Sidewalk Inspiration

Pipecleaner Cirucits

• I was surprised by how quickly the class read the textbook today. I expected it to take the entire thirty minutes. It took the students a few minutes to think about what they had learned during this unit. I am glad that my teacher had the popsicle sticks and pipe cleaners for me to borrow for this lesson. I was stalling by having the students reflect on what they had learned so that I could think about where I wanted to go next with this lesson and she jumped in with this idea. I probably would have played the ball game again and made a rule where the students had to be creative and think of a material that had not been used yet. I also would have turned this extra time into a conversation where students give me feedback on which concepts they do not understand yet. In the future, I will have materials ready a day early. If I had had all of the light bulb wires trimmed and lab reports printed, then I could have jumped into creating their test circuits and hypothesizing for whether the items were conductors or insulators. 

ISTEP+ Inspiration
I thought it was fantastic that a group of people stayed after school to decorate every sidewalk square around the school with inspiring thoughts for ISTEP+. It is a shame that it is supposed to rain on Tuesday.

The Pig and my Birthday

Kiss the Pig
The students loved watching 5 teachers and the principal kiss the pig during today's morning assembly.

Editing
I'm getting better at editing their papers. It can be difficult to decide which incidents I want to edit with the student. If a student consistently made the same mistake, then I focusing on that.

Circuits
We reviewed our major terms from this unit (conductor, insulator, and circuit), then we played a game of telephone where I would make a student an insulator and the group had to decide how to fix the situation. There were two groups so that more students could discuss possible solutions. The students seemed excited about this game, some were not ready to sit down. I wanted to reinforce what we have been learning and to fill in any gaps, so we read what I had decided was the most important part of this section from the text book. I might read the last page that I liked on Monday.

My Birthday
My students and everyone in my grade level really made my birthday special. I loved getting the hugs and when my class sang to me. The entire grade sang "Happy Birthday" to me after recess today!

Insulators

PLC Meeting
It was cool to see the teachers collaborating and discussing their feelings about content this morning. I liked getting to see how the four essential questions worked with the meeting.

Math Workshop
For the first practice problem, I always try to have students suggest their favorite numbers. After everyone in the group suggested a number, the students used dice to create the problems. If a student ended up with 1 as the divisor, I allowed them to solve the problem under the understanding that they had to use the same problem with a different divisor when they were finished. I need to find a way to challenge my advanced group. To give the advanced students more confidence, I had them divide a long number with a decimal by 1, showing that they should not be worried if the numbers suddenly get longer.

Cause and Effect
My host teacher continued my lesson today. I loved the book that she chose. I also loved that she had the children use post-it notes to write cause and effect examples from the books that they are reading. The students got to post the notes onto the anchor chart that we made during my first day of this unit. I feel like the students have a great handle on this topic. Tomorrow I am going to reinforce the fact that nonfiction books also have cause and effect relationships.

Restroom Break
Today, I had the class during the restroom break. Most of the class was pulled out for interventions, but I still complimented the class on being so quiet. I teased one of the boys because he has been sassy in a funny way lately. As I was walking down the line, another boy towards the front suddenly decided to be loud. I was thinking about how I had to stop him, so I decided to say his name then "shhh!" without thinking. The whole class thought it was funny! I finally calmed them down, but when we got to the room, I heard like 5 of the children telling my host teacher, who was also laughing about it. I am glad that this class is so loving and has such a great sense of humor.

Science IMPACT Lesson #2
Today was probably the best lesson that I have taught this semester. I wish that I would have recorded it. My hook was pretty good and so was the engagement. I loved how excited the students got during my demonstrations about conductors versus insulators, they actually oohed and awed. My science lessons have been ending more quickly than I have anticipated. I get nervous about taking too long and the students catch on to the content fairly quickly. Tomorrow, I will play games and sing songs.

Card Trick
Two of my students blew my mind today! During recess, one student asked me if she could do a magic trick on me today. I agreed. She told me to choose a card, so I did. She drew 2 cards, neither one was my card. She had me put my hand on the cards, then she waved another card over my hand and said, "whoo whoo." She asked me to make sure that my card wasn't under my hand and it was! I got excited and told another student to let her do the trick on them, and the other student told me that she had taught the trick to the girl.

ISTEP+ 
I feel better now that I have attended the ISTEP+ training. I like how they are breaking up the tests and that Community in Schools is supplying snacks for the children. I am glad that my students are taking the paper version, because it will make it easier for my students to input their answers for the math portion. I like that Indiana is considering getting rid of ISTEP+ because it had gotten out of control, but I wonder what will replace it.

Resources
My teacher discussed some excellent resources with me today, I am excited to use them. I learned how to update the class website.

Plenty of Teaching

Banana Observation Paper
It takes me a while to conference about papers. It is difficult to keep up with the papers, even though there are 2 of us conferencing while an aid works with the students would we predict would struggle the most with writing the papers. My student that I worked with today has a real issue with run-on sentences. I tried to have him read it and tell me where to break up the sentences, but that didn't work. Now I am focusing on thinking about breaking up a sentence when he types the words an twice.

Extra Math
3 of my students graduated from Extra Math today! Extra Math measures all of the facts 0-10 for addition, subtraction, multiplication and division.

Math Group
Today, the children who are still having difficulty with long division worked with me. For the first problem, I had each of the children give me her favorite number, which I used to create the problem. The children finished at different rates, so after I checked the answer, I allowed the students to create their own problems. This strategy was meant to help with pacing because each child should be able to learn at his or her own pace during small group review activities. Allowing the students to create their own problems gives me more work when it comes to checking answers, but that reinforces and models how to solve the problems because I usually talk it out while I solve the problem. I just have to make sure that the children are mixing it up with the problems; I don't want a child to continually divide by 0, 1, 2, or 5.

Picture Day
We had our class picture today. I ordered a large copy. I was sad that 4 students were home sick today, we never have more than 2 students out.

Reading Mini Lesson
My reading lesson went pretty well today. I mainly reviewed what I did yesterday then had the students discuss the relationship between cause and effect. The level of engagement was pretty good. I liked being able to go back to my anchor chart while I was talking. We read another book. The students loved singing the song with me (engagement), but had trouble coming up with the cause and effect for most of the instances. In their defense, the effect was that he had 1 less button and the cause was that the button fell off. The students did pretty well with the last cause and effect. They also did a good job at sharing their personal cause and effect stories. They all completed my cause and effect assessment, I hope to see correct answers when I grade the assignment.

Science
I was slightly flustered with my first IMPACT project lesson today. We began the lesson with inquiry about electricity (what is it, how do we use it, how does it travel). I accidentally forgot to do the introduction, so it ended up in the middle of my lesson. I also forgot my holiday light, so I was not able to do the hands-on demonstration. I was surprised that I accidentally ran through the 30 minute lesson in 15 minutes. Tomorrow, I plan to review conductors before I go into insulators. My teacher suggested that I do more hands-on activities/games with the students and that I revisit the video. I am pretty happy with my electricity bags of tricks, but I want to add sticks and Hot Wheels.

Organizing Records
My teacher gave me blank rosters, which I use to check in homework. I tend to grade math homework as well as any other homework that is not open ended. Eventually, she will teach me how to enter homework grades into the system. I have learned some good times for checking in homework so that I can still help the children, but they do not have to wait on me before going to recess.


4th Grade Team Meeting
I really like how this group works together. They openly ask for and give advice. They follow the rules. Even though they try to stay on the same schedule of teaching subjects, each teacher feels free to do what is best for her own students. I heard some ver valid opinions on school-wide discipline approaches today.

Planning
I was so glad that my teacher allowed me to help her place students into math groups today. She had each student fill out a color coded exit slip about how they felt about long division. We moved the ranking of the students as needed, but we respected the students who felt like they were on red. We ended up with 6 math groups. We divided red students into 2 groups of 4. We ended up with 3 yellow groups which consisted of no more than 5 students. We have 1 red group, which has 7 students in it. While she was moving students into other groups, I wondered why she was moving them. Upon seeing the completed groups, I absolutely saw the method to her madness. I am very excited for this grouping and look forward to meeting with my 2 groups. I have the lowest group and the middle yellow group. We will not refer to the groups by their colors. When I have to do this in my own classroom, I will probably use excel or word because I do not like the permanent feeling of writing the names on paper, but she did well using pen and paper.

Cause and Effect

Banana Observation Paper
Today, I did some more writing conferences today. One of them was my second conference with one of the boys. It took a while to edit because he originally wrote his paper without using the outline, so I told him which parts he had left to include. This made the organization very scattered and I wanted to read the paper in the order that it should be. I will try to visit this student as he writes the second draft so that I can help make sure that he follows the given order.

Mini Lesson
My mini lesson went pretty well today. It was my first formal lesson that I have taught this group. I did it from the top of my head, but I checked my lesson plan at the end. When I had to turn my back to the children, I was sure to have them turn and talk with a partner. I was sensitive about my pacing, but no one else mentioned anything about it. I didn't realize it, but I kind of answered my own questions and will focus on that bad habit. I need to work on scanning the room for behavior. I am really happy with how my anchor chart turned out, the children gave me ideas that I was able to draw. I would like to see more engagement, but my P12 clinical educator said that she thought that the engagement was pretty good.

Planning
I used my comments from both my university supervisor and my P12 clinical educator (host teacher) as I began to prepare my follow up lesson for tomorrow. So far, the second lesson will be very similar to the first lesson. It took a while, but my P12 clinical educator and I worked together to create a worksheet for the kids. I like how she took what I had on my mind and opened it up to give the children a choice as to which pictures they use to complete the worksheet. We chose to throw in Saturn as an object that would not make sense as one of the answers. We figured that money and an angry guy would be flexible to fit with different pictures.

Kiss the Pig
My school is having a fundraiser where 5 teachers have to kiss a pig this Friday as a fun thing before ISTEP+. 3 of my boys asked if they could buy a ticket to nominate me and I figured that they could. My teacher said that she didn't think I qualified. SAVED!!!

Gheens Laminator

I went back to Gheens today. I decided to get 8 manila sentence strips and 4 yellow sentences strips to post my IMPACT project's learning targets on, but I did not have time to make them the last time I went to Gheens. I laminated them because I want to be able to reuse them. I know that a dry erase board marker can erase words that are written in permanent marker. I also laminated a poster in case my teacher does not let me put the window clings in her window. The laminator moved so much quicker than the one at the school. It made me a little nervous because I didn't want to use too much laminate. Autumn, my oldest niece, was excited to make sun catchers out of my leftover laminate.

Long Division and Planning

Banana Observation Paper: Drafting and Editing
I walked around to help students figure out how to write their rough drafts based off of the outline and to edit papers. I was surprised that one of the students left off half of the outline. I still liked his paper, but I made a list of which sections to add and I added the roman numerals and letters from the outline so that I can help him organize his paper when he completes the other section. I am learning how difficult it is for students to write a paper based off of an outline, they have to be explicitly taught.

Long Division
Most of the students still seem to be enjoying practicing the long division problems on their white boards. When they realize that we are on our last problem, they ask for another problem. More of the students understand long division than yesterday. We have 2 more days to focus on long division before moving on to the next big step. She briefly mentioned how to turn an answer with a remainder into a fraction, at least two student thought that that idea was really cool. I told a struggling student that long division is a skill that they will use for the rest of their life.

Laminating
I learned how to use a big laminator today. I made my initial mistakes and now feel confident using one for my future classroom. I am glad that my teacher was so understanding. I am excited for the students to get to play the area and perimeter game that my teacher found online.

Discipline
I had to talk to two boys who were playing in the bathroom today. They did not want to admit what they did, but one of the boys said that he did exactly what another boy said he did. I was surprised that he couldn't just tell me the story. I never thought that it would be so hard to discipline students when I knew that they needed to be disciplined. I don't normally have this much  trouble disciplining students, but both of the boys were guiltily looking down when I told them to clip down.

Planning
I was really happy that my teacher liked most of my lesson plan that I made for my cause and effect reading mini-lesson on Monday. She offered me some really good advice. I am looking forward to teaching this lesson on Monday. Glenda will observe this lesson, which makes me slightly nervous.

Working with Kids

Banana Observation Paper
Even though the class made an outline for this 4 paragraph paper together, many students still did not know how to turn the outline into a paper. Many students forgot to indent their paragraphs.

Assessment
I graded the front half of the long division worksheet that the students had for homework last night. Three students missed at least three problems. Upon seeing this, I thought it would be a good idea to pull these students as a group later, but it didn't quite work like that.

Math Leadership
I had the students to myself during snack while my host teacher ran some errands. Eventually, I decided to warm the students up for math by having the students solve problems from last night's homework on the white board. (I still had the worksheets on my desk, I wanted the students to completely rework the problems.) I had three students at the board completing three different problems, but then my host teacher walked in. I let the student who finished half of her problem finish solving it and I sent the other two students back to their seats. My host teacher seemed to like that idea, so she had the student explain how she got the answer. We spent math time having one-three students solving a problem at the white board while the other students solved the problems on their own white boards. The students seemed to like this idea. I was surprised that around half of the class was having issues with long division even though most of the class did pretty well on their homework. I wonder if this is because parents check homework.

Reading Groups
I ran the read and respond station. The students did pretty well at finding sentences that were important, but they had trouble finding the most important sentences in each paragraph. If a student chose two sentences from the same paragraph, I asked them if one of the sentences described the other.

Social Studies
I led the social studies lesson today. I read from the book, which described the terrain of southern Indiana. We discussed terms such as sink holes, caves, and knobs by making connections using our schema. The students panicked a bit when we got to the comprehension questions, so I modeled how to answer the first third of the first question.

Recces Duty
I handled a conflict that I thought might turn into a fight today. It was surprisingly well. I could tell that a student was overloaded with emotions and was in over his head so I called him and a friend over. When we got to the edge of the mulch where I had been standing, I was surrounded by five boys and another boy who was involved had run away, I decided that it would be okay to handle him later. I made sure that the panicked boy was at least an arm's length away from his friend. I told them that they needed to use their words instead of their hands because they did not want to have to go talk to the principal if they could just talk it out on their own. I tried to get him to talk to me but they all started talking at once. I assigned a line of who would speak when. It turned out to be a misunderstanding involving time and a game, the story did not really make sense to me, but it made sense to them. I was glad that the boys were able to work it out among themselves with a little guidance from me about talking about their feelings and what was going on. The other friend came up to us and was still a little unhappy. I told the others that he was not ready to play yet. Within ten minutes, they were all running around and smiling.

Record Keeping
My teacher is allowing my to check a sheet to show which students submitted homework and morning work, which is taken for a participation grade. Some students did the other side of the long division worksheet, so I graded that side so that the students could rework the problems when they rework the problems from today. Some students did word pyramids for all of their vocab words instead of just the assigned words, so I put a 24 next to the check so that I would know that they had already submitted that assignment.

Flexibility

Banana Observation Outline
I like that the teacher asked students what they thought should come next. The students wrote like they were supposed to and at least half of the class talked/participated.

Birthday
I like how the teacher remembers to end Go Noodle time with a breathing video to help the students calm back down.

My class was too loud at lunch time.

Flexibility
I was glad that my students were quiet and flexible during our restroom break. Another teacher had her students use the restroom during our time slot. At first, only a few of her students went to the restroom so I had my students wait in a small hallway because we could not get to our restroom break spot. After a few minutes, I chose a few students from the end of the line to use the next closest restroom. I made them promise not to talk and I knew that I would be able to hear them if they chose to talk.

Book Fair

Morning Work
I loved the worksheet that we used for morning work this morning. It showed how multiplication turns into division. I would love to used the worksheet in my own classroom. I think that is very important to teach students that division is just reversed multiplication.

Book Fair
This book fair has so many great books that are less that $5. The selection was huge! I thought it was great that every student in my class got a free book that can cost up to $6.99. Some of my students got spy pens. I talked to one student who I felt would get into trouble with his spy pen, he almost made it through the entire day without getting into trouble. Another student bought a few spy pens. I saw a blue light shining off of one of the plastic carts so I told him to put it up. Later, the teacher had to take away one for the rest of the day. The next day, the carpet around the student turned blue while half of the lights were off. I went up to him and had him hand me the pen, which I put into his drawer. I also saw a lot of students trying to shine these lights into each other's eyes, so I told them about how that was bad for their eyes. In my future classroom, I will have my students put any toys from the book fair into their backpacks as soon as they return from book fair.

Main Idea Pretest
I proctored a pretest for three students. Later, two students came out to finish their tests. The teacher had instructed all of the students to use the question to answer in complete sentences. I noticed that these five students had trouble with remembering to use the question stems.

Skipping Morning Meeting
We had to skip morning meeting today. Two students noticed and told me about it. These students really do care about their morning/afternoon hugs and their morning meeting, they always let me know if one of them gets skipped.

Epic
I was surprised that Epic.com is free for educators, but not for everyone. I love that it reads books to students.

Snow Day

Today was a snow day, so I got to work at the daycare instead.

Team Building and Engagement
Before lunch time, I had to gather my ten school-aged children for a group game that would not be too distracting while the preschoolers ate their lunches. The children did not want to play bingo, so I went in to the game closet while another teacher watched the children. I bought out a few games, but I decided to use the paper flower pots that we did not use last summer. I separated the children into two groups in which I tried to balance by age and family membership. I had a nearly even amount of kindergartners and first graders on each team, I also separated the two sets of brothers. I introduced the challenge to see who could build the tallest tower. At first, the older children resisted the game, but after two minutes, they were getting very competitive. The younger children kept knocking down the towers by accident or had trouble balancing the flower pots, so I allowed all of the kindergartners to join a team of their own. I used yarn to measure the towers, which showed that you could measure with anything. The older children (now on teams of 2) became very competitive where as the younger team decided that they just wanted to build for fun. I had the teams go without talking for two minutes. The children did not want to clean up for lunch because they were so engaged with the activity.

If I ever have a class that needs to work on team work, I would love to incorporate this activity while I am teaching a standard that can tie into it. This activity can also fit into Maslow's Hierarchy of Needs because students needs to feel safe and that they belong in order to learn.

Gheens Academy

Today we went to Gheens. It was a pretty nice trip. I had been there a few times to work on 4-H projects, but it looked a little different today.

They had a ton of books. I looked at them for more ideas for my electricity unit, but I didn't find anything that I liked better than what I already had. I decided to laminate sentence strips so that I could have my Learning Targets posted for my students even though I do not have enough time to write them during my lesson. (I never got around to laminating my sentence strips, but I did buy some. I will write all of my LT's in permanent marker on the strips then when I am finished, I can use a dry erase marker to clean the strip. I will post the targets on the white board during my lesson using poster putty.

I was afraid to get started on too many projects without having my lesson ideas checked so I was not as productive as I could have been. (My teachers were not able to meet with me today.) I decided to look at my lesson plan ideas. First, I read my ideas and wrote in any new ideas. Next, I looked at the extensive rubric for this project and added any items that would satisfy some of the points from the rubric. Finally, I read my pretest and discovered that I had forgotten to include two of the items that will be on the post test, so I wrote those into my unit plan.

I decided to clear my head by walking around. The idea of making window clings had stuck with me all day, vinyl is only 75 cents per page and window clings can make learning seem cooler. I decided to get an orange sheet and a blue sheet in honor the school colors of the school where I am student teaching. Other than a lightning bolt, the die cuts and the special die cut machine did not have anything for electricity, I found this to be very surprising. I decided to cut out the vocabulary words. The staff members were very kind and showed me how to use the die cut machine to create my window clings. I learned a lot about making these window clings. I was surprised because it took so long and it wasn't as easy as cutting card stock or construction paper.

I am glad that Gheens is so close to home, it is a great resource.

Classroom Organization

• Lunch Choice: Write the choices on the board at the end of each day. If I use a SMARTBoard template, the students can out their name under their lunch choice and it will help with attendance. 
• Morning work: If multiple pieces, write a list on the board at the end of each day. I want to have my classroom all set up for the next day before I leave so that my mornings will be less stressful. 
• Job list: Update it every Thursday using an excel sheet so that it is easy to move names down to the next spot. Be aware that a girl can not be a restroom monitor for the boy's restroom. Post the list in 3 places around the room. 
• Print everything for the next week on Thursdays. 
• Turning in work: Have 1 tray per subject. 

Designing My Own Classroom

I love the way that this classroom is designed. It is perfect for its space. Sometimes the sliding carts get in the way, but I love that each child has so much storage space. I love the desk caddies. I like that there are 4 trashcans in the classroom, this makes it easier for students to throw away trash. I wish that the cubby space was a little wider so that backpacks and jackets could fit more easily.

Hands-on Learning

Morning Work
I like that the students grabbed the math worksheet that went with the skill that they are currently focusing on. This made for easy differentiation.

Addition Table
The students colored an addition table for their math notebooks. I did not even know that addition tables existed.

Injuries
One of my students sprained her ankle, another student broke his collar bone. The students and teacher were very good about making sure that these students were taken care of. These students got to leave for everything 5 minutes early.

Birthday Snack
I like that students get to bring in a special snack for the class on their birthdays.

Brainpop Slavery
This activity had great participation. While 1 student answered the question, the class held up the sign for the answer choice that they thought was the answer. If the student answered incorrectly, another student got to try.

Area of a Triangle Activity
I loved this hands on lesson. I will repeat this lesson in my own classroom. I like that we stapled ziplock bags into each child's math notebook to hold the pieces.

Finding 1/2 of 24
I like how many methods the students came up with to solve this problem. The teacher and class created a great anchor chart.