they are much older.

While reading the book I noticed that the children talked a lot about being accepted and the need to belong. When I was younger I always felt that I needed to belong and be in the “in crowd.” I felt like I needed to become like everyone else to fit in. In the book the story about Tico made me realize that all those years of trying to fit in was not me and I was different from everyone else, even if everyone else did not accept this. (Text to Self)

In addition, while I was reading I noticed that many of the issues that the Kindergartners were discussing were related to the world. For example race. In the first story that Reeny reads by the author Leo Lionni, she identifies herself with Fredrick the mouse. She realizes that Fredrick and her are the same color. Even before reading this story she and another boy Cory are coloring. She explains to Cory that she cannot use a marker to color in her skin in the picture because it is to dark. She shows him by putting her hand up the paper. Cory also puts his hand up to the brown marker and says that it is also to dark for him as well. I thought this was a great example of how even Kindergartners realize that there is something different about their skin color, but they do not make judgments about any of their classmates because they are different. This is not like our world today. We need to think more like Kindergartners in the fact that they realize they are different races, but do not linger on the fact that they are of a different race. There is something to be taught here by the Kindergartners and we should follow more in their example. (Text to World)

One part of the book that I found interesting was the part when they were going to write a letter to Mr. Lionni. This reminded me of story that I read when I was in school. We would go through the story and on each page there would be a letter written from a character with a story on it. After we had finished reading the story we would then write letters to our pen pals. Our teacher was very nervous about us writing to a pen pal because she was worried that they might not write back. This is just how the teacher Mrs. Paley felt. She wasn’t sure what to think about Leo Lionni and what he would write back, if he would write back. (Text to Text, and Text to Self)

So far I have found this book to be enlightening and it has also made me think about the way children think in a whole new light. It made me realize that just because these children are only in Kindergarten it does not mean they can not handle a challenge. It also made me think about my childhood and even my adult life and look back and reexamine everything. It has changed my way of thinking about topics such as being accepted into a group or feeling like you belong. It has also given me some examples of how to introduce important topics such as race, and gender into young children so that they understand the importance of knowing that your race or gender does not matter and that you can be whatever you aim to be.

How Do Teacher's Assess Student's learning?

It is a difficult task to assess students learning in language arts. There are many different ways to assess students learning. One way is through observations. The observations may be informal or formal. Informal observations happen when the teacher spontaneously watches the student and is attentive to the behavior and comments that the student makes. A formal observation happens when the teacher plans a specific time to focus on particular students and makes anecdotal notes about their involvement in literacy events and other language arts activities. The main focus is on what the student's do as they use oral and written language. Another way to assess student's learning is through anecdotal notes. This means that teacher's write brief notes as they observe the students. The notes that are most wanted are notes that describe specific events, rather than notes that evaluate. Another option for teachers are conferences. This is where students talk to their teachers so that they teachers can monitor their progress in language art activities. There are also checklists that can be used. The teacher will have a checklist in front of them as they observes students, and check off what the students know. Portfolios are another option for teachers. They keep documentation of the students work. Lastly for assigning grades teachers may use assignment checklists and/or rubrics.

During Tuesday Experience, I saw the teacher interacting with the students and observing them. She would take mental notes and then later in the day write down certain information about the specific child. She also had to do reading testing. She took each student and had them read a story independently to her. While I was there I also took students aside and had them read the story Alvin's Home to me. The teacher asked me how each student did and asked if the children were chunking words or still sounding out each syllable. She was always very positive with the children. They also filled out workbook pages as a form of assessment to see what they had learned. I did not see a lot of different forms of assessment but as I am there for a longer period of time i hope to see her incorporate different kinds of assessment into her lessons.