Week 5

This morning I had my third field experience. I think this was the best one yet! The past two times I went to the school we just worked with the students in the computer lab, but today I spent the entire time in the classroom. The first activity the teacher had the students do was an "invention in a bag." In this activity the teacher gave her students a baggie filled with four toothpicks, a plastic fork, two post-it notes, two paper clips, a rubber band, and a napkin. The students worked in pairs for 30 min to then invent something using ten of the items given to them. I thought this was a great activity because it had the students working together and being very creative. After they had made their invention, the students wrote a short paragraph about the invention and then presented it to the class. This activity involved creativity, reading, writing, and presenting. It was also a girl's birthday in our class today. Her mom came in and bought snacks for everyone. The teacher then let the girl choose what the class would do for the next ten minutes and they decided on free time. The students tried on dress-up clothes, read, did homework, and played on instruments. I thought this was a great time and it was fun to just mingle with the students. We switched classes at the end and learned that the other class was working on a short story assignment in the computer lab. I was very happy that things in my classroom had finally changed a bit! I am excited to see what next week brings!

In E339 today we talked about non-fiction books and what makes them non-fiction. I thought this was an interesting activity because there is such a large variety of non-fiction books. We also got our assignment for the Multi-Genre Research Paper. I am excited about this project because I am free to do the project on anything I want! I love having the freedom to choose my topic because this way I will be doing research on something I actually am interested in! This will be something to keep in mind when I am assigning research for my own students.

Week 4

This morning I had my second field experience! I really like my teacher and my students and I think I will learn a lot from them! One thing that is kind of frustrating to me is the meetings before and after the field experience. I wish that this was time that I could be spending in the classroom instead of going over the syllabus, readings, and note taking. Maybe since it is only the second week of field experience, these meeting will get better as the weeks pass. Today in my classroom, the students continued their work for their "Invention Convention." The students perform research in the computer lab to find out more about an item we use in the present. The students then find out information on this items past and then they predict what the future of this item will be. I am in a 5th and 6th grade combined class and the knowledge that these students possess impress me every time I come in! I am excited to see what the next few weeks will bring.

In E339 today we first read Up, Up, Down by Robert Munsch. This was a great participatory book that had all of the students involved in the reading. I think this would be a good book for my future classroom. Also in class we did a punctuation mini lesson. It was good to see how the different punctuation was used in different books, but I felt like the activity was a little easy for me. I think this lesson could have been accomplished much faster with just a brief overview of punctuation.

In small groups we also presented our Craft Lessons lesson. It was good to hear what other people had come up with. One idea I particularly liked what the "grab bag" idea. In this activity students draw an object from a bag/box at random and then have to write about this object in creative ways. I thought this was a fun idea for students. My activity dealt with teaching students about dialogue and learning about speech bubbles. For this activity, I took a simple book that did not involve dialogue and put a post-it note by a person's mouth and then wrote a speech bubble and filled it with text that I thought the person might be saying. I thought this would be a great activity for younger children as well.

At the end of class we read Eat, Shoots and Leaves by Lynn Truss. I found this book to be very comical. The author writes two sentences the exact same way, except the punctuation is changed so the meaning of the sentence is changed. This is something I would love to use in my punctuation unit with my class!

Week 3

Last class we took a closer look at The Leaving Morning and The Relatives Came. We looked at these stories as if we were reading like a writer. This was a good activity because it made me look at the stories more in-depth and realize things in the story that I didn't see before. This also helped me because I think it will help me in my writing as well.

We also talked about how we will be having a writing partnership for our writer's notebook. I am excited about this because I think it will be good to see what another person thinks of my writing and I am curious to see what other people have written as well!

Week 2

During the second week of class we learned many more things about our writer's notebook. I enjoyed reading the Fletcher book because it gave me a better understanding of what exactly I was supposed to write in my writer's notebook. I also enjoyed our class activity where we were able to decorate our writer's notebook. I think this activity made my writer's notebook feel more personable to me instead of just a plain blue spiral notebook.

In the next half of class we discussed some of the spelling articles that we read for homework. We talked about different techniques for teaching spelling to all different types of learners. We discussed that some students spell more visually and some students use more of a sounding it out strategy. I think this was a good in class activity because it is something that I think I will actually use in my future classroom.

E339 Week 1

I was very excited to come to class last week because it was the start of my first cluster. I feel like these classes are the ones that really matter now. However, I was slightly worried that three hours in a classroom would be very painful. But, after the first class I realized it wouldn't be so bad after all.

Starting the class with The Relatives Came and The Leaving Morning was a great way to start the class. I am not the familiar with a lot of children's literature so I think being introduced to a book or two a week is a great way for me to gain more knowledge on the topic. I enjoyed both of these stories and I think there are great possibilities for them in my future classroom.

When we started to read an excerpt from The House on Mango Street I was very excited because in my summer literature class we also read from this book. I think this is a great book and I am excited to read more of it.

I am also very excited to start my Writer's Notebook. I think this will be a great way for me to write down important things in my life that I want to remember. It will be nice to have all of these thoughts and ideas written down in one place. I especially tend to forget things very easily so I will try to take full advantage of my Writer's Notebook in order for me to have a more successful future.

I cannot wait until next week when our field experience begins! I have heard many great things about University Elementary school and I am very eager to meet my new students. I hope that this semester will greatly improve my teaching skills and give me the confidence I need to become a great teacher!