EC Tutor Talent Show

Today all of the Elmira College student tutors performed a talent show for the students that we have been tutoring the past few months since today was the last time we will be seeing the students. I had a blast! According to my professors (and I agree with what they said), I demonstrated to myself and the people watching that I have what it takes to be a teacher who take risks, has fun, and engages students.  It is okay to show students that teachers can have fun too and be silly which is exactly what we all did in the talent show today. I got to tap dance to the YMCA for students as well as perform in a re-creation of a Richard Simmons workout video. I used to be afraid to go on stage and wondered what others thought of me, but today as I was performing for the students I was not nervous at all. I was excited to see their reactions to our sillyness. I hope they had as much fun watching the talent show as I had performing in it. I will truly miss working with these students each week. Watching the students that I worked with each week, for  literacy groups, develop into better readers and writers has been the most rewarding outcome of this experience for me. I have learned so much about myself as a future educator from this experience and I intend to bring what I have learned from this experience with me into my future classroom.

Something Different at Math Enrichment

For our last week with the students at the Math Enrichment program we did centers instead of individual math lessons. Some of the centers were math focused and others were science focused. My center was science based. The students did an activity that involved an M&M and hot water and they had to make a prediction of what they thought would happen if the M&M was placed in the hot water. Most of the students were good at guessing the water would change to the color of the M&M and that the candy would start to crack and dissolve. However, what the students did not expect to happen was the M on the M&M candy peels off and floats to the top of the water. This is a neat, quick, and easy science activity I found in the Kappa Delta Pi magazine. This activity can be done with students of all different ages. I think the students in the Math Enrichment program enjoyed doing something other than math for a change. I certainly had fun teaching my first science lesson.

Since this was the last time I would be working with my student, I had her complete an evaluation of me so that I could see what she liked and what she did not like. I had my student answer fifteen questions about  my teaching abilities on a scale of 1 to 5. On one of the questions I asked my student "Would you hire Miss Chipman (me) as a teacher?" and she was supposed to circle a number one through five with one being definitely not and five being YES! To answer this question, my student wrote in additional numbers six through ten and circled the number ten. This touched my heart in so many ways. I could tell by her responses that she thoroughly enjoyed the experience of coming to the Math Enrichment program and I certainly enjoyed working with her each week.

Literacy workshops are coming to an end

Today was my last individual session with my literacy group. I have had an amazing experience working with these children. I was scared at first to work with fifth graders and in a high needs school but I have gained nothing but positive outcomes from this experience. If I had the chance to continue working with the students I most certainly would.

I had the students fill out a teacher evaluation for me today and I got nothing but positive responses on that. I asked the students various questions and asked them to write yes or no in response to the question. The questions were all about my performance as a teacher and I asked the students to explain why if they wrote no because that means I had not done something well.  It turned out that none of the students responded no to any of the questions. That means, they must have felt that I did a decent job over the past few months. The only negative responses that I got on the teacher evaluation was when I asked the students to write one thing they would change about the college tutor experience. At first all the students in my group were like "There is nothing we would change because we liked it so much" and then someone said "I wish it was longer." This gave all the other students the idea to write the same thing. I asked the students to clarify what they meant by longer and they said they wished the college students came into their classroom more often meaning both more days a week and for longer than an hour and fifteen minutes each week. I got the impressions based on the students' responses to the teacher evaluations that they have really enjoyed this experience and I am glad because I am partly responsible for that and I have enjoyed the experience also.

My actual lesson today went well. I taught the students in my group about facts versus opinions. We watched two infomercials on YouTube and then discussed common characteristics in an infomercial. Then I asked students to say a fact and opinion that they heard in the infomercial. The next task was to create an infomercial as a group that is trying to sell a green marker. That was really funny. The uses that the students were coming up with for the green marker was making me laugh. Then once we finished the green marker infomercial I had students create their own individual infomercials.

For the individual infomercials I asked students to draw a random object out of a bag and then try to sell it using the characteristics of infomercials that we discussed as well as making sure to say some facts and opinions about the object. I challenged the students to come up with a use for their object other than its actual purpose. For example I said if they drew a shoe out of the bag they could not create an infomercial about a shoe. This was a challenging task for the students and I am not sure if it was because my directions were not clear or they were not able to think creatively, but most of the students created an infomercial about the real object such as a deck of cards. They were successful at saying at least three facts and three opinions about their object in their infomercial though which was good because that is what I was actually assessing.

Next week we have a talent show planned for the students to see but they do not know (at least my group does not). Today my group wanted me to tell them what is planned for next week and if it was small group or whole group activities and I said a little bit of both. I cannot wait to see their expressions and hopefully excitement as us teachers get silly and perform on stage. It is going to be a great time. I am sad that next week truly will be the last week though. I have a had a great time working with these students and getting to know them as individuals and I have a feeling I am going to miss them.

How Tall We Are

Tonight I did a lesson with my student about measurement. I taught my student the importance of using a ruler or yardstick to actually measure things as opposed to just using our eyes to estimate how big or small things are because there are a lot of illusions in the world and we may think something is one size but really it is completely different.

To introduce this concept to my student, I showed her some optical illusion pictures and asked her which image she thought was bigger. In reality all the pictures were the same size but due to the illusion one looked bigger than the other. My student told me she had never heard of an optical illusion before so she was really interested to learn that the images were all the same size even thought they did not appear to be. I was impressed with a strategy my student came up with to determine if one picture was bigger than the other. I had told her she could not use a ruler or yardstick to determine which image was bigger, smaller or the same size so instead, she used her fingers as a method to measure things. She finger measured the length of one image and then kept that same position of her fingers and measured the next object and discovered they were in fact the same size.

My favorite part of the lesson, and based on my student's reaction I think it was her favorite part of the lesson too, was tracing each other's full body onto paper. I traced her and she traced me. Then for the rest of the lesson I told her she was responsible for my body tracing and I was responsible for her body tracing. We then took turns guessing the lengths of each other's various body parts such as a leg or foot and then actually measured them. It was obvious by looking at the tracings that we were not actually as tall as we had traced each other so we decided to measure our real heights. The funny thing was either I measured her wrong or she measured me wrong because based on our measurements we are only an inch apart in heights. I really hope this is not the case because she is a fourth grader and I am a full grown woman. She even looked at me and said something can't be right because you are at least a ruler taller than me meaning I was a foot taller than her height.

To conclude the lesson we each colored in our figures of each other. My intention for the closure activity of my lesson was to have each of us draw actual sized body parts into our figure based on the measurements we had found earlier in the lesson. However, I forgot to mention that and we both just began coloring. The thing that surprised me was my student was like can I use a ruler to draw your hair the actual length it is (which is 22 inches by the way, I informed my student I am growing it out to donate it) and this made me remember that was my original intention in the first place so of course she could use a ruler to draw body parts on the tracing of me.

At the end of the night when it was time for the student to leave she asked me if she could take the tracing of herself home to show her family. I told her of course and then let her keep some extra blank paper so that she could trace more things if she wanted to and then measure them to see how big they are. I suggested measuring one of her parents or her brother and maybe even a cat or dog. She seemed to like those ideas. I'll be curious to find out next week whether or not she actually measured something.

My student told me tonight she was sad to hear that next week is going to be our last week of Math Enrichment. This must mean she has enjoyed the experience. I know I certainly have enjoyed the experience of planning different math lessons and working with my student each week.

I'm going to be a great teacher

The reason I titled this post, "I'm going to be a great teacher" is not because I am cocky but because that is something the students in my literacy group said to me today and it really brightened my day. Although I do not want to sound cocky in saying this, I do see myself making a great teacher someday because I am dedicated to making a difference and helping the student's learn. Just in these past few months that I have been creating lesson plans and working with students in the elementary schools, I have seen myself grow in my ability to create engaging and educational lesson plans. I really enjoy what I am doing and I feel as though it is evident when I do my lessons each week with the students. I am having just as much fun teaching them the lessons as the students are having learning them. That is a sign that I am going to make a great teacher.

For this week, I did a lesson on the how-to genre. The students were familiar with ways we use the how-to genre (such as to give directions) but never realized the purpose of the how-to genre. I started out by asking my students if they had ever made or eaten a peanut butter and jelly sandwich before. They all quickly responded yes. I then gave them different sentences that were about making a peanut butter and jelly sandwich and asked them to put the sentences in order. This was to introduce students to the concept that when telling someone how to do something it is important to have steps and the steps should be in order.

I then told students I was going to give them a book to read and they had to make mental observations of what they saw in their books. The books were not reading books though, they were instruction manuals. The students laughed at this first and were like "these are not books." However, once I asked them what I had given them to read, students identified them as instruction manuals and I informed them that instruction manuals are part of the how-to genre so they are in fact books even though they are not the typical reading books. I asked the students to create a list, as a group, of some of the common characteristics they noticed in their how-to guides (instruction manuals). They did surprisingly well  with this. I thought for sure I would have to help guide them in coming up with characteristics but they were able to identify the fact that for the how-to genre it is important to number things, put things in order, and list the necessary materials, tools, or ingredients in order to do something.

The next part of the lesson was my favorite. It involved oreos. Each child got to show how they eat an oreo and the rest of us watched and made observations. Then as a group we created a generalized guide on "how to eat an oreo." It was funny to see how everyone eats theirs a little bit differently. For this part of the lesson though I made the group come up with only one way to eat an oreo. The students in my group were excited to see how I ate my oreo. They were surprised to see I do not dip mine in milk. In fact I never have before.

The most important part of this lesson was having students create their own "how to eat an oreo" guide. So I gave each student another oreo and had them create oreo books that listed the instructions on how to eat an oreo. They did really well with this task too and seemed really engaged in this lesson.

I can remember at the beginning when I first met my students they disliked doing anything that involved writing assignments. However, now they do not even realize they are doing writing activities when they are because they are so engaged in the lesson. Like today for example, I had the students write instructions on how to eat an oreo in their oreo books which required writing sentences but they did not even realize it was a writing assignment that I was having them doing.

One last thing I did in this lesson was have students swap oreo books and try someone else's method of eating an oreo. Even I tried a student's method and it required me to dip my oreo in milk (something I had never done before) and must say it was quite delicious. I myself thoroughly enjoyed this lesson along with my students.

For the past two weeks, the students and  I have been reading  Hatchet by Gary Paulsen aloud. We do not have very much of the book read so I have chosen to purchase a copy of the book to give to each student once  literacy groups are over. Today they asked if they get to keep the copy of the book they were reading, and I thought to myself "how perfect that they will be receiving their own copy and can finish the book on their own time." One of my students expressed to me today that she wished she could read ahead and find out what is going to happen but does not have a copy of the book. This gives her something to look forward to each week because she knows we will be reading more and finding out what happens.

I am sad to think that this experience is almost over and I will no longer get to spend time with these students. I have enjoyed watching them grow as learners and myself grow as their teacher. I used to say for sure I wanted to teach first grade but now after working with these fifth graders I am starting to consider the idea of teaching older students instead. Honestly though I will be quite content teaching any grade as long as I can make a difference in the students' lives.

Centers

I had a great time today working with the fifth graders. For this week's literacy workshop my collaborative group decided to try centers with our students and I would say they were a success. Each one of  us college students did a different topic for our center and our assigned literacy groups rotated through the different centers. I am glad we got to experience doing centers with students because it allowed me to get to know the other students who are not in my literacy group. Although doing centers this week was a positive experience for the three of us college students as well as the fifth grade students, we have decided that for the remaining weeks we will continue doing what we have done previous weeks which is working with our individual groups for the entire time.

My center today focused on the importance of detail. To introduce students to the importance of detail I read them two fake advertisements for cars that are for sale and then had them say which car they would buy and why. The catch was that one car sounded really nice but was a short description and the other car was older but the advertisement had a lot of detail. It turns out that the newer car had been in an accident but the advertisement did not say that. The students who said they would buy the newer car with less details were "mad" when I informed them that the car they just bought does not actually run. This quickly helped students realize the importance of detail.

The next part of my lesson required students to create a character that is an animal and write a detailed description of this character. I gave each student three minutes to do this. Before they started this, I reminded them the importance of including as much detail as possible because for the next part of the lesson someone else would be drawing the character they created based on what they write for a description. They got really interested in the lesson when they found out they would get to draw a picture. Art is something I know my literacy group mentioned they enjoy doing the first week I met them but it is something they do not get ot do a lot of in the fifth grade classroom.

Once the three minutes were up and students had written their descriptions, I collected the papers and distributed them to someone different. The students then read the description of the animal character they were given and then had to draw exactly what the description said. I told the students they could not add any details to their pictures that were not included in the description. For example, I told the students if the description they were given did not mention anything about a head then they could not draw a head on their animal. Also, if no colors were mentioned in the description, the student could only draw with a pencil. They laughed at this at first but then found it frustrating as they were tying to draw their characters and realized that the person who wrote the description had not included enough detail. This was the purpose of the lesson, to help the students realize why having details is important.

To wrap up my lesson, I had each student read the description they were given and then show the picture of the character they drew to see if what they drew matched only what the description had said. It was funny to hear students who actually wrote the description say "that's not how my character was supposed to look." I informed them that they had not included enough detail to help the drawer realize what the character was supposed to look like.

The centers today took longer than we had originally planned in our agendas. We had thought fifteen minutes would be enough time at each center but we ended up spending at least 20 minutes at each center. This meant we had less time at the end of the morning to do an activity with our individual group. However, I think it is good that we allowed the extra time at each center so that the students were fully able to do everything we had planned at each center. One thing I found to be difficult about doing centers is that not every group finished at the same time. My center always finished before the others did so I was left with the students waiting to move onto another group. It allowed for some extra discussion on our pictures that we created but it would have been an appropriate time to move onto a new group instead.

I liked doing my center with my literacy group the best, as opposed to with the other groups, because I think they were the most successful in following directions. I believe the reason they were best at following directions correctly is that they are my group and are familiar with my teaching style and how I give directions whereas the other two groups might not have understood my directions as clearly because they have never worked with me before.

I am very pleased with the outcomes of today's lesson and I think all the students along with myself enjoyed doing it. I even participated in today's lesson by creating a description of a character and drawing a picture of someone else's character with the students each time. This lesson is definitely something I will consider using in my future classroom.

Math Enrichment Lesson with Manipulative Resources

This week I did a lesson with my student on perimeters of various polygons. To help my student understand how to find perimeters of polygons I had her use a geoboard to create different polygons. We focused on triangles, squares, and rectangles.

I asked my student if she had ever used a geoboard before. She said no and seemed really excited to get to use rubber bands to create various shapes on the geoboard. I remember my student saying a while back that she does not use manipulative resources in her classroom. That could explain why she had never seen a geoboard before. I find it very valuable to use manipulative resources when teaching lessons because it helps students understand what they are learning better. Manipulative resources, especially in mathematics courses, allow students to actually see what they are learning or trying to demonstrate as opposed to just reading or writing about it. Each week I plan to use some sort of manipulative resource with my lesson that I am teaching so that the lesson is more hands on for my student and she will get the chance to use the resources that she does not have or get to use in her classroom.

This week my student gave me a suggestion on how to be a better teacher and it made me laugh. I had given her multiple sheets of dot paper so that she could sketch each polygon that she created on the geoboard onto paper. I had given her a separate piece of paper for each polygon that she created. She told me instead of doing that I should have saved paper and just had her draw multiple images on the same piece of paper. She said it would make it easier for me to grade too. That made me laugh! I will definitely keep her suggestion in mind when I do future activities that require paper.

One thing I realized this week is you do not always have to stick exactly to your lesson plan if something better comes to mind or there is a teachable moment as you are teaching your lesson. This happened in my lesson plan this week. My original closure activity was to have the student find an object around the classroom that was a polygon and then estimate what the new image would like if that object was stretched or shrunk and then we would measure the perimeter of that object. Instead of doing this, I noticed my student wanted to create her own polygon on the geoboard (a very unusual shape) and then determine the perimeter of that. I thought this would be a great way to wrap up the lesson and allow her to show me what she had learned. So I had the student create some sort of polygon on the geoboard, determine the perimeter, and then change the polygon in some way so that she could determine a new perimeter. This was a successful closure to the lesson and I could tell she really enjoyed using the rubber bands to create polygons on the geoboard.

I am looking forward to working with my student again next week and doing a lesson that involves using a different manipulative resource.

Dictionary Lesson Likes and Dislikes

Today I did my lesson plan with my literacy group on using dictionaries to help figure out the meaning of unfamiliar words. There were parts to this lesson that my students really enjoyed and other parts that they seemed bored and not interested in doing the activities. Surprisingly the ones I thought they would enjoy the most were the ones they were bored with and the ones I thought were not as interesting they liked more.

I started off by doing an activity that was not reading or writing based, just something fun as an opening activity to the day. Their task was to draw a picture with a partner by holding onto the same crayon and not talking at all. The only guideline was that they had to draw a snowman. The students really enjoyed this and after they did the activity I had them verbally  share one thing they liked about it. I suppose that was my way of incorporating literacy into the activity. I also plan to do something like this at the start of each time I meet with the students so that they have some sort of fun non-literacy based activity to look forward to.

Today was the the first time I actually realized what it is going to be like teaching, where you have this fantasy in your head of how a lesson is going to go but in reality things do not actually turn out that way. I definitely had this idea in my head that there would be parts of my lesson that the students would be really excited to do and others they would enjoy but were not quite as fun. However, today as I was actually teaching the lesson to my students I realized that what I think is going to be fun and exciting is not necessarily their idea of fun and exciting.

The other thing I realized is that it is hard to please every student at the same time. Some students will like to do something and other students will have no interest in doing it. This was very evident in today's lesson. I had one student say "this is no fun" and then a few of the other students were like "yes it is, I love doing this."

I found out that the student who was giving me the most difficulty today, and saying things were boring, likes to read and would prefer to do that so I am going to keep this in mind as I plan what to do in the future weeks. I am thinking about choosing a book and every week we read part of it. However, I know the reason this student thinks things are boring and would rather read a "fun book" ,as she called it, is because ELA is her area of weakness but it is important for her to continue doing literacy based activities besides just reading so that she can become better at it. I will take her interests into consideration but I cannot base an entire lesson on "fun reads" because I have four other students that I also need to try and please by doing lessons they enjoy too.

I hope next week all the students will find my lessons to be fun but at the same time they will be learning something too. Overall this week did go well and it brought some new perspectives to me on what being a teacher is going to be like.

Candy Fractions

This week as a math enrichment lesson, I taught my student about fractions using candy as a manipulative resource.  Using different colored M&M candy, I asked the student to identify how many M&M's there were total and then create a fraction for each color of the M&M's based on the total number all together. For example, if there were 20 M&M's total and 7 of them were green the fraction would be 7/20. The student did a very good job setting up fractions. Then I asked the student to compare two different colored M&M's by using the symbols <,>, =. I was surprised to see that when I asked a similar question as a paper-and-pencil activity such as is 7/20 greater than, less than, or equal to 9/20 the student hesitated more to answer this problem then when M&M's were involved. This goes to show that using manipulative resources helps this student learn better. This student appears to be a visual and hands-on learner I will keep this in mind as I plan future lessons that will help enrich the student's math skills.

My student tells me that she does not like doing math and that it is her least favorite subject; yet, I cannot understand why because she does a really good job at it. She is always asking for a challenge and if she does not get a problem right the first time she asks me if she can try again until she reaches the right solution. I can tell that my student is a determined learner and whats to make sure she understands what she is being taught.

This week my student brought a book of Sudoku puzzles with her and with our extra time I allowed her to do one of the puzzles. I pretended that I did not know what a Sudoku puzzle was and listened to her explain how to solve the puzzle. It amazed me how excited she was to do these puzzles, and although there is math involved in completing a Sudoku puzzle, she seemed so interested and engaged in the puzzle despite the fact that she tells me she does not like doing math. Activities like these are what kids need more of, where they are doing math but do not realize it because they are engaged and interested in their learning activity.

I want to help my student realize that math really is fun as long as you allow it to be and there is more to it than just routine paper-and-pencil exercises. I hope to achieve this by developing  hands-on and creative lessons that involve some math topic but that the student will be so engrossed in the lesson that they will not even realize they are doing math. I look forward to introducing the student to a new topic next week through creative and hands-on instruction and learning, and hope that she will enjoy the lesson as much as she did this week. I am having a great time working with my student and learning more about her as an individual and young mathematician.

Another Successful Day with my Literacy Group

Today another student was added to my literacy group so from now on I will be working with five students instead of four. They are all girls and seemed to get along fine together when working in the group with me. The only bad thing about having a new student added during week two is that she missed doing the student interest inventory and pre-assessment that I did with the other four students last week. This means I do not know as much about this girl as I do the other students, however from what I gathered today from the activities we did together, she seems like she has a lot of potential to do well in literacy.

My group of students, all girls mind you, are still very obsessed with Robert Paterson (or anything Twilight)  and Justin Bieber so I still had to enforce the rule that I made up last week that any activity that we do whether it be written or verbal cannot involve any of those people. I want them to realize that there is more cool things in life than just Justin Bieber and Twilight and they can discover this through reading and writing. I will continue to enforce this rule throughout the remaining weeks that I spend with them.

Today we focused on understanding how to summarize. I started by reading the students the traditional story of The Gingerbread Man. At first they looked at me funny and said "How old do you think we are" but then once I explained to them what today's lesson was about and that they needed to explain to me what the book was about after we read it, they realized why I started the lesson off with an easy book. Then I had the students do a writing activity where each person started a story off with an opening sentence. Then they passed their paper to the person sitting next to them and that person wrote the next sentence. We continued this process for a while and eventually the original author of the story got to write the final sentence. Then I read each story aloud since I figured the students would have a hard time reading each others handwriting. After reading each story one at a time,  I asked the students to provide a verbal summary of what the story was about. The challenge I gave them was to create a summary that was 16 words or less. We used our fingers to make sure someone did not say more than 16 words. This was a successful activity.

Now that the students had the chance to learn about what a summary was and to try and create one in 16 words or less I read one last passage to them and then asked them to individually write a summary of the passage. It was about a blue snowman. I am using the students' written summaries to assess their understanding of what a summary is and whether or not they can make one in 16 words or less.

Today's activities helped me realize that the children seem more interested in doing writing activities if they are creative such as the stories we wrote today each taking turns writing a sentence. They do not like to just write for no purpose. I will keep this in mind as I plan future lessons. I also found that they do not mind doing activities that involve reading, however they like to be involved in the reading as opposed to being read to. I tend to do a reading activity with them where I make each student read part of the book or passage. They take turns reading paragraphs. This is something I will also keep in mind as I plan my future lessons to do with the students.

First Night of Math Enrichment

Along with spending time in a fifth grade classroom once a week tutoring children in literacy, I have the opportunity to work with a fourth grade student once a week for the next few months to enrich her mathematical skills. I am really looking forward to this experience because I am majoring in mathematics so I get to put my specialty area to use.

With that said, yesterday was my first time meeting the fourth grade student. Every Monday night, I will have an hour to spend with her doing math lessons and activities that will help enrich her math skills. I spent this first hour getting to know more about her and pre-assessing her knowledge of mathematics. I found out that she had also been part of this math enrichment program last year that other college students and I participate in so she told me she is looking forward to it again this year. Once I found this out I asked her what she liked about the program last year and what she hoped to get from it this year.  She said she liked learning about something math related before her teacher taught it in class because then she was familiar with the material ahead of time. I will keep this in  mind as I plan lessons and activities to do with her each week.

Originally this math enrichment experience was supposed to involve more students. However now that it is in action each college student including myself just has one student each to work with. Now that I have gotten to know more about my student I feel as though working with her individually will actually be more beneficial than if each group had more than one student. Through an interest inventory survey that I completed with her I found out that she enjoys reading and writing but not math as much. I hope that working with her the next few months and doing engaging and interesting math lessons will help her grow to like mathematics more. Learning about and doing math can be fun as long as the lessons and methods of teaching the skills are interesting. That is what I am for...to help create fun and engaging ways to get children to learn mathematics.

During the pre-assessment where I asked her a few basic math problems that children her age should know she was very good at finding the solutions. In fact, in one question I asked her I tried to solve it too and her and I got different answers. When we checked over our work it turns out I was the one who had a made a mistake and she was able to find my mistake and show me how to solve it correctly. I was very impressed! As we were running through estimation and division problems she taught me some clever poems that she had learned from her teachers to help her remember how to solve those kinds of problems. I wish I had been taught creatively like that when I was learning about division and estimation. I can tell both her and I are going to learn a lot these next few months.

I am already eager to go back next week and spend time doing math with this fourth grader.

Meeting with my Literacy Group for the First Time

Today was the first time I got to work with my assigned literacy group. There are four students in my group all of which are girls. I was surprised by how well they worked together and seemed interested in doing the activities I had planned for them. However it was clearly obvious to me the difference in skills these four girls have. Each one likes a different component of literacy.  This means I will plan spelling, writing, and reading activities throughout the term  and vary what we do each week so that everyone gets to do something they enjoy most.

In just the short amount of time that I spent with my group today, I learned so much about them. I got a chance to assess their literacy skills in reading, writing, and spelling. I also learned some information about their interests through a student interest inventory activity that I created for them. We started the day with the student interest inventory. I asked students questions about things they like to do and how they view themselves as learners so that I can use this information to help me plan lessons that will be meaningful and interesting for them to do.

A majority of the questions that I asked the students resulted in a response with the name Justin Bieber or James Patterson. I have some extreme Justin Bieber and Twighlight fans in my group. Listening to them talk about their "crushes" for these two celebrity boys makes me remember back to when I was their age and NSync and Backstreet Boys were my heart's desire! Since I now know these boys are something that really interests these girls I will try to keep that in mind as I plan my lessons. Perhaps we can do something that involves song lyrics or Twighlight movie analysis. I also discovered today that the kids in my group love candy (you're probably thinking duh! what kid doesn't) so I will keep this in mind as a reward but I don't want the kids to be accustomed to getting a physical reward (like candy) everything I do a lesson with them. They should want to learn and do the activities that I have planned for them even if there isn't a physical reward involved. That is going to be my major goal this term is to get the kids excited to learn without needing candy first in order to do what I ask them to.

The first thing I told my group today was not to worry; everything we did today was only for the purpose of me getting to know them better personally and academically. Nothing will be graded today. I had them write ten spelling words that I asked them (and then as a bonus question I asked them to spell my last name just for fun).  We also read a short story about a dog that goes to the moon. This was so I could Pre-assess their reading ability and also I was watching for their ability to stay on task and pay attention which I was surprised to find they are very good at. They took turns reading paragraphs from the story and they always had to be listening so they would know when it was their turn to read. Another thing that surprised me was one of the girls was very helpful in correcting the students as they struggled to pronounce a word or if they said the wrong one she would say the correct word. The one other activity I did with the students today was have them respond to the question "If you or someone else wrote a book about your life what would the title be and why?" This was so I could pre-assess the students writing.

I already have ideas planned fore what I am going to do with the students next week and I am looking forward to returning. I can tell I am going to have a lot of fun this term and so far I like being in a fifth grade classroom.

First Day in the Classroom

Today was my first day in a fifth grade classroom in an inner city elementary school in New York. For the next few months I will be going to this classroom once a week to work with the students and help enhance their literacy skills. I have been assigned to work with a group of four students all of which need the most help in fluency. Since today was my first day in the classroom I spent the time I had there observing the teacher and students. I was able to identify the four students I am assigned to work with although they do not know I am their tutor yet. Next week when I return to the classroom is when I will have formal introductions with the students and get to know them better personally and academically.

During the time that I spent in the classroom today students completed a math lesson and a reading lesson. I was able to get a sense of what the students' behaviors are like and their ability or inability to listen to directions and complete the tasks they are assigned. When I first got to the classroom the teacher had all the students sit in a circle and share their names and one thing they like about books. Based on the student's responses I was able to conclude that most of the students read books to help them gain knowledge about something (a lot of students listed books they liked based on a hobby as theirs such as football) and also some (but not all) students said they liked the read books for fun because they were interested in seeing what happened in the story as they read further into it.

I noticed just on today's observations while the students were doing the math and reading lesson that every child is on a different level ability wise. Some students are great readers pace wise but are not able to comprehend what they are reading which is something I will keep in mind to work on with the students. I will also be emphasizing the importance of fluency when I do my lessons with the students in order to help them become more fluent readers. While the students were doing the math lesson, which involved solving a multiplication or division with decimals problem, I noticed that some students are not even able to begin solving the problem correctly. Some students were trying to solve a division problem using the format of a multiplication problem where one number is placed on top of the other. This is a problem, considering the teachers said the students have a test over the material tomorrow.

Overall I really liked what I saw in the classroom today and I am looking forward to working with the fifth graders. I have only ever worked with kindergartners and first graders before so this will be a whole new experience for me and I am ready for it to begin!