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.