Teaching 2nd unit

This week I started teaching my second unit, which is Math. It went pretty well today. I am not sure how anyone else feels about Everyday Math, but I am not a fan of it. I think the students can do more so instead of following the lesson in the Everyday Math book I taught the same concept just in a different way. My CT enjoyed how I changed it to fit the students and how they were still able to learn the information, just in a different way.

Start of Unit 2

I started my science unit on monday and it went very well compared to my first unit, the students listened and i didnt have trouble with transitioning which i would give credit to my CT. My CT cracked down on the class a couple of weeks ago because they were really getting out of control. It almost seems like these kids like to be disciplined or test the waters of breaking rules.

Stephens Practicum

Well, I'm glad that the semester is finally starting to get close to the end. I think we are ready to be done as well as our cooperating teachers! The Montessori style of classroom has never been a wonderful experience, but I have learned a lot from it. We taught our first lesson for Math this past Monday and it went fairly well. It was an exploration lesson that we co-taught, so it was a little crazy and loud - but I think they learned from it. We talked about weight, money and patterns. As far as Social Studies is concerned, the Africa unit is still continuing and they are still researching Africa and answering questions about it. It has not been very exciting or engaging thus far, but hopefully we have either missed those activities or they just haven't got to that part yet. The South America celebration was also cancelled for the end of the last unit that we were part of teaching. The two montessori teachers just didn't have it planned in time - the students were very excited about it too! Hopefully, they will get to do one at the end of Africa though. We'll see!

Bad kids are turned good with a bootcamp

For most of this semester this class was pretty bad and a lot of students have home problems with one or both parents in jail. One girl got suspended last week and on monday when i saw her again and the rest of the students it is a changed classroom because our CT layed down the law and cracked down on them, very good class now and i think the transitions are going to be easier with my next unit on monday.

Test

test to see if it works again

Practicum

This past week in my Practicum class, we have been catching up on our Math assignments. However, the students are starting a new unit - moving from South America to Africa. They seem to be really enjoying the materials and activities that they are doing. They have a large foam floor map that is put together for them to use when they are doing their worksheets. Right now, they are really learning about the geography and location of different places in Africa. They are using a lot of the materials and things that I taught them in the unit I taught. They have to find things North, South, East and West of various places and landforms of Africa. We are having a lot of fun and really learning about the Montessori style more and more every day!

teacher stuff

This week in practicum I got to do some teacher stuff...not so much what we look forward to doing. Wednesday was our last day before the kids spring break and it was packed full. Before everything started the kids went outside for recess and we got to stay in and work on report cards. I was able to fill in the area about attendance and all that fun stuff. While we were there in the morning our teacher got observed by the principal, a fire drill, a ribbon cutting ceremon, and a celebration of the custodians. Even though our teacher has been teaching over 30 years she still was nervous about getting observed by the principal. Both our teacher and principal are great and get along really well. Our fire drill was the typical fire drill, but instead of coming back inside we stayed outside for the ribbon cutting ceremony. There was a new pavilion built and the school celebrated their new pavilion and the main person of the job who created it. This consisted of the older grades (4th and 5th) reading poems and creating poems similar to the poem Where the Sidewalk Ends and a couple other poems about the area. After the ribbon cutting ceremony we had a celebration of the custodians. The custodians are really involved with this school...they create their own bulletin boards and they create decorations in the hall for everyone. One of the custodians actually is the coach of the robotics team at the school. Anyways, the older grades created poems and letters to the custodians and the entire school signed thank you cards made out of butcher paper and framed them for the custodians. It was a secret of the school and of course all the kids loved the idea of a secret. Needless to say the custodians were surprised! That is just in the little bit of time we are there, but it was fun.

Japan

MaCall and I are doing our unit on Japan. Does anyone have any good culture books or books about Japan or featuring a Japanese child?
MUCHOS GRACIAS!

Pictures of S. S. Unit day 2 and 3

The first picture is Abe Lincoln and his hat. It is hard to tell, but each student received a black strip of construction paper and the kids wrote one thing they learned about Abe Lincoln in white crayon (It's hard to see, but I couldn't zoom in close enough to still get the whole deal). Once they were all finished we taped each piece to the back of the door to create Abe Lincoln's hat! The cherry tree is about George Washington. The "cherries" are actually cut-outs of George Washington's head from the Ellis Machine at the school. As with Abe Lincoln each student received one "cherry" and had to write one thing they learned about George Washington. We discussed the myth about George Washington cutting down the cherry tree etc with this project. Everyone loved it, we received many compliments from other teachers in the school!