10/28-11/1

This week I had an incident with one of my students who was extremely disrespectful and rude. During writers workshop time, I was trying to help him edit his paper, which was a complete disaster. This student who is in TAG, could not take any criticism and gave me attitude everytime I gave a suggestion. When I finishe editing his paper, I told him to write his final copy and he simply responded back with "No". I was shocked and honestly did not know what to say. I've had issues with this student in the past because he believes he knows everything, which is pretty frustrating. As a punishment I pulled him outside and questioned why he was so rude.He has no asnwer and basically stood in silence. I then decided he has to stay in for recess and write a paragaph on why respect is important. The child wrote a good few sentences. I plan on talking to his mother about the sitiation during parent conferences.

10/21/-10/25

One morning, one of the other second grade teacher's alarm clock did not go off which caused her to oversleep. Due to this, I saw what would happen in this type of situation where a sub is not present. My mentor teacher stayed in the classroom with out students and I went into the other room to help a tag teacher deal with the situation. Luckily the class was completing an activity that was very similiar to the one I would be doing later in the day. I didn't want to feel like I was stepping on the other teachers toes by taking over but I knew the instructions. It is stressful taking over someone elses calss and it was kind of a reality check for when I begin subbing. I did though recognize how well my classsroom is organized; this experience really made me appreciate my classroom that much more!

10/14-10/18

Today I gave a pretest for my action researcg project! My whole project is based around the question " How does Parent involvement affect student achievment?" For this pretest, I gave them 2 sheets about coins. The sheets required them to identify the sides/ pictures of coins as well as adding cents. I was honestly a bit surprised by the scores from the class. After reviewing all the test, I was able to identify 3 main problems that the majority of students has with coins. Firstly, many of them rushed through there work and made obvious little mistakes. The second problem was that almost 80 percent of the class forgot to use units ( the cent sign). The last problem was that students had trouble just identifying which coin is which. These problems will be something I talk to my students parents about tomorrow. Question: Will all parents who RSVP'd to come show up?

Intern Year: 10/7-10/11

Until I had the opporunity to rearrange seating in the classroom, I never realized just how difficult this process it. A teacher needs to consider students that have special needs, students who can't sit next to each other, and other special circumstances. I think I revised my original seating chart at least 2 times to accomadate all students. The first thing I tried to do was seperate students who have bavioral issues away from each other. I think seated students who have special needs or need asstances during instructional time. Lastly,I tried to put at least 1 tag kid at each table to act as some what of a leader. Also, I plan on changing the layout of the seating. In the beggining of the year the students were split into 3 groups of 8. Now, I plan on having 6 groups of 4. I hope because the groups are smaller, this will prevent talking.

Intern Year- 9/30-10-4

On Thursday I believe I had an extremely affective and engaging lesson with my students! For the past week my classroom has been reading a Magic Tree House book about dinosaurs. My mentor teacher has an awesome book of activities to complete with the students that relate to the book. One activity teaches students about multiplication by using "nest" and "eggs", in other words cups and beans. When I first introduced the lesson to the students they were shocked they were going to learn how to multiple using these materials. One little boy even told me it was impossible! During the lesson I could see how exciting my students were, which as a teacher is one of the best feelings. Once my students got the hang of using the eggs and nests to multiple they continued to ask for more multiplication problems! I left school that day feeling excited and eager to plan similar lessons for my students.

Intern Year-9/23-9/27

One of the classes I took as a participant taught us how to plan and create literacy workstations. This year is the first time where I've seen a teacher use this teaching strategy, which I've found exciting. The first thing I learned was that creating the workstations is extremely hard work. A teacher needs a variety of teaching resources, materials, and space. What was very interesting to me was that my mentor teacher's guide for creating these stations came from a book I've worked with before. This allowed me to be a part of the planning process, which will help my greatly when I have my own classroom. In my classroom we first created an "I can" list for each station that gives students a variety of activities to complete. We then modeled each station for the students, which I felt was very important. Once we felt the students had a grip on how stations worked we allows them to try one station a day. I learned quickly that creating all the station is completely worth it in the end. My students absolutely love going to each station. Almost everyday the students ask when it is time for stations and are eager to start. This is definitely something I want to implement in my classroom.