First Grade

I have been student teaching in my last placement, a first grade classroom.  I just completed an author study on Robert Munsch which was very exciting.  I introduced this author by doing a Reader’s Theater “Invitiation to Munsch.”  Then the students each received their own invitiation to the author study as a motivation, and they loved it.  The principal was invited as well.

Each day for 2 weeks the students listened to a story by Robert Munsch and were then given an option of what follow-up activity they would like to do.  To go along with the theme “Munsch” (Munch), students were given a menu, as if they were at a restaurant and picked what they’d like to do.

At the conclusion of the author study, the majority of the students’ favorite picture books was: A Promise is a Promise and Green, Yellow, and Purple. The only day students were not given an option was when we read the story Green Yellow and Purple. On that day, students were asked to be scientists.  We wore latex-free gloves and put “super-indelible-never-come-off-till-your-dead-and-maybe-even-later coloring markers” onto a 4″ by 4″ cut out of a plain white t-shirt.  They were told to choose 5 colors and create a design.  Then, we used a special liquid solution.  Students each put 10 drops in the center of the design.  Instantly, their design turned into a tie-dyed shirt!  When students saw some marker on their table, they tried to use water and soap to get it off — but it did not work, just like in the book (it wouldn’t come off her skin — good thing we wore gloves!).  But, when the students used the special liquid solution, it magically came off.  How could this be!?

Students LOVED this experiment and we later made a class quilt, putting together their 4″ by 4″ squares.  It will be displayed in 2 weeks at the school’s literacy festival.

kindergarten

A lot has happened since my last posts.  I’ve been student teaching in a wonderful kindergarten classroom that I’m very proud to be a part of.  I was nervous leaving fourth grade because I loved it so much that I feared I wouldn’t like kindergarten but — surprisingly I love teaching kindergarten.  So this May I will be graduating with experience in every grade I’m certified in, except for sixth grade (but I have a lot of experience working with sixth graders when proctoring tests for The Princeton Review, my part time job).

I’m currently in charge of a mini social studies unit on community entitled “My Neighborhood” and a mini math unit on Time.  At first when I was told I was going to be teaching five year olds how to tell time I was in shock!  I remember learning it in first grade and being so confused that I didn’t really grasp the concept until second grade because everyone is so used to digital clocks.  So when I taught the students this past Thursday, I was, and am still, glowing with delight that they really got the concept of how to read an analog clock.  I wish I had taken pictures, but when you are teaching in the moment it’s hard to do.  I feel so proud of all 20 kindergarten students, and myself.  On Friday their morning work was putting together a clock on their own and every single student got it right and the time  that the clock was pointing to.

In social studies, I created the first lesson about homes.  We read a cute spin-off of The Three Little Pigs called, The Three Pigs and the students loved it!  They were engaged during the entire sitting.  Then, instead of having them sit back at their desks and do a hand out or something along those lines, I created different centers that they went to that correlated to homes and the story we had just read.  At one, the students were asked to be construction workers and they had to work together as a group to create one house made of sticks.  This was a difficult task to do but they put their name on their construction hats and went to work and some came out looking quite good.  In another center students built a house with wooden blocks for their brick home.  This was a much easier task and students built inventive architectual designs.  At another center students played a board game I created.  Students rolled the dice and prayed they didn’t land on the big bad wolf or they would have to go all the way back to start.  The first to the houses wins!  But if the big bad wolf wins the game all the little pig’s houses blow down.  And lastly, at another center students were given cards that they had to match in a memory game.

On Friday I created I taught a second lesson in my community unit.  I had brought in a picture book the students had already read (although I did not know), so we skimmed the pictures and talked about what a neighborhood is.  Then, I read My Map Book which is a very cute story and students got to see what different kinds of maps look like.  One student in the class is obsessed with creating maps and wants to be a map maker when he grows up.

Monday I have my first supervised lesson in kindergarten on measurement.  Wish me luck!

Math & Science Bulletin Boards

I was very fortunate that this semester I was able to actively participate, bringing in many of my own ideas into the curriculum.  My cooperative teacher liked my ideas so much that many of the things I brought in are now posted on the walls, such as place value hints for decimals and large numbers (on chart paper), and two bulletin boards.

One bulletin board was for math (and incorporated social studies) with the presidential election (and our class prediction was right!).  We learned about the electoral college, watched a BrainPop video, and learned how to convert fractions to percentages.  On the bulletin we included our essential questions, a map of the United States according to what was predicted would happen in the election, and we payed special attention to ’swing’ states.  Students created a class book in which their written responses were documented and displayed on our board.

The other bulletin board was for science.  The students were ecstatic about this lesson because they got to make ice cream!  We talked about why we use salt when it snows outside and brought that connection to why we would use salt to make ice cream.  When salt comes into contact with ice, the freezing point of the ice is lowered.  By lowering the temperature at which ice is frozen, we are able to create an environment in which the milk mixture can freeze into ice cream.  The class was split into 9 groups of 3.  Some groups were successful in making ice cream, one group looked like it was straight out of a freezer, and others had smushy ice cream, and a few had milkshakes.  We then discussed why some groups ice cream turned out better and came up with ideas such as: the groups that were successful had more ice, shook their ZipLoc bags faster and non-stop.  This lesson turned out great, got everyone involved, and allowed students to be actively involved and excited to see what the outcome would be.

Electoral College

Math and Social Studies Interdisciplinary lesson on Electoral Votes

Student Sample in Class Book

Converting fractions to percentages

Science Lesson: Physical vs. Chemical changes

Finished product: ice cream!

Teaching with Manipulatives

This past Friday I taught a math lesson in a small group setting at MLK elementary and the experience was wonderful.   I was asked to prepare a lesson for place value, and equivalent decimals.

On chart paper, I wrote out a large number: 547,650,321,489.432.  I had it arranged so every three numbers were in houses: the billions, the millions, the thousands, and the ones.  The children loved this and felt it really helped them remember how to say these large numbers.  Also, they just learned about the tenths, hundreths, and thousandths place, so we had to practice saying those numbers.

This was done through a game.  The students were paired off into teams.  They each got to choose their own team names, and tallys were kept.  Each group got a miniature dry-erase board with markers to write down their answer.  I wrote down a number and they had to write how you would say that number.  This was a great success!

Then, once I saw that the students understood this concept, we moved on to fractions.  I made eight circles, each cut into different parts.  For instance, circles included: 1/2, 1/3, 1/4, 1/6, 1/5, 1/8, 1/10, and 1/12.  I wrote out a number, and asked students to find that number within the circles.  For instance, 1.5, or 1 2/12.  Interestingly enough, in some cases, there was more than one way to represent the fraction using these manipulatives, and it was interesting to watch the groups explore possible ways of finding a solution.  At times, the students had difficulties working in groups because they disagreed on their answers, but at times it was helpful because they did not feel confident enough in their responses to share aloud unless partnered up.

Once again, I found that teaching math through manipulatives was very positive and the students were able to have fun with a hands-on interactive lesson, with many visual aids.

Participant Observer at West Side

Wow, I can’t believe I haven’t updated this since my first lesson.  The semester ends in 2 weeks so I have so much to share.  I only have 2 more days left of being a participant observer at West Side, and I am going to miss my second graders and all the people I met there.

Sadly I can’t post any pictures due to privacy rights.

Lesson 1: The students wrote about a community helper and how that person helps to make our community a happy, healthy, and safe place to be.  In addition, some students colored their community helpers and made them look like the person they wrote about.  I then turned their works into a book on community helpers (interdisciplinary study with language arts and social studies)

Lesson 2: The students explored poetry using our observations of nature from looking outside the classroom window.  The students each created their own poem and drew a picture.  I feel they each did an excellent job and I was able to work with two groups of 8 students and learn from my first time presenting the lesson.  As a result, the final product of the second group was exactly what I anticipated and I felt very accomplished. (language arts lesson)

Lesson 3: This lesson was my favorite!  I took some information from the National Geographic Explorer and information from books and the internet on kites to create a lesson on the history of kites.  The students were so excited and were introduced to a great deal of material.  They learned many things they did not know about the use of kites (airplanes, weather, lightening).  They created a timeline (their first ever) and at the end created their own kites.

Lesson 4: The students learned how to create an origami frog, and write an apostrophe poem, talking to their frog.  I felt I accomplished so much in this lesson, tackling a very interactive lesson that incorporated so much, and was able to keep the group on task, complete all my objectives, and finish this all in the limited 30 minutes.

Participant Observer, Lesson One

Immediately after beginning my placement at Cold Spring Harbor, I was assigned to do my first ever supervised lesson. I had to do the lesson on language arts or social studies and so I decided to incorporate both in an interdisciplinary lesson on Community Helpers. First I read the story Tops and Bottoms which many of the students loved how the book was different in appearance, being opened from top to bottom, instead of side to side. Within this lesson I also incorporated the community helpers that came into class while I was there: a real estate developer and Microsoft manager; asking questions such as “How does so and so make our community a happy, healthy, and safe place to be?”

After reading the book, I modeled what I wanted the students to do. And each drew their own community helper and wrote a sentence about how that person contributes to our community…

Leaf Rubbings

While working at the Franklin Early Childhood Center in the Hewlett-Woodmere School District I had the opportunity to do my small group lesson plan on leaf rubbings.

I read/sang the story: The Leaves are Falling One by One, a Scholastic book by Steve Metzger.

The Five Senses

My first experience in the classroom was a noteworthy experience. The first lesson plan I had undertaken in the classroom was on the sense of smell. At the time, the school was spending the month of October learning about the five senses. The day I presented my whole group lesson was during the week that the sense of smell was being discussed.

 

Please Note: My lesson plans are only mentioned, but not explained in full depth due to copyright purposes. If you have any questions regarding the lessons, please feel free to comment.