Blogs I like...

Here are a few blogs from current teachers. They range in grade level, experience and location, but they all share great insights and ideas.

http://teachyoualesson.blogspot.com/
This is the blog of a third year middle school teacher, living in New York City. She is part of the New York City Teaching Fellowship, where people work as public school teachers while working to get their masters in education and teaching credentials. Her blog is a mixture of witty anecdotes from her classroom and thoughtful reflection on her impact as a teacher. There are a variety of interesting posts about her goals as a teacher, continuing education and even book recommendations. A really fun blog, with a casual style (maybe a couple curse words), that I definitely bookmarked.

http://www.newteachernews.com/blog/blog.php
A 2nd grade teacher outlines her first year in the classroom over several blog posts. I really like her honest tone, reflecting on her missteps and celebrating her successes. Her blog is really relatable – for example, she says that in the first few weeks she felt a little like a cross between a game show host and a broken record player J. I especially like how you can feel her love of teaching and see how she evolves as a teacher throughout the year. This blog is part of a larger website dedicated to all things about first year teachers, including some interesting articles and advice.

http://www.cityteacher.net/
I found a few useful teaching ideas on the first couple pages of this blog alone. This blog is written by a second grade teacher in Los Angeles who has been teaching for seven years. She has blog entries on thinking maps, using manipulatives in math, and ways to set up the classroom (just to name a few). A big focus of her blog is how to best teach students in the inner city environment, which I find interesting because it is something I am unfamiliar with.

Surprising...

Wow, what has been my biggest surprise in the classroom so far? I feel like I’ve been learning so much about how a classroom functions everyday that something surprises me every day. Overall, I think my biggest surprise would really be what students understand and what they don’t understand (or have exposure to or not). Some things that I would think first graders are familiar with, they are still learning (i.e. what most and least mean, the difference between a question and a comment). I have to sometimes remind myself the students are six and seven years old and have only been in school for a year. At the same time, there are a multitude of things the students do understand or have ideas about that didn’t expect them to. It has been an eye-opener for me to see I cannot make assumptions about students’ background knowledge and what they know or are able to do based on their age or grade level. It has made me think about truly pre-assessing students before jumping in to a lesson or unit to see what they need to learn and also, consider parts of a lesson that might need more explanation or modeling.

Teaching and Reteaching

I have spent my time in the classroom this week teaching a unit on ‘families’. On Tuesday, I taught two lessons to introduce the topic (or get students thinking more deeply about it, as they all have some experiences and understanding of families). The students shared their prior understanding about what makes a family, listened to and interacted with a book about different types of families, listed family members, and finally got the chance to draw and label a picture of their family. The next lesson (taught today - Thursday) was about the responsibilities that different family members have:

(1) Learning target:
At the end of the lesson, the students will be able to:
-Understand that different family members have different responsibilities
-Write a numbered list of responsibilities from their families
-Classify responsibilities as “big people jobs” or “little people jobs”

During this lesson, after defining the word ‘responsibility’ and hearing me give examples of family responsibilities, the students had the opportunity to create a list of responsibilities people in their families do (after watching me model this type of writing). Then, we thought about who does these jobs in our families and labeled them as ‘big people’ (grownup) jobs or ‘little people’ (kid) jobs (marking each item on the list with a ‘B’ or ‘L’). The students also shared one item from their list with the class and told us if it was a big or little person job.

(2) Evidence:
The students all wrote lists of responsibilities people in their house have (students’ lists ranged from 3 to 10 items), labeled them based on who performs each task and shared a responsibility with the class. The students were, overall, very successful with each piece of this lesson – every student labeled their list (some with support) and shared a responsibility with the class. I gauged individual levels of success based on the types of things students wrote on their list (i.e. whether they used ideas that I had shared or brainstormed different ideas).

(3) Reteach:
If I were to reteach this lesson, I would offer more explanation and guidance for writing aspect of the lesson. Although the main objective of the lesson was focused on social studies, this was also an important writing lesson (learning to write a list). I explained and modeled list writing explicitly , but I wish I would have connected it to the writing they do on a daily basis because a few students were very worried about spelling and how to write things the ‘right’ way. After some explanations from my CT and I that this was just like the writing we do in our writing folders, where you write down all the sounds you can hear, students felt more confident to write freely. Explaining this in advance would have eliminated some of this confusion some students felt.

(4) Extend:
To extend this lesson, I could ask students who have successfully met the learning goal of identifying responsibilities to think a little deeper and explain why they think people have these responsibilities. This is something I quickly asked all students at the end of my lesson, to help extend their thinking, but I think posing the question to some students prior to this would have given them a chance to really think about why these jobs and important and, perhaps, share some ideas with their classmates.

A look at my CT's classroom~

One thing I especially enjoy about the internship experience is hearing about all of the varied classrooms we are working in. As interns, we are working in several schools and grade levels and I feel like I have the benefit of learning things from all of these veteran teachers, by speaking to and sharing ideas with their interns. From some descriptions I have heard, I feel like I can really pictures those classrooms. That said, I wanted to share some photos of my internship classroom and some of the creative ways my CT uses spaces.


This is a picture of the classroom. It shows the five table groups we have for students to sit at. One thing my teacher is using this year (for the first time, I believe) is a table for the teacher in the front of the room - the table with the yellow tub on it in the picture. I see this as a sort of 'staging area' for the day. It's a place for lesson plans, photocopies of student activities and a place for students' work. My teacher rarely uses her desk, which is at the back of the class, and I really like having this space for getting things ready and having papers organized, while in front of the students.

This is our classroom library, which holds a variety of reading materials, from ABC and number books, books we've read aloud, big books, nursery rhymes, and a multitude of other books for students to browse. While there is time every day for students to read books that are specifically at their reading level, they sometimes get to explore books of their choice from the library

This is the word wall - posted on a wall lined with cabinets. Each letter is printed in upper and lower case, has a picture, sight words posted and in a pocket so students can remove the word to use as a resource.

This is a piece of 'equipment' in one of the literacy centers. I wanted to share it because I've never seen it in another classroom and I think it's really ingenious. It's a magnetic column (like you'd find for displaying magnets in a gift shop) that can be used for a variety of purposes. One side (on the right) has important info for the teacher (monitoring sheets, daily schedule, etc.). The other sides have literacy activities, such as ABC flashcards, and can be used for word sorts. Since it has multiple sides, a few students can use it at a time, and it doesn't take up too much space.

Personal Growth

“Prompt: You've been in your internship classroom since late August, assisting your Classroom Teacher in launching the school year. For your first blog post describe, briefly, one strong conviction about teaching that you brought to the classroom that has changed considerably during this time. What changed, and why is this a sign of personal growth?”

Before I started in my internship classroom, I had (like all of my peers) many experiences in different classrooms around the area. I had worked with students in a variety of content areas (literacy, science, math), but these had all been extensively planned out and relatively small units. I knew what it was like to teach, but I still had misconceptions about what it was like to be a teacher on a day to day, and year to year, basis.
When I envisioned an established, experienced teacher, I had a picture of the teacher pulling out last year’s lesson plans and daily schedule and recycling them year after year. I knew that in the first few years of teaching, teachers tried new things and made adjustments as they gained their bearings and “got into the swing of things,” but that after a few years you settled into a routine and kept using it. While this may be true in some cases, I now see that teachers are constantly adapting their teaching and daily format for the students they are serving at that time. Of course, teachers reuse a great deal of their resources (which is great – who wants to reinvent the wheel?), but it’s been eye-opening to see how much experienced teachers change and rework their lesson plans. I have the privilege of working with a very reflective teacher who tries new things with the daily schedule and planning style, even after years of teaching. This has helped me see how important it is to be constantly looking for ways to better myself as an educator and provide learning experiences that resonate with my students.

Welcome to my blog!

Hello!
Welcome to the blog for my elementary education internship in a first grade classroom! I hope to share my stories and reflections here. Thanks for stopping by!

Katelyn