Week 12

So this week I unfortunately missed my field experience. We don't have much time left and I really love spending time there. I have grown close to my Kidwatching student and I am learning a lot from her. I am currently working on a poem about my grandmother for my publication. She passed away July of 2008. I am not really into poem writing, but I was really close to her so I am enjoying writing about her. I am really excited to see the final product! When I went home for Thanksgiving I rounded up a picture of me and my grandparents to put on my final project. I can't wait to share my poem with my family! I hope that it turns out pretty good!!! In class it was really fun to work on digital stories in our groups. I had made a digital story in one of my other classes and we didn't get to pick the topic so I didn't really enjoy making it. Although since we got to pick our topic in class I really did enjoy working on this one. I also thought the videos we watched in class were very interesting!! I can't wait to show off our finished project!!

Week 11

So last week in field experience I received my student's writing sample. I also got to help my student start to type up a play that her and the student's in the group had wrote. I had to help remind her to capitalize letters and were to use punctuation. She was constantly forgetting to put punctuation at the end of her sentences. Then after they went back to the classroom from skills I watched the teacher do I lesson. The teacher did a lesson on the overhead over correcting sentences. I noticed that a lot of the students weren't paying close attention and were doing other things. The teacher often ignored these students. I feel like that when I start teaching I won't be able to ignore these students causing disruptions. After the lesson they then went into writing workshop. When all the students started writing it was time for us to leave. That was my day in my field experience. In class we went over and shared our students writing. My student wrote a paragraph on what she was thankful for. We went through and answered questions figuring out what our student needed to work on. I think the hardest part of this was writing what I would say to the parents about their student. That is one thing I am really nervous about is talking to the parents and tell them where their child is struggling. I hope I never have a problem parent!!

Week 10

So this week in field experience I finally got my kidwatching student. My teacher actually just let us pick any student that we wanted to kidwatch. I choose a girl that I had previously worked with that I have grown a little relationship with. I picked her because I feel like it will be easier for me to interview and watch her since I know she is pretty comfortable with me and talks to me a lot. I really hope to learn a lot from this kidwatching experience!

This week in class we actually presented of our projects! I saw some really interesting genres. I noticed that a lot of students but a lot of work into their projects. I spent a lot of time making my poster and making it visual so I am glad that my other classmates did as well. Going through and looking at their presentations I actually learned a few things about some topics that I never knew about! As everyone knows I did Kendra for my project and her new season comes on tonight! Can't wait!!!

Week 9

So this week in field experience I started in music. Then after the code red and greed drills I went to gym again. This time they played some fun Halloween games. On of the games they played was called zombie tag. After gym we went back to the classroom and broke up into groups again. This time in groups we the students had to come up with Halloween sentences but leave blanks so that their partner could use the context clues to figure out the missing word. The students that I had were figuring the words out fine, but they weren't really creating sentences with context clues. I kept trying to get them to put in adjectives but they weren't really understanding. I don't really like this whole splitting up thing because I barely even recognize some of the students that our in my class because I never see them. I'm disappointed that I didn't get to see Mrs. Mori actually teach a lesson. I sure I hope I get to see some well taught lesson before I leave!

Week 8

So this week in my field experience I received the big news! My teacher had her twin girls! Now she will have four girls all under the age of 5! Wow she is going to be busy! I am so excited for her, but I sure am going to miss her in the classroom. While I was at University I also got to observe my fourth graders in gym for the first time. They were playing soccer! Thats just say that was pretty interesting, will balls going everywhere! After gym we went back to the classroom just a little bit before the students so that we could meet the new teacher! She seems like she knows what she is doing which is great, but she isn't Mrs. Mori. Then after the class came back from specials everyone spilt up into their normal groups for skills. In my group I actually got to read two books to my groups and ask them to figure out the meaning of words using their context clues. In one of the books there was few hard words I didn't know...now that was embarrassing! I'll be sure to look over the books before I read them in front of my class or any class again!!

Week 7

This week in my field experience we got to observe a writer's workshop! This was a great experience for me because I wasn't really sure what a writer's workshop looks like. I'm sure I have done it some time in my educational past, but I can't really remember it so this experience was great! I loved watching the teacher teach the mini lesson. I also really liked how she gave the students good ideas to start their writing. She just didn't expect the students to just go write, but she gave them a little head start with ideas. I think that I will probably use the writer's workshop in my classroom someday! I think its really important that students get the chance to free write and read!

For class we had to have our rough draft done! I finally picked a topic for my paper. I picked Kendra Wilkinson. She has a very interesting story to tell and she is fun! I really enjoyed reading her book so I thought it would easy to write the paper. In class we also started on coming up with ideas for multigenre papers. My partner and I did a picture and caption for her topic of September 11th. I am pretty sure I am going to use the picture and caption for one of my genres. After all Kendra was a model!!

Week 6

Today was the big day! In my field experience I completed the reading assessment! It wasn't nearly as bad or hard as I thought! Actually I was with another teacher and he helped me through it! It was a great learning experience. Also in my field experience this week I got the chance to grade some papers and I realized how soft hearted I am. A student answered one of the questions with " I don't know and I am sorry." I wanted to cry right there on the spot. It was so sad, but the one of the teachers made it a little better. She gave me wonderful advice. She told me that students put things like that all the time, but you have to be strong and be hard. She said " Just remember your not here to be their friend, they have plenty of friends." I know that when I become a teacher I am going to have such a strong connection with all my students and I am going to have constantly remember her advice. This will be one of the hardest aspects of teaching, but we are there to make them better and sometimes that means being mean and hard!

In class we discussed and did activities around our topics for our research paper. I really had a hard time picking my topic. I kept running into several problems with everything I choose. At first I was going to do Kendra Wilkinson because I just finished her book and she lived quite an interesting life. With her I just couldn't think of any questions for the activity because I had just got done reading her book. Then I was going to research about addiction, but that just seemed too boring for this paper. I love Carrie Underwood so I thought she would be a good topic, but then I got to thinking that researching her life would be hard. I have a feeling their won't be much about her on the internet or in books. So these our my 3 ideas, I better make up my mind soon. In class I was leaning more towards Carrie, but now its Kendra! Ah!! I hope I make the the right decision!!