Lesson 5/Assessment - 3/21

We completed our unit on Wednesday with our fifth lesson and assessment. For the prior three lessons, I began the group part of the lesson with an oral formative assessment, asking students to tell me where the characters were, what the setting was, or the definition of the terms. I think this helped keep them thinking about the terms and the significance of including them. On the last day, we gave our summative assessment, and included both an oral and written part of the assessment.
We began in our groups, and Marianne and I switched our groups' stories. The students were very curious about the other story, so we decided to incorporate it into the day. In my group, I read the story to the students. They loved seeing what the other group had written, especially since the stories were so different. I then asked them questions about the new story. They picked apart the beginning, middle, and end, and were able to identify characters, settings, problems in the story, and the resolution to the problems. They have trouble with the term resolution, so we have been calling it 'solving the problem'. The students all seemed quick to respond and were able to answer these questions.
Marianne and I then became a center for center time in class. We gave students an organizer page to begin thinking about their own stories that they would write at a later time. They filled out a line telling us the beginning, middle, and end of the story with the terms characters, setting, initial problem under one, actions under another, and 'solve the problem' under the third. Students then brainstormed and wrote about the characters, setting, etc. of their own stories. I think that most of the students did well on this activity. As we expected, we gave much more support to the lower groups, while the highest group was able to complete this themselves.
We had a lot of trouble determining a good summative assessment for this unit. Since we changed gears after our pre-assessment, we wanted to ensure that we tested both parts of the unit.
I think that the oral part of the assessment in our writing groups was a good way to test the sequencing and the students' abilities to pick apart the pieces of a story. It was also motivating to use a story written by their friends. We then used the center time to have them apply this knowledge to their writing. We are reviewing these assessments to determine whether they tested properly. It is interesting that some of the students were able to do this very well orally, but have more trouble writing things down.

Fourth Lesson 3/20

For this lesson, we once again split into our two groups to complete our stories. Marianne brought in some ribbon as a tool to help resolve problems from the stories, or 'tie up the loose ends'. We split into our groups and reviewed what we had written the week before. I have been having the students read as a group at the beginning of the lesson to review and get them thinking. It is also helpful for students who missed a part of the class due to a pull-out. I am still a little bit confused about how to handle this issue, as it seems I am almost always missing someone from my group for a pullout. I have generally been asking the others in the group to fill in the student. The reading aloud also helps. I have been trying to give a quick overview of what we are studying as well during that lesson to bring them up to speed, but it is difficult.
As we read during this lesson, I taped a piece of ribbon on all of the problems we developed in the first two parts of the story. Students then brainstormed ways to tie up all of those problems and make sure they were resolved. They did a good job of ensuring that we resolved problems, although occasionally a student would want to add in a whole new problem or storyline as we were finishing. I used this time to let students know that they would be able to work on their own stories later and can hold on to their ideas. This seemed to be okay with them.
This lesson was actually relatively short, since there is less development in this part of the story. I think this was good for the students because they had been sitting for quite a while throughout the morning.
I am wondering whether there was another method we could have used to teach a couple of these lessons. I really liked using the group model, but am wondering if there was another type of lesson we could have tied in to mix up the format for the students. I think that this model worked well for the lessons we planned, and I think time constraints could have caused problems, but am determining whether something else might have worked also.

Third Lesson 3/15

I tried to think back to observations and how the teacher keeps the students on track. It seems that the child with Asperger's is often 'in his own world' and does come back to the group when asked a question. I spoke with the teacher about the two students in my group and the best way to keep them on track. She agreed with the questions for the one child, and suggested that I have him sit in a chair rather than on the floor with the group. This worked very well, and while I still lost his attention occasionally, he was much more on track. The other child apparently has a lot going on at home, and has been acting up. This was very good to know about the student! She suggested just letting her come sit near him if he is acting up. I still wonder if there was another way to handle this, but her presence very near him did help.
During the third lesson, we focused on the middle of stories, and in particular the actions that are necessary to keep the story moving and interesting. Again, we split into two groups and used a group interaction model. The students have been really engaged in the story since it is their own, however I still had some trouble attempting to combine the ideas of the boys and girls of the group. We came up with some compromises, but of course the attention of each side of the group was better when we were discussing and writing the part of the story they came up with (the girls wanted to write about a puppy; the boys about robots and spies). Somehow, we did come up with a story including both! The distractions were different during this lesson. The construction outside is very loud and often distracting to many of the students. In addition, I liked having two groups in the class, but I could see that the students in my group wanted to know what the other group was writing. When we were writing about the puppy, I could see one boy in particular trying to see what the other group was writing.
Overall, I think that this lesson went very well, and kept the students engaged. We were still able to focus in on the sequencing of the story and what has to come next. One student actually gave a suggestion for the story that did not make sense given prior sentences, so we were able to examine the sequence of the story to make sure it made sense in a smaller scope as well as throughout the entire story. This was a good addition to the lesson that came up during teaching.

Second lesson 3/14

I was much happier with the way our second lesson ran. After the first lesson, we actually made a few changes to our following plans to keep the lessons brief and streamlined. For this lesson, we focused in on only one part of stories: the beginning. While we had planned to focus in more on the book Corduroy again, we decided to dive right into our small group lessons. We taught group interactive models, so after starting as a class, the class was split into two groups.
I worked with my group to review Corduroy briefly and to review the information that is generally included in the beginning of a story. We made a list of the parts. Rather than simply discussing that the beginning comes first, we included a writing element to the lesson. My group began to brainstorm what we normally find out in the beginning of a story, including the characters, setting, and an introduction to a problem. We thought of ideas for our own story, and as a group, the students dictated sentences to the beginning of their group story while I was the scribe.
It was nice to work with a smaller group of students because we could ensure that all students were contributing to the group. I did, however, begin to wonder about the best ways to work with a couple of the students. I worked with a child with Asperger's Syndrome. It was very difficult to keep his attention, so I found myself calling on him quite often to keep him engaged. I wonder whether there is a better way to handle this to ensure that I don't spend too much time with him and not enough with the other students. I have a second student who is also difficult to keep on task. I will talk to the teacher to see how she works with them specifically.
I think that the questioning I did of the students was good during this lesson, and we were able to review what we did on Monday very well.
It seems that our story will be very interesting. The boys and girls seem to have very different ideas of the way the story should go. I am doing my best to compromise and include as many ideas as possible.

First lesson 3/12

Upon administering our pre-assessment, we decided to slightly change our plan for our unit lessons. We discovered that while some students do still have trouble with sequencing stories, much of the class can put events in the correct order. We decided that we should focus in on both comprehension from sequencing and detailed writing using the various parts of a story (characters, setting, problem/conflict, resolution). This new plan will allow us to stick with parts of our initial plan to aid comprehension, especially for those still having trouble, but will also allow us to expand on our lessons.
For our first lesson, we read the book Corduroy to the class. A few of the students had read the book before, but they had not read it as a class. We talked to the students about the order of the book and the sequencing of beginning, middle, and end. In addition, we decided to discuss the parts of the beginning, middle, and end. In the beginning, we discussed and created a list of the characters, settings, and initial problems introduced. In the middle, we discussed the development of the plot, the actions, and the fact that characters and new settings can be introduced. In the end, we talked briefly about conflict resolution.
We taught this lesson as an integrative lesson, using our lists from each part of the book to sequence the book and discuss the parts. I felt that this lesson went okay, but could have been done better. I think that parts of the presentation were too long, and we could have combined the second and third phases together to keep the students' attention. The activities seemed to become repetitive. I also think this may have been too much information to give at once. I do think that Corduroy was a good book choice and that the charts were a good way to show the information.

Week of 2/26

This week, we were able to observe a new math concept introduced to the class. The class has worked with word problems, but now is working on their answers to word problems. Their answers must include a picture, an equation, and a written explanation of how they reached their answers. This caused a few nervous reactions from some of the students, but most ofthem seemed to get the idea.
The class is also working on the money unit. Since they have been "feeding the piggy" all year during morning meeting, they do have some idea of the coins they are using, but are now gaining a better understanding of each coin and its value. The teacher has given each student a box that they keep plastic coins in. They can earn new coins by performing well and behaving throughout the day. When they gain new coins, they can change them with the teacher for a higher valued coin. This seems to be very motivating for the students to learn the values of their coins.
We administered our pre-assessment this week as well. We read Goldilocks and the Three Bears to the students, which they have heard many times before. They then filled out a sheet telling us what happened in the beginning, middle, and end of the story. The responses were very interesting. Some students drew pictures and others wrote quite a bit. Most students were able to think of something that happened in each part of the story, but there were a few exceptions. It is interesting to see the small details they picked out of the story or the pictures from the book to put on their charts. Most of the class came up with the same ending, which was the last page of the book, where in this version, Goldilocks jumps out of a window to run away. While many of the students had some idea of the three parts of the story, I think that we will be able to work well with the class teaching them new terms and details included in stories.

Week of 2/19

This week, we were able to spend some more time with our teacher working out plans for our unit. This was very helpful. We got a little bit more background about what the students have been doing lately. During this planning time, we also learned more about the teaching of Spanish and sign language to the students. All teachers in the school are responsible for teaching Spanish to their students, which I thought was very interesting. I still wonder whether the teachers are taught the Spanish or if they have to learn a lot on their own. Our field teacher decided to teach sign language to the students on her own, which has been going very well. I am trying to focus and remember some of the signs she has taught the children while we've been there!
We saw the students react to a desk change this week. We gathered that the teacher took students' suggestions about how to arrange the seats in some ways. I thought that was a great idea to have the students involved in the decision.
Last week, I saw a lot of math strategies in practice. This week, I saw a lot more of our reading development/language block strategies in use. We were able to watch some speed sorts of various groups of students, and I noted the stages they worked on. The speed sorts seemed to motivate the students, who were anxious to know if they had beaten their previous scores. I also noted that there is a student in the class working in the syllables and affixes stage of word study. This was very surprising to me. There are actually three first graders in the school on this level, so two other students come to our room for word study to group the three together. The teachers noted that they have trouble determining what to study with these few students.
Since I have been observing some ESL pullouts for these students, I have been noticing the amount of time they spend out of the classroom much more. I am still amazed at how often they are pulled out and wonder if they are losing too much time in these transitions. When the students go to ESL, they walk outside to another building. The pullout session is only 30 minutes, but the students spend about 5 minutes in transit and getting settled. It seems like a lot of time is lost just in that one pullout, and I am curious how much time is lost throughout the course of the day in this movement. I am hoping to see a little bit more of this as the semester progresses.

We're back! Visits 1 & 2 (2/15-2/16)

This week, we returned to our first grade classroom. With the exception of fewer teeth in most of the kids' mouths and a new classroom desk setup, the class was as I remembered it. Due to the snow days and delayed opening over the last two weeks, the classroom is a little bit chaotic. It seems that the teachers are feeling the pressure to catch up.
Once again, I am observing in the morning, so I saw the morning meeting, math, and writing sections of the day. Centers were used in math, and I saw many of the activities we have done in our math class used in this classroom. The students were using domino cards, 10 frames, and dot addition cards. These activities were run similarly to the centers from last semester.
I noted a couple of the children signing a name to each other, and thought it was funny that they remembered their sign language from last semester and are using it to communicate with each other during quieter work times. I'm not sure this is what the teacher was going for, but it was good to see that they did remember it!
I noticed a new method being used for one child with Asperger's Syndrome, which we have talked about in some of our classes. The student now carries a clipboard with the daily schedule written on it. Next to each subject or time slot, a teacher works with him to determine how he behaved and participated that day. There is a space for notes, and there is a circle next to each section to draw a face, showing how well he had done that day. Today, there was a happy face next to morning meeting. :)
I also had a more emotional connection made this week. Yesterday, there was a delayed opening, so breakfast was not served in the cafeteria. The teacher recognized that a couple of the students were 'acting strangely' and asked if the class who had eaten breakfast. About a third of the class hadn't had anything to eat yet. We also heard about one of the students coming to school crying because he didn't have his backpack. To keep his family warm over the last week, a kerosene lamp was lit, which burned his backpack overnight. While I knew a little bit about the students prior to this week, I feel like I am learning much more about their backgrounds very quickly.
I have also been fortunate enough to follow a few of the children from class to their ESL pullout, for another field placement. It was interesting to note that the children seem to speak much more and much louder in the smaller groups for ESL. I am not sure whether this is due to a smaller group of people or the level of the students they are with, but I am curious to watch this as the semester goes on.

Lesson #3 - Force and Motion (hovercraft!)

We taught our third lesson yesterday to our first graders. They have just begun a science unit on force and motion (push and pull). This was the lesson we were actually most nervous about, but I think it was probably our best one! It was a great way to end a busy week. We began the lesson in the classroom by figuring out what they have already learned. The students were able to tell me that they were studying force and motion, push, pull, and turn. I asked them what each of those forces was, and most of the students were quick to respond. It seems that they have caught on to this concept pretty quickly. I used a couple of examples. The students then went through some more examples including dropping a book, bouncing a ball, typing on a keyboard, and were asked to determine whether there was a push or a pull occurring. The book and ball were a little bit advanced, but we did have one student eager to answer that gravity pulls! It seemed that he was the only one to know the concept, so we worked on beginning to explain that to them. They were also asked to stand up and show us what a push motion looks like in the air as well as a pull. They are beginning to really grasp that a pull brings something toward you and a push moves it away. We then moved to the cafeteria for the hovercraft portion of the lesson. The students were very excited for this. We did stop a few times to tell them that they needed to be on their best behavior if they wanted to participate...I have never seen this class so quiet. We reminded them again what push and pull look like. They each had a turn riding on the hovercraft. We took turns pushing and pulling them to float them around the room. The students on the craft and the students watching determined what we were about to do (push or pull) by our motions, and were able to tell us which way they would move as a result. All of the students were able to answer and had a lot of fun riding around the cafeteria.
I think that the best parts of this lesson were making the students show us what push and pull looked like. By having them get up and act it out, they were able to really see what happened. I think the examples all helped to solidify this, and the hovercraft topped it off. They were able to learn and practice while having fun.
If I were to do this activity again, I might have thought of other ways to have the rest of the class more actively involved while watching the hovercraft. Since only 2 children were on at a time, the rest of the class was watching. It worked out fine since they were excited to watch each other. We did stop to ask the whole class a few questions between riders, but I would have liked to have gotten them more involved somehow.
We are going to meet our first grade teacher today for some feedback on all of our lessons, so hopefully I'll come away with even more ideas.

Lesson #2 - Turkey Cookies

We taught our second lesson to our first grade class on Tuesday. This lesson went well overall. We gave each student materials on a plate, and read directions to them step by step to make a "turkey cookie." We also had the steps written out on a board for them to look at if they chose to. After they completed their cookies, they were allowed to eat them, so we had a little break. Then, we started the rest of the activity. I read them a list of instructions to make the cookies that were out of order from what they had done. They were quick to tell me that they were not correct. The students were given a copy of what I was reading. They then cut out the steps, put them in the correct order, and glued them to a worksheet we had given them. Overall, this went well, and the kids were of course excited to get a chocolatey snack! I was happy to see that they really understood the concept of having steps sequenced and the importance of doing this.
All of the students were able to put the steps back into order, but many of them did need help reading the list. We had initially wanted the students to write a list, but we decided that too many of them would not be able to do that, so we switched to the cutting activity. While we tried our best to make the instructions easy to read, some of the words were unknown for the kids. We had 4 teachers in the room to walk around and help, so this was okay, but we did talk about the lesson afterwards and came up with a few ideas to change the lesson to be on a more independent level for the kids. Including a picture prompt seems to be the easiest way to make the words more accessible. Francine actually did this with one of the children, and it seemed to work well. I think that if I were to do this lesson again, I would include some pictures or color coding to help the students read the list. This activity was fun to do with food, but also could be done with paper or other craft materials.
Another thing I did with the students who had trouble reading was to talk through the steps with them. Since this was not a reading lesson, but rather a lesson on sequencing, I did not want to focus too much on the reading. If the student was able to tell me what the next step was, I felt that they were successful, so I would help them find the piece that said the step. Again, since there were many helpers in the class, this was okay to do, but would be difficult if I had to do this on my own.
Overall, this lesson went well, but again, there are things I would change for next time in a first grade class.

Lesson #1 - 11/9/06

Today Marianne and I taught our first lesson to the first grade class. We taught a lesson on nocturnal and diurnal animals. The students have been studying animals, and are getting ready to finish up that unit. The teacher had mentioned in our planning that she usually likes to include nocturnal/diurnal in the animal unit, but was not going to have time, so we took it on.
We used our time to discuss animals and their habits for a few minutes and determined what they already knew. A few of the students were familiar with the term nocturnal, but did not know the term diurnal. We did an interactive read aloud of a book on this concept, reviewed various animals, determining whether they are nocturnal or diurnal, and had the students create two murals using animals prints we gave them.
Overall, I think the lesson went well. I will be interested to receive some feedback from the teacher when we can meet with her. Prior to the reading, Marianne took some time to hear about the class rules of read alouds from the children themselves. I think this was a great way to start the lesson and remind the kids that the rules are the same even if we are teaching the lesson. They really enjoyed having some time to color and cut their animals out. I think that this activity was a good way to break up the lesson and give them time to move around. The students went back to their desk for this. While they were coloring, Marianne and I each visited with each student to help them determine whether their animal was nocturnal or diurnal. This worked well to give us time to evaluate if all students had understood. We were able to reinforce the idea and ask them questions individually. The repetition seemed to help them grasp the concept as well. The class was able to work well together creating the murals, and all the students were excited to help create the background of the murals.
There were a few parts of the lesson that I might have changed if I were re-teaching this lesson. I think that we could have made the book more interactive, asking more questions while we were reading. While the book is not very long, students struggled a little bit not to talk. We could have also tried to reinforce the idea that we would take questions, not hear stories during the reading. I'm not sure this would have helped since they were very excited to tell us everything they saw in each picture and any story that related to the animal we were reading about. I also think that I might have used the worksheet differently. We gave them a page with all the animals we were handing out on it. Underneath the small picture is a clue about whether the animal is nocturnal or diurnal. We read this with them. Some students followed along, but others seemed distracted by having the paper in front of them. I might have waited to hand it out until after our discussion or tried to use it in small groups, rather than with the whole class. Lastly, we began by using the terms awake and asleep to describe the terms, but as the lesson progressed, we found that they understood better when we used awake for both terms. We began teaching nocturnal starts with 'n', so those animals are awake at night and diurnal starts with 'd' and those animals are awake during the day. I wish we had put this phrase together for them in the beginning of the lesson. I found myself stating that nocturnal animals were awake at night and asleep during the day, which was a lot to think about at once.
The only other thing I had trouble with was knowing the best way to tell a child when their answer was incorrect. I was able to do so, and usually just kept with that student and continued the discussion until the correct answer was produced, but I am still feeling a little bit unsure about how to tell a student they are wrong while being supportive. I think that this is easier with some types of answers, but not others. I will need to work on this.

Field Visit #5 - 11/2/06

Today was an interesting day in first grade. I saw a change in behaviors among a few of the students, as it appears there is a new romance beginning in the class. It seemed to just add an extra challenge for the teacher. She tried to keep the students a little bit further apart from each other as they worked on the rug to help avoid distraction. It seemed that the little girl involved couldn't resist trying to get closer and closer to the little boy, who seemed mildly interested, but not quite as publicly affectionate. To make things even more interesting, the girl's friend seems to be getting very close to the same boy. This caused a few distractions throughout calendar time, but it did give us a chance to see how the teacher handled the issue. She occassionally would ask someone to get up to do one of the calendar activities and then encourage them to sit elsewhere when they were finished. The teaching assistant also took a part from the back of the room of asking a student to get up and do something and then sit near her or in a spot with more space.

We also had the chance to talk to the teacher about the children who leave for pullouts throughout the day. I asked how she handles them coming back in to the middle of a lesson. She explained that for the most part they know what they should be doing, but that it took a few weeks to get that down. She also mentioned that the students are not afraid to ask a friend or the teacher if they are confused. They do not come in and sit, staring blankly, but are very vocal when they are not sure what to do.

We were also able to talk about differentiation in the classroom, as there is a wide range of abilities within the group. This came up while discussing our lessons for the next two weeks that we'll be teaching. We talked about different ways to address the ability level differences during lessons. It sounds like there is often a group of 4-6 students who work on a slightly different version of the lesson, as they are a little bit behind the rest of the class. We asked if this bothered them or the other students, and it seems that it really doesn't bother them. The teacher said she had the same reservations at first, but explained that the children just got used to it and it doesn't bother them anymore. At first there were some questions about why one group was doing something different, but they now understand that some people are stronger in some areas than others, so it will be better for everyone to have various versions of the project or assignment. It made me feel better and more comfortable that the children handle this well, but I do wonder how this would work without a teaching assistant to help another group. I also wonder if this is the case with older children as well.

We had the opportunity to discuss our lesson plans with our teacher that we will be teaching over the next two weeks. We will be teaching on the 9th, 14th, and 16th at around 9:30 am after calendar time is done. We will be teaching two science lessons, one on nocturnal/diurnal animals and one on force and motion (push and pull), and one writing lesson working on procedure or step writing. Differentiation for this last lesson will be the most difficult, and we are still deciding exactly how our small group will be completing the lesson. We may have one of us work with the small group and do an interactive or shared writing while the other works with the rest of the class as they write individually or in small groups as well. I am starting to feel like I know the kids better and better, but am still nervous about our first lesson! More to come on how it goes....