Reflection for the week of November 13th - 17th

I’m going to focus this reflection on New Mountain Hill and our Tinker Tub Day. I made nail boards for my Tinker Tub. The boards were a circle, a square, a heart, an oval, and an oval star. Each board had a different nail pattern. I made two challenges: one was to make a design; the other was to make shapes. Because this was a pre-school class I kept my reflection question to the students short. I recorded a video so that I could keep up with their designs, the students were so excited to show me all their designs (video link below). Some of the designs even were outside of the nail boards as far as how they laid out their rubber bands. Because of the nature of the activity I did not take many notes but I did voice record a good portion of the time in our group (audio link below). I did ask the students why they made so many spider webs after we cleaned up and they told me it was because they saw a spider making a spider web outside during recess. I was impressed when they asked without prompting if they could switch nail boards with another student. To me this showed that they wanted to expand their creativity onto another foundation. I took many pictures you may say to many but these students were creating new designs almost as fast as I could click the shutter on the camera. I thought initially that I may not get many designs outside the shapes of the boards but that was know where near the case. I was truly impressed with the designs I was presented with, mostly because I got airplanes, houses, fences (3D), spider webs and so many more. I think I enjoyed this activity as much as they did. I would love to take this same activity to every grade level and see how each grade levels thinking changes. I believe this activity will stay with me for many years so as I progress as a teacher I will get to see many of my student’s ideas and creative designs.

Link to my NMHES Tinkering Voice Recording:

https://drive.google.com/open?id=1XEqJH5p464DV1A858LjS5954C4NAxm9S

Link to my NMHES Tinkering video:

https://drive.google.com/open?id=1-Lz42Pwp0ns7ic5UCMmbm6hxrz_TYcne

                
                    

                

                

                

                

                

                

Reflection for the week of October 30th - November 3rd

Its Halloween and the school work is in high gear. there is no more cruising it all go-Go-GO!!! However, there is always time for fun and treats. My wife and I always make treats for the class I observe so this year we made sugar cookies with orange and black sprinkles and then put a mellowcreme pumpkin in each cookie. On Wednesday I have my Instructor/Professor observed lesson plan and to say I'm a little nervous would be an understatement. I have worked on this lesson alone so that KJ could work on her lesson. I decided to have a different kind of word-work and creative element than I have had before. With this word-work I focused on hands-on and teamwork to complete the work. The guided reading was done differently this time to best fit the requirements of the class. I initially had a problem doing the guided reading the way I was told mainly because after talking with my cooperating teacher I found out that the students were not taught or introduced to the type of reading I was to be evaluated on. I went ahead and changed my guided reading and before I did my lesson I told my group what was gonna happen and told them not to worry and if they got confused just let me know. Once I started my lesson I felt more at ease but still felt as if I needed to be as clinical and rigid as possible, this is not my normal disposition mainly because I like to be more upbeat and energetic. after the lesson I had the students do a story recall to assess their comprehension of the story. I did this by having them fill out a sequence of events chart with drawings and a description of each drawing. For the most part this creative element went well, I did have a student not complete the assignment as directed which I had a feeling was going to happen. The student does not complete his regular class work. After the Lesson was complete I sent the students back to class. I sat down with Ms. Hale and we talked about the lesson and I found out that I could have made a greater tie in to other standards but that all of my lesson still was pointed at the standard I had. After everything I felt a relief but I still cant slow down because I still have one more lesson to teach and several projects to complete. the semester is not over yet.


Word-work (sequencing)

Creative Element / Assessment




Followed directions and could retell story accurately!

Mixed up sequence of events!

Did not follow directions making story recall difficult.

Mixed up sequence of events!

Reflection for the week of October 23rd - 27th

So last week I did not get to teach my lesson for our peer-to-peer, which was an unexpected glitch in my overall plan. However it did give me more time to look at my lesson and refine it. Monday was a day of prep. I had to wait till Wednesday to give my lesson. In the mean time I got my camera ready to record KJ's lesson on Tuesday. For this lesson, I had to make sure that I listen to what KJ says so that my follow on lesson would match hers. It was also important to listen carefully to KJ's lesson because I had to evaluate her. This was not an easy task because I try to be open minded and excepting of a persons thought process, this makes me sometimes grade leniently
. She is covering the first half of the book and focusing on plurals whereas I'm covering the second half of the book and focusing on compound words. We are both focusing on comprehension but separately focusing on areas the students are struggling with in class. My compound word work would allow them to learn how to decode and learn how compound words work. After the word work we read the book and I asked questions as we read so that they worked on recall. At the end I had them take their project from Tuesday and turn it into a game board. the key was used to know what questions to ask when they landed on certain spots. It was a fun lesson and from how the students reacted they had fun and were not bored.


Game board made from a map of a school. Each white card is a specific room or place.



On the 24th I went to New Mountain Hill to participate in the STEAM night. I had so much fun and got to see so many super intelligent kids. I was put in the spaghetti tower room and I thought at first that this was gonna be a uneventful activity. Instead it became one of the most fun and interesting activities according to some of the parents I talked with. At this activity not only did the students participate but we had parents helping the kids so that they understood how to build strong structures. I even helped one boy who was lost build a structure that many said was impressive because it had no truly vertical pieces. I thought this event would slow down but we had people still building at 20 minutes to 8pm. we then cleaned up and left all of us talking about the structures the kids built.

A dad helping his daughter build a tower.

This is the one I helped this boy build.

We decided to save some of the best builds and then we took a group picture with them.

Reflection for the week of October 16th - 20th

This week KJ and myself are preparing to teach our peer-to-peer lesson on Wednesday and Thursday. We found a book about map keys, and we plan on doing guided reading with a creative element on the end of each lesson. We are also video recording this lesson which has its own complexities.

KJ and I decided to merge our lessons so that we could have a more in-depth and well-rounded lesson set. We decided that KJ would teach the first lesson and I would piggy back the following day and close out the lesson. The book was short but had a great deal of information, that covered places including a zoo, museum, state park and aquarium. KJ covered plurals using “s” - “es” - “ies” and I covered compound words like waterfall and boathouse. These were used in the book and allowed for us to have a connected lesson set but cover different items so that we did not lose the students attention. The lessons creative elements were also merged to make our lesson more connected and seamless. KJ was to have her students create a map with a map key and then my group was going to take the map and make it into a game board and the map key was going to guide the question you would get asked for landing on certain spots.

the original map / game board layout and potential symbols for the map key

 The original plan was to teach our lesson on Wednesday and Thursday that way we could have the weekend to reflect on our lesson and complete our MAP forms. This plan was changed when we were told that we must evaluate the students in our group so that we know what reading level that they are. We explained that the teacher already tested our students. We were then told that we had to evaluate our students using the DRA kit and have evidence of our students reading level before we could teach them our lesson.

On Thursday we had to test our students so that next week we could teach our lesson and have time to reflect and turn everything in before our Professor observed lessons on the week of October 30^th. This was not optimal but KJ took two students and I took the other two and we used our whole class time to evaluate our group. It was not optimal but it was required so we got it done. When the testing was done we noticed that all our students were exactly where our cooperating teacher said they were.  It was a busy week but we are now ready to teach next week unless something comes up between now and then.

Reflection for the week of October 9th - 13th

This week was short due to Columbus Day. The students came back to school with their batteries fully charged. One of the students that I have been watching was gone all week. I asked the teacher if the parents understood that taking their child out of school for the week could be bad for him in terms of missed time and missed assignments. She told me that they wanted his work for the week and so she gave it to them. I used this week to test the students with my Piaget task kit. I had one student almost complete the kit and another student stopped when they came to the conservation questions. I had one set of questions in the kit that I think were hard for the students because they did not understand the words. The task kit took up a lot of time but was insightful into the minds that my students have. some of the answers from one student could be considered creative in nature but still based in a more concrete since of thinking. Do to the week being short I mostly focused on working with the students and making sure they were successfully doing their assignments. Since my lab time is primarily focused around reading I try to get the students to engage their reading so that they comprehend the book they are reading at the time. I do wish the students work was more creative instead of being mostly worksheet work. I think about the fact that during reading the kids have to be silent and sit at their desks so that they do not disturb the guided reading group, to me this limits and even stifles the students creativity, it is almost unfair to do that to the class but I understand that sometimes students need to be quiet so that others can learn.

     

Reflection for the week of October 2nd - 6th

This was an interesting week not only did we go to lab on Tuesday and Thursday but we came to lab on Friday so that we could teach our first lesson plan. Most of the week was devoted to preparing for the lesson plan which was our Co-op plan, we had to figure out how to integrate our plan into a classroom that most would call traditional in design and implementation. On Tuesday we had to get creative to fit another class into our room because one of the 2nd grade teachers was out for the day. Some kids were at tables with Ms. Ells kids (where we could fit them) and others were on the main carpet so that we could still do guided reading. We got to have Cherry join KJ and I to help wrangle in the madness of a class and a half worth of students. Noise and space were the main issues especially during guided reading were our normal routine is that everyone is quiet. Cherry worked with her normal students and KJ and I worked with our students, so that no one was left out or in need of help. When the class went to recess KJ and I were able to talk about our lesson and finalize some of our thoughts. On Thursday KJ had to be out of class so I was on my own when Ms. Ells started guided reading. I used this time to check on some of the students that I had noticed that were either struggling or doing well just so I could see a difference. I laid down on the carpet and took notes and called students over for a very informal and stress free talk while I looked through their reading notebooks. I stressed to the students that they should slow down when taking their AR tests so that they could improve their test scores. I also informed many of the students I called on how to fix their work if it needed fixing. At the end of reading Ms. Ells had me take up everyone's reading notebook and remove the work the students had done. Unfortunately some of the students had decided to not complete their work on time resulting in them losing their Friday Funday time, this time would now be used to complete work instead of being able to bring in their own electronic device for Bring Your Own Device (BYOD). FRIDAY Friday friday, lesson plan 1 taught by myself and KJ is a go. We started by telling the kids we were gonna "play" and "craft" during our lesson the response was "cheers" and "woo-hoos". The plan didn't go as planned but the content was delivered and we were able to challenge a lot of the kids. We observed team work and lack of teamwork. The best part is we gave no stipulations to the students on what they could create except they had to name it and write their names on the project. The following pictures show the projects and the results run the spectrum on completed design and implementation of design. these results definitely helped me to understand the relationships some of the students have with each other.

The only team to complete the task was the yellow team!

Blue team did well but ran out of time

 

Black team had a great design but no name on the project.

Green team argued the whole time and the results are evident!

Orange team had a good start but creative differences halted their progress.

Reflection for the week of Sept 25th - 29th

This was an odd week, it was split between Double Churches and New Mountain Hill.
       On Tuesday I was in Ms. Ells class. I was still getting used to being in the classroom but had started making observations about the students and the daily operations of the class. I found out that the students can use tablets in the classroom to take AR tests instead of using computers, which I did not expect to see. The class is not what I would consider creative but it is also not boring. the students have the freedom of choice during the time I'm there to choose what task they want to complete that day as long as all the work gets done by the end of the week.
       Thursday's lab was moved to Friday at New Mountain Hill I like STEAM Days because I get to see the students react to new and exciting stimuli. On todays journey to New Mountain Hill I got to introduce my group to coding using a simple coding mouse that the media center had. The mouse could go forward and backward and could turn either right or left and for some added fun it could do a random action if added into the code. I had my students first design a course using foam blocks, over a five minute period the course was formed and it was time to code the mouse so that it would navigate the course. I tried to be as hands off as I could on the decision making because I wanted the students to learn how to problem solve, but of course I had to offer some guidance when they either became confused or started to argue. I went in order from my left to my right and each student got to decide on a direction to send the mouse. it took four iterations to get the mouse to the end of the course with a few corrections needed to correct miss coding due to student decisions. The mouse was not perfectly accurate in its actions but came close enough. The students were able to see that their decisions had made the mouse go from its starting point through an obstacle course and end at the designated ending point. When the mouse stopped at the stopping point my group started cheering, it made me smile how happy they were to complete this task. From design of the course to giving the directions to code the mouse it was all them and they knew it.


Building the course

              These two videos show the mouse working through its code that the students created!

              





The finished course and the mouse at the end point.
The mouse started on the opposite side,
between the red blocks facing the finish point.





If you zoom in or look closely you can see the course
 laid out by arrows that the students created.
Course corrections are marked by an X with the new direction next to it.

Messing around and having fun!!!

If any one would like to use these or have a custom one made let me know. I made these using PowerPoint! I'm willing to share and help with anything just ask.