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.
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