Week 5 - Last 2 Days

I came out of this week feeling sad from saying goodbye to the students and happy that we all made it to the end of the school year and feeling confident after all the things the students had said to me over the last few weeks.  My kids spoiled me with confidence.  They were such a great class and I feel so blessed to have had them as my class to work with and grow with and become a better stronger teacher from all that they taught me, yes even the ones who misbehaved because they made me search for other ways to work with them and expand in classroom management strategies. 

            This week was really relaxed and not much happened it being the last week and only having 1 ½ days of school. 

·         Tuesday I got to experience two new things.  The first was an assembly.  Watching the students was more of a priority then watching the assembly.  Making sure students were behaving and not messing around and doing things they should not be doing.  The assembly went on kind of long and I could tell the students were getting restless.  They were for the most part good but some students had to come over and sit by us since they would not sit still and be respectful to all the others there and around them.

·         The 2^nd thing we did on Tuesday was watcher Where the Red Fern Grows with the 2^nd grade.  So this was just about like the assembly experience.  Making sure students were all sitting up and watching the movie.  Making sure they were talking and doing what they were supposed to be doing.  It was a day full of monitoring students.  It was a good day though.  They kids enjoyed the movie and they had lots to say in contrast to what was in the book (they read that earlier in the school year).

·         Thursday I spent the day working on a project for my teacher.  First I dicut the alphabet for her.  Then I cut out all of Fry’s first 300 sight words.  She wanted me to alphabetize them next so I did.  After that I had to alphabetize the words in each letter.   So all of that took most of the morning. After the kids left I continued my work and didn’t even stop to each my lunch and worked 12-3 nonstop to finish my project and finished right at 3.  I laid yellow paper out all over the room and walk around and laid the words out in alphabetical order and put each dicut letter right before that group of sight words started.  After they were all laid out and I got the approval I glued them all down to the paper.  Now this really does take longer than you would think.  I glued and glued and glued and glued.  I was so proud of my work when I was finished and I did something that I hope to also do for my classroom, I really liked the idea. 

·          I got to spend some time with the kids.  They were all having me sign things of their and really made me feel special.  Even student I did not know just because I was there wanted me to sign their papers and year books.  It really made my day.  Reminds me that students at such a young age don’t care who you are but love you no matter what and think that you are cool because you are older and a teacher.  Kids at that age are what I want to work with.  They don’t judge each other and they all love everyone. 

Stop and think moment this week was the random kids I have never seen asking me to sign their things. I didn’t say no to them but I was wondering why they were asking me to sign, I wasn’t their teacher, technically I am not even really a real teacher yet.  It however felt really good to be asked to sign things for them.  No one is left out of these kids’ lives.  They want everyone to sign and the more people sign the better they feel or just because of the fact that they love everyone.  None of them judge each other and none of them don’t like someone for one stupid reason or another.  The sweet innocence of being so young and still at that age before good friends out cast others because out of nowhere that person isn’t “cool”.  Why can’t we all be like the little children?  We are told to be in the scriptures.  The unconditional love for everyone around them including strangers and no judgmental feelings, we need to be more like them. 

I don’t really have anything to prepare for next week since I have no school next week.  But over the next week prepare myself for a new experience.  This will not be like what we just went through.  Read back over my journals from summer school for early field last year to remind me what it was like and just really remember what I have learned and retain it all to get ready to go into summer school. 

<3   Erin Christina

What have I been up to

Ice Caves
Fishing
Camp fires
Roommate photos
Homework homework homework

I can get pics for those too but it is past bed time now...this is enough updating for now!!

Who knows if I will ever get back into this to update like I should but I will try!!

<3  Erin Christina

Pics to do with my 2nd graders

 Hallie and I are BFFs!!

 Big hugs from Sarah

 Just the cutest thing anyone has ever done for me!! I love this one from Charity

 Jake made me this one. I could not fit it on anything so I made it a decoration for my name tag. 

 One student (Melissa) made me the ring and another (I feel so bad I cant remember who gave the bracelet becuase I was doing a bunch of things at once and they came up and just put it on me)

 My cow girl outfit

 Me and Hallie are Best Friends Forever  (she was the attached one from the field trip...still attached)

Megan is such a sweetie!!

I really do love this class.  Going into the last week is really sad.  :(  I am going to miss these kids that I have grown so close to in the last few weeks.

<3  Erin Christina

Week 4

With each week my feelings get better and better.  I feel more confident in what I am doing and how I am teaching.  It really is getting a better feel for everything and finding out how I like to teach and picking out the things I don’t like.  I love how it feels to have the class listen to you and be able to find the way I like to punish or just get the students to stop doing what they are doing and do what you tell them to do.  I have such a good class though now that the semester is coming to an end they are starting to get pretty crazy but they are a good class. 

            This week has been a different week since we have started to run out of things to do and have the students do. 

·         The majority of our day has been writing the pages for their All About Me Books.  This has taken over Reading time since we finished the book last week and also my center since we finished out work book last week too.  So besides my 2 math lessons all we did this week was write and edit the papers for their books.  I sat there with them and when they need to spell a word they would ask and I would help.  I would read their paper and give them prompts on what else to write.  I would check for punctuation.  The only thing that I didn’t know is if I should totally correct it or just help a little.  So I did what I could and helped them along.  Their books are starting to come together very nicely.  I can’t wait to see them all put together and the pictures they are bringing from home to put on them. 

·         The first math lesson I taught this week was on doubling.  I used coupons and told them about how stores will double coupons.  I should them there are two different ways to double a number (adding it to itself or by multiplying by two).  Each student got a coupon and had to double it and write it up on the board.  They students enjoyed the fact that they all got coupons and that they got to save even more then what was on the coupon.  It was a pretty simple lesson but they seemed to enjoy it.

·         The other math lesson we did this week was recording information on a graph.  We used dominos and probability to teach this lesson.  Each domino was an addition problem and they had to find out what the domino added up to be and write the problem in the column of the answer.  They seemed to enjoy this one too since they all got to take turns and answer the problems and check each other’s work.  We came back together in the end to talk about what we learned and go over the information on the graph to see what they could tell.  We discussed that you are more likely to pull out a domino that equals 6 and least likely to pull out one that adds up to 0, 1, 11, 12.  It was also a good way to walk around and assess how students are doing with their addition facts.  How long does it take them to figure out what it is equal to and do they have to count all the dots or can they just look at it and say 4 plus 5 equals 9. 

My stop and think moments were when I was helping student write their pages for their books.  I was able to stop and see the things in each of their writings that each of them were struggling with and helping them fix those main issues and how to go about helping them with those struggles.  So rather than focusing on all the mistakes we would just look at a few big problems they were having.  It helped them a lot rather than getting discouraged because everything was wrong and it also helped since we didn’t have a lot of time. 

My plan for next week is really just to try my best to keep the students on task and not out of control as best as I can.  They are still in school until they get out on Thursday and they need to remember that.  The last week is going to be a lot more relaxed but got to make sure they are still with us and doing what they need to be doing till the end.  

I have two cowboys in my class.  Last week their wore cowboy boots and so I decied I would dress up like a cow girl for them.  So Tuesday I wore my boots and some southern western clothes and they just loved it!! I had so much fun.  Over the last 4 weeks I have found the southern accent I thought I never had.  They speak in such a southern accent I start doing it too.  I love my kids!! Next week is the last week of school and I promiese you I will cry.  

Oh I have also been getting notes and pictures from my kids the last two week.  Also had some make little things for me!! I will try to get the pics on here!!  

<3  Erin Christina

Week 3

This week was a fun week full of lots of great feelings and experiences.  It makes me so happy to see the smiles on students face and I get excited when I see students understand the things that are being taught.  The “ah ha” moments are my favorite as well.  I love it when students will come to me to ask me a question and they think it is the coolest thing how I know so much.  With each and every time in the classroom I feel more and more like a teacher.  I am absolutely in love with what I am doing.  There are stressful points and points that I just have no idea how to handle a student but in the end I know that I will grow from that experience and that I can help the student as well. 

            This week:

·         We worked with the long /i/ sound.  Students were to identify the long /i/ pattern and also give examples of words that have a long /i/ pattern in it.  (ex: igh, ie).  Students took turns coming up to the board and telling me what words would have the long /i/ and also underlining the pattern in the words. 

·         We worked with irregular verbs.  The students had to identify the proper verb to go in each sentence out of a regular present tense verb and an irregular verb.  (ex get and got, tell and told, blow and blew)  Identify past tense verbs that do not end in –ed.  There were some sentences that the students struggled with but after rereading the sentences with the students and having them identify if the sentence was past tense or present and showing the key word that tells them it they were able to complete the worksheet. 

·         We worked on finding details.  Students had statements from the story we read that they had to go back into the story and find out more about that part of the story.  At least two details for each of the three statements.  Students struggled to come up with more details and when I would ask questions to probe their thinking they would write down one word answers.  It took a little bit of time but each student was able to come up with two different details from the points of the story.  Some students even went off on their own and dug much deeper into details of the story. 

·         We had to find and categorize adjectives.  Student had 3 sentences to find adjectives in.  They had to categorize the adjectives into either “what kind”, “how many”, or “special adjective”. The students had a little bit of difficulty in doing this but with a little help and reminders from me the student all were able to finish and accomplish the worksheet.  The helping included having the students find a noun in the sentence or I would give them the noun and they would tell me what word was describing it and helping to understand the concept that the adjective (the word describing the noun) will come right before the noun. 

·         We did some problem solving and inferring.  The students had a worksheet that gave them 2 different paragraphs that stated a problem someone was having and what they were doing about it but gave no solution.  The students had to tell what the problem was, what they were doing about the problem and how they might go about solving the problem.  The students could answer the first two questions but I had to help them with the last one.  I would ask a question for them to think about and answer to help them come up with an answer to the last question. 

·         I taught a reading lesson this week.  All it was for the reading lesson was to read that story and ask the students questions.  We did a vocabulary activity before we read the story.  The students were able to answer my questions and they did such a good job with giving ideas for what they think would happen in the story. 

·         The first math lesson I taught this week was dividing by two.  The class was so much fun and I could tell they enjoyed the activity we did.  I used the students had had them divide each other into two groups and tell me how many were in each group.  We even did remainders.  They class go this lesson so fast and concept.  They even tried to get into a more advanced topic about getting into decimals and not a remainder. 

·         My other math lesson this week had three different parts.  The first part was multiplying by 0.  That went by really fast, my class is so smart.  The 2^nd part was counting by 5, 4, 3, and 2 all the way to 100.  We colored charts to show the patterns to help them notice what happens when you count by those numbers.  The last part was a problem solving activity.  The students did struggle with this a little bit and I caught on to the fact that I needed to help them as a group, something I should of done from the start. 

The biggest stop and think moment I had this week was during the problem solving activity.  How am I to help these students understand?  The teacher said that they have done it before and would know how to do it.  I realized they needed some extra help so I made up my own example to show them what to do and how to do it.  I really wanted to help the students.  I hate that I hadn’t thought to give them an example from the start to help them understand more. 

This next week I am going to work on making sure to give the students enough information before they start working on something and it becomes too hard to finish because they are just too frustrated.  

 Another story to add to this day is when we were in the Library.   The kids were so cute and wanted to sit with me and play the clapping games (I taught them one from way back in my day ... "Miss Suzzy had a steem boat the steam boat had a bell....")  and the library at the school has a bunch of flags all over it from countries all over the world.  Well they started asking me what all of them were.  I was like ummmmm (no IDEA!! but you cant tell a student that because they look to you like you know everything)  I turned it into a learning experince.  So I thought on my feet...We are in a Library arent we?!  There has to be a book about the flags .. and one boy went and got it for me.  So we went through the book and found flags around the room.  I love my kids!! 

<3  Erin Christina

Week 2

This week was a good week.  The more I teach and interact with the students the more confident I feel and more I want to just keep teaching.  I wish everyday could be Tuesday Thursday so I could just be there every day.  I love this so much more then my other classes.  I have a slower reaction to my real name as well since I hear “Miss Elliott” all the time now.  A huge thought that has been with me each day is that I know I could not have any kind of impact or progress with the students if it wasn’t for the spirit.  I know that if I didn’t start each day with prayer and ask for the guidance and have the spirit there teaching with me.  This week has been full of good thoughts and feels and growing confidence. 

This week:

·         Did the reading lesson.  I read to the class The Mural.  Really all it consists of is reading through the story and in the teacher book there are questions and other things to ask and do with the students during the story.  At the start as a class using choral reading we read the preface.  We went over the vocabulary words they would come across in the story and in their work book pages.  After each page I would ask them the comprehension questions that went along with the pages.  I started calling on students whose hands weren’t up since I had the same three girls who would raise their hands even before I had asked the question.  I didn’t want to call on the same students over and over.  A lot of the questions were what they thought would happen.  When there are multiple answers they wouldn’t be wrong.  I liked seeing some of them smile after sharing a thought and finding out it was a good point.  There were also a few parts in the book that told me to write a word on the board and talk to the class about how a new ending to a word changes how the word is broken up into syllables. 

·         I had a mini lesson on writing words and what you had to do to the word to add the ending on it.  The students spelling words for the week end in -ed or –ing and they had to identify what to do to the base word to make the new word. (dropping the e).  I wrote the first one on the board and asked them what I should do to it.  After I did one I started writing just base words on the board and had the student come up and show me how they should write it and tell me and the class what they did to the word to make it that way.  I also threw in some other questions like why are you putting -ed at the end if the ending sound is /t/?  The class is so smart they know that –ed makes three different sounds and they knew that the end of the word had to be –ed.

·         Comparing Adjectives (adding –er or –est).  The students needed to identify when to use –er or –est when comparing adjectives.  The students were able to answer when I just asked them about how many items when I use –er but when I did switched the answer with the question they became confused.  They did a worksheet later and were able to identify the ending on that.  They started actually using them in the class talking about who was shorter and who was shortest.  One of them in a conversation almost got me to use the wrong comparing word.  It was a close call, if they hadn’t been learning about them I probably would not have caught myself. 

·         We did some comparing and contrasting in class this week.  The students were able to answer when I just asked them about how many items when I use –er but when I did switched the answer with the question they became confused.  They did a worksheet later and were able to identify the ending on that.  Student were able to pick apart a paragraph and say what only belonged to two different things and say what those two things also had in common.  I was surprised how fast they picked up on it.  It really only took a reminder from me to point out in the paragraph they were reading from to look for where is says “both stories” and where is said just said the name of one of the two kids. 

·         One math lesson this week was on translations.  I went into the lesson thinking it was going to be a hard lesson to teach but the students picked up in very fast.  I took to school with me my stuffed animal to use to show slide, turn, and flip.  The class just LOVED it.  I told them and showed them what each thing was.  The Saxon lesson wanted me to show them a bunch of examples but I deiced to let the students come down and show me the examples.  I also changed the game up a bit.  They came down and moved the dog and showed me on the board what they did so I knew they knew what they were doing.  While that happened the classes eyes were closed.  When they opened them a student would come down and tell me what they other student did and then they would have to undo it so the dog would be back in its starting position.  The class did their first worksheet and came back to the kiva and had so much to say about what they learned.  They had a lot of fun with this lesson.  They did their last worksheet so well that they even earned getting to pet and hold my dog stuffed animal while they lined up to leave for the day.

·         My 2^nd math lesson of the week was reading and labeling a coordinate graph.  The most important thing I did with this lesson is I stressed going right then up.  I really do have a smart class because they caught on very fast.  They even realized that when the 2^nd number is the same they will be living on the same street (I related it to addresses and houses).  I had the student come up and tell me the addresses to ones drawn on the board and then I would give them address and they would place them on the graph for me.  When we went back to their seats we normally go through the first worksheet together but as I was walking around the room they are all finishing it up on their own.  We went back to the kiva to talk about what we learned and they were all excited to tell me the different things they learned about for the lesson.  The final worksheet went very well.

My stop and think point this week was during my math lesson on Thursday.  I was being observed by Sister Gordon and one boy was acting up the whole time.  I did what I normally do when the class acts up but he didn’t stop.  He was the only one who was misbehaving that didn’t stop after one time.  I lost all my points for classroom management.  I had been feeling so good about everything and one boy in the class got me totally marked down and I felt horrible and lost every bit of confidence after talking to Sister Gordon.  I guess I felt even worse because she started off saying amazing things and building me up so high then it all came crashing down.  She had also told me that I need to be more positive when student do things right rather than just focusing on those kids doing things wrong.  I was sitting there after she left and the class was doing something else just thinking and going through my binder.  I do focus on what the students are doing wrong over when they are doing good things.  I need to watch for those good things.  I thought I was but maybe I need to do a little more and reinforce the good behavior. 

My main plan is to work on my classroom management.  I thought I had a good system down and the class had never gotten out of control and when it did I fixed it right away.  But after getting observed I have no management from what I was told.  So finding a way to make sure the class is on task and not doing over and over again what that one boy was doing all during my lesson on Thursday.  I have those few students I am still trying to work with to help them and find the best way to be able to get through to them.  I made a brake through with one on Tuesday and I hope to keep making progress with him.  

<3  Erin Christina