Hurray for WVSTA!

Well, this weekend I attend my first teacher conference. I feel so grown up! I attended the conference with Nichole, Ashlee, and an under-the-weather Dr. Rye ( He kept calling me Angie!!) On Friday, we woke up and began attending presentations. The first presentation that we attended was actually hosted by a group of participants! The focus of their presentation was on using live crickets to measuring jump distances. Of course, I thought that was awesome because I like bugs and I love hands-on learning!!! Their lesson was completed with second grade students, but I clearly saw how I could change the lesson to be appropriate for my kinder kids. So guess what..... there is going to be a cricket invasion next week at North Elementary!!!!!! The other two presentations were about scientific writing and how to host a Science night at your school. The Science night presentation was very helpful and we came up with some awesome ideas. Be prepared for the most amazing Math and Science night that North has ever seen!!

Look at Fratoni go! 

My gorgeous presentation materials

Saturday was the moment that we had all been waiting for....presentation day!

Ashlee ready to share her garden knowledge!

We presented at 8:30 in the morning so I assumed that zero people would attend, but surprisingly I had six different people listen to me! I thought that I would feel super nervous, but actually I felt excited to share what I had done with my students. This lady from NASA seemed particularly interested in my students' journals and told me that she would give me seeds that had been in SPACE! Wowza! These seeds grow completely different than seeds that stayed on Earth. Can you say kindergarten experiment for contract hours??? 

All in all, it was a fun and educational time and gets me even more excited to present in Denver this Spring!

Do a little spider dance!

Well due to my illness, I have not blogged in a few weeks! Missing four days of Kindergarten felt like an eternity and I surprisingly realized that I would MUCH rather spend my days teaching than laying in my bed. As I get further into my action research, I am feeling so happy about! Not only is it fun, but I can see how much my students are engaged in the stories. The most interesting part about this study is watching my students act out the stories that we read. Using the simplest of props ( from a construction paper crown to a few sparkly stickers, the students bring the stories to life. My kids literally look like their heads are going to explode as they raise their hands SO high to be chosen as an actor. To make the job even sweeter, I always ask my actors to stand and bow as the audience claps. This week we worked with the story      " Where the Wild Things Are" and it has been one of my favorites so far. To add a little twist to my lesson, I played the animated version of the book on the SMART board following the story read aloud and student plays. When asked if the students preferred watching the plays or the video, all of my students said they enjoyed watching the student plays more. I found that to be such a special comment for children who are constantly watching TV, movies, and video games.

This week we learned about spiders to wrap up the month of October! The students seemed absolutely enthralled with the fact that girl spiders are bigger than boy spiders. The fact that really excited them was the fact that girl spiders eat boy spiders if they are hungry and boy spiders do a little dance and offer the female a treat when he wants to make friends with her ( well technically mate, but I don't want to get into that!!!)


After missing almost a week, I am so ready to be back!

In 1492, Columbus Sailed the Ocean Blue....but my kids think he is Johnny Appleseed

Even though this was a four day week it seemed extremely long. I feel like many of my students made strides these past few weeks, while others continue on the same path of blurting and turning off their ears to directions. My students just act as though they have no "off switch" for their voices. Somehow I place some partial blame on chocolate milk. I feel like yellow lights will start to come out more and more as students fail to close their mouths and listen to directions.

This week I started my action research and I have been very excited to implement it into my classroom. So far my students have reacted so positively to the read aloud adjustments that went along with my study. The first book that we focused on was "Caps for Sale"! Because this is a very vintage story, I worried that the students would not have as much interest but apparently this story delights children of any decade! One major aspect of my read aloud strategy is the implementation of story dramatizations and boy did my kiddies adore this! You have no idea how proud it made me feel to hear them giggling, raising their hands so high to be picked, and acting out the story with such enthusiasm. Some of my students even pouted because they were not picked and even though this is "unacceptable" behavior it showed me that they were very eager to take part in this lesson. I hope that the rest of my study continues in such a positive light!!

This week we celebrated Columbus Day with a variety of stories and activities dedicated to Columbus sailing the ocean blue. I chose to do a handprint activity that I had found on Pinterest. Truthfully, Pinterest is an amazing resource for teachers!! My first week of full time teaching felt a bit stressful, but also made me feel right where I am supposed to be. Teaching early childhood students is my passion and I am so excited to have this opportunity to work with these VERY diverse students everyday. Even though sometimes I feel as though I need a shot of adrenaline to match their level of energy.......

We love to write! 

A bunch of PUMPKIN heads :)

After reflecting on this week, I have to say that the lessons that I created were quite successful. Yay me! This week I focused on concepts of print, the sections of a book, patterning, and sequencing. Seems like a lot for my kiddies to learn in one week, but they  did  a very good job. From what I can remember from kindergarten, it seems like children these days are expected to learn so much! But on another note, I recorded myself teaching circle this week and when I watched it back, I felt like I was kind of a scary teacher. I always felt like in the past that I struggled with discipline and had no clue how to attempt classroom management, but this stern voiced Allie was on the screen. Am I too firm with these kiddies? I just feel like for them to understand the behavior that you want from them you need to be clear, bold, and show that you MEAN it with your body language and voice.
Some of my favorite lessons from this week were a fiction/non-fiction discussion, learning to "read", and pumpkin seed counting. When I started to teach my fiction and non-fiction lesson, I noticed that I was not as clear as I could be with the confusing concepts. I chose to start using key words "fake for fiction" and "not fake for non-fiction". That helped me teach and the kids understand the concepts!

Fiction and Non-fiction discussion materials



This week I also taught my students to "read" in fifteen minutes! Teacher of the decade goes to Allie Angotti.........well, not quite. Only one student in my class can actually read words, but I realized with excitement, visuals and prompting my students can read random letters, animals, and colors using correct reading strategies. I loved seeing the joy on my students faces when I gave them praise and applause for reading all on their own. It made me so happy that they were all clamoring to read again!
On Friday, we finally cut open the pumpkin that has been taunting the students all week! Working in small groups, the students estimated the total number of seeds and then each counted the a small group of seeds. The total number was over 300!!!!

  

It's Apple Season in Kinderland!

This week we celebrated the start of Fall with Johnny Appleseed's birthday and an apple theme! One of my lessons for this week was creating apple prints with the students and also incorporating sentence writing. It was definitely a trial and error process! This activity showed me that prior to a messy lesson you should practice at home so you are confident when you create with the kiddies. My students were given the task of choosing between the colors red, yellow, or green and they then had to write the sentence " NAME likes COLOR apples in Fall." This one of the students' first experience with writing on a line and A LOT of erasing occurred at my station. But that is OK!! Though some students eventually wrote their sentence after basically erasing a hole in their paper.....others needed a little extra help. For those students, I wrote out the sentence in highlight and they had to trace the pre-written words. I was pretty impressed with my on-the-spot differentiation idea!

After a month of allowing the students to sit where they please at circle time......that time has come to a beautiful end. Some students just cannot sit next to each other because of incessant chatting, touching, or fighting. Asking my students to sit still for 30 minutes is so challenging for them! I am hoping that my assigned seats will delete some fidgets and chatting issues.

As my time for full time teaching and starting my research project comes close, I am getting excited! I will definitely need to start pre-planning my activities so I am not completely overwhelmed in the next few weeks. Here's to a happy new week and the start of October!!

Just another week in crazy kindergarten....

Well I survived another week with these hyper kiddos, I'm pretty sure that chocolate milk should be served at a minimum in the public school system. This week it seems like we are starting to realize that our students struggle to listen, follow directions, or zip their lips. It is getting quite frustrating because it seems like it takes so long to do anything! From lining up to packing up backpacks, conversations constantly occur and the students fail to follow simple directions that we have been explaining for three weeks. What is the problem?????? To start, we moved a few students to different tables and this seemed to solve a few chatting issues. Tattling and the "blurts" are getting out of control....ugh. When a child comes up to you and says, " I have something REALLY important to tell you!", you usually assume that someone is bleeding in the hallway or a child has just lost a limb. But, alas, it is 99.9% a tattle. We had a conversation about tattles, but I think I need to move on to the next level.

Blurting is also an issue with my kinders..... they always seem to bubbling up with thoughts that just rush out of their mouths. Distracting, distracting, distracting. Once one student bursts the blurt bubble, then the rest of the children freely release their blurts. NO MORE!  I have developed a blurt chart which will hopefully erase the blurt issue. Each child's name is on a chart and if they blurt three or more times before recess, they must stand on the wall for 3 minutes. This will be my first week of trying this out, so I am sure it will be a learning experience for both the students and me. Some of my frequent blurters are typically all green light students, so I can assume that some tears will be shed.

First tooth lost at school! 

My last few weeks

Well apparently I have forgotten to blog for the last few weeks so I will just write one giant blog to make up for it.... :) Kindergarten is basically everything that I expected it to be and I love it, even though it really is so much work. After the first few weeks of school, I felt like going to sleep at about 8:30 every night and I felt quite disorganized and overwhelmed. I feel like I slowly getting into my stride because I know the routines, writing out lesson plans is becoming more simple and like second nature, and the children are becoming more independent as the weeks roll on.
The concepts that I have been focusing on are:
- the alphabet and letter sounds
-numbers,counting, and how to write numbers
- colors and how to mix colors to create new ones
- rhyming words and how to produce rhymes
- student writing their names in different forms ( using environmental print, cut up pieces of paper, etc)

Maddy's name mosaic 

I feel that so far my lessons have gone pretty darn well and the fact that we use station rotations really helps with tweaking my lessons throughout the morning. I usually always start with the RED group of students and they are excellent listeners and a higher group of children, so I know if something does not work for them that I definitely need to adjust the material for the other children. I still do find it challenging to provide the extra one-on-one attention for the ELL children throughout my lessons because the other students need my assistance as well. I think I need to grow a few more pairs of arms to meet this balancing challenge. From what I expected, the students seem to absolutely love any activity that involves moving around the room, competition games, or using crafting materials. Who know that musical chairs and paint would delight the students so much!!

Becoming color mixing scientists!

Another interesting thing that I am noticing is that your attitude as a teacher has a major affect on the students' interest and enthusiasm for the lesson. I usually try to use silly voices, different inflections, and excitement when explaining the lessons and I can definitely see that if I am excited about the lessons then the students become very pumped up! Acting like a crazy clown when you are reading a story sky rockets their engagement. Lucky for me that acting like a crazy clown comes naturally for me :) 

Carlos' perfectly painted chameleon from " A Color of his Own"


For my action research, I have decided to focus on the effects of interactive read alouds on students' acquisition and comprehension of vocabulary words. Starting in October, I will be choosing approximately four "sophisticated" story books which will be used in my study. I am curious to see how many extra words that students will learn if they are more actively involved in the read aloud process. I am also hoping that this action research project will not eat me alive like the one that I struggled through last year in fourth grade. 

Week 1

I have survived my first weeks of Intern year and spending time in a Kindergarten setting has really shown me that I am meant to be in an early childhood setting. In fourth grade last semester, I felt unsure, overwhelmed, and terrified for a large majority of the year. I also didn't like that my students were taller than me! Even though I seem to be always tying shoes, opening milk cartons, and reminding kids to wash their hands, it makes me feel happy. The little ones are so eager to learn and develop so much over the course of the year. I also had my first experience with home visits and I realized that they are so important for both the teacher and student. I saw so many different family structures, living conditions, and levels of parent involvement. Stepping into the home lives of these children helps you better understand the way that they react to situations and how they are treated once they step out of the classroom.

I am excited to have a bigger role in the classroom and work with the children on a daily basis. Ms. Lattanzi and Ms. Elyse really took me under their wings and showed me all that needs to be accomplished before the students step into the classroom on the first day. Who knew that riding the bus was such a complicated and time consuming method of transportation?
 
The nuclear family structure is no longer the norm and I can see that this change in family relationships definitely makes the job of a teacher more complicated!

 I really thought that the parents would take a more active role in their child's education because they are so young and new to school, but I was sadly mistaken. I am excited to see what next week has in store for me!!!

Reflection on Article #3

Niederberger, Mary. New Twist in Education: 'Flipped classroom' makes homework an in-school effort, put lectures online. Pittsburgh Post-Gazette. 5 January 2012. 

A few days ago, I was on the classroom section of the online "scapbooking" website Pinterest, when I came across the concept of a flipped classroom. I had never come across that educational term before and I ventured to guess that it involved revamping a classroom. My prediction was far from correct when I ventured more deeply into the topic of a flipped classroom. Basically, it involves the process of a teacher recording online lectures in which the students watch in their free time and class time is spent working out problems based off of the online lecture.  It is considered flipped because lecture occurs at home and home work occurs during class time. Just through reading this short article, I can see some major benefits and flaws within this newly flourishing teaching method. 

I personally would not want to engage in a completely flipped classroom in my future teaching career, because I greatly enjoy teaching and interacting with the children. Teaching "virtual" children would be quite strange for me and I believe that it would be difficult to gauge whether or not the students understood the material if I am just a recorded video. I also see the issue of children who do not have computer access at home; the article does state that various accommodations are made for these students to ensure that they have ample time to view the lectures.  What about the children who engage in various after school activities or have a long commute to their home, when will they find the time to watch online lecture videos? Another wonder I have is how much extra time will be added to a teacher's already overwhelming work load. I know from experience of creating digital stories that recording your self speaking requires you to typically create a script and record quite a few takes to get the perfect shot. This seems like quite a lot of work! 

I also wondered how the teachers can truly ensure that the students listened to the lectures and were ACTUALLY engaged. I know that I can watch an online video while at the same time watching TV, eating, and talking to my family members. I am technically watching the video, but my full attention is not on the video. The article states that online quizzes are given following the lecture, but does this leave room for modifications??

Even though it was simple for me to come up with glaring issues with this method, I do believe that I can see some benefits. Due to the fact that the lectures are recorded, the students can work at their own pace and rewind the video if a concept needs to be refreshed due to misunderstanding or simple forgetfulness. Because of the fact that the students are learning the concepts online, this leaves much more time during class for problem based learning, experiments, and other engaging classroom activities. 

At this point, I can see a few benefits of this method but I mostly see some worrisome aspects to a flipped classroom. 

Reflection on Article #2

Roache, Joel. Lewis, Ramon. "Teachers' Views on the Impact of Classroom Management on Student Responsibility". Australian Journal of Education. Nov. 2011. 132-146. 


Even from the beginning on Tutor year, I always had the understanding that classroom management would be a struggle for me. With a quiet voice, small stature, and a free spirit personality, it was difficult for me to discipline children. There was the constant worry of hurting their feeling, the balance between being too harsh and too lenient, and what behaviors should be ignored. So many wonderings and the constant answer I would receive is that these skills will come from experience. Working with fourth graders was completely out of my comfort zone ( especially since a few of the children are almost as tall as me!) so this classroom management experience would have been a much needed tool in my back pocket. 


I found this article to be quite interesting and relevant to my personal views on student classroom behavior. Fourth grade children are nearing the end of the elementary school years and I believe that these nine and ten year old ladies and gentleman should have the developed abilities to maintain responsibility for their assignments, desk area, and the well being of their fellow students. The purpose of this Australian student was to determine the effects of teacher demeanor and the amount of student responsibilities on the overall classroom environment. Would less disruptions occur? This quote found within the article beautifully describes the purpose of the study:

".......that children should be willing to assert their right to learn at school and be prepared to protect the rights of other students in their class to learn in a safe and emotionally secure environment.To help encourage students to do this, there is a growing body of research that argues that the nature of the student–teacher relationship needs to be built on a basis of sensitivity, trust and mutual respect."


This study invited the students to take part in classroom management decision making, hinting when unacceptable behavior is occurring, making not of appropriate behavior that is occurring within the class group, and making expectations clear. Interestingly enough, the study found that when students misbehave the teachers obviously grow concerned and somewhat angry that their methods are failing. These unwanted student behaviors are in turn paired with the punishments inflicted by the teacher. These  teachers are also less likely to reward and validate appropriate behavior in the presence of misbehavior. This in turn causes the teacher to become less "responsible" and also diminishes the childrens' responsible behaviors as well. 


I would say that in simple terms, this article is stating that it as important to dole out consequence as it is to praise students who are behaving appropriately! 

Characteristics #1 and #6

#1- We believe that the novice teacher should have a commitment to and skills for life-long learning.

As a "novice" teacher, I know that I still have so much to learn about teaching, differentiating, and effectively transferring knowledge to my students. Technology, student interests, and classroom atmospheres are continually changing so it is absolutely crucial to remain a life long learner. Over the past two years, I have encountered so many different classrooms from collaborative, to ESL, to Pre-K and I had to adjust my teaching styles, lesson difficulty levels, and demeanor to meet the needs of all of these students. From year to year, so many diverse children will be filtering in and out of your classroom and it would be silly to believe that the same lessons can be used to meet these students each year. Becoming a "comfortable" teacher would cause a major disservice to both my students and to myself. Remaining a life long learner also involves on going reflective practices to determine what works, what needs tweeked, and the methods that are providing zero benefits for your students. 

In my opinion, a life long learner is an individual that welcomes change into his or her classroom and actively seeks out the latest educational journals or bright and shiny technologies. For example, North Elementary recently introduced the Sparks system for Science classrooms. These gadgets can be a bit overwhelming at first, but many teachers attended and were willing to learn during the tutorial. 

I believe that to be successful in any job, but most importantly teaching, you must be prepared to adequately  adjust in this ever changing world. Recycling lesson plans for the next ten years, solely relying on the textbook as an informational tool, and displaying information on a out dated overhead projector are methods that do not fall into the category of a life long learner. 

#6 - We believe that the novice teacher should have in-depth knowledge of content.

I will admit that this is a characteristic that I struggled with immensely this semester. Truthfully, fourth grade mathematics caused me the same amount of head aches that it did when I was a nine year old child. I felt as though I sadly did not have an in-depth knowledge of the mathematics content and this in turn caused me to lose confidence when teaching these concepts to my students. I now see that a teacher must study the course materials and develop an appropriate grasp of the concepts. If you do not understand how to add and subtract fractions as a teacher there is absolutely no way that you can effectively teach your students the correct methods to add and subtract fractions. 

You always hear the age old saying of "Those who cannot do, teach" and that saying is absolutely false. If you do not have the knowledge or skills to play soccer or understand what a helping verb is, how can you teach this information to your pupils? I believe that our methods courses were created to teach us this knowledge of content, though some educators are much less successful than others. Assignments such as the small group mathematics activities for Math Methods most definitely required us to have background knowledge on the topics. 

Hopefully, I will feel more confident and comfortable with teaching kindergarten material Intern year and will not feel like I was somewhat drowning as I did this semester! 

Characteristics of the novice teacher #5 & #8

Characterisitic 5: Knowledge of Pedagogy
 To show that i have mastered this characteristic, i plan on importing my learning cycle from our science methods class. This in-depth lesson plan will showcase my ability to come up with lessons and activities to both teach and assess student learing, all while meeting or exceeding state standards and objectives.
I also plan to include the tech toolkit that we completed as part of our SPED 360 class to prove that i have knowledge of pedagogy. This project will highlight my ability to differientiate instruction for students through the use of technology. i have also received feedback from my mentor teachers regarding each of these lessons which proves i have met their expectations as professionals in the field.

Characteristic 8: Reflective Practictioner
To show that i have met this characteristic, i will have a direct link set up to my blog page so that the panel can see just how often i reflect on my practices as a preservice teacher. i will also point out that each and every lesson plan i include in my portfolio will have completed reflection questions at the end to show that i am reflecting in the field as i teach. Finally, our teacher video will serve as a great tool for reflection in that i can learn from my mistakes, and reflect on the postive things i do when teaching at my PDS.

Allie,

What characteristics and artifacts are you going to discuss today?

Review of Article 1

Bosse, Michael. Faulconer, Johna. Learning and Assessing Mathematics through Reading and Writing. School Science and Mathematics. January 2008

I chose to reflect on the first article that I will be using for my inquiry...... Bosse, Michael. Faulconer, Johna. Learning and Assessing Mathematics through Reading and Writing. For the past few weeks, I have been interviewing my students about their views of hands-on, creative assessments being used to learn math concepts. Quite a few of my fourth grade students stated that you CANNOT learn math through creative writing or art activities and I am hoping that my inquiry project will change their views. 


I truthfully am a bit unsure of how to implement such activities because I have never seen writing or art truly used in a mathematics classroom. "Beyond word problems and open-ended questions concluding exercise sets in the textbook, most students report that they do not read and write in mathematics classrooms and/or only read the smallest amount of text necessary to accomplish homework"These words written by the authors of this article very much display the views of the children in my classroom. Upon reading the article, I was pleased to see that they provided me with quite a few examples of ways to appropriately implement writing into the mathematics curriculum:
-free writing, mathematics autobiography, writing letter to teachers, proof writing, and rewriting lecture notes, journal writing


I thought that the letter writing and journal entries were a very interesting idea. As a child, I struggled immensely with mathematics but at times was too embarrassed to speak up and say that I needed help. This caused me to fall behind in my studies very quickly and become even more self- conscious of my math abilities. If you asked the children to write confidential letters or journal entries about their view of the lesson, what they learned, questions that they have, or even just stating that they need extra help can provide excellent and useful data for the teacher. 


The authors discuss the fact "that addressing purpose, audi- ence, and climate are necessary' for effective leaming of mathematics through reading and writing." I believe that this quote is stating the fact that differentiation is crucial to the implementation of reading and writing. My classroom especially has a wide range of ability levels and it would be unwise to assign the same assignment for all children in the classroom. The fact that I am only working with a small group of students at a time makes differentiation much more possible. 


Overall, I thought that this is an excellent article that is so closely related to my research topic. Many of the topics discussed in the text have eased my worries and provided me with viable resources and activities to implement into the mathematics curriculum. 

Artifact and Characteristics of a Novice Teacher #4

"We believe the novice teacher should be a facilitator of learning for all students."

Before that seminar on February 10th, I really had no idea what the characteristics were other than the fact that they are used in our enormous rubric. It is hard to believe that this is Spring semester of participant year and that after this semester is completed I will basically be a full time teacher. It is absolutely exciting but completely terrifying. I am placed in a fourth grade classroom and this placement is completely out of my comfort zone. Pre-School and early elementary is my niche so these older children and the different teaching styles used are so different than my norm of teaching. But this placement has my opened my eyes to the true nature of public school in ways that I could not believe. These sweet nine and ten year old children have unimaginable home lives, health issues, developmental levels, and family disfunction. Learning more and more about my students makes me feel even more passionate about being a teacher because school is a safe haven for many of these children. This is why I chose to focus on characteristic #4- novice teachers should be a facilitator of learning for all students. 

Because of the wide range of ability levels in this classroom (from illiterate to reading on an advanced level), my mentor teacher strays away from teaching in the whole group setting. Specific groupings, tiered assignments, extra assistance, and differentiated activities are all present in Ms. Pennington's classroom. Throughout this semester, I am seeing how amazing she is at meeting the needs of her students and how much she truly cares about these diverse students. I think that this characteristic is especially important in my current placement because I am required to modify my lessons to help every child in the classroom. A teacher could simply "teach to the middle" and just hope that her lower level students will stumble through the confusion and her high ability students will quickly finish their work. This mentality is in no way the definition of an effective educator and is the opposite of the ever present 21st century learning skills. Many artifacts come to mind to show that I have worked to acquire this characteristic in my teaching:

- sociograms to learn about the friendships and children who do not get along

- IEP meeting notes

-lesson modifications, including different versions of tests and assignments

-interest inventories to learn about students' learning preferences

- mapping of student groups for various assignments, reasons and data to back it up 

I believe that this characteristic should not only be found in a novice teacher, but in all educators. If you do not get to know your students on a deeper level how can you understand their needs? This is the first placement where I have to include a variety of modifications into my lessons and I am worried that I will fail at correctly individualizing my lessons. I am sure that my mentor teacher can provide me with feedback as she is a differentiating specialist :) 

Jason, what characteristic is the most important to you this semester??