Java e shtatë (Week 7)

            Monday I started my TPA unit. It went pretty well. The lesson went well but you can only make fractions so exciting. I went through the day and got through everything I had. Monday’s we have a 3 hour slot at the end of the day and I felt like I was scrambling at the end of the day and unprepared. I had that feeling that I didn’t want to move on with anything but I didn’t have enough supplemental activities for them to do. We sent home a note that was explaining to the parents that in the two weeks coming up before ISAT’s we are going to be going over a little more review of some language arts concepts and so their homework might go up a little bit, it was saying now that I’m full time teaching they may have a “new teacher” but the routines are all the same. The students have been going home and telling their parents that they don’t have any spelling homework and no spelling tests, then progress reports went home and all of a sudden they’re failing spelling and we’re getting calls thinking they didn’t have any spelling. So the note said that nothing has changed and they are told every day to study their spelling (because I verbally tell them and write it on the assignment board every day). It had some important dates on it and a part about a change in the handwriting. Because the school is almost out of the budget we are running out of paper, so instead of printing out whole handwriting packets we are having them write paragraphs on a separate sheet of paper. It ends up being MUCH less than the original handwriting packet so we said it was due the next day (it was only one paragraph) and Luke started to cry when we passed it out. He thought it was too much and didn’t want to do it. But we just kept explaining it and pretty much ignored him. He does this so often it’s either just a cry for attention (literally) or he’s trying to manipulate us into pulling back on the work.

            Tuesday I came heavily prepared, I absolutely hated the feeling of scrambling and being crunched for time so I came with around 12 different things we could get done and move on to if we had extra time, and of course didn’t. One thing I am planning on doing though is some reading with them. They do a lot of reading in their textbooks and then silent sustained reading when they have some extra time, but I am going to start reading them a fiction book because you can do so much with it and for the kids who don’t get all their work done on time they never have that opportunity to read in school. I was going through the books and Mrs. Z. said she had a unit made up for James and the Giant Peach that I could do and that was the book I was thinking about anyways so now we just have to find it and I’m going to start doing that. One of the things we did in my TPA unit was an equivalent fractions game where they each got a fraction and they had to find their equivalent fraction partner. They don’t really get to do a whole lot of activities like this so it was really fun for them. A couple students who constantly ask me questions the second they start working on anything were having trouble being confident with it. They wanted to just come up to me and ask if it was right rather than do the math on their own to double check. We had a lot of specials so it was a pretty uneventful day.

            Wednesday was an interesting day. We had finished out TPA unit content; it’s just working on the final assessment from here. They have to take the data I collected from the whole fourth grade and make fractions out of all the categories. I asked them what their favorites were in categories like candy, sports, baseball teams, and other things. Then they have to simplify all the fractions and put it on a poster which we are going to hang in the hall. I had to go out and buy the posters because the budget is almost all tapped out and I didn’t want to ask the principal to do it. The biggest change I made with this project from my last one is that I’m making it completely in class. We have a problem with one student whose mother is doing work for him (but I’m not going to get into that) so in order to make sure that it’s completely their own work I collect everything at the end of the day and pass it out the next time we work on it. When I told them this the particular student started freaking out, breaking down, and crying. Then later when I reiterated the fact that it was completely in class he asked “except for me right?” To which I replied absolutely not. Then when I was coming back from dropping the kids off at gym I walked into the classroom and Mrs. Z. had fallen and was sitting on the floor kind of in shock. While she was trying to hang posters she fell and hit her head so she went home for the second part of the day. The principal wanted to just let me be in the class and said I didn’t need another teacher or a sub in there and I was fine on my own but rules were rules. So we had the reading specialist just come in and sit at the desk and do her own work. That was a huge boost of confidence to hear that the principal trusted me in the classroom without another adult in there and if it weren’t for the legal aspects of it I could have just been on my own.

            Thursday I was completely on my own for the whole day! Mrs. Z. was out all day and so it was truly my classroom without her presence. The sub just sat in the chair and read or did Sudoku’s all day which was fine with me. She was really nice and has been subbing in the district for almost 30 years so she knew the kids from when she subbed for their class in kindergarten. She said she loved being a sub because of that reason; she’s subbed for some 8^th graders before and said she tied their shoes when they were little. She loves being able to see the kids all throughout their lives and this was something I didn’t even think of. The day went really well, the kids were great, they were pretty much better than when Mrs. Z. is there which is an amazing sign for me because they truly do respond to me and respect me as their teacher. I had a problem with Job all day though, but just him. It got to the point I was going to send a note home with him but unfortunately didn’t know where Mrs. Z. keeps them so I just had a talk with him. I told him that the only reason he’s not getting a note was because of that and if he were to get another note home he’d have an in school suspension. I asked him if there was something going on because the first 5 weeks I was here we never had a problem and all of a sudden in the last 2 weeks he’s been out of control. He said he didn’t know what was going on but he did say he was going to be better. We also started our final assessment for my TPA unit. After they did so well on the review and were so confident they really struggled with the simplifying.

            Friday Mrs. Z came back but was really sore. She has a bruised clavicle so she was just sitting in her chair and going through a bunch of boxes that she’s been meaning to for the last few years. So she was just sort of chilling in the corner and I felt like she wasn’t even there, which again was perfectly fine with me. It’s weird to think that as of this point I have the minimum requirement of full time teaching. This is weird for me because I feel like I have just started to hit my stride as a teacher and if I were just finishing I feel like I wouldn’t have gotten enough out of it. Anyways, we were working on our final assessment and they told me they had never learned greatest common factor. So I went over factor trees which they had indeed learned and then went through how to find the GCF with factor trees. Once they remembered that then everything went much better for them. Fun Friday was great, I had them make comics because we have been working on predicting, one way to work on predicting is through comics because there are no words. So they had to make their own comics, I let them work in groups and on the floor and it was a lot of fun for them. It was a really good week overall.

Classroom Confidential

            In chapters 8 and 9 in Schmidt’s Classroom Confidential, she talks about social studies and art in the classroom. I love teaching social studies and one thing I haven’t been very good about is bringing in outside sources. For instance I have generally stuck to the book or just the facts and haven’t done a good job about bringing in the things she talks about like primary sources, visual images, artifacts, literature, or bringing in the architectural element. This might be easier for me if we had a projector somewhere other than the computer lab which is always booked, and my renderings of architecture on the blackboard don’t exactly cut it. She talks about how pictures are “perfect tools for getting to the past – fast” (pg 173) which is somewhat what we did at the art institute last week. We looked at multiple different types of paintings and that let the students see the different styles of clothing and other basics about that time period or place, then lets them infer about the rest. It works on both the historical aspect of a subject and inferring. It was also weird to read about the books that offer a different view of a time period, the one she started with was time traveling books, which usually consist of two kids getting stuck in a time machine and going to a different time and learning something (not exactly Bill and Ted’s excellent adventure). A couple weeks ago we actually watched a movie about two kids who time traveled back to different aspects of Dr. King’s life. So it was cool to read that and have already done something like it.

            The two things Schmidt says are the biggest benefits to putting drama in the classroom are: Drama brings stories to life, enriching literature, poetry, history, and social science and it is a vehicle to convey ideas and emotions, strengthening oral and written expression, thinking, and social skills. I try to incorporate things like readers theatre and other methods into the classroom that use the arts because with reasons like that I don’t see why you shouldn’t try and do it. Mrs. Z. likes to play classical music in the classroom when the students are having a good day behavior wise which is something I really like. Having music in the classroom not only benefits the learning environment but you can play so many different types of music which is very beneficial to the students because they can learn about different cultures through it. I love the African culture and I think the music is so unique and can bring so much to the table, I like being able to have the freedom to be able to play that in class. It gives them a chance ot explore not only the different musical aspects like beat or rhythm, but questions like “Why do you think they use mostly drums instead of string instruments?” and other questions like that can open up so many doors into learning about a particular culture, all through a couple songs.

            I love what she says about if there are different ways of knowing then there are different ways of showing. There are so many different ways of assessing students than with tests, which is something I love to do if you haven’t figured out already. I’ve been in the class for 7 weeks now and the only tests I’ve given are spelling tests and a single math test (and that’s because I didn’t teach the first half of the unit). I love alternative assessments! I love to use debates and am trying to find the best place to implement one, we are actually having a social studies fair at the end of next month, instead of picture books I had them do a comic as a small assessment, I had them write a short story of a piece of art after the field trip to the art institute, these are all things she talked about that I have done or am planning on doing. She does bring up some other things that I really want to try as well like making a mural, having them do a dramatic performance would be fun with some of the personalities we have in our class, or re-creating the past with models. These are all great ideas that I would love to try and implement in my classroom and hopefully I can find the perfect place to do it.