Blog Weekly Post 7 - Monday

After my lesson today my teacher began to take over to start her lesson. As we transitioned into her teaching I noticed how well she spots off task children. In Kindergarten, every other second it seems like a child is off task or paying no attention. My teacher is really good at keeping all the students’ attention the whole time she teaches. I have noticed that I am so concerned about teaching my lesson and what I need to do next that I have trouble managing my students’ behavior. I feel like I am constantly correcting or trying to manage a certain student or twos attention and I feel like I am taking away from my other students. I also feel like when I go to correct a student’s behavior I must stop my lesson to do so and I am losing my on task students attention. Is this a skill that comes with time when teaching? Am I not paying enough attention to off task behavior during my lesson? I know that no class is going to be perfect but is there a way to grab every student’s attention. I then start to question my ability to grab my student’s attention. Am I planning exciting enough lessons that my students want to learn and participate in.

Weekly blog post 6

I have come to realize that the plans you make for your teaching can change so quickly. I plan my lessons the week before I teach them. During the middle of the week I find myself changing or tweaking my lessons. Sometimes I feel like my students do not understand the information as much as I would like and feel like I should not move on to the next steps until they fully understand the first steps. I have also gotten to the middle of the week and thought I was holding them back from their learning and I needed to speed things up. I have been having trouble with assessing my students. I feel like I need to take more time with my students individually on their learning to assess what they know. I try to call on my students individually to see if they comprehend the information but I think that sometimes their answers are not always one hundred percent accurate. Sometimes other students will whisper answers to them and other times I think my students might know the answer but are too afraid to say it aloud. My teacher keeps a clip board with cards of each student’s name and will write down things that they can and cannot do. I like this method but I feel like there are always students we miss, especially our higher level learners. I am going to try to write something about each child once a week. I noticed that my students have been getting bored with our morning message. They have been getting more chatty and restless during our morning routine. I have decided to change our routine a little by creating some more activities. I have tried to keep them active and interesting. I think that the end of last week’s morning routine went better than the beginning of the weeks before I changed it. I am feeling very comfortable with my students and my classroom. I am picking up on so many great ideas and strategies that I feel like I will use in the future!

Blog Weekly Post 5

I finally feel like my students are getting into their routine of how our daily schedule works. Most of the students are transitioning very well from one activity to another. One of my biggest pet peeves that I have noticed with my students is they cannot keep their hands to themselves. It is so very distracting for me and the other students. The majority of my students have trouble with the concept of keeping their hands to themselves. I know that this is a very normal concern in Kindergarten or younger students. I want to start looking for different ways to try to keep my students hands to themselves. It is just a constant distraction to the class and the others. One thing I noticed this week is that I tend to think that my students that are quieter do not understand information or that there academic qualities lack. I was surprised today when my teacher showed me assessments that she had been working with individual students. One of our quieter students scored fairly well and I was very surprised. This student tends to keep to herself and not answer questions even when prompted and asked. I think I thought because this student did not answer questions aloud to me that she did not know the answer. This makes me think about my instruction or individual assessment with this student. I tend to make mental assessments on my students when I talk to them or hear them talking to their classmates about their class work. I feel like I do not have a great grasp on this student’s capability because I never hear her talking aloud. I want to spend more time with this student to learn more about her and the ways that she learns. I also want to find a way to assess her in a way that she is comfortable. I believe that one way could be not having her answer questions in whole group instruction. I think that I could have her give me an answer by writing or drawing the answer if she doesn’t want to speak. Another part of me thinks that she needs to learn to speak in front of her classmates so that she will get comfortable.

Week 4 Blog Posting

I am beginning to realize that our students really listen to the teacher’s when we speak. They unintentionally listen to how we talk to each other and other students. We have one student that speaks little English and has trouble with her behavior. We are constantly talking to her and saying her name during class. Many times we have to stop whole class instruction to correct her behavior. It is very difficult and tiring to keep her on task and focused, as you could imagine it would be being from another country and not understanding the language being spoken. As teachers, we are constantly trying to correct her behavior without interrupting the other students learning. I have noticed that the other students are starting to talk to her like the teachers do. They try to boss her around and tell her what she should or should not do. In some ways it is good that are students know what they need to be doing and try to help this student get on track. There are many negatives to this situation. I feel like the students see this particular student in a negative light. She is consistently bothering the other students by touching them and talking or making noises during instruction. As teachers, we tend to say this students name loudly, directive, and authoritative. I have heard the other students talk to her this way. I feel like we do not realize how negative we make this student look to her classmates. I heard a student in line the other day say, “I have to stand by the weird girl”. This was upsetting and eye opening to me. Our students probably see our frustration with this student and find her weird and not like the other students. I want this student to be treated fairly and normal. I never realized how much our students listen to not only what we say but the tone of our voice. I am not sure what the answer is to fix this problem. I know that I am going to try to talk to this student in not just a demeaning tone. I want the best for this student. I do not want to give her a bad reputation with her classmates because of how we speak to her. I also have a student with a behavior issue that comes from an interesting home setting. We have had some serious issues with him cursing and hitting other students. He has no earned star cards (our reward system) multiple times and it does not seem to phase him. We kept him in from his second recess for cursing at another student and it did not phase him at all. Today we had an issue with him hitting other students on the playground and at lunch. He will tell the other students sorry if we ask him too. When we ask him why he hit his classmates he has no reason. We gave him a red light (behavior management system) and it did not seem to affect him. I am not sure how to punish someone who does not care if he is punished. Our punishments are obviously not making a difference in his behavior. I do not know how to keep our other students safety in mind when dealing with a student who does not care to hurt others. I have learned a lot about my students this week. Every week I am learning more about them academically and personally. I am really enjoying my time in Kindergarten!

Chapter 3 Reflection

When I think about data I get very overwhelmed. I find data difficult to read and decipher. I never understand what kind of data I should be using and what kind if data Is appropriate. Interviews are data that I understand and can contribute without any problems. Some observational data is confusing but I generally understand. I have trouble deciding what data that I need to collect and use for my study. I think I have a difficult time understanding the difference between research data and assessment. Interview data can also be survey data. I never considered this before. I think that surveys are a good start to collecting data for your research. Table 3.2 gives some great data-collection tools. I think that I want to record a lot of teaching for data. I think that video recording is great evidence to support your data. Triangulation is your three sets of data, interview, artifacts, and observations. Although this covers much of your data it does not cover all. Triangulation makes your data and research trustworthy.

Week 3 Blog Posting

This week has felt like the longest four days ever! I am starting to realize that my students are such zombies on Monday since they are tired from their weekend. I think that Monday’s seem like a good time for instruction since they are too quiet to disrupt their neighbor. I also have noticed that I am most tired on Monday as well and need to really step up. I took over morning work this week. My teacher suggested that I should teach morning work for two days and then she would take back over for a day so I could watch her one last time. I thought that this was a good idea. After the first two days of my teaching I reflected really well so I knew what to look for when she taught the third day. One of my main concerns was that I was not very upbeat. I felt like if I wanted m students to be excited about learning the information, then I needed to be excited about teaching it! The next days I tried to step it up. I find it hard early in the morning when I am really tired to get really engaged so that I engage my students. Although the week felt extremely long, I learned a lot this week. I have been trying to work more with my students’ one on one. Our students’ levels are really far apart. We have one student that cannot even recognize the first letter of their name and another student that is on a third grade reading level. This makes instruction very difficult. This week I started taking small groups during station time to work on leveled instruction. I found it difficult to decide what students needed what instruction. When my teacher reviewed my lesson plans she thought some activities were too low for some groups. I wonder if this comes with experience or if I do not know my students well enough. I made it a point this week to get to know my students and their strengths AND weaknesses better. I noticed that I tend to get better results from my students when working one on one with them. Well duh! I feel stupid for even writing that. I just am seeing how important it is to work to each individual needs. I find it very difficult to realize that many students are not getting this one on one interaction that they need. I feel like they could really be rising to their potential if we have the teacher man power. It is difficult to find one on one time with certain students. I wonder if we made a time every day where a teacher just pulled one student at a time to work on a specific need if we could make a faster learning process. I worked with our child that has behavior issues this week one on one. He was refusing to color his worksheet, which we needed to do before he could go play at stations. The student just sat there and watched all of the other children. The other teachers were busy either pulling students for individual teaching or busy supervising the other students in the room. I decided that I would sit down and talk to this student. This is a student who has really never been given the chance to color in his life. I talked to him about the different colors and what color he wanted to use for the different parts of the picture. As he told me what colors to use I would pick up the crayon and begin to color that section. I told him I started it now you need to finish it. He did very well with this activity. His coloring was the best we have ever seen it. Of course he would get distracted but he actually finished his work in time to play. I feel like because of his behavior issues we tend to leave him out or not think he needs help or deserves help but in reality he needs more help than anyone in that room.