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.