My students on Valentines day

It's the 100th day of school!

my wordle :)

http://www.wordle.net/show/wrdl/3487792/Untitled

Student Teachers as mentors

Today I was talking with my collaborating teacher and she told me about a mentor program some teachers want to start at J.J. Harris Elementary school next fall. They want to match up student teachers with one student from a different class/grade. The idea is to have a student teacher become another students mentor for the semester and spend an hour a week with them. The student teacher will tutor the student as well as just be there for them.
 I think that this is a great idea because it not only allows the student teacher to see what its like to work with a child in another grade. Also the student will have a reliable person that they will see on a daily basis. I hope that this gets put into action next fall because I think that it would be beneficial for both the student as well as the student teacher.

#Comments4kids

I really enjoyed reading these posts!

http://kidblog.org/2017Purple/alekk/knowing-the-truth/#comment-2351

http://kidblog.org/MrReutersClass/Lukas5/passion-3/

http://jefferyk10.edublogs.org/

Cluster Fair

At my elementary school we have something called clusters. Every Thursday students switch classes for one hour and are able to go to another classroom that has a specific concept. Some of the different concepts are top chef, tiger tales, bird watchers, scrapbooking, etc. At the beginning of each semester students pick their top three choices and are placed in a certain group. My teacher, Mrs. Brown, has tiger tales which discuses different cultures and learning how to accept everyone.

Last Thursday night we had a cluster fair. This is when the students as well as parents come up to the school (6:00 pm) and the students can show their parents what they did in their cluster. They can also go around the school and see what the other clusters were doing. Each cluster had a table which we decorated the day of the cluster fair. Our table had pottery, t-shirt, and paintings that my students had done throughout the semester. I think clusters are a really great idea and the students seemed to really enjoy it. I hope that other schools will catch on with this idea and have clusters in more elementary schools.

Units of Study

Chapter 12 it talks about have unites of study. Since I am only in my field experience classroom two days a week I don’t get to see much of the beginning of their writings. By the time I get there on Thursday they are usually finishing up with fixing their errors and making a final draft. Nevertheless from what I have seen there is certain times where students are allowed to free write, and then there are times that they are given a prompt. Chapter 12 talks about the importance of both of those.  Its important to let students pick topics because they are learning how be a good writer and by giving them some freedoms they could enjoy writing more.  I know by observing my kids they seem to move a lot faster when they are able to write about something that interests them.

                One thing that this chapter talks about that I have never seen before was the idea of taking a hour slot every other week where they practice writing to a prompt as they would if it was a test. Hopefully I can see this during my full week of teaching. I’m sure some of my teachers have done this I just have not been in the classroom at the time. I also really liked that the idea of letting students spend some of their writing time reading and sharing about a genre/author so that they can gain a better understanding of that author/genre so that when they write they can really understand the topic.  Lastly, I really liked the 2^nd to last sentence in the chapter there it says that, “Any lesson we teach, any conference that we have, has both a history and a future in the life of the workshop.”

PUBLISHING!! :)

Chapter 7 talks about the three main things needed when planning workshop management. The first being presence. The teacher needs to make sure that they are up and walking around the classroom while the students write. I think that is a good idea because students would easily get off task if the teacher is somewhere else trying to catch up on her own work. Also this would be a great time to conference with students and see where their writing is going. The second part was room. Allowing students to work somewhere beyond their desk. Many students will have lots of materials so it may be easier for them to spread out on the floor or on a big table. This could also help with people talking because they won’t be crowded in a small place. The third management idea was about supplies. Teachers need to make sure their supplies are in a place that the students can get to them without the aid of a teacher. In my field experience classroom I see a lot of these ideas. The students know where all their supplies are and get them as they need them. Also my teacher walks around the room while the students work and read over what they have written so far. Another good point the book made was making sure not to have a “no talking” environment. I have seen that in past field experience classrooms and it didn’t work as well as the other classrooms I observed where they were allowed to talk.

Chapter 8 talks about writing workshop kits and how they are really a “cop out”.  They try to make it look like writing workshops are easy and all the same by having handouts for both the teacher and the student.  It also talks about how the teacher has to let the students control it because it is their writing. My field experience teacher right now does some of this. They may read a book or talk about a certain subject, but then the students are allowed to take what they want from it and write however they want.  The main thing I got out of this chapter is that writing workshop can be hard, but it is also really rewarding.

Chapter 19 starts out by saying that publishing is not an option. I agree with this and I have seen publishing while observing many classrooms of different age groups . one thing that I found interesting was the idea of giving deadlines far in advance. I think that could work sometimes, but I think its also important to be flexible in certain situations. Nevertheless it made it a point when it said that “the one thing that can get a writer going and move her forward like nothing else is a deadline”. The chapter also talks about how some students don’t get to publish a lot because teachers make the writings very elaborate books and pictures. I couldn’t agree more. My students in my current field experience class publish almost once a week. They seem to enjoy that and they get to write about many things that they really care about. I also liked that this chapter talked about letting students have a lot of independent writing time. I think that it’s important to let them work on their own so that when the teacher is not around they can  still follow the process.