One Full Day, One More Day
Thursday was my “full teaching day.” I planned for the day with W--, one of the other teachers-to-be in my CMA group. She is also teaching 4th grade for the summer, and she teaches the same block as I do. When we spoke about planning, she had already written the lesson plans for two of the lessons (math and writing) and had an idea for the third (reading). I felt like a useless moocher for a bit, but she had no idea what to do for science and I love planning science lessons, so it worked out in the end.
I hadn’t done anything with centers yet, but both W—and I were eager to try them out, so we had math centers and reading centers. It was very exciting. It takes more planning (much more) to make the centers, but then it gives the kids a useful activity and lets them have a break from the teacher. When it came down to it, I didn’t leave enough time for the math centers, but they were getting it, at least.
In reading, we used all of the methods we had learned all summer to help us understand a text (finding the main idea and supporting details, making text-to-text, text-to-world, and text-to-self connections) in conjunction. I read a story about a little girl who was worried that her single-parent household would seem “weird” at a class party, but then she found that family can mean many things (we connected it to our class party, our different kinds of families, and a story we had read before, among other things). Then we read a story about a girl who was worried about fitting in at a new school because she only spoke Spanish aloud together and made some connections. Then they went to reading centers. At one, they mapped the main idea and answered some questions on another short story, and at the other they made connections with that story and posted them on an overhead of the story so we could see everyone’s connections.
Then it was time for writing. They have been writing a “personal narrative” all summer, and Thursday was the day that we put it all together and illustrated it, and so I did a lesson on useful illustration. First we looked at the pictures in the book I had read aloud, and then we thought up a useful illustration for my narrative example about going to the space center. Finally, they had time to work on their books.
In math, we learned about congruent and similar shapes. The centers were the fun part, because one had things like similar pill bottles and congruent cans of food (3D kinesthetic, yeah!) and the other had flat shapes they compared to a worksheet. Finally, in science, we played a game to show how energy is lost as it goes down the energy pyramid. Then we made an energy pyramid for the class ecosystem that they created with Ms. B—yesterday, and then they made their own energy pyramids for their person ecosystems from yesterday.
The day went fairly well. However, I did only have four students, who were (as usual) very well behaved and motivated. I adore them. They are nothing like my students will be in the Delta, I’m sure. Or even if they are, there are only four, compared to the twenty-three I will have in the Delta. The best part was reading the comments that people left for me when they observed (other corps members popped in and out to observe all day long, including my IC, who stayed for almost half an hour). I asked observers (in a note on the observation table) to let me know what I was doing well and what I needed to change, and the comments were, on the whole, very helpful.
Later, after classes, the group of TFA'ers teaching at Robinson Elementary went out to Eric’s, a bar at the Hilton Hotel (just around the corner from the dorm) to celebrate before our very last day of classes at Institute. Here are some of the people from Robinson:
I hadn’t done anything with centers yet, but both W—and I were eager to try them out, so we had math centers and reading centers. It was very exciting. It takes more planning (much more) to make the centers, but then it gives the kids a useful activity and lets them have a break from the teacher. When it came down to it, I didn’t leave enough time for the math centers, but they were getting it, at least.
In reading, we used all of the methods we had learned all summer to help us understand a text (finding the main idea and supporting details, making text-to-text, text-to-world, and text-to-self connections) in conjunction. I read a story about a little girl who was worried that her single-parent household would seem “weird” at a class party, but then she found that family can mean many things (we connected it to our class party, our different kinds of families, and a story we had read before, among other things). Then we read a story about a girl who was worried about fitting in at a new school because she only spoke Spanish aloud together and made some connections. Then they went to reading centers. At one, they mapped the main idea and answered some questions on another short story, and at the other they made connections with that story and posted them on an overhead of the story so we could see everyone’s connections.
Then it was time for writing. They have been writing a “personal narrative” all summer, and Thursday was the day that we put it all together and illustrated it, and so I did a lesson on useful illustration. First we looked at the pictures in the book I had read aloud, and then we thought up a useful illustration for my narrative example about going to the space center. Finally, they had time to work on their books.
In math, we learned about congruent and similar shapes. The centers were the fun part, because one had things like similar pill bottles and congruent cans of food (3D kinesthetic, yeah!) and the other had flat shapes they compared to a worksheet. Finally, in science, we played a game to show how energy is lost as it goes down the energy pyramid. Then we made an energy pyramid for the class ecosystem that they created with Ms. B—yesterday, and then they made their own energy pyramids for their person ecosystems from yesterday.
The day went fairly well. However, I did only have four students, who were (as usual) very well behaved and motivated. I adore them. They are nothing like my students will be in the Delta, I’m sure. Or even if they are, there are only four, compared to the twenty-three I will have in the Delta. The best part was reading the comments that people left for me when they observed (other corps members popped in and out to observe all day long, including my IC, who stayed for almost half an hour). I asked observers (in a note on the observation table) to let me know what I was doing well and what I needed to change, and the comments were, on the whole, very helpful.
Later, after classes, the group of TFA'ers teaching at Robinson Elementary went out to Eric’s, a bar at the Hilton Hotel (just around the corner from the dorm) to celebrate before our very last day of classes at Institute. Here are some of the people from Robinson:
posted by Jessica at 8:30 PM
3 Comments:
What kinds of comments did you get? Did many people take the time to write out their comments?
Everyone wrote out their comments. Please are very good about feedback and following directions here. And I read the comments to you over the phone, Mom.
Everyone wrote out their comments. Please are very good about feedback and following directions here. And I read the comments to you over the phone, Mom.
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